Holiday Breakfast

Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has asked officials for advice on potential law changes that could address lingering privacy worries with the NZ Covid Tracer app.
It comes after a leading data expert and Privacy Commissioner John Edwards suggested legal tweaks that would ensure agencies couldn't use tracer data for spying or criminal investigations.
New Zealand's app remains a critical tool for helping tracers quickly track down close contacts of people infected with Covid-19 - but at the same time, collects large amounts of personal information from users.
The Government has moved to allay surveillance worries by making the app "decentralised", leaving location data - like that loaded via QR codes - and interaction information, fed via Bluetooth tracing, on peoples' phones until it's needed for contact tracing.
While that approach, widely used by other countries, helped protect users' privacy, there was still little legislative protection against the data being used for other purposes by the Government.
Dr Andrew Chen, a researcher at University of Auckland-based Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, said one concern was that police or intelligence agencies could seek a warrant for a phone and then take tracer data from it.
Singapore's government recently sparked an outcry when it passed laws allowing its police to access data from its TraceTogether app for serious crimes like murder, rape and drug trafficking.
In New Zealand, Chen noted that a recent police review of emergent technologies showed police have the tools and capability to search phones for data.
This month, he wrote to Hipkins and Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, suggesting New Zealand could take a similar step to Australia, which introduced an amendment clarifying who and who wasn't allowed to use tracer app data, and for what purposes.
That effectively meant that intelligence agencies who incidentally collected tracer data from phones had to delete that data and could not use it.
But Chen told the Herald there were still concerns around two scenarios.
"One is law enforcement agencies getting access, as happened in Singapore, which is the main worry," he said.
"The other is that, just because the NZ Covid Tracer app is designed well, it doesn't mean that other digital contact tracing tools are well designed too."
For example, he said, there had been some 30 different providers for digital contact tracing QR codes in the past.
"We know that, last year, there were companies that collected personal information from contact tracing and then used it for marketing purposes.
"So it would actually be good to have some rules in place that specifically state data that is collected for the purposes of the Covid-19 pandemic should only be used to respond to it."
Chen has previously suggested the Government could amend the Public Health Response Act, but now believed the reform would be more suitable elsewhere in own current laws.
In a written response to Chen last week, Hipkins noted that location and Bluetooth contact data was recorded centrally only when given to tracers - and even then, people could still decide if they wanted to release it.
"With New Zealand's relatively small number of cases, there are relatively few people whose data is held centrally," Hipkins said.
"This data is well secured in the ministry's systems and the ministry has undertaken only to use it for contact tracing purposes."
Further, he said, the app had existing protections that limited the time period that data was retained for.
Scanned and manually recorded locations were kept on a user's phone for 60 days and then automatically deleted, while Bluetooth interaction keys were kept on a user's phone for 14 days and then wiped.
Although data from the app uploaded to ministry systems was kept for longer as some of it became part of a person's health record,...

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Seafarers are finding they are caught in a snag when it comes to booking space in the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities and want change.
They are subject to the Managed Isolation Allocation System like the vast majority of people coming across New Zealand's borders. Its is currently booked up until June.
But Nathan Schumacher and Geiri Petursson say the job of a seafarer, where they often have terrible internet access, and the overloaded system means it is nearly "impossible" to book a space.
The pair wants a set allocation in managed isolation for seafarers and feels like no one is advocating for them.
"That's the only way," Petursson said.
They also point out New Zealand had signed onto the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) protocol, which designated seafarers as essential workers.
However, this was not reflected in the Government's policies and seafarers were treated like anyone else. Meanwhile airline crews were exempt, for similar reasons.
Petursson, who is on a vessel off the coast of Argentina, said getting a space is "impossible" because the system is not designed for people working in their positions.
Petursson left New Zealand on November 19 last year, and said he would usually work two months before coming home for the same length of time.
Instead, he had made an agreement with his employer to work about six-and-a-half months because of the pandemic. He is working 12-hours per day, seven days a week.
"It's testing to do that for six months."
He has a visa to enter Argentina when his work-stint ends, where he will have to wait until he gets a spot in managed isolation.
Petursson's wife and children are in New Zealand and he thinks they'd like to see him spend less than seven months away.
"We're often in very, very poor internet connections … we just can't see how we can possibly get those vouchers," he said.
Petursson said also having an Argentina visa put him in a privileged position, but was concerned about New Zealanders who could find themselves docking, and only given a 24-hour transit visa before being expected to fly home.
He had a colleague who arrived in Myanmar over the weekend, where a coup d'état began last week.
"His situation is quite frightening," he said. "As of four days ago … he's still being told [by the Government] his situation does not meet the criteria for an exemption from the voucher system.
"I don't know what needs to happen to meet that criteria."
Schumacher's situation is different. The offshore geotechnical engineer is still in New Zealand and actually missed a job because of Australia recently halting quarantine-free travel from New Zealand.
"It was pretty much a blessing in disguise for me because I then would have been in the same situation," Schumacher said.
But if another job came up soon, he would likely go: "Because I've got a mortgage to pay."
Schumacher said he was speaking up for the people overseas. He'd set up an email account for stranded seafarers to contact him through, and in the past 24 hours about 50 Kiwis working overseas had been in touch about their struggles to book an MIQ spot.
"It shouldn't be part of their job that they know that if they leave for a two-month stint it's actually going to be six-to-eight months before they get home."
Schumacher said New Zealand could also be in breach of the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006, which allows unhindered repatriation of seafarers to their country of residence.
MBIE, which looks after managed isolation, and the Maritime Union of New Zealand has been contacted for comment.
- text by Jake McKee Cagney, additional reporting Michael Neilson

