The Week in Detail: From Posie Parker to processed foods

Every weekday, The Detail makes sense of the big news stories.

This week, we looked at how co-governance really works, Labour's record on climate action, what the new AUKUS nuclear submarine deal means for New Zealand, Posie Parker's visit to Auckland and the free speech debate, and the damage processed foods are doing to our lives.

Plus, a new edition of our Long Read.

Whakarongo mai to any episodes you might have missed.

Co-governance at the coalface

Newsroom's Nikki Mandow went hunting for organisations run using a co-governance model and found some have been doing it quietly for years. No power grab, no stolen assets.

She hears from leaders of river authorities, local councils and schools and about what co-governance looks like in practice, and asks - does it work?

Assessing Labour's record on climate action

During the 2017 election campaign, then-Labour leader Jacinda Ardern made a bold statement: "We will take climate change seriously. This is my generation's nuclear free moment". 

But almost six years later, has Labour's action on climate change while in government lived up to those words?

"I don't think that the action we've seen from the government over the past two terms, or over any term of parliament ever, has been consistent with Jacinda Ardern's proclamation," Newsroom senior political reporter Marc Daalder says.

Tom Kitchin speaks to Daalder and climate scientist Professor James Renwick.

Balancing our alliances

In the latest developments, Australia has signed off a deal - part of the AUKUS defence pact - to acquire nuclear-powered submarines; and China's president Xi Jinping has travelled to Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Newsroom's national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva says for a small nation like New Zealand, the world's becoming increasingly tricky to navigate from a foreign policy perspective.

"We are walking a fine line really, a tightrope of sorts, between the two countries [China and the US]."

Sarah Robson asks Sachdeva - will there come a time that New Zealand needs to pick a side?

Parker's visit poses plenty of questions

Before she arrived last Friday, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull - aka Posie Parker - was a controversial figure internationally for her claims that transgender women are a threat to the safety of women, but few New Zealanders knew her name.

That changed when Parker's rally in Melbourne, the previous week, attracted a group of neo-Nazis who gave a 'Sieg Heil' salute as they marched past.

Suddenly her name was on everybody's lips and Parker was greeted with a large organised protest at her rally in Auckland’s Albert Park.

Sharon Brettkelly gets three different reflections on last weekend's events and what they mean for free speech.

The new food baddie on the block

Almost 70 percent of the packaged foods in our supermarkets are classed as ultra-processed - and in some food categories, nearly all products are. 

They're high in salt, sugar, artificial flavours and colours, ingredients with numbers, not names; and often the methods used to produce them resemble nothing you'd do in your kitchen. 

Alexia Russell speaks to Consumer NZ writer Belinda Castles and public health physician Rachael McLean.

The Detail's Long Read: Jungle Warfare

This is The Detail's Long Read - one in-depth story read by us every weekend.

This week, it's Jungle Warfare, written by Ellen Rykers and published in New Zealand Geographic's March/April 2023 edition.

You can find the full article, with photos by Adrian Malloch, here.

Hundreds of pest plant species—many of them garden escapees—run rampant in New Zealand’s biggest city. It’s thought Auckland has more invasive plant species than any other in the world. Now, its citizens are fighting back.

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