The Wire with Castor

Last week, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka announced that the government would be removing a clause from the Conservation Amendment Bill that permitted expanding the sale of conservation land. The decision followed multiple weeks of pressure from members of the public, environmental activists, and political parties, who claimed that the change would open pathways to selling large portions of Aotearoa’s natural landscapes. 

Earlier this month also saw the government backtrack on another bill, the Fisheries Amendment Bill. Among other changes, the bill would have reduced restrictions on overfishing and disallowed members of the public from accessing footage from shipping vessels. 

Lastly, recent polls have seen centre-left political party Opportunity polling close to or above 5%. With Opportunity spending much of its campaign period targeting the Green Party, it’s unclear what a coalition between the two could look like. 

For this week’s catch-up with the Green Party’s Ricardo Menendez March, News Director Castor asked about each of these issues, beginning with the Conservation Amendment Bill.

This week on the Tuesday Wire...

For Dear Science this week, our expert, Dr Cushla McGoverin, chats with us about the oldest meteorite crater, peptides and antimicrobial resistance, and great ape laughter.

For our weekly catchup with the National Party, Host Alex speaks with MP Ryan Hamilton about NZ First Leader Winston Peter’s comments on the India Free Trade Agreement and disagreements over the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill

And for Green World today, Producer Liam speaks to Dr Kevin Trenberth, Honorary Academic from the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland, about the extreme heatwaves experience in Europe, the causes and consequences of these extreme weather events, and what we might expect to see in the future.

The Five Eyes Alliance, a multilateral intelligence-sharing alliance which includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States has issued warnings that frontier AI models are rapidly increasing the risk of cyber threats. 

This shift is too quick for humans to manually keep up with as instead of having years for defensive actions against attacks, we only have a few months now.

Hence why cybersecurity experts believe that using AI to fight against AI might be the only option to keep up with this new shift in pace. 

The phrase “AI fighting AI”, refers to when Artificial intelligence is used to both launch and defend against cyberattacks. Since AI can automate hacks and intrusions at un-heard of speeds, systems are needing to rely on autonomous AI models which can recognise and counter the threats in a few seconds. 

Producer Jude spoke with University of Auckland Professor, Dr. Alex Baird, to learn more about AI fighting AI.

New Zealand’s tax system is unique among developed countries; while we have comprehensive taxes on income and the consumption of goods and services, yet we lack a comprehensive capital gains tax, net wealth tax, or inheritance tax.

Ahead of the upcoming election, various parties are campaigning on making changes to the country’s tax system. Labour has proposed a relatively narrow capital gains tax, while the Greens have proposed a wealth tax of 2.5% per annum on the value of assets above 10 million dollars, among other new taxes.

To help make sense of these proposals, News Director Castor spoke to Dr. Lisa Marriott, an expert in taxation who teaches at Victoria University of Wellington.