Nine To Noon for Thursday 4 July 2024

 

 

09:05 Illicit tobacco sales infiltrate NZ towns and cities

The steady creep of widely available black market cigarettes is costing the country millions of dollars in lost tobacco product revenue. Over the last 18 months a Customs team investigating illicit tobacco has made 17 arrests and laid around 140 charges. This represents 9 million dollars of revenue evasion on contraband for that period. Chief customs officer, fraud and prohibition Nigel Barnes says it's a nationwide problem and if you are in a reasonably sized town there will be somewhere you can obtain illicit tobacco. In the latest case, charges have been laid after a sophisticated illegal tobacco processing factory in Christchurch was busted. 

 

09:20 Disappointing season for Bluff oyster industry

Challenging conditions for Bluff oyster harvesters have seen some operators pull up anchor early for the season. While the industry is notoriously cyclical, this season, which usually runs until the end of August, has been especially bad, operators say. The Bluff Oyster Management Company is the stakeholder group of all oyster quota owners in the Bluff oyster fishery. It is also involved in an ongoing project with MPI and Niwa to monitor the health of the fishery.Graeme Wright of Barnes Oysters is operations manager of the Bluff Oyster Management Company.

09:25 Ashleigh Hoeta's journey from a stroke to champion weightlifter and arm wrestler

Ashleigh Hoeta is the first woman in the world to bench press more than 300kg, and is now vying to be named world champion in arm wrestling. It's an incredible feat, given it's been less than four years since learning to regain movement again, following a stroke. The Taranaki powerlifter smashed the former bench record by 22.7kg - lifting 317.5kg last year. This week she's heading to Turkey, to take on the best arm wrestlers of the northern hemisphere for the East vs West competition - after recently qualifying in the Oceania Championships in Sydney.

09:45 UK: Starmer and Sunak make last pitches for votes ahead of election day

UK correspondent Harriet Line joins Kathryn to look at final hours of campaigning, before the UK goes to the polls in a contest almost guaranteed to deliver a Labour landslide. We look at the closing hours of the campaign - which has included a promise by Prime Minister and Tory leader Rishi Sunak that he'll take full responsibility for the election result and concerns over postal delays.

Harriet Line is Deputy Political Editor of the Daily Mail

10:05 Psychiatrist appointed to the Medical Council warns of unsafe working conditions

Unsafe and in crisis: That's the analysis of the state of the psychiatric profession, in New Zealand according to a leading specialist who's just been appointed to the Medical Council. Marie Bismark's appointment was confirmed this week. She will take up the position at the Medical Council - which oversees standards for doctors  -  just weeks after retiring as the sole specialist psychiatrist at the Kāpiti mental health clinic. The World Health Organisation recommends one psychiatrist for every 14-thousand people - Marie was on her own in a region of 60-thousand - filling three people's jobs. But she says it wasn't just the workload that pushed her out. Ms Bismark cites a culture of tolerance among doctors,  with basic safety measures going unmet, resulting in three improvement notices after a Worksafe inspection of the clinic. Alongside her new Medical Council role, Ms Bismark balances a busy schedule sitting on a range of other boards, and is in her first stint locuming in Melbourne.

 

10:35 Book review: Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley 

Kiran Dass reviews Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley published by Serpent's Tail

10:45 Around the motu: John Freer covering the Coromandel Peninsula

The terms recovery and resilience are well connected to the Coromandel Peninsula. John talks to Kathryn about the long tail of the 2023 storms, but also some new infrastucture projects, and new housing for Thames township.

CFM's John Freer.

11:05 Tech: Miss AI beauty contest, watch your (fake) WiFi, EU bundling battle

Technology correspondent Bill Bennett looks at the first 'Miss AI' beauty competition that sees computer-generated women take part in a virtual parade - and throws up a raft of questions about the idea of perfection. Police in Australia have charged a man over installing a fake WiFi network on a plane to harvest fliers' credentials. And he'll details moves in the EU to ramp up a campaign against big tech, including Meta's workaround to data collection rules, making phone battery replacement easier and tackling Microsoft's bundling packages.

Bill Bennett is a technology journalist

11:25 Parenting: The social lives of babies

During his academic career in psychology, Professor Emeritus Ben Bradley from Charles Sturt University in New South Wales has done research on groupness in infancy, and also belonging in child care. He's recently co authored a book Babies in Groups along with Jane Selby and Matthew Stapleton. Professor Bradley says babies enjoy participating in groups of their peers even before they start to form one-to-one attachments with adults.

11:45 Screentime: The Bear s3, I Am: Celine Dion, A Quiet Place: Day One

Film and TV correspondent Chris Schulz looks at whether the third season of The Bear lives up to the stellar reputation of the first two. He'll also review the documentary into the life of superstar singer Celine Dion as she reveals her battle with Stiff Person Syndrome and A Quiet Place: Day One is a prequel that takes audiences back to the beginning of the invasion of aliens with sensitive hearing.