The Wire with Manny

Earlier this week the government announced a major policy overhaul, they called it a reshuffle, which included dropping some of the less popular or seemingly viable intitaitives like the TVNZ/RNZ merger to focus more on ‘bread and butter’ issues.
Also announced was a $1.50 hike to the minimum wage, a delay to the income insurance scheme and hate speech reform, the scrapping of the biofuel mandate, and ambiguous future changes to three waters.

Casper had a chat with National MP Dr Shane Reti about the announcement and how it’s been received by National.

For this week's Tuesday Wire, Allan Blackman joined Casper and Milly over the phone for Dear Science. Casper spoke to National’s Shane Reti about the government’s policy reshuffle announced this week and Dáithí Stone, climate scientist at NIWA about what’s driving Cyclone Gabrielle.

Milly speaks to Assad Shamseldin from the University of Auckland about improving our stormwater infrastructure. And Milly also spoke to epidemiologist Michael Baker about the new measles case identified in New Zealand.

Recently an imported case of measles has been detected in New Zealand, Milly speaks to epidemiologist Michael Baker from the University of Otago regarding the risks of an outbreak and what we can do to stop the spread of measles, which has mostly been eliminated in New Zealand. 

On 8 February Chris Hipkins announced work on the TVNZ-RNZ public media entity "will stop entirely". This comes several years after the bill was first tabled by former broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi as a way to address declining audience numbers. Arno spoke to Dr Gavin Ellis, affiliate of think tank Koi Tū, “the centre for informed futures”. He started by asking what the difference between public and private broadcasters meant for the public.