09:05 Living wage for overseas seasonal workers

RSE workers from Samoa working in Bostock orchard, Hastings.

RSE workers from Samoa working in Bostock orchard, Hastings. Photo: RNZ / Anusha Bradley

Businesses are welcoming government moves to allow two thousand overseas seasonal workers back into the country to work in the primary sector. The workers will arrive early next year, spending two weeks in managed isolation at the expense of the employers, who will also be required to pay them the living wage of $22.10.  The government has also announced a range of financial incentives to entice unemployed New Zealanders into seasonal work, but employers are not required to pay the living wage for anyone other than the skilled labourers coming from the Pacific. Is this discrepancy in pay going to be justifiable? Does it expose low wages as a fundamental problem in the sector's labour market woes? Kathryn talks with Alan Pollard, chief executive of NZ Apples and Pears, and Kirk Hope, Chief Executive of Business New Zealand.

09:20 Jobs for restaurant workers

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Photo: Supplied

CEO of the Restaurant Association Marisa Bidois tells Kathryn about their initiative to match up hospitality staff with employers who desperately need them. Tautoko Hāpai Ō provides online resources including region-based job opportunity boards and a displaced apprenticeship redeployment scheme.

09:30 Travel in the time of Covid: Two Kiwis who kept going

New Zealanders Monica Page and T De Silva quit their Sydney-based jobs last July with a plan to travel the world for three years. Already seasoned-travellers, they had a spreadsheet of destinations they'd lined up to visit and were in Europe in March when the seriousness of Covid became apparent. They flew to Barbados to lay low, ending up there for four months before heading back to Europe to visit Slovenia, Slovakia and Croatia before Covid cases ramped back up again. They're now in Egypt, and the pandemic travel's inspired them with their work - Monica's created a wellbeing website and T's helping the anti-poaching charity IAPF. So what's it like to travel in a pandemic? 

09:45 Asia correspondent Elizabeth Beattie

In Hong Kong three pro-democracy advocates have been remanded in custody this week after pleading guilty on charges of organising and inciting an unauthorised assembly during last year's protest movement. And thousands of protesters in Thailand continue to take to the streets. The activists have escalated their demands calling for the king to cede control of the royal fortune. 

A banner of the Royal Thai Police Headquarters was spray-painted by protesters during an anti-government rally outside the Royal Thai Police Headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand.

Photo: AFP

Elizabeth Beattie is a journalist at Thomson Reuters, based in Hong Kong.

10:05 Intrapreneur Lydia Hascott on navigating career uncertainty 

Lydia Hascott

Lydia Hascott Photo: supplied

South Aucklander Lydia Hascott went to university not sure of what the end goal was. She talks to Kathryn about how she came to be the head of Intrapreneurship at the London-based Finance Innovation Lab, working with mainstream finance professionals to help them to embed sustainable innovative practice and purpose in their organisations. If she has one message for young graduates - it is that their degree does not have to be their identity.

10:35 Book review - Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?

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Photo: Allen Lane

Tilly Lloyd from Unity Books reviews Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? by Michael Sandel. This book is published by Allen Lane.

These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favour of the already fortunate. Sandel argues that to overcome the polarised politics of our time, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalisation and rising inequality. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success - more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility, and more hospitable to a politics of the common good.

10:45 The Reading

The final short story in our series by Pip Adam, You've Come a Long Way Baby, read by Erin Banks.

11:05 New music with Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor from SlowBoat Records says the 19th album from Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips is full of trippy nostalgia, Auckland’s Na Noise come over like an indie rock Thelma & Louise, and he plays an intriguing reissue from 1983 from Osaka’s Viola Renea

Na Noise

Na Noise Photo: Supplied

11:30 Sports commentator Sam Ackerman

The Blackcaps summer of cricket gets underway today, just as there's Covid concern in the Pakistan cricketing camp and the All Blacks season comes to an end with tomorrow's match against Argentina.

2020 Investec Tri Nations Rugby. New Zealand All Blacks v Los Pumas of Argentina at Bankwest Stadium, Sydney. Patrick Tuipulotu and Jack Goodhue of the All Blacks  tackle Argentina's Pablo Matera. Photo: Photo: Stuart Walmsley / www.photosport.nz

Photo: PhotoSport / Stuart Walmsley

11:45 The week that was with

Comedians Te Radar & Pinky Agnew

Music played in this show

 

 

Track: Singing

Artist: Sun June

Time: 9.37

 

Track: Coming Up for Air

Artist: Sarah Nikey

Time: 10.35