Latest news with #Detail
Newsroom
5 days ago
- Newsroom
Boy in the Water, The Detail win national podcast awards
The Boy in the Water won best true crime podcast and The Detail won best news and current affairs podcast, for the second consecutive year, at the 2025 radio and podcast awards. Held annually, the awards recognise excellence in all areas of commercial and non-commercial radio broadcasting and podcasting. Winning best true crime podcast is another accolade for Newsroom's investigations editor Melanie Reid, producer Bonnie Sumner and editor Dave Filoiali'i. The team also won best podcast and best investigation at last year's Voyager Media Awards. The Boy in the Water examines events surrounding the death of a young boy in the southern town of Gore. Lachie Jones was found floating face-up in the town's oxidation pond by a police dog and its handler in January 2019. He was deemed to have died by accidental drowning but Reid's investigations have spotlighted serious deficiencies in multiple police investigations and the autopsy performed on the three-and-a-half-year-old. Melanie Reid with Lachie's father Paul Jones at the Gore oxidation ponds. Photo: Grant Findlay The podcast has had more than three and a half million downloads and is about to enter its fourth season on Newsroom's podcast channel, Delve. Reid and her team will be in Invercargill on Friday June 13 when Coroner Alexander Ho releases his findings from the inquest he held last year. 'It is great to win this category and have our team recognised for the hard work that has gone into the series. For us, The Boy in the Water is about trying to answer the unanswered questions – it's about system failure, shoddy police work and the dynamics of life in a small town like Gore,' says Reid. The Detail, produced by Newsroom for RNZ, beat a strong field to win best news and current affairs podcast. The Detail team of Amanda Gillies, Gwen McClure, Davina Zimmer, Alexia Russell and Sharon Brettkelly. Photo: Supplied The other finalists were Kim Hill wants to know for RNZ, Front Page for NZ Herald and another Newsroom podcast, Fractured – also produced by Melanie Reid and Bonnie Sumner. The Detail team of Sharon Brettkelly, Amanda Gillies, Alexia Russell, Gwen McClure and Davina Zimmer produce six podcasts a week that are published on multiple platforms including Newsroom, RNZ, Apple and Spotify. The podcast looks at the story behind the big stories making news. Producer Alexia Russell says 'we aim to speak to the person in New Zealand who knows the most about the issue we are looking at; or the journalist who has covered it at length and can offer an over-arching and unbiased view. A comment we received last week, that The Detail was a young person's introduction to good journalism, made us very happy. 'Our hope is that we can contribute to raising the news IQ in Aotearoa.' The Detail's entry included episodes on the sinking of the NZ Navy vessel Manawanui, the growth of controversial Chinese online retailer Temu and a look back at the impact TV3 News had over its 35 years of broadcasting. Both of Newsroom's award winning podcasts are supported by funding from NZ on Air. In May, Newsroom's Jonathan Milne won the Voyager Media Awards honour for best original podcast for his international investigation Powder Keg, with Mike Wesley Smith. He was also named business journalist of the year. In other awards: In the same way it has dominated the commercial ratings, Newstalk ZB had a strong night – winning Station of the Year for the fifth consecutive time. Niva Retimanu won best newsreader and the station's drivetime host, Heather du Plessis Allan won the coveted Sir Paul Holmes Broadcaster of the Year award. RNZ's Alexa Cook won best news journalist and Kate Green won best new talent – journalist. RNZ podcasts took out the honours for best society and culture (Nellie's Baby), and science and culture (Our Changing World). The public broadcaster also won best news story, best documentary for The Last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior and best children's programme for Suzy Cato's Suzy and Friends in a POD-cast and best daily or weekly factual feature for Our Changing World. Best local station went to More FM, Northland and independent station of the year was won by Radio Tarana.
