Crikey, when I suggested yesterday that it might be a good idea if you've never seen Parliament TV, you could always tune in and see the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill.   Crikey, I expected fireworks but not quite to the level that was on display yesterday. The House was temporarily suspended as the legislation was being voted on, after members of the Te Pati Māori performed a haka in front of the bill's author David Seymour. Gerry Brownlee cleared the public gallery, suspended the House, and once order was restored about 20 minutes later, Te Pati Māori's Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke was “named” for starting the haka with the speaker. Gerry Brownlee called her behaviour appalling, disrespectful, and grossly disorderly. Being “named” is one of the most serious punishments in Parliament. If you're named, you are suspended for 24 hours, and your pay is docked. Doesn't happen terribly often – former National Party MP Nick Smith was named three times in his parliamentary career, but apart from Smith, it really is a pretty rare punishment.   Newstalk ZB's political commentator Barry Soper said the behaviour was the worst he's seen in 40 years of covering politics. Former Speaker of the House Sir Lockwood Smith said he too thought it was the worst he'd ever seen.   “That would have to be as bad as I've ever seen. I guess, you know my feeling after it was just one of real sadness, you know? Real sadness to see Parliament treated that way. You know, you can't blame the Speaker – I don't think you can blame Gerry at all. I think in the end he had no choice but to suspend the House and let things settle down, have the gallery cleared. I think, you know, some of the rot has started a way back – the whole standard of the place has been lowered in, you know, recent years. And I think you know, this is just when, once you start letting things slip, it just, you know, another inch happens or another centimetre and so it goes on.”  Well, the bill isn't going anywhere, but not until there's been six months of public submissions. ACT, National and NZ First agreed to support it to a first reading as part of the coalition negotiations – one of the dead rats they had to swallow to form a government. And look at the latest poll, the major parties have gained. Nationals up 3.9%, Labours up 1.2%, ACT and Te Pati Māori are both down. That says to me we don't like extremism, we don't like political opportunists making hay, we don't like people at the very extreme of politics. For the most part, we want a relatively quiet life. We just want to be able to send our kids to school and know they'll be educated. We want to be able to ensure that we can go shopping and not be mugged, that we can sleep safely in our own homes, that we can drive from point A to point B without falling down a pothole the size of a three-story skyscraper. We all want the opportunity to be able to work, look after ourselves and if the worst comes to the worst, fate deals this a cruel blow, there will be a safety net there. Oh, and it, you know, perhaps if we have an accident, there's a health system that can pick up the pieces there too.   The extremism doesn't, for the most part, win votes. I've had David Seymour on here before and put to him that this whole Treaty Principles Bill was a huge part of campaigning and yet on voting day, on Election Day, ACT didn't get nearly the votes they thought they were going to get. National made it very clear they were not going to support the bill. They had to, in the end, form a government to first reading. They didn't want a bar of it. And neither do, I would argue, most New Zealanders of whatever ethnicity you might be.   But come back to Lockwood Smith's point when it comes to Parliament, are MPs really role models and exemplars of behaviour we should all be seeking to emulate? Sir Lockwood Smith seemed to think so, that there's a standard within Parliament that needs to be set and maintained for the good of society. I don't think that's true. I think they are representatives of New Zealand and as such, they represent us. And we have become more tribal, less likely to debate an issue more entrenched in our beliefs, if you don't support me, you're against me. Less likely to listen and agree to disagree.   What we saw in Parliament is pretty much what you see on social media every day. People yelling at each other, not listening, not debating, just taking a stance and sticking to it, and that's fair enough. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. Everybody is entitled to put forward a proposition. You can hear the other side out and you can maintain your own position if that's what you wish to do.  You can change your mind if you wish. But David Seymour knew exactly what he was doing. ‘Oh, hey, I'm just putting it up there for discussion’. Oh, come on, it was political opportunism. He got exactly what he knew would happen. He's not stupid, he's many things, but he is not stupid.   So all we saw in Parliament, I think, is a reflection of what we see just about every single day in social media, on the text machine. We've seen it over numerous different issues. I think this and if you don't think like me, there's no such thing as debate anymore. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You have woken up to the news that New Zealand businesses can now take meaningful action to drive down the gender pay gap. You need no longer wait for governments to legislate – the power is in your hands. The launch of an online calculator to help do so was announced yesterday by the Minister for Women, Nicola Gregg. The previous Labour government announced plans last year before the election to require public and private companies with more than 250 workers to publish a gender pay gap report. Earlier in the year, Acting Minister for Women Louise Upston said the Government was committed to addressing inequity in the workplace, but she said “we do not want to overburden businesses with unnecessary costs and regulations.    