The Wire with Alex

Last week, NZ Post announced the closure of 142 retail stores in the urban-retail network across the motu. 

Concerns have been raised about the disproportionate impacts the closures may have on senior communities who may not have the digital literacy to support the transition in regards to important administration, like paying bills, and staying in touch with loved ones. 

Producer Jasmine spoke to Age Care Concern Tāmaki CEO, Kevin Lamb, about this issue.

Colonisation continues to deeply affect the Pacific, with the production of health inequities tied closely to the unequal power dynamics still inflicted on Pacific nations by external high-income countries.

A recent article by a group of women academics and health professionals based in Fiji, Tonga, Sāmoa, and Aotearoa New Zealand has called for a reimagining in how global health is approached in the Pacific.

This proposed shift would see greater sovereignty exercised by Pacific nations in research and health, and a pluralistic worldview reflecting Indigenous Pacific knowledge systems.

To understand the state of global health in the Pacific, the reimagining her group has proposed, and the role that Aotearoa New Zealand can play, Producer Theo spoke to Public Health Medicine Specialist Dr Sainimere Boladuadua.

This week on the Wednesday Wire...

For our weekly catchup w/ the Green Party, Host Manny spoke with MP Ricardo Menéndez March about the Civil Defence Payment for disaster victims, the state of the economy, and Waitangi Day.

They then spoke to Professor of General Practice and Primary Care Bruce Arrol, on the changes being made to ADHD diagnosis and access to medical treatments.

Producer Theo spoke with the spokesperson for Ka Lāhui Hawai’i, Healani Sonoda-Pale, on the seventeen-member delegation to Waitangi from Hawai’i, and solidarity between Māori and Kanaka Maoli.

They then spoke to Public Health Medicine Specialist Dr Sainimere Boladuadua on the Pacific shift in global health she and her colleagues have proposed.

We are now more than a year into Donald Trump’s second term as president. Over the past twelve months, we’ve seen the United States flex its military muscles both within the Western Hemisphere and beyond, launching a military operation in Venezuela and capturing president Nicolas Maduro, making further threats to take over Greenland, and provoking Iran by sending a fleet of warships to the Persian Gulf.

Last year, President Trump even signed an executive order, renaming the ‘Department of Defence’ to the ‘Department of War’ on the basis that the former name was too “woke.”

This morning, Producer Toby spoke with University of Auckland professor Chris Ogden about the assertion of hard power in American diplomacy, and how this can be understood through the theory of ‘political realism.