Nine To Noon for Tuesday 8 September 2020

 

 

09:05 Bovine TB in Hawke's Bay from wildlife: indicates pest control failure

Farming advocates claim pest control has failed in northern Hawke's Bay, as bovine tuberculosis is traced to wild pigs, with implications for more than 500 cattle farmers. Rural Support Trust spokesperson Kevin Mitchell is a former farmer who says he's lived in the shadow of TB his whole life, and this is the worst it's been.  The current outbreak has been traced back to wild pigs who have eaten infected possums, indicating the spread of TB in Hawke's Bay is coming from wildlife, rather than the movement of infected livestock. The organisation that works to eradicate Bovine TB in NZ is Ospri.  Kevin Mitchell says Ospri's monitoring and controlling of pests is at the root of the problem. Kevin speaks with Kathryn Ryan, along with Danny Templeman, Ospri's General Manager for Service Delivery.

09:20 Screen sector gets next 10 years in focus

We've got the creativity - but where's the capital going to come from? It's a question the Screen Sector Strategy 2030 has sought to answer in its 15-month deep-dive into what New Zealand's screen industry needs to grow over the next decade. The sector pulled in about $3b a year prior to Covid, and employed close to 30,000 people - but mostly in small businesses. In identifying how to grow, the strategy calls for more collaboration within the sector, creation of content with international appeal and increased capacity, so there's more work in the pipeline ready to go. Kathryn talks to prop-maker Felicity Letcher about the Covid-curveball that the industry faces, and CEO of Greenstone TV, Rachel Antony, about how a healthy screen industry can help the wider economy. 

09:45 Fallout continues over Trump's 'loser' comment about US troops

US correspondent Susan Davis looks at the reaction to the President's comment disparaging US war dead, Kamala Harris steps up her role on the campaign trail and attacks the president on race and Washington fails to agree to the next steps to combat Covid.

Susan Davis is a congressional correspondent for NPR and a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast.

10:05 Bill Sutch and Shirley Smith. A memoir by Keith Ovenden

 In 'Bill & Shirley', Keith Ovenden, takes an intimate and candid look at the lives of his parents-in-law, the Wellington power couple, Bill Sutch and Shirley Smith. Each led their lives in the spotlight and were influential in their own right. Bill Sutch, was a brilliant left-wing economist and civil servant, who had a painful fall from grace. He was arrested, but later acquitted for espionage.
While Shirley Smith was a glass ceiling breaker, with a name for championing the underdog as a lawyer, when few women worked in the field.

10:35 Book review - Searching for Charlie by Tom Scott

Harry Broad reviews Searching for Charlie: In Pursuit of the Real Charles Upham VC & Bar by Tom Scott, published by Upstart Press.

10:45 The Reading

How to Walk a Dog, part 2. Written and read by Mike White.

11:05 Business commentator Rod Oram

Business commentator Rod Oram joins Kathryn to talk about the continuing, large loss of talent from Air New Zealand's senior executive ranks, stock markets here and abroad are racking up their first wobble in confidence in more than three months and the CEO of Port of Tauranga, Mark Cairns is retiring after more than 15 years.

11:30 Kiwi author Robyn Pearce's family link to US anti-slavery fight

It's not every author who is gifted the idea of a book in a tin trunk full of family letters, but that's what happened to Auckland-based writer Robyn Pearce. She was given letters about her relations, the Burnetts, who emigrated from America in the early 1800s to settle in Whanganui in 1856. Through reading the letters and documents, she got an insight to the workings of a middle-class family who were drawn into the fight to abolish slavery in the US - which at the time was an extremely unpopular and dangerous cause. She tells Kathryn how she switched from writing about time-management, to writing her historical novel: It Happened on Fifth Street - A Tale of Forgotten Heroes.
 

11:45 Discovery to buy Mediaworks' TV arm, TV news ratings wars

Media commentator Andrew Holden joins Kathryn to talk about the move by Discovery Inc to buy Mediaworks' TV operations. When it comes to the TV news, why does TVNZ keep out-rating Newshub? And Munted, Stuff's video series for the 10th anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake revisits 200 hours of original video footage in a new series narrated by Philip Matthews. The Press's footage was also shared with, and can be found, at the Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive - Ceismic. 

Andrew Holden is a journalist for more than 30 years including five as Editor of The Press (in Christchurch) and four as Editor-in-Chief of The Age in Melbourne.