First Up - The Podcast, Thursday 4 December

Yes, well, Ata Māori, welcome along to First Up, tōtahi ki te oho. It's Rāpare, it's Thursday, the 4th of December. I'm Nathan Rariri on a very special day for the Kitsets furniture community. and they probably need one of those, what are they even called? You know, there's bits down the end of the bed. They look like there should be a bedspread, but then when you stay in the hotel and you go to pull them up, you're like, it's only a...

be able to meet along, what am I supposed to do with this? If you're one of those people that, they go on top of the duvet, those ones. I think they've sold those. And also, a big day for the, oh, I'd just like to try a little bit of that meatball community today. So you'll see a lot of...

news about the new furniture shop opening in Auckland. I think it's got other things in there as well. So I'm sure you hear about it today, but we've all made it, haven't we? We were here on the day, the 4th of December. Let's see what's on first up for you. It's Scrutiny Week. in Parliament. One Labour MP using just every resource available at her fingertips, apparently, for her scrutiny. But we'll also talk to another one, Willow Jean Prime as well. Also...

The sprint to get to the Winter Olympics is narrowing down our curlers. are trying to curl their way. This will be coming up in this next week, so we'll speak to one of them at the event, also in Australia. We've got the incredible journey all over again. Emma Cropper telling us about an escaped parrot.

and found its way home. I had gone 30 kilometres away, spotted some shiny beer cans swooped down into this party that was underway, and as luck would have it, they were a very friendly, bird-loving family, and they'd spend the whole day driving it back to her. An Australian paragraph if I've ever heard one.

We go now to Alice Wilkins, who's been looking at news overnight. Kia ora, Alice. I wonder why it's here, but it says here the search for the wreckage of MH370 is to resume. How long will the search last? and why are they trying that again? Yeah, a brand new search for the Malaysia Airlines flight. It's going to start on December 30th. It will run for a period of 55 days, this search. It did actually get approval in March this year, but...

poor weather conditions got in the way. It's, of course, for the Boeing 777 flight that was carrying 239 people. It vanished in 2014 while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It lost contact with the air traffic... This has obviously sparked a huge search. There have been multiple attempts to search for this. There was a multinational effort involving 60 ships.

and 50 aircraft from 26 countries. That ended in 2017. And then in 2018, there was a search by exploration firm Ocean Infinity. That lasted three months. Ocean Infinity is actually going to lead this new search. The arrangement is a no-find, no-fee arrangement. It will be paid. more than the equivalent of about 120 million New Zealand dollars if this search does prove successful.

Malaysia's Transport Ministry has said this latest search shows a commitment to providing closure to the families affected by the tragedy, who, of course, have very little answers about what happened here with this flight. Absolutely. OK, thank you for that. Can we talk about this looming crisis in Israel? What is this?

Yeah, it's becoming a major political issue this. Lawmakers are considering a draft bill that would end the exemption given to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from conscription to the Israeli army. This is an exemption that's offered to them. If they are enrolled in full-time religious study, it's been in place since 1948. It was actually ruled illegal by Israel's High Court of Justice almost 20 years ago, a temporary arrangement to continue this.

was ended last year. So some 24,000 draft notices were issued at that point. Only about 1,200 ultra-Orthodox Jews reported for military duty. And now there are further tensions over the debate. around this new bill that would essentially force these men into military service alongside other Israeli Jews. There's a lot of discussion about this and disagreement. There have been huge protests in October, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews march.

against this, but also a large number of the public actually want this bill and don't want the exemptions to be offered.

OK, there's lots of countries around the world trying to boost tourism. Thailand is going to relax alcohol rules in a bid to do that. What changes are to be made? Yeah, all around the timing that alcohol is available, liquor stores, bars and restaurants are going to be able, under this change, to sell beer, wine and spirits between 2pm and 5pm, which they haven't been able to do after a ban.

since 1972, which has basically meant alcohol can't be sold in the afternoons. This ban was actually brought in initially to stop government employees drinking during work hours. And anyone found to be breaking that ban would face the fine of equivalent 500 New Zealand dollars. This is actually still just a trial. It's going to be in place for six months, and of course it does come into effect right before Christmas and New Year, which are obviously...

crucial time in Thailand for tourist arrival. So people will be able to purchase alcohol from 11am till midnight and a committee is going to study the impact that that has. Yeah. Wow. OK. And very, very quickly, there's been a drunken burglary in a liquor store in Virginia. Tell us why it's unusual.

