The Wire with Manny

Germany’s federal elections took place on Sunday, and the preliminary results show right leaning parties dominated the election— with the Conservative Alliance claiming most seats in the federal Parliament, as well as the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland party (AfD) winning 20.8% of the vote.

According to researchers in far-right extremism, from the University of Tübingen, writing for The Conversation— the AfD’s breakthrough in Germany’s 2017 federal election shattered the nation's stigma against far-right extremism.

Producer Athena spoke to Professional Teaching Fellow for German at the University of Auckland, Mareike Schmidt, about the rise of the AfD, and her perspective on the federal election results, as a German citizen living in New Zealand.

Recent Stats NZ findings have shown that there is likely an additional 36,300 children living in material hardship, compared to 2022.

In 2018, the Child Poverty Reduction Act passed, which received cross-party support, helped in creating a downward trend in these statistics. However, these Stats NZ findings show that there has not been any substantial changes to the nine poverty measures from June 2022 to June 2024.

Overall in Aotearoa, an estimated 156,600 children are living within these conditions, which is roughly 1/7th of the population.

News and Editorial Director and Monday Wire Host, Joel, spoke to the Executive Officer for Child Poverty Action Group, Sarita Divis, about what has caused this increase, and what the government should be doing to tackle these concerning findings.

Firstly, they started off by asking her about what reasons there might be for this upward trend in recent years.

Concerns have been raised regarding Aotearoa’s tax model, regarding charities also operating as businesses.

Despite the current model requiring all profit obtained through a charity's business not be used for personal gain, this is a little bit of a grey area.

For example, any profit from weet-bix cereal products is tax exempt, due to Sanitarium Health Food Company being owned by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which results in the company having an advantage over their competitors.

However, with the 2025 Budget set to be released later this year, changes may be made to this system.

News and Editorial Director and Monday Wire Host, Joel, spoke to a Senior Lecturer in the Accounting Department at AUT, Ranjana Gupta, about this tax model, and what she hopes will come out of the 2025 Budget regarding this.

They started off by asking her about what purpose a charity may have to run a business as well.

The Cook Islands and China have released the details of their recent partnership agreement.

The agreement has raised concern amongst the New Zealand government, who have close constitutional ties with the Cook Islands, as they felt they were not adequately consulted before the agreement was signed.

The controversial agreement, and New Zealand’s opposition to not being adequately consulted, have gained international attention.

For International Desk this week, Wire host Caeden spoke to AUT Law Senior Lecturer Sione Tekiteki about the agreement and the controversy surrounding it.