The week in podcasts: New Govt, modern slavery, congestion charging and national security concerns

Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis face a tough task delivering on their economic promises, commentators say. Photo / NZME

Nicola Willis will be the next Finance Minister of New Zealand, inheriting an economy that has been hit hard in recent years.

NZ Herald deputy political editor Thomas Coughlan was this week joined on the On the Tiles podcast by former NZ Herald economic editor Brian Fallow and NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenée Tibshraeny to discuss the challenges ahead to deliver on National’s promise to get the country back on track.

Fallow has warned that no matter what Willis might plan, she could find that some things are well beyond their control.

“She might want to reflect on the other 99.8 per cent of the global economy and its endless ability to sideswipe us with shocks,” says Fallow.

“At the moment, the picture we see there is not particularly reassuring. Even before the Gaza hostilities broke out, the IMF was describing the global economy as limping along. There are clearly all sorts of challenges in China, our major trading partner and Europe is going sideways.”

So what can Willis do to live up to her promise of getting the country back on track?

Price of Black Friday

There's a darker side to some of those great online deals. Photo / NZME

A new study by World Vision suggests New Zealanders are unwittingly spending as much as $77 per week on goods linked to modern slavery.

Everything from shoes and clothing to furniture and electronics could be made by people working in dire conditions and being paid next to nothing.

World Vision head of advocacy and justice Rebekah Armstrong told The Front Page podcast as much as 92 per cent of all shoes imported into this country are considered to potentially be associated with modern slavery.

“There are nearly 50 million people in modern slavery, and 27 million of them are in forced labour,” she says.

“To bring it home a little, it might look like Vietnam, where 6000 children are reported to be working in hazardous conditions to make our shoes. They’re missing school. They’re working in factories that are dangerous to their health and toxic. They’re using their little hands to thread laces into the shoes that we wear.”

Deals that sometimes seem too good to be true could in fact be the product of dire working conditions in places far from here.

Paying to drive

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is taking aim at the traffic in the city. Photo / NZME

Congestion charging has been mulled in Auckland for the better part of a decade, and it has been raised again by current mayor Wayne Brown.

“The idea stretches back to Len Brown when he was mayor of Auckland Council,” NZ Herald supercity reporter Bernard Orsman told The Front Page podcast this week.

“The last big piece of work was in 2022, which was undertaken by the Council of Auckland Transport, the Ministry of Transport, Waka Kotahi, Treasury and the Government.”

Brown also has a commercial imperative forcing his hand in that the incoming National-led Government has promised to remove the regional fuel tax in Auckland.

“That will mean a loss of $150 million a year for Auckland Council another $150 million in subsidies from central government,” says Orsman.

“Without this money, the council would have to drastically cut its transport budget. And the mayor appears to be in a hurry to replace the lost income with some form of congestion charging.”

The bigger question, however, is whether this plan will actually work in reducing the traffic without crippling those most reliant on cars to get to work.

Musicians in the dark

It's getting harder for local musicians to get their stories out there. Photo / 123RF

With the steady disappearance of industry magazines over the past two decades, New Zealand musicians are battling more than ever to get their stories.

Big artists are releasing new music no one knows about because the stories are nowhere to be seen.

Major live events are going unreviewed simply because there aren’t journalists around to cover them. Speaking to The Front Page podcast, experienced pop culture journalist Chris Schulz said many up-and-coming and even established artists have stories to tell, but there just aren’t any music journalists listening.

“A lot of these artists have really good stories, and if you get the right journalist in front of them to pull those stories out, you can make something that’s readable and really works for audiences.”

The problem isn’t only affecting musicians. With the contraction of the media industry over the past two decades, we’ve also seen a decline in stories on pop culture and the art scene.

“It’s massively worrying,” says Schulz.

“I worry about the artists not getting enough exposure.”

Are we safe?

State of Threat sheds light on the challenges facing New Zealand's national security. Photo / Massey University Press

The last time tensions in the world were this high was during the Cold War – and New Zealand can no longer rely on its geographic isolation for security.

That’s a key takeaway from a new book called State of Threat: The Challenges to Aotearoa New Zealand’s National Security, edited by Professor William Hoverd – the director at Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security – and teaching fellow Deidre Ann McDonald.

They joined The Front Page to share their insights and talk about why the Government can’t be complacent and rely on geographic isolation to keep citizens safe and secure.

“If you’re thinking about geopolitical security in here, I’m really thinking about the Pacific region. But you also have economic security given our reliance on supply chains and trade. And then there’s also environmental security, where we’re talking about pests and diseases entering the country through the necessary connections with other countries.”

All these threats have made geographical distance less protective than it once was.

Beyond this, there’s also the growing threat of cyberwarfare to knock out key communications infrastructure across the country or expose sensitive data of New Zealand citizens.

So what’s being done about all these threats? And is it enough?

The rise of AI

AI will have some big unintended consequences. Photo / Getty Images

Artificial intelligence has become the buzzphrase of 2023. You can’t attend a business conference or tech talk any more without this topic dominating discussions.

The building blocks for this technology have long been in the works, but we have now reached the point where the power of AI can actually be put into practice.

The promise here is that it will speed up everything we do, removing the mundane and giving us more time to focus on creative challenges. But what if the mundane is a key part of what we do to get paid? How do they fill that gap and where does this leave salaried workers?

These are the big questions we asked founder of the New Zealand AI for Business Advisory Justin Flitter and Business Herald reporter Madison Reidy on The Front Page this week.