So the Gender Pay Gap Toolkit was set up by working with businesses and organisations like Spark, ANZ, Tonkin + Taylor, to make sure it's user friendly and has a common methodology. It was also shaped and road tested, apparently, by many other organisations across the country, including Transpower, the Port of Auckland, Champions for Change, and Global Women. Although the pay gap has reduced steadily from 16.3% in 1998, its stuck at around 9 to 10% for the past decade, except for 2015/2016 when it hit 12%. So, it's come down a bit and now it's stabilised.   My colleague Heather du Plessis-Allan had a hot take on why the gap remained stubbornly in place, which she shared with her audience last night. It's up to women, she says, not employers to fix the gender pay gap:  “Here's my tip if you are a woman and you don't want to have a gender pay. Don't take maternity leave. Make the baby's father take the paternity leave and don't always be the one to stay home with the kids when the kids are sick, make the father stay at home with the kids when the kids are sick, because I think that is now part of our problem. We are literally, as women, a more unreliable workforce than men, because think about this: I mean this is brutal, but it's true, right? If you've got an equally qualified man and woman standing in front of you, let's say early 30s, married, but haven't had babies, are you going to hire the lady? Because I don't know about that.   “I'd look at the lady and go oh, she hasn't had babies yet, so now she can have babies, now she's going to want take a year off for every single baby. Now, when the babies sick, got a bit of a cough, the woman's going stay at home. She's unreliable. The guy is more reliable. Guy gets the job. Right. I know that this is hard, and I know we want it all in the modern age, right. We want heaps of money, we want all the big jobs, and we also want to be the ones who stay at home and raise the babies when they come out. But life is tough, and choices are tough, and I suspect women are going to have to start helping themselves a little bit here by getting the dads to do the heavy lifting too, instead of just complaining that life ain't fair.”  So she has a point. If you are going to take a couple of years out of the workforce to be the primary caregiver and you’re female, then you're going to have missed work opportunities, missed promotion opportunities, and that's just the way it is. If you're not around for two years, your employer can't gauge just how effective you are, how good at working you are.   At the same time, we all know the first three years of a child's life are vitally important. Every single child psychologist will tell you that. If you're given $100,000 to put towards your child's education, stay at home for the first three years or employ a primary caregiver to do the same. It just has to be a person who can talk to the baby, speak to the baby, take it out, stimulate it, and it has to be a kind of one-on-one relationship. A best practice according to child psychologists. Not always able to do that, we all just muddle along the best we can. I was back at work when my daughter was six weeks old. I hired a nurse, a young trainee, a graduate nurse to look after her. Not ideal, but needs must. The money had to come in somehow. I tried to keep breastfeeding that first year and managed to do so pretty much, but it was a struggle.   If you want to have children and many couples do, I think it's a lot easier these days to share the load. I mean, we've had a child sick at home and their parents have divided the time. Dad stayed home three days because he can work from home. Mum has stayed home the last two days to give him the best possible chance of recovery and to allow everybody to get the most important parts of their job done on the days they really have to go into the office. They've had to juggle it between them. It's not expected that the mum has to give up five days of working in the office to stay at home. I just don't think there is that expectation among young parents.   I think there really should be a shared responsibility between men and women. Perhaps the mother has the first six months off, then the father has six months off, so that when you do have a man and a woman applying for a job, they're both 32, they both have the same level of qualifications for whatever job they're applying for, then an employer can look at them both and go. I know that at some point, if they want children, I'm going to lose that person for six months, be it the man, be it the woman. If there is an expectation that the man will take time off too, an expectation from within the family, from within the community, from within the workforce, that men are just as likely to take six months off as women are, that kind of evens the playing field. So I think Heather had a point: it's not always going to be possible for a woman to give birth and then skip back to work the next day, leaving the man literally to pick up the baby. But I think if there is an expectation that it will be equally shared between men and women, it will help level up the playing field. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Police have announced Operation Nickel, a nationwide operation focused on the enforcement of the Gangs Act 2024. What is the Gangs Act 2024? It's the specific piece of legislation that enforces the prohibition of the display of gang Insignia in public places. It provides for the issue of dispersal notices to stop gang members from gathering in public places, and it also makes provisions for non-consorting orders to prevent specified gang offenders from associating or communicating with each other for three years.   