Nine To Noon for Thursday 17 September 2020

 

 

09:05 Māori and Pacific pay gap in senior public sector roles

New data obtained under the Official Information Act shows senior Māori and Pasifika public and health sector workers are less likely to earn over $100-thousand dollars than their pākehā  counterparts. The full extent of the ethnic pay gap is revealed in a study, published in the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, aimed to identify pay disparities among senior management in the public sector. Kathryn Ryan discusses with Dr Heather Crane, the Head of the Public Health Department at Auckland University of Technology.

09:45 Boris faces grilling on Covid surge, Brexit prompts resignations

UK correspondent Harriet Line joins Kathryn to tall about the surge in Covid numbers - with almost 4000 recorded overnight. Boris Johnson has faced a grilling from MPs about the speed of the testing system, which forced opposition leader Keir Starmer to miss Questiontime. Meanwhile another top law official has quit over the legality of the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

10:05 Luke Harding - Putin, poison and plotting

Luke Harding is an award winning Guardian journalist whose latest book shines a light again on the role of the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin - from the poisonings of Segei and Julia Skripal in Salisbury to the Russian involvement in the 2016 US Presidential Election. A former Guardian Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding argues that President Putin - a former KGB agent himself - has merged organised crime, spycraft and government into a single entity with the aim of sowing chaos and division among Washington and its western allies. He discusses Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West with Kathryn Ryan.

10:35 Book review - Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan

Kiran Dass of Time Out Bookstore reviews  Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan.

10:45 The Reading

How to Walk a Dog, episode 9. Written and read by Mike White.

11:05 Economy officially in recession

The country is officially in recession for the first time in a decade. Official numbers show gross domestic product -- the broad measure of growth -- fell a seasonally adjusted 12.2 percent in the three months ended June. RNZ Business editor Gyles Beckford says it's the biggest fall on record.

11:15 Facebook's Zhang memo, AI's fake election news

Technology commentator Mark Pesce joins Kathryn to talk about the memo released by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang that blows the whistle on the extent to which the tech giant ignored global political manipulation. A powerful new AI system known as GPT-3, which is able to generate surprisingly real text - but what does that mean for the integrity of news? There's a warning Russian state hackers are targeting the Trump and Biden election campaigns and there's frustration for those trying to capture the colour of the wild-fire affected skies in affected states - their smartphones just aren't programmed to do it.

11:25  "I fink it's a wabbit" -  when children can't say 'R' and 'Th' sounds

Speech and language therapist Christian Wright talks about two speech sound errors commonly heard in children's speech that can persist through adolescence and into adulthood - the R and Th sounds.

11:45 The Third Day, Horndog, The Social Dilemma

Film and TV reviewer Chris Schulz joins Kathryn to look at HBO's new blockbuster The Third Day, with Jude Law and Naomie Harris - strange goings-on on the island of Osea. He'll also look at Rose Matefeo's Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning show Horndog and The Social Dilemma - Netflix's documentary about the detriment of social media.