The Wire with Lillian Hanly

The government has announced a $320 million funding boost for sexual and family violence support services in what is the biggest funding announcement of its kind. Around one million New Zealanders experience sexual or family violence each year and Jacinda Ardern has made it a priority of the so called ‘wellbeing budget’.

Lachlan spoke with head of the Women’s Refuge Dr Ang Jury about the announcement, finding out about its effects on both her organisation and violence rates in general.

This week on the Monday Wire, Jemima speaks to Green Party co-leader James Shaw about the Emissions Trading Scheme, climate policy in the Pacific and the cannabis referendum. Southern Cross is back with the latest in Pacific news. Lachlan talks to Dr Ang Jury from Women's Refuge about the government's recent sexual and family violence funding. Jemima waps it up with Hayley Coles from the new Aotearoa Legal Workers Union to discuss what the union has planned for the legal profession. 

Sisonke MSimang is a writer and anti-racism activist, though on her Twitter it states, writer, mama, and bear. Of South African whakapapa, her work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. Born and raised in exile as the daughter of freedom fighters working to bring down apartheid in South Africa, the government had labelled her father as a terrorist. Currently living in Perth Australia, Sisonke is in Tāmaki Makaurau this week for the Auckland Writers Festival speaking tomorrow at Aotea Center on her book Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home. Lillian Hanly spoke with Sisonke about terrorism and freedom fighting, national identity, racism, privilege, the importance of stories and the concept of home. Sisonke starts by explaining her book and why she wrote it.