Basically, it's to make life uncomfortable for the gangs who've had a pretty free ride of it over recent times. Paul Basham, National Controller for the operation, says the display of gang insignia in public places will not be tolerated. When the new laws come into effect, he says, the police will actively enforce any breaches. As part of the operation before the legislation came into effect, police engaged with gangs and community representatives about the requirements of the Gangs Act and what the police intended to do with the legislation. He said gangs are well aware that once this law comes into effect, they are not allowed to wear a gang patch in public. If they're sitting at home watching The Chase, fine. Pop your gang patch on and be the business.   Police staff have spoken to gang leaders and made it clear that anyone breaching the new laws can expect enforcement action, he said, and if we come across anyone wearing gang insignia in public, we will not be taking the excuse of ignorance as a defence.   He spoke to the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning and said he is confident the Gang Disruption Units are set up and ready to go.   “You know, it's inevitable that we will be responding to reports of gangs breaking the law but you know, in addition to that, those units will be proactive, gathering intelligence, looking to work with other police units, and taking opportunities to sort of fulfil their mandate, which is in line with the purpose of the Act, which is to reduce the ability of gangs to operate and to cause fear and intimidation and disruption by the public.   “So those units are really clear in terms of what the purpose is, and from the 21st of November they'll be into it, and I think too, you'll see them, you know, sharpening their tradecraft and their skills relative to the provisions of this legislation. And so we just see it as an awesome tool to allow us to continue the work that we do pretty much up and down the country every day anyway, in the way that we police the gangs.”  So there were about 400 meetings up and down the country. As the police said, this is what we intend to do, this is what the legislation is. So fair dues. It doesn't mean though that if you see a person wearing a gang patch, you think, ‘crikey, they're breaking the law’ and you jump on your phone and you dial 111, that the police will be able to descend upon the offending individual, blues and twos at the go with the full weight of the law. There may be higher priorities for the police in that situation. Police Assistant Commissioner Basham says they will gather evidence allowing them to follow through with enforcement action at a later date.   As I say, the gangs have had it pretty cruisy for some time now. That whole ‘let's work with them’ approach was tried but I don't think it was terribly successful, and I think enough time had passed to see that it wasn't actually working for the majority of us, for the rest of the community. Might have been working brilliantly for the gangs, went gangbusters, in fact, but for the rest of us, not so much. So now gangs are being told you want to live outside the community, you want to live outside the laws, you want to break the law to make a living, then expect that your life will be difficult. The community has decided enough is enough, and we don't want to see that anymore. We don't want the flaunting, and we don't want the swaggering, and we don't want the ‘we are sticking two fingers to you’ shoved in our face.    Gangs argue that they're not all bad. That they provide a form of family for children and young people who have been failed by their own families. And in part that is true. You can only imagine how woeful the families are they've come from if they think that the gang is a good idea. They argue they do good work. Remember at Wellsford, north of Auckland, when the local Head Hunters had a charity motor bike ride and raised $2,500 and decided to donate the money to the local volunteer fire brigade? Yes, the fire brigade was advised to give the money back and there was harrumphing about that, but let's face it, they were just looking for a bit of PR. Which is a very cheap amount for good PR - $2500 is chump change for the Head Hunters. They could have donated the proceeds of a couple of baggies and be done with it.    The Tribal Huk – remember them? Ngaruawahia? They were making and delivering sandwiches to socially deprived children at schools in the region long before the government was doing it. They also made headlines for their attempts to rid Ngaruawahia of methamphetamine which meant that the leader, Jamie Pink, came under fire during a confrontation in Ngaruawahia in 2016. The Huks ran a Christmas party for children. They gave money to schools for drug education. Good, good boys. No, not really. When a dispute arose within the gang, Jamie Pink, the leader, repeatedly smashed the blunt edge of a log splitting axe into the legs of his former mate so that the bones were sticking out of the skin on both knees. The man needed operations to insert screws and rods into his leg so he could walk again. And Punk Pink is currently serving seven years at His Majesty's Leisure.   You've got the Mongrel Mob Kingdom. Remember them? Our frequent caller, PR woman, Louise. We haven’t heard from her in a while. She's been lying very low, probably because the Mongrel Mob kingpin turned out to be wolves in sheep's clothing. If you're going to be a gang, be a gang, be done with it. Sell your drugs, live your life – it's basically a pyramid scheme to the young ones who are thinking should I get a 9-5, which is really hard, and you have to get up five days a week, or should I go and sell drugs for the gangs? It's a pyramid scheme - only a few get really, really rich. If you're a grunt at the bottom, you get the abuse, you get the jail terms, you get very little money. You might get a few baubles or trinkets from the top guys and that's about it.   