Yeah, it's a masked burglar. He broke into a liquor store when it was closed. He hit the bottom shelf, smashed glass bottles all over the place. There were puddles of alcohol left all over the floor. And then he was found passed out in the bathroom after drinking up some of that alcohol. It's unusual because this was a raccoon. Brilliant.

A messy raccoon, and I hope he tied it up after himself, quite frankly. These bloody raccoons. Thank you for that. Alice Wilkins with the latest in crime news. You've got to watch those.

Those raccoons, they'll do that to you. It's 13 past five. Time to see what's making news across the Tasman with our Australian correspondent Emma Cropper. Our producer, Ross McNaughton, spoke with her and started by asking about Australia's social media ban for under-16s, which... It comes into force next week, but some companies like Meta are already taking action. Yeah, it's going to be a big moment for Australia.

Everyone under the age of 16 is banned from social media on the 10th. But yeah, Mesa, which is Instagram, Facebook, some of the biggest social media in Australia, they're being banned from tomorrow. Basically, they're going to start shutting down any of those accounts over the next...

next few days to make sure that when it gets to the 10th, anyone who is under the age of 16 is gone and cut off. So that's to avoid any fines the government may issue. These social media companies are facing huge fines from the Australian government. Australian government if they're caught breaching the social media ban. But it's going to be really interesting. No one knows how it's going to work.

We're starting to see things like facial recognition, like you use when you open your iPhone, to try and work out if the person making a social media account is over the age of 16. We're starting to see these sort of little different...

Apps pop up in Australia here at the moment that users are flocking to because they're not on the official ban, but the government is sweeping on those and quickly adding them to the list as well. So it'll be interesting to see how it unfolds, but hopefully all going well. It'll do what it's meant.

to do and reduce the risk of bullying and harm for teenagers. Now, former Liberal Party staff member Bruce Lehrman has lost his appeal in a defamation fight. What's the latest there? Yeah, it's an interesting case and it's really backfired on. I mean, this has been playing out in Australia for years. It's been one of the most high-profile rape and defamation cases in the country's history. It started with an interview with a young...

Staffer from Parliament House, Brittany Higgins, she sat down on Channel 10's The Project over here, did an interview with a presenter, Lisa Wilkinson, and accused Bruce Lehrman of rape. Now, there's been many twists and turns over the years, one of them being that the police dropped the criminal...

case against him. He took Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson to court saying they then defamed him in this interview. That court ruled no. There was a very high probability that he did rape Brittany Higgins and that he has to pay them $2 million. million in costs. Now, he appealed that decision. He's taken it to court and it backfired on him today. The ruling was right. And his legal costs have now gone up because of this. So he'll be paying close to $2.5 million now.

And a sad story, a man's died and his stepson was seriously injured when a retaining wall collapsed on them in Brisbane. Yeah, it's a Kiwi family, Kamura Dixon. He was working on a site in some shallow trenches with his stepson who was 19 years old. The retaining wall was...

collapsed on both of them. Unfortunately, Kamura has died of his injuries on that side, and his stepson, his quick-thinking workmates, have managed to lift some concrete off his chest, and he's been partially buried. It took rescuers over an hour to get him... out of there. He survived. He had some leg injuries, but he is all OK. But unfortunately, his stepfather passed away on that construction site. Really awful workplace accident that took place in Brisbane here in Australia.

Well, on a lighter note, I'm just going to read this headline. Party-loving pet parrot reunited with family six days after wild storm. Can you tell us what that's all about? Yeah, and I think this just shows the power of social media. It was a young girl who had a parrot that in a huge sort of summer storm we had here one afternoon, it took off and it had gone for several days and she had been posting about it online, looking for...

anyone to come forward with any help trying to find her beloved pet. And it seems it had gone 30 kilometres away, spotted some shiny beer cans swooped down into this party that was underway. And as luck would have it, they were very friendly. bird-loving family and sort of took hold of this parrot. Ivy looked after her and then started searching online to see if anyone knew whose parrot it was. And they spent the whole day driving it back to her and reuniting it with her.

So on one hand over here, we've got social media being stripped away from these teenagers, and the other one, it's helped one young girl be reunited with her pet.

17 past five, you're listening to First Up here at RNZ National. I'm Nathan Radere. The Olympic dreams of the New Zealand men's and mixed doubles curling teams hinge on how they perform at the final qualification event, which is in Kelowna in Canada.

