Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand has extended its pause on direct payments to the Cook Islands government, after it signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the total amount of paused funding was NZ$29.8 million and covered two financial years.

“We took this step reluctantly and after careful consideration.

“Direct funding to another government relies on a high degree of trust. The Cook Islands government breached New Zealand’s trust through a series of actions that are well known.”

The spokesperson said New Zealand’s concerns about the Cook Islands actions “need to be addressed and trust restored, before we can release this funding”.

“Significant development assistance to the Cook Islands continues, including in areas such as health, education, governance, security and humanitarian support. This is being delivered through New Zealand agencies and regional programmes.

“New Zealand remains deeply committed to the Cook Islands and its people. We share a unique constitutional relationship and the people of the Cook Islands are New Zealand citizens.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters informed the Cook Islands government of the initial decision to pause funding in early June.

The Cook Islands operates in free association with New Zealand. It governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief, and defence.

The 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration signed between the two nations requires them to consult each other on defence and security, which Peters said had not been lived up to.

In February, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China.

New Zealand reviewed its development programme in the Cook Islands as a result, and in early June informed Brown the funding would be paused.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A tougher stance on rough sleepers in Auckland’s central city has some homeless people fearing they will be pushed out to unfamiliar suburbs where they could struggle to survive.

Earlier this week, the government confirmed it was considering new measures that could see people living on Auckland’s city streets forcibly removed.

Opposition parties and housing advocates raised alarm over the prospect of an effective ban on homeless people in CBD’s, warning such an approach only displaced the problem and caused more harm.

Along Queen St and the surrounding blocks, people were still bedding down in shopfronts, bus shelters, and on building steps.

Earlier in the year, an Auckland Council committee declared homelessness a crisis, with support teams working with more than 800 people sleeping rough. Police Minister Mark Mitchell said he supported giving officers more powers to move people on from public spaces.

Outside the Auckland Central City Library on Thursday, 27-year-old Jae sat with his puppy Snoop and said the solution was straightforward: put more money into housing.

“Instead of putting new stuff in the middle of the street, decorations and all, they should put their money into putting us somewhere, instead of kicking us out of the city. That’s the only place we know.”

Jae said forcing people into unfamiliar suburbs risked driving some into criminal activity.

“They’ve already tried to trespass us from the library and that’s, this is where most of the free dinners come. If you get trespassed and you can’t really eat. If they kick us out of the city, then how are we going to eat?

“It’s going to result to other things, like crime.”

Further along the street, 21-year-old Angela said crime might be her only way to survive. She had been in and out of jail for petty offending since she was a teenager.

“If I get moved on from the streets, I will go back to jail. [The government] has been trying, but I would just go back to prison again because of the things I do to survive.”

Nearby, 60-year-old Tane – who had spent decades sleeping rough – agreed moving people on would only make things worse.

“This is our home, the streets. If it gets taken away from us, homeless people will probably break into things, they’ll start turning into criminals. They’ll move away from begging and go into criminal world.”

Another man, who had lived on the streets for more than 30 years and asked not to be identified, said shifting people away from the city centre would not solve the problem.

“There’s always places to go, you know, there’s… the country’s quite big. And there’s other streets, there’s other parks, there’s other hills, tracks.”

A few blocks away, John, 71, said the government seemed more focused on appearances than addressing the root causes of homelessness.

“We is what [the government] don’t want the tourists to see. And yet, in their countries, they have the same problem with homeless people. And I’m sure they don’t go around putting them into mental institutions.”

The government said details of its plan to crack down on rough sleeping would be released soon.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said any move-on orders would need to be paired with proper housing and support.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Ministry of Health is being accused of sitting on a state abuse survivor’s compensation claim for weeks, knowing she had cancer and was about to die.

Wellington lawyer Sonja Cooper wrote to the ministry on 7 October, flagging her client had terminal cancer and “weeks left to live”.

“We would appreciate if the Ministry of Health could prioritise assessing [her] claim give the time-limiting circumstances,” the email said.

More than two weeks later, on 23 October, the ministry’s chief legal advisor Phil Knipe wrote back, “confirming that we will look to prioritise the claim”.