It's a misogynist – if you're looking for diversity, equality, and inclusivity, you're going to struggle to find that in a gang. They don't seem to have places for women. You can work under them, but not in the way you might want to. Just be a gang, and be a crim and be done with it. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Or renounce the patch and the crime and come join us. It's not that bad. It really, really isn't.   You don't have to join the gang, there are other options. But for God's sake, don't dress yourself up and pretend that you're decent people, providing an alternative to the wayward and the forlorn, that the patriarchal, oppressive government has failed to provide - that is total BS. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is the electric vehicle market really dying?   Nissan is axing over 9,000 jobs as sales slump in China and the US and Toyota has said that the California regulations around EVs and emissions are unworkable.  EVs are being discounted by a third in Britain as manufacturers rush to meet their end-of-year sales targets.   In New Zealand, October saw the second strongest month when it comes to car sales, but despite heavy discounting, EV sales have slid backwards.  BYD NZ General Manager Warren Willmot told Kerre Woodham that globally, EV sales are actually up around 30% in September, with China contributing heavily to the market.  He said that last month, 53% of all new cars in China had a plug, whether they’re plug-in hybrids or fully electric.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Take a look at your children, or your grandchildren if you have them, when they're at their most delicious – seven, eight, nine-year-olds, full of hopes and dreams, and starting to come into themselves properly. Their character’s forming, you see what they're good at, what they love doing, where their passions lie, supported and nurtured by families and communities who love them.   Your kid's basic belief that life is good is informed by the love and the care that they've received from before they were even born. Before they were born, they were loved. While they were growing, they were loved. From the time they hit the outside world, they were wanted and loved. Their potential is limitless.   Imagine those same 7-year-olds, but they grew up abused by the very people who should have been caring for them, or who were ripped from their families and put into the pastoral care of organisations that were supposed to act in loco parentis. Whose carers presented to the world as decent, good men and women who stood in front of their institutions, and they mouthed platitudes, and the community was grateful. Because these troubled children, these problem children are out of sight and out of mind and being given a good upbringing by the decent God-fearing and women who were doing God's work on earth.   Hospitals and orphanages and schools and churches are the places that those who still have their innocence believe are places of comfort and of safety. For thousands of small, vulnerable Kiwi children, they were places of torture and abuse and places where their faith in humanity was broken. The children were broken. How the hell do you recover from that? Many don't, many haven't. Many survivors of abuse haven't lived long enough to hear the apology from the Government today.   The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith Care delivered its report to the Governor General back in July, 14 kilograms of paper and each piece held stories of the horrors that went on right within our communities – just about every community in the country. The apology is the first part of the official response, redress will be dealt with later. Some survivors have said an apology without compensation is worthless, and that successive governments have had plenty of time to work out a framework for compensation. And while a light has been shone into the dark corners where predators hide, and many of those predators have faced the glare of prosecution and conviction, have been held to account for some of the damage they've done, all survivors spoken to say the inquiry, the apology, the compensation are worthless if the abuse of society's most vulnerable is allowed to continue.   Abuse survivor Jim Goodwin spoke to Early Edition and he's not confident that things will change:  “How will they provide support for survivors and what will they do about preventing abuse in care in the future? That's what I'm worried about. Compensation is important, but it's only part of what survivors need. Survivors need to be able to access ongoing support, like counselling support, for their lives. That's quite difficult for a lot of survivors at the moment, so I hope that the government will change that, but compensation is only a part of it.”  Absolutely. Jim's right: compensation is only a part of it. You hear of some exceptional individuals who are able to —I don't know how— find some purpose, find some meaning, find a lifeline, and make their way in the world. They can open up their hearts enough to trust one or two people, and they can find their way. So many cannot and have not. They're just too broken. Their parents have failed them, people in authority have failed them. People who said they could trust them, who knew how to groom small, vulnerable children desperate for love, desperate to belong, those predators knew what they were doing all right, they knew which ones to choose.   