This weekend and the next week as well. Only two spots remain in the men's, the women's and the mixed doubles curling for the Winter Olympics, which start in February. And Anton Hood is competing in both the men and the mixed doubles and joins us now from British Columbia.

Anton, thank you for being... Oh, you're in Calgary. Sorry, you're in Alberta. Anton, tell me, how does it feel to be so close to qualifying for the Olympic Games? It feels amazing. For all of us, it's been a very long sort of... part of our career to try and get to an Olympic Games. The last four years that these teams have been together and competing together across the world, we're certainly feeling excited to be at this point.

Yeah, you've got a brilliant qualifying story. I want to talk to you about some of your journey along the way, but very quickly for the audience here. So eight teams there in the men's division. We'll get to that one first. So can you explain for us how those two Olympic spots are chosen? from those eight teams? Because you start with the round robin, don't you? Yeah, so we start with the round robin. So everyone plays everyone. So it's a seven-game round robin. And then the first and second...

Ranked teams out of the round robin will play off against each other and the winner of that then qualifies through and then the loser of that gets a second life against third place team. So that's how that works. So you want to be finishing top three if you can in the round robin? Yeah, top three is the only chance for an Olympic playoff spot and top two gives you two chances at it. So yeah, we're definitely hoping for that.

That's exciting. And how many games do you get through in a day? So the schedule is kind of two games, one game, two games, one game, because you're working in with the women's draw as well. Yeah, they can fit three games of curling comfortably in an arena. So, yeah, you just kind of alternate with the woman. I wanted to know...

How much difference to a game does a venue make? Because from my dumb eyes, I just go, well, ice looks like ice. But does ice play differently wherever you go? Yeah, lots of the different climates around the world kind of. I guess affect a curling club or in a curling arena so yeah we're playing in British Columbia which is a relatively drier and warm climate so shouldn't be too much frost on the ice for us.

But it's a great venue and we played there a few years before. And World Curling have great ice makers that go around the world making amazing ice for us. So we're not too concerned about how the ice will be next week.

In my experience in that town, Kelowna is quite a distracting venue to keep your mind on the ice, please. It's an exciting place. Let's tell people about your journey to get here. You've been in many countries, what, Curling and Aberdeen? stage there in October in Scotland? Yeah, we were in Aberdeen this year. We play lots in Canada, lots in Europe. A few of us have played a wee bit in Asia over the years. So yeah, we've...

We've been a bit of everywhere, but this year we've been just to Europe and to Canada. You're in Calgary right now. I'm not sure if you're staying with your friends that you have, but tell us the story because you're no stranger to there. And I know that you very much, you were a guest. You spent a few months training, I think in 2023, living in a retirement.

home. Tell us about your mates at the retirement home and is that where you're staying again at the moment? We're not staying there actually this time. Actually since we left the Chartwell retirement home. all the rooms have been full since so we weren't actually able to get back in. We've kind of done ourselves out of mischief with the publicity we kind of helped get. The boys were there yesterday having a chat to a few of the residents. Sadly, quite a lot of the residents that were there.

we weren't there anymore but one of our favourites Bertha was there so I had a good chat to her and she's 99 so she was quite excited to see the guys and to hear how life had been for them over the last 12 months since we seen her last time and yeah so we were kind of all up spent almost a year living in retirement homes.

in Calgary, so across two seasons. So, yeah, we're no stranger to hanging out with the oldies. Bertha is your fan. I've seen her quoted a few times talking about you boys. She'll be waving a New Zealand flag for you, won't she? She definitely will, but yeah, she'll be tucked up in her room, I imagine, but we've talked to her about how she can watch us on the tally, so she'll certainly be screaming at the tally for us, so we're quite excited about that.

I know that there's talk of a film being made. Cool Runnings, we've got to come up with a better name than that for it. But Anton, you've got business out there on the ice. All the best for Kelowna and we'll be following you along with every curl, eh? Yeah, thank you so much for the support. No worries, no worries. There he is, Anton Hodier, just a couple of places left in the men's and also the mixed doubles. Come on, New Zealand, let's talk.

23 past five. I'm Nathan at Aradet. You are listening to First Up here on RNZ National, keeping it a bit sporty. Grant Chapman comes along very soon as we analyse the Rugby World Cup draw, and we will catch up in just a second with our neighbourhood round the Coromandel. Who are the people in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood? Say who are the people in your neighborhood?

The people that you meet each day. Time to check out what's happening around the neighbourhood. One of our most beautiful neighbourhoods, actually, the beautiful Coromandel. And we're here from Iana Piper-Helion. How are you going?

