Nine To Noon for Tuesday 25 February 2025

09:05 Data sovereignty concerns as courts data gets set to move to cloud 

Next year all information held by the Family Court will be moved into cloud servers owned by Microsoft. The move is the first phase of the judiciary's Te Au Reka project, which will see the entire courts system move online and away from piecemeal and paper-based, which is contributing to lengthy delays in the justice system. Microsoft is confirmed as the cloud provider for Te Au Reka for the project. The government has about 200 agencies under orders to shift their storage and processing to the cloud, and many have already made the move. And while storing data in the cloud isn't a new concept - data sovereignty experts are concerned what the move could mean for some of the population's most sensitive information. Legal opinion sought by a local cloud company at the time the project was being procured stated the only way to ensure total data sovereignty would be to hold the information in servers based in New Zealand and owned by a New Zealand company. Dr Karaitiana Taiuru is a data sovereignty expert with expertise in Māori data sovereignty, and George Sadlier who worked for 15 years on cloud tech for Google and Microsoft.

 

09:30 Ambitious plan to make three New Zealand islands predator free 

An ambitious, complex, and expensive programme aims make three of our largest islands predator free. The Department of Conservation estimates it needs $137 million to restore eco systems on Maukahuka/Auckland Island, Rakiura/Stewart Island, and the Chatham Islands. It's recently joined with an international grouping of conservation organisations and philanthropists which fund such projects. The subantarctic Auckland Island is a particular challenge. The World Heritage Site is 465 km south of Bluff — with feral pigs and rats roaming where chest-high flowering megaherbs once flourished. Auckland Island is home to more than 500 native plants and animals, including over 100 found nowhere else in the world, including Gibson's albatross, New Zealand sea lions and hoiho. DOC senior ranger and Auckland Island project manager Stephen Horn joins Kathryn.

09:45 USA correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben

'Respond or else' - the now notorious email asking all US Government workers to say in five bullet points what they did over the last week is causing chaos. Elon Musk has said a failure to respond will be taken as a resignation but leaders of various Government departments are telling staff not to respond. Danielle also talks about the fight to control executive agencies within the Government and President Trump's blaming of Ukraine for Russia's invasion. 

Danielle Kurtzleben is a political correspondent assigned to NPR's Washington Desk.

10:05 Bowel cancer survivor's deep dive into processed meat industry

Lucie Morris-Marr was a fit and healthy 44 year old, mother of two when she received a shock diagnosis of invasive stage four bowel cancer. She had no family history, was a non smoker, had a varied diet, a good weight and wasn't a heavy drinker. Lucie had just published her first non fiction book into the secret trial and conviction of Australian Catholic Cardinal George Pell. As her treatment began, all publicity events for that book were cancelled, and she defaulted to her journalistic instincts - digging deeper into other possible links to bowel cancer. What she discovered was a wealth of scientific studies linking regular consumption of processed meats with bowel cancer. Her new book Processed, draws on this science, and her own experience, to make the case for much better understanding of the risks to human health from processed meat. 

10:35 Book review: Life Hacks For a Little Alien by Alice Franklin 

Cynthia Morahan reviews Life Hacks For a Little Alien by Alice Franklin published by Hachette    

10:45 Around the motu: David Hill in Kaikōura

It has been nearly six months since the Kaikōura district was granted international dark sky sanctuary status, the Kaikōura Mayors' Taskforce for Jobs is proving successful and there is new research into dusky dolphins and whale poop.

David Hill is a Local Democracy Reporter with North Canterbury News, based in Rangiora.

11:05 Business commentator Rebecca Stevenson

What does Andrew Bayly's resignation mean for his reform work in New Zealand's capital markets, competition and consumer data regime? Rebecca also discusses the situation Spark finds itself in with talk of over-sold shares and questions over the CEO's position as the company's market valuation plummets $1 billion.  Also German sandal makers Birkenstocks fail in an attempt to get the sandals classified as art in an attempt to achieve higher copyright restrictions.

Rebecca Stevenson is a senior journalist at BusinessDesk.

11:30 Patricia Donovan's killer novel about the public service

Patricia Donovan's been an extremely prolific author of late - publishing four books since 2022, including The Collections and The Madison Gap. Her first novel was The Remarkable Miss Digby, which imagined the later life of British aristocrat Jane Digby, who refused to conform to the expectations of her class and gender in the mid-19th century and spent her final decades in the Syrian desert. Patricia has also written a guidebook to a profession she worked in for a long time, communications. And it's from there, she's drawn inspiration for her latest novel, Rita Vegas. Rita, the book's protagonist, finds herself dealing with a mysterious death at a Cambodian rehab centre that has echoes of an earlier incident at a public housing agency in Wellington five years before. Patricia joins Kathryn to pick up the tale.

11:45 Sports correspondent Glen Larmer

Another barnstorming weekend for the Super Rugby Pacific competition but what has happened to the defending champions, the Blues? Elsewhere Auckland FC crushed the Wellington Phoenix in football's A-League, while in cricket, the Black Caps start their campaign in the ICC Champions Trophy with a strong win over hosts Pakistan. And the Warriors are in Las Vegas.