So how on Earth do you recover from that? We've really got to ensure that where we can, the fundamental framework, where we can get in and see what's been done – we can't with families, we can't open the door of family homes and get in there, and put the torch on, and shine that light, and flush out those predators. We can in institutions and organisations. And we can't fail these children again because that's what they are. They might be adults now, but they are still the children that were broken by the very organisations that were meant to save them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now, there was news from over the weekend that the Government will be introducing legislation this year that will make stalking illegal with a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison. The announcement came from the Justice Minister, Paul Goldsmith. It does seem incredible that stalking wasn't illegal before now, but there it is, it's on its way. The offence will have a maximum penalty, as I said, of five years imprisonment and will capture patterns of behaviour being 3 specified acts occurring within a 12-month period. There will be a list of behaviours that may amount to stalking and harassment, including the damaging of a reputation, recording or tracking and following, or loitering, as well as the use of technology and modern stalking methods. There'll be four other amendments made to support the new offence. It will allow courts to make restraining orders and orders in relation to harmful digital communications when sentencing for the new offence. It's also adding sentencing to new stalking-related aggravating factors which recognise the particular harms associated with stalking behaviours and offending against a person who has a restraining order against the offender. So an ex-partner and the like.  That a stalking and harassment conviction disqualifies the offender from holding a firearms licence – that seems sensible. Clarifying that the definition of a psychological violence in the Family Violence Act includes stalking - that will provide better recognition of the harms associated with stalking for those in a family relationship with their stalker. Victims advocate Ruth Money says the legislation is a good move but does need to be refined. The list of behaviours that defined what constituted stalking needs to be future proofed, which is a good move. When I had a stalker it was before social media. You had to put your back into it if you wanted to be a stalker back then. And it was much more clear cut.  It was a lot easier for police to see you had a stalker if there were phone calls being made to your landline. If there was a footprint on the loo and the bathroom window had been jimmied open, if they had left traces of themselves in your bed. It was much easier to say this is a stalker. Much more clear cut, I think, for the police than the digital communications. Ruth Money also says two instances in the year should be enough to activate the process, not three. We don't have figures for New Zealand that I could find. I mean, there may well be, but I couldn't find them this morning. But in Australia, one in seven adult Australians have been stalked in their lifetime, one in five women, one in 15 men. About 3 to 4 percent  of women, 1 to 2 percent of men are victims of stalking every year, and it has a real impact. The seemingly never-ending intrusions the social and financial toll, and that's probably why stalking victims report high rates of depression, anxiety and traumatic stress disorder, and in the very worst cases, of course, it ends in death. Most stalking is perpetrated by people who are known to the victim, either as an acquaintance or an ex partner, with strangers responsible for about 20 to 25 percent of stalking, and apparently it usually starts because the person feels mistreated and they stalk to take revenge or write the wrong. Or they stalk to start, or enact a relationship with the victim that does not exist, as happened with my stalker - saw me on telly, thought he knew me, was somebody with issues anyway and wanted to engage. And when I didn't engage, got increasingly angry. In a small number of cases, stalking his sexual motivation and can sometimes be part of planning or preparation for a sexual assault. The thing in common is that they will not be ignored. They simply do not hear no. You know, if you say leave me alone, the relationship is over. They don't hear that, and so they will keep at you. If they see you or you might engage with them at university or at work or you might be nice to them when they're having a rough day and they suddenly misinterpret, you know they will take that benign interaction and turn that into a much bigger story in which you and they are the stars. And they can't understand why you're not following the script. And they want to make you follow the script. It is much, much easier these days to make people's life misery, all you need is a smartphone. And all you need to do really is have precious little to do with your time so you can appear at odd moments. It would be incredibly unsettling. I can totally understand why so many people have been lobbying to get stalking seen as a serious crime. It is. As I say, I'm stunned it hasn't been seen as one before now.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A prison sentence of up to five years could soon be handed down to those convicted of stalking. A new anti-stalking bill will be introduced to Parliament by the end of the year. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says it applies to patterns of behaviour -- specifically, three acts taking place within a 12 month period. Goldsmith says there needs to be a threshold an offender will have to cross, and there needs to be a clear message that stalking won't be tolerated and will come with consequences. Independent Victim Advocate Ruth Money joins Kerre Woodham with more.