I'm good, thank you. I'm good. Yeah, the weather's holding up. Perfect. I like that because summer concert tour time is nearly on the way. Iggy Pop coming for the Mandel, Joan Jett as well. But the Whitianga show got pulled, I think. What's that impact been like? Yeah, Greenstone Entertainment.

made the decision to pull out of Fitianga this summer. They said it was due to dwindling ticket sales, but it was also going to be a big opportunity for us because it was going to be moved from the Fitianga waterways to a new TCDC purpose-built venue. for the event and for lots of other events but it was going to be the big launch of that it's called Sheriff's Block and yeah it's going to be quite exciting but no local businesses are

Pretty gutted. The hotels have said that lots of big groups have cancelled and pulled out, and it's, yeah. It's a shame. I mean, it could have been a local cafe with a little sign, Iggy bought a focaccia. from here, you know. But let's talk about something which is scary. Shots fired, and normally we say that as an expression, but actual shots fired near a popular swimming hole in Thames last weekend. Take us there.

Yes, so swimming hall up the Kauranga Valley Road, there was a guy there that was allegedly threatening people, shouting, waving a firearm around before firing a shot in the air. It really scared so many people. No one was injured. The incident has shaken the community. He escaped, fled into a car with another person. They drove up the road and the police Eagle helicopter caught up with them. And he was arrested. appeared in the Hamilton District Court on Monday. Yeah, don't do that.

Let's stay in Thames. Every good New Zealand regional town needs a town clock. I know that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066 because the clock in my hometown has 1066 written on it. And the Thames one, it's back on again. I know. It was frozen at 4.34 for nearly four years. Back to the future. Stuck in time there in Thames. And, yeah, it's a nice story because it was a restoration which was funded by pub charity and Trillian Trust, which cost $21,000.

but at no cost to ratepayers. So this clock was gifted to the town by the Thames Lion Club back in 1968. And it sort of stopped and started for stretches of time over the years, but lots of people are really stoked to have it. going again and it's a big symbol to the community. It'd be really good to find a collection of the best lies that people have told their visiting friends about why it's frozen at 4.34. Don't you know about that?

Done some great ones there. Finally, though, we are getting into the summer season. How's it looking for Coromandel Peninsula? Yes, now, just before we get into the summer season, I did want to mention the Oceana Gold draft approval for the Waihe North project because... It's the first...

private fast-track one that has had a draft approval. It's not fully approved yet, but it's a really controversial topic around the peninsula. And, yeah, Oceana Gold says it's going to create a lot more jobs nationally, 1,100 jobs apparently. and lots of workers in the area, lots of money projected to come into the area, $3.4 billion directly into the Hauraki district.

But then, of course, there are groups that have spoken up and opposed this, quoting environmental issues. There are endangered bats, very endangered arches, frog, and also those freshwater systems that they're worried that haven't. being considered enough and once you go into the mining, there's no going back. So there's a lot of debate in the area about this project. Good for tourism if people like holes that they're doing. But just how is Coromandel looking, though, for the summer? Yeah, good.

The Coro Classic has just sold out, which is a gig that has not been cancelled in the area. And the Coro Glen Tavern and Waihi Beach Hotel have lots of stacked lineups for the summer. Cathedral Cove Track is open. We get, I think, around 3,000 visitors a day.

and peak summer there. Hot water beach is open as well. And there'll be lots of people down there trying to dig those hot pools. We get so busy there. We've still got one lane bridges in the area. So traffic does build up on our roads. So lots of patience is needed. the oceans. We've already had some dramatic rescues this season. Three people were rescued by helicopter from the Weretoa blowhole.

in November. That is amazing that I'm so pleased that those rescues happened. My goodness me, that must have been scary. Thank you so much for that. Have yourself a brilliant summer. Ladies and gentlemen, you've just met Ayanna Piper-Healyan here at First Up. Thank you. Thank you.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. It's the day of our life we call the 4th of December. Let's harken back... to 2014, the day after a fake MSNBC story reports the death of Axl Rose. The very much alive Guns N' Roses Axl Rose tweeted, If I'm dead, do I still have to pay taxes? So I thought I'd play a bit of him being romantic. Song I don't normally know from Mark Garfinkel. What about that? Axel, real range on the fella. Birthday's on this day, you.

