New guidelines for sex education will be released in a few weeks, but the Government will shy away from ordering schools to teach more than basic biology. The Ministry of Education is due to release the new blueprint in December, nine months after an advisory panel recommended teens be taught respectful attitudes as a core Read more
New Zealand
Smacking law has criminalised parents
Tuesday, November 18th, 2014Leading public lawyer Mai Chen says New Zealand’s 2007 changes to smacking law have criminalised “good parents”. A legal opinion signed by Ms Chen for the lobby group Family First says case law since Section 59 of the Crimes Act was changed have confirmed that is now illegal for parents to use force against a Read more
Booze cause of domestic violence – inquiry
Tuesday, November 18th, 2014Sir Owen Glenn’s report into child abuse and domestic violence has found that perpetrators associated their violence with alcohol and drug use. The study involved 26 people, almost all of them men, who had not been violent within the previous year. The report found most thought violence in the home was acceptable and that half Read more
Mission Concert takes a gap year
Friday, November 14th, 2014
For the first time since 1993 that The Mission Concert, held annually at Mission Vineyards in Taradale, will not be staged at the end of summer in 2015. The February concert had been postponed until a suitable act could be found, the Sports Entertainment Limited chairman James Erskine said. “The search for a suitable act Read more
Acute shortage of palliative care specialists
Friday, November 14th, 2014
New Zealand is desperately short of palliative medicine specialists. “There will be a crisis in that workforce within five years unless something is done urgently to address the situation,” says Ian Powell, Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS). “Senior doctors providing end-of-life care tell us that 55 palliative medicine positions exist Read more
1000s of fertility samples may be destroyed
Friday, November 14th, 2014
Eggs, sperm and embryo samples of almost 2000 people are set to be lawfully destroyed as a ten year storage time deadline approaches. In 2004, the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act was passed governing the practice of fertility treatment. In 2010 the legislation was amended allowing the retrospective 10-year storage period for eggs, sperm and Read more
Treaty meets Gospel
Friday, November 14th, 2014A leading Maori historian says the churches have an ongoing responsibility to the Treaty of Waitangi. Manuka Henare presented his thoughts to a recent church hui at Manukau Institute of Technology on the treaty and theology. He says it was a chance to review the greater understanding historians now have of the early contacts between Read more
Little: Time not right for a euthanasia debate
Friday, November 14th, 2014Labour leadership contender Andrew Little says he does not want a colleague to restart the highly divisive debate on legalising euthanasia when the party is trying to restore confidence with voters. Labour’s Palmerston North MP Iain Lees-Galloway has taken over responsibility for the End of Life Choice Bill after sponsor Maryan Street failed to get Read more
Award winning writer planning a play about Maori Bishop
Tuesday, November 11th, 2014
Aroha Awarau, an Auckland-based journalist who recently won best play at the recent Annual Script Writers Awards for his play Luncheon, says his next play is going to be about the first Maori bishop. “A lot of great Maori writers tend to explore Maori issues in a spiritual or Maori world,” he says. Awarau says Read more
Poland to Pahiatua – war refugees remember
Tuesday, November 11th, 2014
Eric Lepionka and Halina Melgies recently celebrate their 52nd wedding anniversary. They are two of the 733 Polish children who, 70 years ago, arrived in Wellington Harbour as New Zealand’s first official refugees. While the majority were orphans, 13-month-old Halina, now 71, arrived with her mother, one of the 102 caregivers who joined the children. Read more