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I know for many people affirmative action programmes are a real sticking point. A new report in the New Zealand Medical Journal, has found that affirmative action programs at the University of Otago have however, significantly lifted Māori, Pacific, and rural enrolments over the last 30 years. Where they have failed is increasing the student numbers from poorer backgrounds.   So people don't like them, but they do actually work. Māori made up 20% of enrolments at the university's medical school over the last four years, reaching parity with European and Asian enrolments for the first time. For a very long time, that wasn't the case. Ten years ago, 7.6% of new domestic medical students at Otago identified as Māori, 2.7% as Pasifika, so that shows up in the workforce in which only 3.4% are Māori, 1.8% Pasifika. However, after more robust affirmative action policies were implemented at our medical schools there was a big change. By 2016, Māori and Pasifika students entering Otago Medical School had increased by 179%. Māori were about 16% of domestic students, Pasifika about 5.6%, which is pretty much in line with how they're represented in the population.   However, health profession courses at Otago are still dominated by students from wealthy backgrounds and top schools, despite rare efforts to recruit more people from poorer communities. So, if you're wealthy you're going to be fine if you want to be a doctor, you're going to be particularly fine if you're wealthy, comfortably middle class and Māori/Pasifika. Barack Obama famously said his two daughters, who have grown up in a privileged background, should not benefit from affirmative action programs when they are competing with students from poor white families.   What's more important? Your ethnic identity or your background? It's easy to dismiss affirmative action as racist or lowering standards, but just remember that if you're a woman you have been able to benefit enormously from affirmative action in just about every sphere of society - law, engineering, medical school. There was a time when it was thought only men had the brains and the mettle to make it in medicine. Affirmative action opened the door to women and now it's no longer needed. Women can see it and know they can be it.   Women now make up nearly 2/3 of all enrolments in health professional programs, up slightly from 1994. In fact, universities are starting to be concerned by the relative underrepresentation of young men in tertiary education and may well have to have a program encouraging young men to enrol at university in a number of courses. Places may well have to be kept for men in law school so that their profession is not flooded with women.   When you look at people who have received scholarships, you cannot really go past Sir Peter Buck, and this was at a time when standards were phenomenally high for anybody entering the profession. He went to Te Aute College, the Māori secondary school, got a scholarship to Otago University, where he graduated in medicine. He was awarded so many degrees, from so many prestigious universities —Yale, Rochester, Hawaii— he received military medals for distinguished service in wars, he was an anthropologist, he worked in public health. This was a scholarship kid, he did okay.   As did Māui Pōmare, which are from the young Māori Party who were a phenomenally talented group of young people and went on to equit themselves at the very highest level, with the very highest honours. Not every scholarship kid's going to be like that. Not everybody who is a recipient of affirmative action is going to be like that. Once you're in, you have to pass. And I don't know about you, but there are some incredibly clever, clever people who become doctors who probably shouldn't. They're smart, no doubt about that, they ace the exams. But when it comes to people? Not so much. Maybe they should go into pathology where they can just cut up dead things rather than deal with people one-on-one.   In an ideal world, we'd all start the same, we’d all have the same opportunities, we'd all have the same choices. This is not an ideal world. So when it comes to affirmative action, I know ideally we'd all compete on the same level playing field, but as a woman, because I have seen so many of this gender benefit, to the point that we're now going to have to start thinking about offering affirmative action policies to young men, I can see its benefits.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alarms are being raised over a shortfall in programmes aimed to lift medical school enrolment for under-served groups.  A study in today's New Zealand Medical Journal has found Otago University's initiatives have lifted Māori, Pacific, and rural enrolments over the last 30 years.  However, the number of students in health courses from poorer backgrounds hasn't actually increased.  Otago University's Public Health Professor Peter Crampton told Kerre Woodham they shouldn't be missing out.  He says efforts should be made to ensure everyone can make use of tertiary education opportunities.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Donald Trump is once again Commander in Chief, and now the 45th and 47th President of the United States.  He becomes the first former president to return to the White House in more than 130 years and, at 78, the oldest man elected to America's highest office.  Trump has beaten Kamala Harris in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.  Republican pollster Dr Whit Ayres told Kerre Woodham that Harris was always on a bit of a hiding to nothing coming in after Biden’s messy exit.   He says that she was effectively running for Biden’s second term, especially with her inability to articulate a clearly different direction for the administration.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.