Tyra Banks, Jay-Z, or Sean Corey Carter as he was born, or Mr. Beyonce as he grew up to become. Marissa Torme's birthday is on this day. Also the birthday of the dudes, Jeff Bridges. On this day in 1843, Manila paper had its birthday. It was patented by John Mark and Lyman Hollingsworth. They produced their paper from old marine hemp ropes. The hemp typically came from the Philippines, thus the name Manila.

When I was at school, I thought they were vanilla folders. Before then, the paper was usually made out of old cotton and linen rags, you see. Yeah, sing it, Axel. OK, I'll get back to reading. In 1909, the Montreal Canadiens Ice Hockey Club, the oldest surviving professional hockey franchise in the world, was founded as a charter member of the NHE. They have won 24 Stanley Cups.

that Toronto Maple Leafs have won 13 next. On this day in 1961 New York's Museum of Modern Art decided to hang Henri Matisse's picture Le Bateau the right way up because a stock broker called Genevieve Javier had noticed that it was upside down.

she was the first of 116,000 people that went past that painting in 47 days to notice that it was hanging upside down true story It was on this day in 71 during a concert by Frank Zampa and the Mothers of Invention at the Montreux Casino an audience member fired a flare gun into the ceiling.

causing a fire that destroyed that venue. And that is where deep purple smoke on the water comes from. And this was the day in 1988 of the Gary Busey motorbike accident. He was driving his Harley Davidson West on Washington Boulevard. He lost control. his head on the pavement, wasn't wearing a helmet, suffered a fractured skull, broken bones and a head wound, needed 150 stitches, but he spoke of his experience afterwards. He said that he died.

and came back to life after the accident, he described a place where, this is his quote, everything but nothing is happening. He said he was surrounded by angels which appeared to him in balls of light. He felt trust, love and protection like he never had felt on earth before. said he was given a choice to come back to his body or go with an angel.

Later Gary Busey in his life would come to blows with an actor playing an angel on the set of the film Quigley after Busey refused to do a scene in the movie Set in Heaven because he said the set design looked nothing like the real heaven that he... had seen. Specifically, he complained about props like a sofa and a mirror, apparently yelling, they don't even have mirrors! Then a fistfight broke out with an actor playing an angel because that man had also claimed that he'd seen heaven.

when he'd had a near-death experience as well and on this day in 1990 the Simpsons released the album the Simpsons sing the blues had that song do the Batman I was a young man working a young boy actually working in radio at that stage boy I was sick of that song Those are your happenings on December the 4th.

Welcome along to First Up here at RNZ National. If you've just joined Thursday's program, we've already been around the world. Earlier on, Emma Cropper in Australia told us about their imminent social media ban for under-16s. It's going to be a big moment for Australia.

Everyone under the age of 16 is banned from social media on the 10th. But yeah, Mesa, which is Instagram, Facebook, some of the biggest social media in Australia, they're being banned from tomorrow. Basically, they're going to start shutting down any of those accounts over the next...

Ellie is in the UK. She's got news for you. Chappie's had a look at the Rugby World Cup draw. He'll bring you his thoughts on that. And Willard Jean Prime as well talks about AI and its use in Parliament. Scrutiny week. But first...

Looking at the business team right now, it's Anansaki. How are you going? Good, good. How are you? I mean, how are you going? How happy are you at work? Look, this is a very philosophical question, isn't it? No, it's a very good question because, look, I have to say, I feel beta... than how you felt probably when the Simpsons album came out at work. I mean, it was cute the first three times I heard that song, and then after 800th, you're like, no, let's play it again.

Fair enough, fair enough. And that would make you unhappy at work. But look, there's an interesting bit of research that's come out around, you know, just how happy are you at work? And turns out most of us are... are pretty happy. Our recruitment website, Seek, asked the question and found 64% of employees are in fact happy.

at their workplace. That's pretty much on par with what their survey showed last year. 12% of people are actually unhappy, and I guess the rest are kind of just meh, you know, not going either way. Interestingly, the location of their work is what they're most happy with, followed by their colleagues, their teammates. And it turns out one of the reasons that's also important for people to be happy is...

the purpose of their job and the responsibilities that go with it. So most of us still like to take a bit of pride in our jobs, but countering that is the dissatisfaction. about their career progression. That's what we're least happy with. The declining satisfaction about job securities in there. And also... Bit of unhappiness with their direct line managers. So the old manager complaint coming in there. But Sikhs, what stands out for them is that New Zealand workers are still...