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A shark expert believes more people being in the water is the likely reason behind the number of shark sightings this summer.
Swimmers at an East Auckland beach today were warned to take care after sharks were spotted, and another shark warning is in place at a west coast beach. Last month, 19-year-old Kaelah Marlow died after apparently being attacked by a shark at Waihī Beach in the Bay of Plenty.
Marine scientist and shark researcher Riley Elliott said the increased number of sightings is not surprising, despite their populations declining.
He said there are far fewer sharks than previously, but a lot more people are going into the water than before.
"We cannot blame sharks for us encountering them more, we can only blame ourselves, we can only educate ourselves and we can only understand the environments that we go into and accept the risk if we're going to go into them."
But Elliot said every tragedy as a result of a shark needs to be investigated so we can learn from our mistakes.
"It should be recognised because we don't want this to continue, you need to learn from these, you need to react from these tragedies."
Elliott said it's vital to distinguish science from personal observations.
A major international report in the journal Nature a few weeks ago indicated that worldwide shark numbers have declined 70 per cent over the past 50 years because of an 18-fold increase in fishing pressure, he said.
"That is absolute scientific fact, so we have only 30 per cent of the world's sharks left and that is a huge decline."
Elliot said many reports in the media or from fishers are personal observations.
"I'm looking at a couple here right in front of me saying 'because we stopped shark finning there's sharks everywhere'. That's personal observation."
Elliot said that does not count as fact or science.
"But when we have a unique tragedy like the unfortunate one in Waihī from a suspected white shark - that stands out as an anomaly that we should be looking into because statistically and scientifically great whites in that area have not been a common thing."
He said last year great whites were sighted off Bowentown in Tauranga and one reportedly bit a surfer's board at Pauanui beach.
At this stage these are anomalies that are not yet statistically significant, he said.
"But any tragedy is statistically significant in my eyes as a shark biologist."
Australia's shark population
Elliot said Australia needs to be broken into two distinct areas in terms of shark attacks.
"West Australia has quite a lot fewer shark attacks but they're almost all fatal, whereas the east coast of Australia had, I think, 88 in the past 10 years, but a very small proportion of those are fatal."
He said on the west coast, mature sharks are hunting seals, and their hunting grounds overlap with areas surfers are.
"You just get a full-blown predatory attack, which results in fatalities because these people are also far from medical help."
Elliot said there is a much larger population of smaller great whites on the east coast of Australia because estuaries and shallow water coastal systems make good nurseries.
"You get a lot of nips, a lot of these young juvenile sharks don't really understand what's going on yet, their diet shifting from fish to mammals, being seals not us, and they make mistakes."
Elliot said the east Australian sharks are part of New Zealand's shark population. Most of this country's shark population hunt around the southern islands.
But he said the sharks that have been seen in the North Island are juveniles.
"These live in our northern harbours, they get above two and a half metres and they shift their diet from fish to seals and they start moving down the coasts or they start migrating."
Elliot said he is curious and concerned to see whether New Zealand ends up with a more juvenile sharks, which...

