The Wire with Manny

For City Counselling this week, Wire Host Caeden spoke to Councillor Shane Henderson about Community Committee Grants for 2026, and a proposal from Mainfreight to open bus lanes to trucks. 

They also spoke to Associate Professor Theuns Henning of the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Engineering about the challenges for New Zealand’s infrastructure in the face of increasing extreme weather events. 

For our weekly catch-up with the Labour Party, Producer Pranuja spoke to Shanan Halbert about leadership pressure on the government, inflation, and the response to recent flooding.

She spoke with Emeritus Professor Tim Hazledine about New Zealand First’s proposal to break up the supermarket duopoly.

And she spoke with Dr Christopher Cornwall about the environmental impacts of sewage discharge following flooding in Wellington.

Last week, the Save Science Coalition released a report looking at the impact of government cuts to science over the last two years, finding they have led to over 700 roles being slashed.

The report contained eleven stories of New Zealand scientists who had to move countries or shift into a different field to find work as a result of government cuts, and made suggestions for non-partisan long term funding to ensure the security of New Zealand’s research and development.

To discuss the impacts of cost cutting to publicly funded science and potential solutions to the problem, Monday Wire producer Thomas talked to Save Science Coalition spokesperson Ben Wylie-van Eerd.

Last week, the Green Party leaders, Marama Davidson and Chloe Swarbrick, hosted their state of the planet address, where they launched their call to electrify the nation.

On top of that, events this week have led the party to criticise the government. The first critique, instigated by the floods that swept the nation, hitting the Coromandel and causing a state of emergency in the Wellington Region, led the Greens to question the government's decreased funding of flood responses as harsh weather increases.

The second critique came with a cabinet paper this week that shows the government is planning on moving ahead with reforms to legislation that will see references to the Treaty of Waitangi and Te Tiriti o Waitangi redefined, in what the government sez is about ‘standardisation’ but what the Green Party sees as dishonouring Te Tiriti.

So for our weekly catch-up with the Green Party’s Ricardo Menéndez March, we discuss their criticisms of the government but start with a discussion of their electrification policy.

After an NZ First initiative from within the coalition agreement, the government has proposed to weaken treaty obligations. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith claimed the government was attempting to create more consistency by changing the semanticUs of obligations to make the government take the treaty “into account” rather than prevous formulations such as “honour” or “have regard”. 

Critics have sed the changes attempt to weaken obligations to the Treaty and have opened grey zones based on semantic understandings.

Flo spoke with Associate Professor Andrew Erueti at the University of Auckland’s law school about the government’s proposed changes to Treaty Obligations.