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1700 to 1707 NEWS
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The Prime Minster says if Labour had given him the evidence to back up an earlier allegation about Richard Worth he would have sacked the former Internal Affairs Minister then.Dr Worth has resigned his ministerial portfolios as the police investigate a separate criminal complaint of a sexual nature.Labour Leader Phil Goff told John Key last month about a complaint from another woman and says the evidence from phone logs and text messages was there to back it up.Mr Key accepted Dr Worth's denials and says Mr Goff leader should release the evidence if he has it.But Mr Goff says the Prime Minister always knew it was available. PRE-REC
So why didn't John Key ask Phil Goff for the phone logs and texts? PRE-REC
After less than an hour of deliberations, the judge in the High Court murder trial of David Bain has called the jury back into court. Justice Pankhurst is set to clarify matters that legal counsel raised issues over and is expected to give the jury new direction within the next half hour. David Bain is being retried for the murders of five members of his family; crimes he was originally convicted of in 1995.Our reporter Monique Devereux joins us now: LIVE
A year-long Auditor General's inquiry into the Immigration Service has found multiple deficiencies in the way it issues visas.Today's report backs up the findings of a State Services Commission investigation, which found the former head of Immigration, Mary Anne Thompson, consistently breached her own department's policy by failing to manage conflicts of interest.She brought members of her family over here from Kiribati.Now - the Auditor General has found that 42 percent of the decisions made about giving people visas or permits were either "questionable or poor" within the service's controverisal Pacific Division.Wendy Venter led the inquiry on behalf of the Auditor General: PRE-REC
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1720 TRAILS AND BUSINESS WITH
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Telecom is scrambling to find out what caused an outage affecting landlines and eftpos facilities from the Bombay Hills to Northland for two hours today. The fault hit homes, businesses, and 111 emergency centres, as Kim Baker Wilson reports. PKG We asked Telecom to come on the programme to provide the latest information about its systems but they refused to be interviewed. Howevert we understand there have been no further problems following on from today's outage.
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17.30 HEADLINES
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Returning to our lead story about the Prime Minister's handling of the Richard Worth affair. Dr Worth has resigned his ministerial portfolios as the police investigate a separate criminal complaint of a sexual nature. And there have been developments at Parliament in the last few minutes. We're joined from the gallery now by our political reporter Julian Robins: LIVE
And returning to the Auditor General's inquiry into the Immigration Service. It has found that 42 percent of the decisions made about giving people visas or permits were either "questionable or poor" in its Pacific division.
It backs up the findings of a State Services Commission investigation, which found the former head of Immigration, Mary Anne Thompson, helped family members come here from Kiribati. The immigration minister Johnathan Coleman says the report's findings are shocking. PRE-REC
The Government's confirmed a multimillion dollar funding boost for the country's ambulance services, including an extra 100 new paramedics for frontline work. The total funding is 48 million dollars over the next 4 years, and was budgeted for by the pervious Labour Government. Minister Tony Ryall says the extra paramedics will boost patient safety by increasing the number of double crewed ambulances. He says the package also provides half a million dollars a year for more training for rural volunteers. St John chief executive Jaimes Wood was at today's announcement -- he's with us now. LIVE
The state of Victoria has been blacklisted as Australia's swine flu capital. Tough new measures imposed by Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia now require school children traveling to Victoria be isolated for a week when they return home. Here's the ABC's national medical reporter Sophie Scott. PRE-REC
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17.45 TRAILS
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WAATEA
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Chinese police have been out in force trying to stop any commemoration of the pro-democracy protests in Tianamen Square. Hundreds - possibly thousands - were killed when tanks rolled in before dawn on June 4, 1989, to crush weeks of student and worker protests around the Beijing landmark. CLIP China has attempted to stop any commemoration, blocking access to social networking websites, blacking out some foreign news reports and hiding away key dissidents. Tens of thousands of people are expected to rally in elsewhere but the only the only major commemoration on Chinese soil is to take place in Hong Kong. At the same time US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on Beijing to release all prisoners from the Tiananmen protests and stop any harassment, and instead talk with the victims' families. Our correspondent in China, Quentin Sommerville, has been at Tiananmen Square. He joins us now live from Beijing: LIVE