Pretty resilient despite pressures, especially around job security. And the least happy group at work are Generation Z. So those born between, what, the late 90s and early 2000s seek, say, this is... Of course, the generation that's just joined the workforce likely at the bottom of the employment ladder and pay scale, most likely to feel the cost of living pressures and so on. So unsurprising there.

Wonderful. Thank you for that. Anansaki, with the news, and you can catch more from the business team throughout the day. You can trade your Kiwi dollar, but I'm a little bit behind time, so go out and find that for yourself. Be resourceful. Come on. We're that generation. You don't need your phone.

Get off it. Let's have a look at the pumps this morning. The average price for diesel is $1.96.2. The average price for 91 is $2.63.6. If you're filling up your car, the cheapest place to do it is at the Gulf Station in Mangawai. and petrol's just $2.33.9 per litre.

Generation Z don't even know. Grant Chapman will tell you we used to dig our own oil for our cars back in the day. Eh, mate? Don't really remember doing that, sorry. Yeah, we did. Just after we got back from... walking home from school in bare feet. Tell me, the Rugby World Cup draw was overnight. What do you reckon? I don't know. I'm not a big fan of the 2014 draw. I'm looking at the draw and I'm thinking there aren't...

24 good teams out there. When you look back at previous World Cups and looking back at 2023, four pulls of five seemed like a very more manageable number. Looking at the pools, looking at last night's pools, Phil, first of all, the All Blacks have drawn a pool, pool A with Australia, the hosts, Chile and Hong Kong.

So you have to think that probably New Zealand are going to play Australia in the first game of the tournament, which could be interesting. Hopefully by then the Australians will be a bit better. But looking at the rest of the pools, there's really no pool of death. Like in the past, when you had four pools or five, you had at least two good teams plus a third team that could create a bit of an upset.

But looking at these pools last night, there's really no one there that's going to topple any of the major powers. And the format of the tournament is now they've introduced a round of 16 as well. The top two from each pool will definitely get through, plus the four next best third place teams. And it's a stretch. It's a real stretch to see those...

bottom four teams being filled by teams that are actually going to do anything in the tournament. I will just caveat that by saying people thought that about a group that had Scotland, Ireland and Japan in it and then Japan went and beat both of them. in the pool stages on the way through. I quite like it in a way, though. I quite like this, that I think the pool stages...

I look at New Zealand and things, and when we go to Football World Cups and that sort of thing, we're absolutely stoked about those other matches, aren't we, there? Because I was watching the Hong Kong team watching the draw last night, and when New Zealand came out, they were just in raptures.

were disappointed they didn't get England because I think for them they were like oh I'd want to play England but to me I looked and I thought that'd be like if you're in the Tall Blacks and you find out you're going to play the dream team it'd be a pretty cool thing yeah I wonder whether

Hong Kong playing the All Blacks is going to make Hong Kong better in the long run? No. I have my doubts about that. I've always thought that the Rugby World Cup, it's a real shame that these teams that actually get eliminated early...

Don't get to play each other at any stage. Have some meaningful games where they have a chance of winning and, you know, have something to take home from a World Cup. Sure, it's great to run out on the field and play against the All Blacks, but if you're getting pumped by 100 points...

that would wear off pretty quickly, I would imagine. I have the same reservations because this weekend we've got the Football World Cup draw coming up. And then, of course, they've got now an expanded draw as well. You know, it feels like New Zealand's just going to walk into this tournament from now on. And part of the prestige or the legacy of this tournament is how hard it is to get there. And if it's now easy to get in there...

I'm just not sure it's going to have the same pull. I think it's, what, 33% of the world's nations. can qualify now. So I saw some statistic, but I will double check that because they might have, you know, chat GPT'd that figure. We're unfortunately running out of time. Thank you, Chappie. Also too, Chappie Warder wanted to touch on the Breakers winning last night in Hamilton as well as they won that.

one with a thriller over the sydney kings it is 17 to 6 lej stands by in the uk also willow gene prime to talk about the week in parliament

Well, in the UK for us this morning, it's our correspondent, Ellie Jay, who joins us in London. Morena Ellie, the president of Germany, is in town, apparently on a state visit too. Why? What's the agenda? To Mario Nathan, yes, he's here. This is the one, this is the kind of visit where you're invited by the king and queen, and it's lots of pomp and ceremony, basically. So President Steinmayer and his wife arrived to Heathrow, where they were met by the prince and princess of Wales.

this morning, kind of as representatives of the King there. They were taken to Windsor Castle, formally welcomed by Charles and Camilla. They had a gun salute there too, and also one in the centre of London to announce it, and then a carriage procession.

from where they were welcomed up to Windsor Castle. So there's more, I mean, there's more royal salutes, there's bands playing the national anthems, they did some inspections of troops as well, and a big lunch with kind of more members of the royal family.