Knipe attached a criminal declaration form to his response, asking Cooper Legal to get the dying woman to complete it to “get that out of the way”.

The declaration asks survivors if they’ve been convicted of a violent, sexual or firearms offence for which they were sentenced to more than five years’ jail.

The options for selection are ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘unsure’, though it carries a warning that “random criminal conviction history checks will be carried out”.

The coalition has introduced these criminal checks to ensure the granting of financial redress “does not bring the state redress system into disrepute”.

Though a bill to legislate this criminal carve has only passed its first reading, survivors are already being asked to fill them out.

Cooper Legal wrote back to the ministry the day Knipe replied, pushing for an exception to completing this form.

“This is a considerable administrative task, especially considering the delays and hoops to jump through to get a valid form of ID if someone does not already have it.

“Considering [our client] has weeks left to live (and other survivors will be in a similar situation), these delays could be the difference between getting redress or not.”

Knipe replied the next day: “I’m not aware of any plans for an exemption for any survivors…there may be flexibility on the form of ID in those cases where there is a reason why they do not have one of the forms of ID requested.”

Cooper Legal got a signed declaration form to the ministry on Sunday morning. The client died that night.

The Minister leading the Crown’s response to abuse in state care, Erica Stanford, has since confirmed the criminal declaration form applies to all survivors, including those terminally ill.

Though she added: “If there’s anyone that’s been caught up and it’s delaying things, then that’s something I’ll go and talk to my officials about because it shouldn’t.”

Stanford’s office has since come back to RNZ about this case.

“The Crown Response Office has been in touch with the Ministry of Health and reminded them where a person is terminally ill, this exemption process exists and should be used.

“We understand the way is clear for the claim to be progressed and the Ministry of Health will be in contact with Cooper Legal to progress it.”

A Ministry of Health spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with the claimant’s whānau and friends at this time.

“The ministry has passed on its regret to the law firm representing the claimant that the claim was unable to be completed within time. The ministry has been treating this claim with urgency since it was received on 7 October.

“We sought clarification from the Crown Response Office regarding the ministerial exemption process and will ensure this is also followed for any future cases involving claimants with terminal conditions.

“We are working to finalise the claim as quickly as possible.”

Cooper said the system was “abhorrent”.

“Why should somebody who is terminally ill, hospitalised, unable to move, in their last few weeks or months of life, why should they be put through this additional hurdle to get redress when it is hard enough, in any event, to go through the redress processes.

“I just think it’s abhorrent and it just shows a complete lack of humanity on the part of the state, once again, towards survivors it abused, mostly as children, but also as vulnerable adults, in its care.”

The government has received one expedition request on the basis of a survivor being terminally ill to date. It was approved the day it was made.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Many agree NZ’s education is below par, but how to fix it is the subject of major conflict – as the government’s proposed curriculum has made clear

When Michael Johnston stepped onto the stage to speak at an education conference last week, the crowd was tetchy and tense. He wasn’t expecting a warm reception but for the first time in his long career in education, he was heckled and booed, according to one bystander.

Johnston is the lead educator for the think tank The New Zealand Initiative, and has played a key role in drawing up the government’s controversial draft curriculum, while the audience at last week’s UpliftEd event has largely been opposed to the overhaul.

He says he was invited to the conference several months ago by the organisers Aotearoa Educators Collective to speak about the state of boys’ education, “a much-neglected equity gap”.

“The reason I agreed to do it is I don’t think there’s enough talking across the aisles in education and I was very keen to try to bridge the gap.

“I’m not sure that worked but that was my intention,” Johnston tells The Detail.

Newsroom’s political editor Laura Walters was at the conference and says he was booed and heckled. Johnston says that’s an exaggeration, and the audience was mixed in its response. He challenges suggestions that he represents a right wing think tank.

“I would say what we are is a classical liberal think tank. We give policy advice to any political party who wants to talk to us. You know, [Labour leader] Chris Hipkins spoke at our members’ retreat earlier this year so it’s not true that we only talk to the right wing parties.”

