The Wire with Manny

The government as announced their plan for the Cook Strait ferry a year after they scrapped Labour’s plan, including cancelling the ferries the Labour government had ordered.

And a new report from the Ministry of Social Development has revealed nearly a quarter of beneficiaries are not receiving their correct entitlements.

For our weekly catch-up with the Labour Party, Wire Host Caeden speaks to Deputy Leader Carmel Sepuloni about both of these topics.

Just one week ago, science, innovation and technology Minister Judith Collins announced cuts to the Marsden Fund, specifically for humanities and social sciences, reinforcing the government's clear initiative to focus on rebuilding the economy and putting business first.

Following this announcement came major backlash from professors, researchers and mainstream news, which claim to shrink the already small percentage of allocated funds towards humanities to an even smaller number. The cuts will also disproportionately affect Maori researchers, cutting the existing 13% of funded research to a proposed 5.5%.

Many argue that social sciences and humanities are important for understanding societies’ and the science which will be applied to it. However, another viewpoint to consider is the millions of taxpayer money which has been going to silly projects, something which needs to be discussed in further detail.

So Sasha spoke to Dr Julie Douglas, National President of the Tertiary Education Union, who believes that the government is making a shortsighted decision for cutting humanities and social sciences from the Marsden Fund.

Recently, an independent evaluation was conducted on Foodstuff’s trial of facial recognition technology in their security system at 25 of their outlets in the North Island.

The evaluation found that using facial recognition in security cameras reduced crime and harmful behaviour at foodstuffs outlets by 16%, based on an examination of 1742 facial recognition alerts for repeat offenders.

However, there were also 9 instances were customers were misidentified as offenders by the system, with one woman who was wrongly removed from a Pak’n’save launching a case againsts facial recognition technology with the Human Rights Review Tribunal, claiming that the technology was discriminatory.

Oto spoke to Guhan Gunasekara, an Associate Professor of Commercial Law at the Univeristy of Auckland, to discuss the implications of facial recognition technology at retail outlets, and what we can expect in the aftermath of the independent evaluation into the trial.

Pharmac has announced its decision to fund the drug, Enhertu, used for slowing the advancement of the HER2-positive form of breast cancer, beginning on the 1st of January, 2025. Alongside this funding, two eligibility restrictions will be removed.

HER2-positive breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer, where the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 protein is present, and encourages the growth of cancer cells.

Producer Athena spoke to Chief Executive at the Breast Cancer Foundation New Zealand, Ah-Leen Rayner, about how Enhertu compares to other breast cancer medicines, the removal of eligibility restrictions, and how the Breast Cancer Foundation pushed for this change.