Nine To Noon for Wednesday 15 October 2025

09:05 Crucial vote looms for farmer-owned meat processor

It's crunch time for the red meat processor Alliance Group, with a vote next week on whether to accept an overseas investment deal which would see Irish firm Dawn Meats invest 250 million dollars - in return for 65 per cent of the business. Alliance Group is urging farmer shareholders to vote for the deal, warning that it risks insolvency if they don't.Some farmer shareholders are against the deal saying they believe Dawn Meats may look to strip assets from Alliance to boost short-term profitability, and that the country's only 100% farmer-owned meat processor should stay that way. Mark Wynne is chair of Alliance Group - he's been on a nationwide roadshow talking to farmer shareholders - ahead of the vote next Monday. In July, Kathryn interviewed critic of the Dawn Meats deal, Dave Pinckney.  

09:20 Farming community  restores degraded waterways near Lyttleton Harbour

Much of New Zealand's freshwater is struggling or in crisis. The latest environment report on Freshwater, from 2023, indicated 45% of rivers - by length-  were not suitable for swimming due to E. Coli and 46% of lakes bigger than one hectare had poor or very poor health. But in the face of statistics like these, a farming community on the edge of the Lyttleton Harbour has worked together to improve the local ecosystem. The starting point was a camp - Living Springs - set up on farmland in the 1970's by a group who wanted to provide a nature experience for disadvantaged children; the farming continued to fund the activities. But by 2010, Environment Canterbury was offering help to stop sediment build up in the waterways - a move that kickstarted a wider effort among 24 landowners. Eliza Cowey is a water engineer who told the story about a community  that involved both her father and her grandfather, to this year's Water New Zealand Conference.

09:35  Melissa Hannan: teaching women what's under the hood

Melissa Hannan loves cars and she's now teaching other women what's under the hood. The Timaru mechanic is running basic car maintentance workshops to help other women feel more confident working on their cars. Melissa Hannan has been a mechanic for 18 years - including 10 as a warrant-of-fitness technician. About 18 months ago she started the Girls N Gasoline workshops - creating a non-judgmental place for women to up their car maintenance skills. Now she runs workshops around the country.  

09:45 Australia correspondent Annika Smethurst

Annika Smethurst is political editor at The Age

10:05 Ion Man: Bill Buckley on magnets, mechanics, and motorsport

At age five Bill Buckley was driving a tractor on his parents' farm. Mechanically-minded from a young age he grew up around machines, spending hours in the shed with his father or on his own, pulling engines apart and putting them back together. At aged 10 he built a petrol car for himself - with lawnmower wheels and a kick-start engine hijacked from an old concrete mixer. Now Bill Buckley is best known for his work with electromagnets, that are used in more than 90 percent of the world's silicon chips. His work with magnets began in the  mid-1970s when he started work with the Auckland Nuclear Accessory Company - where he was quickly was able to build them faster, and to a higher quality than the Company had been doing. In 1981, a major downturn in the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley coincided with a world-wide recession that hit the US particularly hard. The Company's magnet business disappeared overnight and went into receivership. Bill bought up a lot of the machinery from them - and started to build his own business. His story is told in the biography Ion Man by Robert Tighe which documents his life, career , and his love of speedway and motorsport. Bill Buckley speaks with Kathryn Ryan.

10:30 Science funding body announced

The new science funding body has been announced - pooling what was previously three separate funds and there are moves to add in health research funding. Research Funding New Zealand was announced yesterday by Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Shane Reti. It replaces the Endeavour, Marsden and Strategic Science Investment Funds. This was one of the key recommendations from the Sir Peter Gluckman-led Science System Advisory Group which put its report out earlier this year. As well as taking the role of the previous three science funding bodies, there is an 'in-principle' decision for the Health Research Council's funding capability to be moved to Research Funding New Zealand. Minister Reti says the new model will be phased in over the next four years and all current contracts will continue. Lucy Stewart, co-president of the New Zealand Association of Scientists, speaks to Kathryn.

10:35 Book review : Feathers of Aotearoa by Niels Meyer-Westfeld

Lynn Freeman reviews Feathers of Aotearoa by Niels Meyer-Westfeld, published by Potton & Burton.

10:45 Around the motu: RNZ's Samantha Gee in Nelson

11:05 Music with Dave Wilson: Hit songs written for films

Music correspondent Dave Wilson joins Kathryn to look at the success of songs written for films - including the wildly popular song Golden from Netflix's biggest hit KPop Demon Hunters. He also takes in one written for Audrey Hepburn's vocal range and another that became synonymous with a film that almost didn't have any songs in it at all.

Dave Wilson is a saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, and interdisciplinary scholar, a Senior Lecturer in Music at the New Zealand School of Music-Te Kōkī.

11:20 New book explores the lives of some of the world's greatest hunters

Stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. That's how hunting author Peter Ryan describes his latest book Riding the Echo Down: Hunting Adventures from New Zealand and Around the World. The book is a collection of illustrated essays exploring hunting and the natural world and includes previously unpublished historical and modern images, vintage ephemera, maps, journal entries, news clippings, and artwork. It follows stories of hunters and adventurers from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and New Zealand. Peter Ryan has hunted around the world. After time spent in New Zealand and Australia, he volunteered for an aid project in southern Africa which led to an epic series of solo journeys across South America and Africa. His writing and images have appeared in hunting journals including Sporting Classics, Gray's Sporting Journal, Fieldsports and NZ Hunter. He speaks to Kathryn Ryan.  

11:45 Money with Susan Edmunds

Susan Edmunds is RNZ's Money Correspondent