The incident reflects deep divisions in the sector over the contentious curriculum, labelled by critics as racist, deeply concerning, absolutely ridiculous and more.

In the latest development, the government’s decided to cut the requirement of school boards to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi, a move that has shocked and angered some in the sector who say it will put Māori content in danger and undermine efforts to lift Māori students’ achievement.

Other areas of contention cross from arts to technology to Physical Education.

The full draft for Years 0 to 10 has been released in the last week and is open for consultation for the next six months, before a phased rollout over the next three years.

“To call it an education reform or overhaul wouldn’t be overstating it,” says Newsroom’s Walters. “What the government is asking teachers and principals and educators to do is pretty massive and educators don’t feel like they’re being listened to.”

She points to a loss of goodwill over the past two years between the government and the ministry on one side, and teachers and educators on the other.

“I can understand and I wasn’t surprised by that immediate and broad pushback from the sector that feel like they’re being asked to rush through these massive reforms at pace, that they’re not getting the support that they need; that they’re not being listened to.

“Meanwhile, they’re dealing with the day-to-day, these classrooms with children who have high learning needs, high behavioural needs. You kind of have to put the pushback or the reaction into that context.”

Johnston says the criticism is loud but it is not widespread or a balanced reflection of the sector.

“I suspect it isn’t a majority of teachers and principals but certainly there’s a lot of noise generated by some.

“I’ve talked to a lot of principals myself, I’ve been around the country in the last weeks and months and had a lot of conversations. A lot of principals are very supportive and certainly think things like this are urgently needed,” he says.

He believes there are legitimate concerns about the pace of change and the extent to which teachers will have to shift their practise.

“They’re going to need support to do that, so I understand that side of the worry. It needs to be backed with the right resources.”

For the past 18 months Johnston has been part of the curriculum coherence group, a panel convened by the Ministry of Education to review the rewrite.

“We look at the documents that the writers produce and comment on them from the point of view of knowledge-rich curriculum design, mostly.”

He explains the often-used phrase “knowledge-rich” means the content is carefully selected to be representative of a subject and that it is correctly sequenced.

“It’s knowledge that is related to other knowledge, so that when children learn it … it is built on what they already know.”

Walters says a lot has been dumped on the sector and teachers and principals need time to digest the details.

“I think that there will be more nuance and more context and a better understanding that will flow through over the next couple of weeks. It’s really unclear as to whether they will actually change their stance.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Labour is promising to make cervical screening free for everyone, if elected, through its previously-announced Medicard scheme.

Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said the move would help prevent cancers and avoid costly hospital treatments.

“Each year 175 New Zealanders are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 55 die from it. Almost every case is preventable with better uptake of cervical screening and vaccination,” she said.

“Free cervical screening means earlier diagnosis, lives saved, and less pressure on our hospitals.”

Under the policy, from October 2027, anyone eligible for screening would be able to access it at no cost by presenting their Medicard at their local doctor or community screening event.

Cervical screening is available for people aged 25 to 69 every five years. The test is currently free for Māori and Pacific people, Community Services Card holders, and those aged 30 and over who have never been screened or are overdue.

The policy would make it free for the remaining half.

Labour estimated the expansion would cost $21.6 million in its first year, to be funded from within the existing health budget.

The policy is one which Labour also campaigned on at the 2023 election.

“Today, we’re committing to finishing the job and making sure that there’s free screening for everyone who needs cervical screening,” Verrall said.

She said when last in government, Labour had introduced self-test options, and extended free screening criteria.

She said the self-testing had been a “game changer” for screening, and removing the costs for Pacific women had led to a 20 percent increase in screening rates.

“Now that women, we’re screening ourselves, it’s very hard to argue that we should have to pay, and it’s never been right that cervical screening is the only screening programme where the users have to pay.”

New Zealand has committed to eliminate cervical cancer by 2030.

“Free cervical screening and HPV vaccination will help us reach that goal,” Verrall said.

“Labour’s Medicard is about making sure every New Zealander can get the care they need, when they need it.”

Labour announced its proposed Medicard in September, promising to use revenue from a new targeted capital gains tax to provide every New Zealander three free GP visits a year.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand