95bFM: The Wire

This week on the Tuesday Wire...

For Dear Science our expert Doctor Cushla McGoverin chatted to us about pandas eating better in the past than they do now, using light to spot COVID, and separating liquids using other liquids.

In our weekly catchup with the National Party, Wire host Castor spoke to MP Katie Nimon about hospitality spending and the potential for a four-year parliamentary term. 

They also spoke to general manager of the Restaurant Association, Nicola Waldren, about hospitality spending in Aotearoa and what more the government could do. 

And on the Green Desk, Jack Marshall spoke to lecturer of sustainable architecture at AUT, Priscilla Besen, about solutions to Aotearoa’s energy crisis.

The struggles faced by the hospitality sector have been highlighted in a recent trading report from the Restaurant Association covering the second quarter of 2024. The report outlines various challenges businesses face, including low customer numbers and customer spending, reduced staff availability, and cost of goods. 

Wire host Castor spoke to the general manager of the New Zealand Restaurant Association, Nicola Waldren, about these issues and what more could be done to address them.

Unions say that the government's change to employment law restricting contractors from challenging their status in the employment court, is a step in the wrong direction. 

The change comes off the back of the landmark decision by the employment court to grant four contract uber drivers the status of an employee. The government now wants to prevent this from happening again. 

E Tū Union National Secretary Rachel Mackintosh says this change will lock in the exploitation which Uber’s current model relies on. 

Producer Evie spoke to Mackintosh about why the government is implementing the changes and how it will negatively affect workers. 

Last week, thousands of explosions erupted in Lebanon, both the capital of Beirut and other parts of the country. 

This was due to a coordinated attack caused by explosives that were planted in a number of pagers and walkie-talkie devices used by members of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, that Israeli Intelligence is confirmed to be responsible for.  

The attack resulted in thousands of people being injured, many of whom were civilian bystanders, and 32 people being killed, with two of the casualties being children.

Oto spoke to John Minto from Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa, to discuss his reaction to the pager attack in Lebanon and how this could lead to a wider conflict in the Middle-East. 

They also talked about New Zealand’s vote in favour for the UN resolution demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Around mid-August this year, senior management at the University of Auckland made an announcement saying that they were looking to cut a number of small postgraduate and undergraduate courses in the Faculty of Arts with less than 60 and 30 students respectively. 

The University said that the cuts were being proposed to “optimise” course offerings and address classroom spacing issues. They also said that the cuts came about as a result of a routine review of courses regularly conducted by the University.

The announcement resulted in widespread outcry and condemnation by the University of Auckland’s senior academics and lecturers, saying that the University gave them a limited timeframe to review and contest the changes, and the decision to cut courses such as Huarahi Māori will have an impact on marginalised communities.

Oto spoke to Nicole Wallace, an organiser at the Tertiary Education Union who works with lecturers at the University of Auckland to discuss the course cut proposal and its implications for senior academics and lecturers.

For their weekly catch up with Te Pāti Māori, Oto spoke to Mariameno Kapa-Kingi about Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori last week, Gang patch legislation passing into law, and New Zealand supporting a UN resolution, calling for an end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

He spoke to Nicole Wallace from the Tertiary Education Union to discuss a recent series of proposed cuts to short postgraduate courses at the University of Auckland.

And he spoke to John Minto from Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa to discuss Israel’s exploding pager attack in Lebanon last week, as well as New Zealand voting in favour of the UN General assembly resolution demanding an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

For their weekly catch up, Evie spoke to the ACT Party’s Simon Court about restricting contract workers from challenging their employment status, and the ban on gang patches passing into law. 

She also spoke to E Tū National Secretary Rachel Mackintosh about the same planned changes to the contractor employment law, why the Union opposes these, and what negative impact she believes it will have.

Vanuatu, Fiji, and Samoa have formally requested an amendment to the principal treaty of the International Criminal Court to add ecocide alongside genocide, war crimes, and aggression to the international community’s list of most serious crimes. 

If successful, ecocide would become the fifth recognized international crime.

As one of the founding members of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Aotearoa New Zealand has and continues to advocate for the importance of the court’s role as a last resort to try the most serious crimes against humanity.

Sofia spoke to Professor of Law at the University of Waikato and former judge of the Supreme Court in Samoa, Leilani Tuala-Warren, about this proposal, what criminalising ecocide could look like, and how Aotearoa New Zealand should respond. 

She began the interview asking her firstly what ecocide is.

Wire Host Caeden speaks to Yale Daily News’ Andre Fa’aoso on the anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Trump campaign towards immigrants in Springfield, Ohio as well as the apparent second assassination attempt against Donald Trump this campaign.

For our weekly catch-up with the Labour Party, Wire Host Caeden speaks to Labour’s Ginny Anderson about retail crime in the CBD, banning gang patches, and the Minister for Firearms not ruling out bringing back high-powered semi-automatic firearms. 

For States of the States this week they speak to Yale Daily News’ Andre Fa’aoso about the situation in Springfield, Ohio after several weeks of Republican-led anti-immigrant rhetoric and the second assassination attempt against former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump.

And they speak to University of Otago Senior Lecturer Leon Goldsmith about the device explosions in Lebanon that have killed at least twenty-six people and injured thousands more. 

For City Counselling this week, Sofia speaks to Councillor Shane Henderson about Mayor Wayne Brown’s proposal for a second harbour bridge from Point Chevalier to the North Shore as well as Council spending over 250K on beach stairs on Milford Beach.

She also speaks to Professor of Law at the University of Waikato, Leilani Tuala-Warren, about a recent proposal by Vanuatu, Fiji and Samoa to recognise ecocide as a crime against humanity and whether Aotearoa should support the proposal.

The New Zealand government has recently provisionally approved the Monkeypox, or MPOX vaccine in New Zealand. This comes after two new cases being linked to the Queenstown Winter Pride festival. 

The overall risk of MPOX to New Zealand still remains low, despite the World Health Organisation Director-General declaring MPOX outbreak a public emergency of International Concern. Despite this, the virus may still prove deadly without proper vaccination or treatment.

Sasha spoke to Associate Professor Mark Thomas from the University of Auckland Molecular Medicine and Pathology about the recent adoption of an MPOX vaccine.