It's important. It's the first state visit from Germany in 27 years. And they're very much kind of diplomatic enterprises, relationship building, that kind of thing. I mean, the UK and Germany work together on a lot of things. And this is part of the process of kind of making.

closer ties. I mean, if you remember the Trump visit here a couple of months ago, I think weeks ago, months ago, they will have this big lavish banquet. The king will give a speech. Some of it is likely to be in German and the president will give

the speech too. You'll get celebrities, politicians being there as well and we'll see photos from that. He's met the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and said some nice things there too and he's going to speak in Parliament and meet some German Premier League football players.

as we're hearing. So a busy schedule. Oh, it is too. It's good to get a bit of football in there. The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and the leader of the opposition have clashed in Parliament, which is probably their job, but what are they clashing about this time?

It's still about the budget. So that was released this time last week and has basically been an absolute mess since then. So since then, we've had kind of accusations, comments that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, misled the public over what she'd been told by the...

Office for Budget Responsibility. The opposition parties are basically saying she told people it was doom and gloom when she already had been briefed that it was a bit better than they were expecting. So this was something that Kemi Baden-Ock, the Conservative Party leader, was... saying in the house of commons she was talking about the fact the head of the ovr has resigned because the budget was leaked before the official announcement so it's been back in

forth about both of these things too. So Kemi Badenoch calling for the Chancellor to resign. She said if she was a CEO, she'd be fired and maybe even prosecuted. And Keir Starmer replied saying that Badenoch is losing the plot. said and defending the government's record defending Rachel Reeves and and the budget as well too so it is something that every day there's been updates on so this isn't unexpected but it doesn't seem to be a story that's uh there's going away

Let's finish by getting our Attenborough on and move to the animal kingdom. The remains of a rare octopus have washed up on a beach in Aberdeenshire. What makes this octopus so interesting? So this octopus, so this is a tentacle that's washed up on the beach there. And it's the remains, they say, of a rare deep-sea octopus, which is called the seven... Seven armed octopus, basically. And you might think, isn't that just a regular octopus who's lost a leg? But it's not. It looks like a...

Looks like it has eight arms, but one of those arms is a reproductive organ. So you would be wrong there. And I mean, the tentacle that they found is huge. There were pictures online. It was found by someone walking around a nature reserve there.

from the nature reserve had to send it off to be identified and they're saying it's one of the biggest species of octopus sometimes called a blob octopus and usually it's it's found sort of 500 meters below the sea so they're very confused as to why it's been found there and a lot of excitement over that.

I've had a look at one. It looks like this little cephalopod is gorgeous. I've seen it on the Google image there while you were talking to me. It looks like a Pixar film. Thank you for that. I didn't know they had Scottish accents, but now we do. Ellie J, bringing you the news out of the... united kingdom time now to catch up on the week in parliament with the opposition's point of view and we're joined by labour mp willow gene prime kia ora how are you

Morning, Nathan. I'm good, thank you. Now, we've got to get to this because last night on the 6 o'clock news I had a look. Ingrid Leary, one of the Labour MPs there, caught using an AI chatbot to write questions to the Minister Casey Costello and then accidentally emailing. them to the minister. That's not a great piece of work this week, is it? Yeah, a mistake she made at 11 o'clock at night, I think I saw on that news story.

Yeah. Does Labour have an AI use policy when you come to things? Because I think she was trying to prepare questions for the Minister Casey Costello with them.

I don't think there's a policy that I'm aware of, but of course there are modern tools that are available to all of us to do our work. You know, some people may use it, some people may not. I'm not aware. Right, okay. But there wasn't like an email going around or a telling off for everyone to go, you've got to be better? Not that I have seen, but I haven't been checking my emails. I have been very busy in scrutiny this week.

OK, tell me about Scrutiny Week. You are on the Education and Workforce Committee. It looks like it's been very busy there. Talk to me about your busy week with the Education Minister. Well, that's right. So starting on Monday, we had the Charter Schools Agency, where we finally got the enrolment numbers for charter schools. And what we can see is that because those numbers have been suppressed, the agency has... required those schools to withhold those numbers. So we finally got some...

of those numbers on Monday. And then yesterday when I put that question to David Seymour, the minister, he said he too was pleased that the numbers were being withheld. because he gave his reasons in terms of how he thinks those numbers could be used to try and say that charter schools receive more money than state schools.

