Head2Head

Rebecca is an extraordinary person. Back in 2011 she saw two problems in her Palmerston North community. A lot of food waste going to tghe dump or feed pigs and a lot of hungry people. So she decided to do something about it - rescue the food and feed those who need it So she created Just Zilch in a free store, and today she had a full time team of 5 and 100 volunteers who distribute surplus food,...

What must you believe to be a Christian? In 1967 New Zealand Presbyterian Minister and Theologican Sir Lloyd Geering faced charges of heresy for teaching that the Biblical record of Jesus' death and resurrection is not true. For the making of my of my documentary Jesus The Cold Case - Who Killed Jesus And Why? - I interviewed Sir Lloyd who was then aged 90 . (At the time of posting 30/6/24 he is 1...

Worried about the calls to privatise our public health system? Concerned about falling numbers of doctors and nurses and the increasing difficulty of getting access to medical care when you need it? Dr Gary Payinda MD MA DDU FACEP FACEM is an Emergency Medical Doctor in Te Tai Tokerau Northland. He is at the frontline of our health care system and he spoke to me frankly about what has gone wrong w...

There’s avery good chance you have heard of Ruud, the Dutch-New Zealand naturalist whose passion for insects saw him start a talkback radio show ( Ruud's Awakening ) in in 1987 in which which he offered environmentally friendly tips to gardeners. It earned him the name of “the bugman” which he carried to the NZTV series Maggie’s Garden Show from 1992 until December 2003. This led to successful int...

Michael Belgrave is Professor Emeritus of History at Massey University. He was research manager of the Waitangi Tribunal and has continued to work on Treaty of Waitangi research and settlements. published widely on Treaty and Māori history. His 2017 Dancing with the King, an exploration of diplomacy and peace-making in the decades between the Waikato War and the opening of the King Country, was sh...

Yesterday I decided to interview the Chat Bot Chat GPT (the GPT part is an abbreviation of Generative Pre-trained Transformer - I’ll let you look that up :). First of all,let me admit that I have come very late to this particular party which hundreds of millions of users have already been enjoying, because…well, to be honest, I saw it as a gimmicky young person’s thing and not for oldies like me....

Susan St John Bsc, MA, PhD, QSO, CNZM, is an honorary Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland . With Auckland accounting tax expert Terry Baucher she has been publishing papers on what they term a Fair Economic Return Tax (FER)as a much better solution than either Capital Gains Tax or Land Tax as a way of getting the wealthy to pay their fair share towards the upkeep and fut...

Aotearoa New Zealand does not have a written constitution, rather a collection of fundamental laws, conventions, and documents, including The Treaty Of Waitangi, the Māori text of which ,Te Tiriti, was the one signed by most rangatira Māori (540, compared to 39 who signed the English version), and it is that text which is recognised in international law (contra preferentem). David Seymour’s Treaty...

Gavin Ellis is a media consultant and Honorary Research Fellow at Koi Tu, The Centre For Informed Futures at Auckland University. He holds a PhD in political studies and is a former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald. Funding for independent public journalism has been cut off by the current government. To support my work in speaking truth to power, please share posts on your social media si...

Lisa teaches taxation at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research interests include social justice and inequality. She has a particular interest in what is politely termed “the behavioural impacts of taxation.” White-collar crime (fraud and deception) is the fastest growing crime type in NZ and in our conversation we cover the general attitude to it in our country The Tax amounts ea...

Catherine was an MP from 2008 to 2017 representing the Green Party. These days she remains an activist in environmental, social justice, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi issues. She is Chair of Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki and works in the campaigns against multinational goldmining in the Wharekirauponga Forest and is active in the national solidarity network for a Free West Papua. She is a writer and a...

What happened to the coastal shipping network we once had? Why are we not training young New Zealanders for Seafarers jobs especially with the advent of offshore wind farming on the horizon? And why are the major transport sectors of our economy - trucking,rail and shipping not working more effectively together? Find out the sensible solution Carl would instigate if he was MInister of Transport. T...

Max Harris describes himself as Public Lawyer. He is a barrister at Thorndon Chambers who also works at ActionStations. He was an Examination Fellow in Law at All Souls College at the University of Oxford, where he completed a DPhil in constitutional law on the prerogative and third source. He completed BCL (with Distinction) and Master of Public Policy degrees at the University of Oxford as a New...

Dr Bryan Betty is a General Practitioner at Union and Community Health , a not for profit health clinic in Cannons Creek, East Porirua, a suburb that is known for its high needs and social deprivation. The practice has 7,000 enrolled patients, 90 percent who are high needs with 25 percent Māori, 50 percent Pasifika and the remainder mainly refugee. Dr Betty was the Medical Director of The Royal Ne...

Dr Nikki Turner is a General Practitioner who is also a Professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Care and Medical Director of the Immunisation Advisory Centre (IMAC), at the University of Auckland. She works part time as a General Practitioner at the NUHS Broadway clinic in Strathmore, Wellington and academic interests are in immunisation, primary health care and preventive chil...

Bryan Gould is one of the Left’s clearest thinkers whose books and articles have certainly influenced my own views economics, political and society. So when the opportunity came up to interview him I asked if we could talk face to face rather than doing a Zoom type computer interview. The 17 minute segment I have posted here is just a fraction of what we talked about but it contains his challenge...

Bernard Hickey is one of my go-to financial journalists and commentators for solid, data driven, opinion. He’s also a regular podcaster who distributes much of his engaging and thought- provoking work through his Substack site - The Kaka which you can find here: thekaka.substack.com has over 23 years of experience in public journalism and economic analysis with roles in a variety major media organ...

With government accusations of overspending in the disability sector and cutbacks in benefits, I called Mel Smith who is the CEO of CCS Disability Action to get her perspective on these issues. Mel has worked for and with people with disabilities for more than 20 years since she was a student social worker at Otago University. After a stint in Perth as an Employment Consultant with the Western Aus...

Dr Mike Joy is The Morgan Foundation Senior Research Fellow in Freshwater Ecology and Environmental Science School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences. A late starter in academia, Mike first attended university in his early thirties to gain his BSc, MSc and PhD in Ecology from Massey University. He began lecturing there in ecology and environmental science in 2003. After seeing first-hand...

Dr Claire Achmad became Aotearoa /New Zealand’s Chief Children's Commissioner and Chair of the Commission in November 2023, a role she will hold for 5 years. She holds a doctorate in international children’s rights law from Leiden University, the Netherlands, and has published internationally on a range of children's rights issues. She also holds degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Auck...

New Zealand has an estimated 150,000 children living households with incomes below the poverty line (think the entire combined populations of Nelson, New Plymouth and Invercargill) with 64,000 of those children living in extreme hardship.  In this episode of Head2Head Susan unravels for me some of the complexities of the Working For Families benefit and reveals the wired in unfairness that discrim...

My guest today is Selwyn Manning- investigative political journalist and founder of Multimedia Investments Ltd He provides analysis, assessment, and evaluation of the political environment specific to New Zealand, Australia, the economies and island states of the Asia-Pacific region with a specialisation in the analysis of geopolitics, cyber-security, and, intelligence issues. He was also a former...

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