Sunday Morning for Sunday 1 September 2013
8:12 Insight Australia Votes
Australia goes to the polls in just over a week to decide between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. Philippa Tolley looks at the key battlegrounds where the election will be decided, whether it’s policy or the leaders that matter most and how voters will cope with a record number of registered parties.
Produced by Philippa Tolley.
8:40 Peter Posa – Guitar Guy
1960’s NZ music legend Peter Posa has just released his follow-up to 2012’s platinum selling White Rabbit: The Very Best Of Peter Posa which spent six weeks at number one in the NZ album charts.
The new album is called Golden Guitar: The Peter Posa Anthology. Peter tells Richard about his golden career, love of performance, and his struggle with illness that at times keeps him from his music.
9:06 Mediawatch
Mediawatch looks at the risks and rewards for freelance journalists reporting from war-torn Syria; and how the media have picked Labour’s next leader even though they’ve barely begun their campaigns. Mediawatch also looks at a little local election difficulty in Hawke’s Bay; and is TICS the new GCSB?
Produced and presented by Colin Peacock and Jeremy Rose.
9:40 Frankie McMillan – Playful Poetry
Christchurch poet Frankie McMillan won the National Flash Fiction Day competition this year. She talks to Richard about trying to make sense of the world through her playful, slightly subversive poems.
10:06 Ideas UAVs – A force ‘for good and evil’
UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones as they’re commonly known, are suddenly everywhere. Conservationists and academics are using them to map our rivers; engineers surveyed the interior of the earthquake damaged Christchurch Cathedral with one; and then, of course, there’s the military drones used to such lethal affect in Pakistan and Yemen. Ideas visits Palmerston North’s Skycam UAV – New Zealand’s leading manufacture of UAVs; talks to the interim president of the Association of Unmanned Operations – a union of US drone pilots; and Professor James Cavallaro tells us about the findings of a report he co-authored: ‘Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan.’
Produced by Jeremy Rose.
10:55 Today’s Track
Postcard from Waterloo, by Tom Verlaine. Verlaine is playing Auckland in October with his US rock band, Television.
11:05 Down the List
David Shearer has bowed out of the Labour leadership. So who is the front runner to replace him in the new democratic system where everyone in the Labour camp gets a say?
11:12 Peter Stanford – Reading a Graveyard
Peter Stanford says if we want to escape the taboo of acknowledging our mortality and to contemplate our own end, then graveyards offer a rare welcome. Peter talks to Richard about his book, How to Read a Graveyard: Journeys in the Company of the Dead, and what cemeteries reveal about our understanding of death.
11:40 Wayne Brittenden’s Counterpoint
With the US poised to lead an attack on Syria, Wayne takes a critical look at the crisis, and the non-military options. Richard follows up with Andrew Levine, US author and former professor of political philosophy.