Newsroom
13-05-2025
- Health
- Newsroom
Smokefree 2025 goal all but up in smoke
More than 80,000 Kiwis must quit smoking before the end of the year to meet the goal of Smokefree 2025, which was launched 14 years ago. But Professor of Public Health Chris Bullen tells The Detail it is unlikely to happen – 'I don't believe so, sadly'. 'The evidence suggests we are not heading in the right direction fast enough,' says Bullen, who is also the director of the National Institute for Health Innovation. 'We have got more work to do in 2026 and beyond.' The smokefree goal aims to have less than 5 percent of the population smoking by December, but the latest data reveals there are still about 300,000 daily smokers across the country. Bullen says part of the issue is, last year, the coalition government repealed three areas of the Smokefree law, most importantly the de-nicotinisation of tobacco products (where the nicotine is basically taken out of cigarettes) and banning the sale of tobacco products to those born after January 1, 2009. 'I think we could have gotten to the goal under the previous legislation, but that was repealed by the current Government. 'The lack of policies to support and motivate more people to think about quitting means there's an awful lot of effort on the ground that's got to go on to get 84, 85 thousand people to quit smoking between now and the end of the year and I just don't see it happening fast enough.' He says the denicotinisation strategy needs to be revisited, and a smoke-free generation approach needs to be adopted to encourage young people not to start smoking. 'Other countries picked up the baton when we dropped it, and I think that would lock in the very low levels of smoking in our young people, forever, and this would be a real boost for their future prospects.' The Detail also speaks to Bullen about illegal tobacco and vaping, and the role they play in Smokefree Aotearoa. A tobacco industry-funded report shows that 25 percent of cigarettes sold in New Zealand are from the black market, smuggled into the country, largely from China and South Korea, and available on Facebook Marketplace, at construction sites, and in some dairies. Black market cigarettes are about half the price of legal packets, which can cost up to $45. But Bullen is not convinced the percentage of illegal sales is as high as reported. He says it's more likely around the 10 to 15 percent mark. He believes the tobacco industry inflates the number – and the problem – to 'encourage the Government to ease up on being tough on their product'. 'Regardless, whatever kind of tobacco it is, it's dangerous,' says Bullen. Another growing addiction for New Zealanders is vaping, and new research from Auckland University has revealed almost half of schools across the country have a specialist vape store within a 10-minute walk, despite recent legislation aimed at preventing this. New research, which overlays vape stores on school locations, shows 44 percent of schools have a vape store within a 1km radius and 13 percent have a dedicated store within 300m. 'That means a lot of our young people are getting multiple exposures daily to vape stores and vape marketing,' he says. 'We know that association with visibility is important in normalising and making these products more acceptable. 'It's not good enough; we need to get tougher on the vast number of vape stores we have, they are way too accessible in New Zealand. 'We should continue to demand that the Government restrict the general vaping retailers. We don't need as many.' Since 2020, it has been illegal to sell vapes to people under 18, but students as young as 10 and 11 are vaping across New Zealand today. 'Probably, these young kids are getting them from their siblings, or from friends on the school ground who are operating like drug dealers, if you like – they are distributors. 'And they are getting them from their favourite store or on the internet, where you just click a box to say you are 18 or over, and bingo, and you have a delivery on its way, if you can hide that from your parents.' Bullen says across the board, more work has to be done with smoking, illegal cigarettes, and vaping in New Zealand. 'The sooner we can control tobacco, the better; then we have these other issues to work on. It's a bit like whack-a-mole, you just get on top of one thing, and another thing pops up.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
NZ Herald
10-05-2025
- Politics
- NZ Herald
Waitematā harbour drilling reveals seabed for future crossing plans
We've been here before. There was the Skybridge, then the Northern Pathway, and let's not forget mayoral hopeful John Tamihere's double-decker 18-lane proposal. Yet despite the many plans, reports and debates, no government has managed to get a shovel in the ground. So, what makes it different this time? 'There's never been any substantive geo-technical drilling in the Waitematā before, so this is really the first time that we're seeing a picture of what the rock conditions are underground,' said Sian France, a geologist and the investigations lead of the Waitematā Harbour Connections Alliance. Today, the Detail gets a closer look at this jacked-up barge, finding out more about the drilling process, the geological testing and how it's helping further plans for the long-awaited new crossing. The project should take about seven months, which sounds like a long time, but Mark Ware, project director for NZTA, says there's a lot more to it than drilling a couple of holes. 'Each hole takes between four and five days. So you're drilling upwards of 75 metres in the marine area below the surface and 65 on land,' he says. Ware is hoping for a decision on the crossing by mid next year. 'Depending on what that decision looks like it will then take us a number of years to finish off the designs, procure our services and contractors, so we're looking to be in the ground or under the seabed by 2029-2030.' But for this to go ahead, governments over the next couple of parliamentary terms will need to be on board. With an election happening next year and no legislation securing the plan, there is the risk that it could be scrapped in favour of a new idea. 'Hopefully we've got a strong enough case that any government coming in sees the benefit of actually undertaking the work that we're doing and building an alternative harbour crossing,' Ware says. The drilling is done with a steel pipe that has industrial-grade diamonds on the end of it, which cut through the rock. Sections have to be removed 1.5m at a time. Then geologists such as Georgia Woodside and Sian France get the extracted material ready for testing. 'Often when it comes out it's got a bit of drilling fluid or a bit of clay from the hole so we wash it off so it's clear what we're looking at and then we box it up, taking great care not to break it because it can be used for different kinds of testing,' Woodside says. That testing includes looking at the rock formation, and what it's made of. 'For example, here [Waitematā Harbour] we've got the East Coast Bays Formation, so that's saltstone and sandstone interbedded,' Woodside explains. All of this information is logged and used to inform how the crossing will be built. 'It's all about how the ground will respond to construction activity,' France says. 'So, if you pile for a bridge, if we bring a tunnel boring machine in for a tunnel, how will the ground respond? Will it stay open by itself? Do we need additional engineering means to support it? How do we design and build it in a safe manner?' France says investigation is important to avoid later cost blowouts, because by the time shovels are in the ground it's too late. 'You've missed the opportunity to really manage cost risk and so that's a really huge part of getting Geotech investigations done upfront. 'We're trying to minimise surprises; there's a whole bunch of really good stats that come out of construction projects in the UK that essentially demonstrate that a very small percentage of overall spending on geotech will significantly reduce the likelihood of having construction overruns.'
