Checkpoint FOR WEDNESDAY 27 JULY 2011
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1700 to 1707 NEWS
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One the Government's most controversial ideas to help fight child abuse has resurfaced. In 2009 it's own taskforce recommended parents with addictions or mental health problems should get priority for treatment. Now that idea is up for discussion again in a Green Paper on Vulnerable Children released in Auckland's Aotea Square this afternoon. It also suggests mandatory reporting and the sharing of private information between agencies. In a moment we'll hear from the Minister for Social Development Paula Bennett. But first this report from Leilani Momoisea. PKG
The Green Paper says the government could move money into programmes where there's strong evidence they work and also suggests high risk families have priority access to services such as mental health and housing. Two years ago the Social Development Minister Paula Bennett asked independent experts to identify ways of preventing child abuse. The Forum told her money and resources are being wasted on allowing ineffective programmes to continue while letting the effective ones wither away. The experts also said that parents with addiction and mental health problems who have young children should be given priority access to treatment. I asked Paula Bennett why that still hasn't been done. PREREC
An investor in the failed finance company National Finance wants its director sent to jail for at least 5 years after being convicted of defrauding investors of three-and a half million dollars. Following an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, Trevor Allan Ludlow was found guilty of seven charges relating to theft and false accounting. He made unauthorised or unsecured advances to his Payless Car group of companies, as well as transactions of more than eight-hundred-thousand dollars to an audio company and a property in Fiji. Aucklander Russell Walls invested ten thousand dollars with National Finance which he lost when it collapsed in 2006. He's relieved by today's news. PREREC
The 250 skiers stranded overnight on Mount Lyford have made their way down the mountain.The risk of an avalanche closed the road yesterday and explosives had to be used to clear the snow. Lisa Christian spent last night at the lodge, and joins us now. LIVE
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1720 TRAILS AND BUSINESS WITH Naomi Mitchell
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As Norway continues to mourn, the country's justice minister has praised the security services for their response to the mass killing. But questions are being asked about whether the police were quick enough to get to the island where the lethal rampage occurred. Locals were left to organise the first rescue of traumatised teenagers. The BBC's Gavin Hewitt has been talking to some of those involved. PKG
The organisers of the Rowing World Champs are being blamed for a budget blow-out which cost taxpayers more than 2 million dollars. The event last November at Lake Karapiro was meant to make half a million dollars, but instead lost 2 point 2 million. An independent review the Government ordered from Sport and Recreation New Zealand was released today. It says the event's managers lacked commercial acumen and discipline, and the financial monitoring by the event's board was poor. Sparc's chief executive Peter Miskimmin joins us now. LIVE
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17.30 HEADLINES
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A bitter stalemate over raising America's borrowing limit is threatening to degenerate into an all out political brawl. Democrats are now openly blaming the ultra conservative Tea Party element inside the Republican Party for the impasse and neither side will support the other's plan to avert a default. The ABC's Jane Cowan reports: PKG
The director of the failed finance company National Finance has been found guilty of defrauding investors of three-and a half million dollars. Following an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, Trevor Allan Ludlow was convicted of seven charges relating to theft and false accounting. He made unauthorised or unsecured advances to his Payless Car group of companies, as well as transactions of more than eight-hundred-thousand dollars to an audio company and a property in Fiji. I asked him why he pleaded guilty to one count of theft. PREREC
A navy flotilla off Somalia commanded by a New Zealand Captain has intercepted a pirate boat that had a merchant ship in its sights. Captain Jim Gilmore is in charge of one of three US-led taskforces trying to stamp out piracy in the Gulf of Aden and Somali basin. He's on board the taskforce flagship, the guided missile cruiser the USS Anzio, which intercepted the pirates.
He joins us now from the ship. LIVE
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17.45 MANU KORIHI
Kia hiwa ra kia hiwa ra he aitua!
The national president of the Māori Women's Welfare League, Meagan Joe, has died.
She was 58.
Ms Joe passed away in the early hours of this morning after a long battle with breast cancer.
Many people have been paying tribute, praising her contribution to the well-being of Māori.
Her body has been taken to Pukemokimoki Marae in Napier.
The general manager of the Māori Women's Welfare League, Jacqui Te Kani, says the death of Ms Joe is a great loss for the organisation.
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Jacqui Te Kani says Ms Joe is the second league president who passed away while still in post.
She says the first was Maraea Te Kawa who was elected in 1983, and only served a couple of months.
The Māori Party has paid tribute to her, saying she was an outstanding woman who strove to make a significant contribution to her community, country and whanau.
Meagan Joe worked in the public sector for more than 25 years, and helped to develop a parenting programme for Māori men who are fathers of young children.
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A Bay of Plenty volunteer community worker says a hard-line approach to preventing suicide won't work for Māori.
Mate Tangitu's responding to a suggestion by the Māori Party MP, Te Ururoa Flavell, that tangi for people who take their own lives should only last a day.
He also says they should be buried at the front of the cemetery, so their actions can be condemned.
Mr Flavell says his comments were never meant to hurt people, but it's essential a tough stance is taken.
But Mate Tangitu disagrees, saying many young Māori who take their own lives did so out of grief.
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Mate Tangitu says the way to reduce the risk is by whanau being open and honest.
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Eel stocks are slowly recovering in the Whanganui River after up to 40 of them died in oxygen-starved water.
They perished when the river level dropped and the water warmed up, which cut oxygen to the tuna and other fish.
It happened during a long dry spell last summer.
Ben Potaka of the Whanganui River Māori Trust Board catches eels to eat, and says numbers are starting to increase.
He says it's tikanga, or traditional, for his people to offer eel as kai.
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OUT...DO THAT NOW
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Ben Potaka says he'll have to wait until summer to see if eel numbers have fully bounced back.
That's Te Manu Korihi news, I'll have a further bulletin in an hour.
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The coroner's court has heard there was confusion over the whereabouts of the notorious murderer and rapist, Taffy Hotene, shortly before he was found dead in Whanganui Prison.
Hotene was serving a life sentence of 18 years without parole, for the murder of Auckland journalist Kylie Jones in 2000, and preventive detention for raping her. Hotene's death at Whanganui Prison in late 2009 appears to have been self-inflicted, after a day spent working at a concrete factory inside the jail. The factory's manager, John Hackshaw, today told an inquest of the conflicting messages about where Hotene was in the prison . CUT Our reporter Tim Graham was at the hearing. PREREC
A Māori leader who's had three nieces and nephews commit suicide says they shouldn't be singled out in the way an MP is suggesting. Te Ururoa Flavell, the Māori Party MP for the Bay-of-Plenty seat of Waiariki, says people who commit suicide should get only partial Māori burial rituals. Olivia Wix reports. PKG