“Nursing a dream”.
New Zealand nurses are among the best trained in the world. But their own country doesn’t want them, or at least, all of them. There’s a huge surplus as the polytechs churn out far more than the hospitals have jobs for. There were 1200 new graduates last year, three quarters still don’t have jobs and many are still struggling to pay off loans they took to get them through their training. Now they’re being forced to get deeper into debt as they try to scrape together money to get to America, one of the few countries that has jobs for them. There’s been a mass exodus to the United States to take the American nursing exams and a pass means they can work there. For the US it’s been a great deal, getting $3.5 million worth of expensively trained expertise. Polytechs say it’s a good experience for the nurses to get some OE. But for those forced to leave it’s heartbreaking, and for their friends and families. A report following New Zealand nurses in New York.
Speakers: Russel Foster (Husband), Michelle Taylor (Graduate), Paula Stockley (Graduate), Donna McIntosh (Graduate), Helen Hoffman (Nursing Recruiter), David Wills (NZ Nursing Society).
“Yes Prime Minister?”
Journalists on duty at Parliament last Monday thought that Prime Minister Jim Bolger would finally lift the lid on what’s been a story of major intrigue in recent months. Back in May Bolger said the public needed to know the real truth behind a crisis in the Beehive at the time of the Fiji coup in 1987. There’d been a serious showdown between the Labour Government and the military over whether to send the SAS to Fiji to resolve the Air New Zealand hijack drama. But last Monday Bolger’s expected bombshell amounted to nothing but a damp squib, and that’s left the man at the heart of the 1987 affair, former Prime Minister David Lange, seeing red.
Speakers: David Lange (Former Prime Minister), Rod Gates (Former High Commissioner), Jim Bolger (Prime Minister), John Henderson (Former Head PM’s Department), Richard Harman (TVNZ Political Reporter).
“Streets ahead”.
A report from San Francisco about former Vietnam veteran Harry “Hooks” Sweats, a homeless radio reporter.