95bFM: The Wire

This week on the Monday Wire...

For our weekly catchup with the ACT Party, News Director Castor spoke to MP Simon Court about health sector underfunding and overcrowding in hospitals, ACT’s proposed working with children card, and the investigation into another harbour crossing. 

They also spoke to honorary research fellow at the University of Auckland, Melissa Jade-Gregan, about a study she authored into New Zealand’s adherence to international tobacco lobbying regulations. 

Producer Pranuja spoke to Dr Joanna Hikaka about why Māori are accessing aged-care services at much lower rates than non-Māori, and what needs to change for the system to work better for kaumātua and whānau. 

She also spoke to Associate Professor Tanya Evans about why women from girls-only schools are more likely to pursue engineering and computer science, and what that could tell us about the gender gap in STEM.

New Zealand’s aged-care system is facing calls for major reform, with a new Ministerial Advisory Group report highlighting significant gaps in how older people access and experience care.

For Māori, those inequities are particularly stark. Māori with daily care needs are around half as likely as non-Māori to access community-based aged care, and around half as likely to enter residential care.

Producer Pranuja spoke to Dr Joanna Hikaka, Director of the Centre for Co-Created Ageing Research, about what is driving that disparity, and whether the Government’s proposed overhaul could deliver a more Māori-led and equitable aged-care system.

Women who attended girls-only schools are overrepresented among female engineering and computer science students at the University of Auckland compared to women from co-ed schools, according to new research.

Researchers found no equivalent effect for men who attended boys-only schools, raising questions about what girls’ schools may be doing differently when it comes to confidence, gender stereotypes and encouraging students into traditionally male-dominated subjects.

Producer Pranuja spoke to University of Auckland Associate Professor of Mathematics Education Tanya Evans about what might be behind the difference and whether those lessons could be applied in co-educational schools.

Auckland Council has gained legal protection for 700 more hectares of regional parkland, on top of the 37,000 already covered by the Local Government Act. 

And Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has called on the public to submit their top easy-fix roading and transport issues. 

The “Quick Fix” campaign focuses on delivering early wins as the Auckland Council takes over decision-making from Auckland Transport in October.

For City Counselling this week, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Councillor Julie Fairey about both of these topics.

For City Counselling, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Councillor Julie Fairey about new protections for regional parkland in Tāmaki Makaurau and Mayor Wayne Brown’s “Quick Fix” transport campaign.

Producer Flo spoke with Labour MP Shanan Halbert about the proposed Meola Reef to Kauri Point Centennial Park harbour Crossing, campaign donations to political parties, low youth enrolment as well as National Party leadership debate.

And producer Eloïse spoke with Dr Alex Sims, Professor in Commercial Law at the University of Auckland, about artificial intelligence and fair use

The need for more extensive copyright protections for artists, musicians, writers, and other creatives whose work is used to train AI is increasingly apparent.

Last year, a landmark class-action lawsuit, Bartz v Anthropic, saw authors file a suit against Anthropic for the company’s use of copyrighted material to train the company's LLM Claude, which resulted in a ONE POINT FIVE BILLION US dollar settlement.

Producer Eloise spoke to Professor Alex Sims, who has a piece just out today in Newsroom on this topic, about AI copyright issues in the news and how we can respond.

This week the Green Party announced a policy aimed at banning price gouging by large supermarkets, the first in their series of “Affordable Kai“ policies that they say will reign in the cost of food.

Mimicking a similar policy put in place in Australia in July, it would ban unreasonably excessive profits, but leaves it up to the Commerce Commission(COMCOM), to determine what unreasonably excessive looks like. The ComCom would then take the supermarkets to court over the breaches.

If found in the wrong, the supermarkets would be hit with large financial penalties of up to $10 million, three times the value of the commercial gain, or 10 percent of turnover.

But is this the best intervention to lower prices and is the ComCom adequately resourced to potentially assess  tens of thousands of product prices?

For this week’s catch-up with the Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez March, Host Manny and Menendez March discuss his policy to ban supermarket price gouging.

The concentration of key industries in Aotearoa New Zealand, such as banking, insurance, building materials, and - of course - supermarkets, has been touted as one of the contributing factors to the ongoing affordability crisis.

However, despite a series of reports released by the Commerce Commission pointing to this concentration, little change has come about. The Opportunity Party has proposed significant reforms to the powers held by the Commerce Commission, that they believe would allow for greater competition in Aotearoa New Zealand. So what would these reforms look like?

Also, this year we’ve seen significant cuts in already-scant funding to the arts sector. With many venues and artists across the country under immense strain, what would the Opportunity Party’s approach be to funding the arts in Aotearoa New Zealand?

So for this week’s catch-up with the leader of the Opportunity Party, Qiulae Wong, Producer Theo asked how Opportunity would approach market concentration and what their stance is on funding the arts sector.

Last week saw protests around the country by the Stop Data Centres NZ movement. Protesters in Auckland gathered outside the Data Centre Leaders Summit held on Symonds Street against the creation of Data Centres in New Zealand, which many worry will lead to negative environmental, health and economic impacts. 

I spoke to protesters including Shane McCoy, Alby Barr and Daymond Goulder-Horobin, about why these protests have been organised, what their concerns about data centres are, and what impact they hope this action will have. 

Last Saturday over 30 protests against the conservation amendment bill were held across the country. 

While the government has already made changes to the bill due to public lash back, removing a clause which would allow for the sale of large amounts of conservation land, protestors believe the bill still places an unnecessary prioritisation of economic development on conservation land.

With protests continuing next month with the Auckland march on nature, pressure on the government looks set to continue until significant changes are made

To discuss the protests against the conservation amendment bill, producer Thomas spoke to Greenpeace policy advisor Gen Toop.