Sunday Morning for Sunday 26 July 2009

Sunday for 26 July 2009

8:12 Insight: Carbon Offsetting

Insight investigates some of the environmental projects that businesses are using to offset their greenhouse gas emissions and asks whether they stack up.
Written and presented by Ian Telfer
Produced by Sue Ingram

8:40 Feature interview: No Escape

For British convicts banished to Australia, Van Diemen's Land was a feared penal settlement at the end of the earth. The film, 'Van Diemen's Land', is based on the true story of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most notorious convict who escaped in a group of eight men into the rugged Tasmanian wilderness - and was the only who lived to tell the tale. Chris Laidlaw talks to the film's writer/director Jonathan auf der Heide, and writer/lead actor Oscar Redding.

Van Diemen's Land screens at the New Zealand International Film Festival 2009

9:05 Mediawatch

Some people were fascinated by media reports of the trial of Clayton Weatherston this past month, but others found the gruesome details in the evening news too much to take. Mediawatch this week brings together a concerned viewer and a TV news editor to thrash out just how much detail really belongs in our news. Also in the programme - can people be persuaded to pay for news online? And will it be good for journalism if they can?
Produced and presented by Colin Peacock and Jeremy Rose.

9:30 Feature interview: On the Dark Side

Canadian author Linwood Barclay (right) was well-known to readers of the 'Toronto Star' for his regular humour columns, but after one of his novels featured on a popular UK TV show, he became the best-selling author in Britain last year and his books are available around the world. Chris Laidlaw's found no trace of humour in Linwood's latest novel, the crime thriller 'Fear the Worst', and talks to the author about being funny - and about exploring the dark side of life.
'Fear the Worst' is published by Orion.

10:06 The Sunday Group: Irrigating the Mackenzie Country

A stoush over the Mackenzie Country landscape is shaping up as farmers seek water rights to irrigate more than 27,000 ha of the Mackenzie Basin and Upper Waitaki Valley. They want to run more livestock in the area which many of them describe as turning into a desert. Conservation groups are opposing the plan, warning irrigation could change the unique landscape and cause an environmental disaster.
Chris Laidlaw chairs a panel that includes: Dr Susan Walker, an ecologist with the crown research institute Landcare Research, who leads a research programme into the ecology and restoration of biodiversity in New Zealand's drylands ecosystems; Greg Burrell, a freshwater ecologist with Golder Associates who has done a lot of work on the environmental effects of irrigation for both the Canterbury Regional Council and backers of large irrigation schemes; John Murray, a committee member of the Upper Waitaki Applicants Group and the chairman of the Mackenzie branch of Federated Farmers; and Forest and Bird South Island Conservation Manager Chris Todd.

Looking north from the Church of the Good Shepherd throughout the night. Copyright Fraser Gunn. For further information visit www.mackenziesky.co.nz.

10:40 Hidden Treasures

Each week Trevor Reekie takes you on a trip that seeks out musical gems from niche markets around the globe, the latest re-releases and interesting sounds from the shallow end of the bit stream. Today Trevor digs deep to unveil a gypsy brass band version of 007, there's a flash-back to Hippies on Harleys and he discovers how well-known local singer/songwriters subsidise the rent.
Produced by Trevor Reekie

10:55 Feedback

What you, the listeners, say on the ideas and issues that have appeared in the programme.

11:05 Ideas: Free Data - New Zealand on the Net

Almost exactly two years ago Britain's Guardian newspaper ran a thousand-word article on a decision by the New Zealand Government to stop charging the public for statistics. Yet the decision to have Statistics New Zealand all but abandon the user-pays philosophy and put its data sets up on the web barely caused a ripple in the media here. The idea that information gathered with public funds should be publicly available was seemingly uncontroversial.

In recent years dozens of publicly-funded agencies have embarked on ambitious internet projects that have seen everything from those statistical data sets to old episodes of the TV series 'Gloss' go on-line.

This week on Ideas we take a look at a handful of those publicly-funded initiatives and talk to former New Zealand Government Chief Information Officer, Laurence Millar, and Andy Neale of Digital NZ.

LINKS:
NZ On Screen
Te Ara
Statistics New Zealand
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
Digital New Zealand Digital New Zealand
Laurence Millar's blog

Further information about Barcamp

The New Zealand Open Government Bar Camp is an "unconference" for people who are interested in making government-held data more freely available for others to re-use. An unconference is an alternative participant-driven event, that avoids aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations.

Web 2.0 developments have shown the potential of combining data from different sources made freely available on the Internet. The government holds a huge range of non-personal data which could form the basis of innovative services and applications by others on the Internet.

You may want to attend Bar Camp if you are interested in government information policy, explore ways to provide data, making entrepreneurial use of the Internet, or building working applications during a weekend.

Presented by Chris Laidlaw
Produced by Jeremy Rose