I put that to him then, is this really about commercial sensitivity or political sensitivity? So I'm concerned that the Minister has had a role in ensuring that those numbers are withheld from the public. Also, another concern around charter schools was...

of the situation that we had with Calston High School, where that school was put under huge, and community was put under huge pressure by an external organisation seeking to convert their school to a charter school. The questions put both... to the agency and the minister confirmed that there is nothing to stop this happening to another state school again, and that's really concerning and disappointing.

We also had the Education Minister in yesterday afternoon, and I put to the Minister that with over 1,500 schools signing letters and reaffirming their commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, that being about two-thirds of all schools. New Zealand, did the Minister think that she got it wrong? And she said no. We also had school lunches come up in our hearing last night. How'd that go?

Yeah, well, it was fiery. And, you know, our kids deserve better than what they have been getting from this government under their cheaper school lunches programme. I challenged the minister for his behaviour in bullying. a school principal who is speaking on behalf of her students, her children, their community. This school has tried to get out of the contract with the School Lunch Collective and have not been... allowed to do that and the Minister continues to

that require them to stay in a contract that they have had numerous issues with. Can I just quickly jump back to the charter schools? When you had a look at the numbers... of students that are there and they were worried about, oh, it'll make it look like, I mean, about what does it look like it's going to cost per student when you compare it to a normal state school?

Well, we know from past reports that have been done on charter schools that it's anywhere between sort of three to five times more per student in a charter school than in our public. And what we are worried about is that these are ideological. This is an ideological exercise. They are not being transparent with taxpayer money. And what we see is the siphoning off of public money to private companies. It's really concerning when the Minister...

And the agency are asking these schools to withhold their numbers so that the public doesn't have that. So what we saw at Kelston. There's nothing to stop that happening at, say, I don't know, Auckland Grammar or Wellington College.

Well, that's right. So we put this to both the agency and the minister because, you know, this has caused significant stress for the school and for the community where you can have any organisation under the current... legislation basically to have a takeover of a state school the government is encouraging state school conversions they have this in legislation and we said given the situation that we have seen with Calston what is there

What assurance can you give us that this won't happen to another school? And they said that there was nothing to stop this type of thing happening to another school. And that's really concerning.

Just very quickly here, before we jump out of here, the Children's Ministry signalled that it might run another boot camp for young offenders before a law change kicks in next year. What do you know about that? So I understand that the planning for another boot camp is well advanced. I put this to the minister and she... was cagey in her answers. She said no definite decisions have been made about whether that boot camp will be in March next year. What we know from the

exchange that we had both with the minister and with Oranga Tamariki is that the government is planning to run another boot camp before the legislation is passed and takes effect. So essentially this is going to to be a voluntary boot camp. My questions to the department was, is this the best use of taxpayers' money when we have seen... boot camps this you know latest one fail and decades of evidence to show that this is what would happen so in my view

The lives of our children are just far too important to experiment on. What we need to do is invest in intensive wraparound interventions for all children in youth justice. not these gimmick policies that we're seeing from the government. Thank you for your time this week. Labour's Willow Jean Prime has been busy in a week of scrutineering. Now, they've already been scrutineering what their show is this morning. Ingrid and Corrin, set to go for morning report. Kia ora you two, how you doing?

Kia ora, morning. Yes, well, we are looking at the measles cases. We've got five cases announced in one day. So we'll speak to Health New Zealand about what that means, where those cases might have come from, because there had seemed to be a bit of a lull in cases. We look into this Transport Accident Investigation Commission report into an A320 that had an issue last year, December. It was faulty switch by the look of it. It's not quite clear exactly how...

broad that problem is, but it's been identified. It's quite interesting just how that all happened. And we're digging into SEEK's Workplace Happiness Index and finding out about exactly how people are feeling in their jobs. Good news is most of us are happy in our jobs, but there is a... particular age group that dreads coming into work on a regular basis. It's not us, by the way. Oh, it's not us? Okay, that's good. Thank you. Well, we've finished with Twisted Sisters. Oh, come all you faithful.

Also too, Mike has told me, because I was going, what are those things across the bottom of the bed people are going to buy at IKEA today? So that thing at the foot of the bed is called a bed runner, a bed scarf or a throw. Thank you, Mike. I need to get better at my interior stuff. From all of us here at First Up, have yourselves a wonderful day. We're back in your ears. A popo.