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Nearly half of women who gave birth during lockdown at a major DHB left hospital sooner than they wanted - fuelling a rise in those readmitted with complications.
"I felt alienated. Depressed and stressed," one new mother told Waitematā DHB, after the health board surveyed women who gave birth during lockdown restrictions.
"I cried the whole night. Alone in the ward. Felt like I was a prisoner. No support at all. This whole experience of giving birth was traumatic."
DHB leaders will soon write to Health Minister Andrew Little asking for a wide-ranging review into how Covid-19 disrupted different health services, so lessons can be learnt for future pandemics.
"The lack of support people on the postnatal ward was a key factor in early discharge decisions made by women which also resulted in an increased readmission rate," a report on the maternity survey concluded.
"Any future restrictions on support people should be considered in the light of the harms this causes for postnatal recovery and maternal mental health."
Lockdowns stamped out community transmission of the virus, saving the country's hospitals from being overwhelmed with cases, and greatly limiting damage to the wider economy.
However, the pandemic also led to thousands of elective surgeries and procedures being delayed, and severe visitor restrictions.
Waitematā DHB, which runs Waitākere and North Shore hospitals, contacted about 890 women who gave birth during level 4 and 3 restrictions, and 190 took part in the survey.
Most were happy with the care received, and 67 per cent said they felt supported during and after birth in hospital, with many praising hospital staff for the kindness and care they received in trying circumstances.
However, the survey also revealed "clear and heartbreaking" evidence that restrictions left some women feeling "abandoned, alone and devastated", with some saying this had a lasting effect on their or their partner's mental health. Findings include:

46 per cent said they left hospital sooner than they wanted, with more than half of this group saying they did so to get support at home. Nearly 9 per cent left because they feared catching Covid-19 in hospital.
7 per cent of mothers or babies were readmitted with complications. This is higher than normal, and most women believed this could have been avoided.
More than half said their stay would have been better had a support person been able to stay with them.
Nearly one-in-four mothers reported needing more support to breastfeed, and the same proportion had a problem accessing other services like ultrasound, GP or hearing screening.

A woman who was readmitted with her newborn because of pain from a C-section and her baby losing weight told the DHB, "if we both had received checks like we would normally have or support with feeding I firmly believe baby wouldn't have had any issues with weight gain."
Another wrote: "So, so disappointed with our experience and as a result seeking psychologist help to manage the trauma of it".
In a recent meeting Waitematā DHB's hospital advisory committee noted the "mixed feedback", with the main concern being not having a support person during delivery.
The visiting rule in the first lockdown followed national guidelines, the committee noted, and was revisited when the next lockdown happened in August.
The Ministry of Health has asked the maternity service to provide feedback on the experience and lessons from the pandemic, and the DHB will soon write to the Health Minister, "to inquire about undertaking a review of the response to Covid-19 and compiling all learnings by the health sector from the pandemic".
In a statement, Little said the Covid-19 response, including that of the health system, "has been the envy of the world" - but also confirmed services and the workforce "are under considerable stress and our system is complex and...

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Most people are back at work now, while the return to school is fast approaching for many children. And the adjustment to get back on your regular body clock has been made worse by the scorching weather covering most of the country right now.
Sleep expert Dr Alex Bartle joined Tim Beveridge to discuss tips for getting back to your normal sleep routine, how to sleep during this heat, and to answer questions from listeners.
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Many of us may think that menopause is something that only happens to older women, but the symptoms can start for some women as early as their 30s.
Wellbeing and nutrition expert Niki Bezzant joined Tim Beveridge to discuss what people need to know about menopause - including the things husbands and partners may need to know for their partner as well - and to bust the stereotypes about it. 
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The holidays are already over for many of us, and that means we need to get our brains back in working order for the year ahead. 
However, there is a need to find balance. Brain Fit coach Jude Walter moved into this career after she had a mental and physical breakdown in her early 30s - and that sent her down a path to help other people avoid a similar path of letting stress get the best of them. 
She joined Tim Beveridge to discuss how to keep your brain fit, and to answer questions from listeners.
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Some GPs are making decisions on who should get cheap contraception, and who doesn't.
The New Zealand Medical Journal says Māori and Pacific women are being targeted for the Ministry of Health's $4.5 million fund for free or low-cost contraception.

It's for women at risk of an adverse outcome, as a result of an unintended pregnancy.
Auckland University's Orna McGinn told Tim Dower all women should be able to benefit from cheap access to contraception.
“Figures show one in four women in New Zealand will have an abortion in their life time – which is more likely than having your tonsils out.”
McGinn says several DHBs are targeting Māori and Pacific women, those at risk of family violence, or mental health issues.
She says that's not the way a population health measure should be rolled out.
“Access to contraception should be even, throughout the country.”
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Our final stop on the Newstalk ZB Holiday Breakfast road trip is Stewart Island.
Last month, the Rakiura museum on Stewart Island moved to a brand new purpose built building.
It's a big deal for the museum, which ran out of room in the converted house it's been using since 1960.
Chairperson of the Rakiura Heritage Trust, Anita Geeson joins Tim Dower to talk about the attraction.
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2020 was an incredible year for Kiwi singer-songwriter Harper Finn, who is the son of Tim and nephew of Neil Finn.
His single 'Dance Away These Days' is getting a lot of air time on the radio, and it's backed up by his strong collection of moody synth pop anthems.
Harper joined Tim Dower to talk about his career, and performs live in studio!
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