Afternoon Edition: 20 June 2024

The Afternoon Edition of News Fix for 20 June 2024, straight from the Newstalk ZB newsroom - bringing you everything you need to know in news, politics, business, entertainment and sport.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Good afternoon. I'm railing Ramsey. This is your afternoon news
fixed for Thursday, the twentieth of June. Electricity is being
partially restored in Northland and some areas have been reconnected.
There have been massive outages since a transmission tower toppled
over at Glory this morning. That's between co Copper Cuppa
and Welsford in Auckland's northwest. Transpars reconfigured systems to use

(00:28):
local sources such as geothermal generation acting al far near Kakher.
It's issued an operational grid emergency notice until midday tomorrow.
Energy Minister Simeon Brown says he's spoken to Transpar's CEO
twice today.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
The priority at the moment is making sure power is
are stored as quickly as possible. Vulnerable people who rely
on electricity are looked after.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
GDP has risen point two percent for the March quarter,
but economists say we're still heading backwards. The light up
tick reported by Stats and Z today means we're no
longer in a technical recession, but per capita GDP has
decreased byzero point three percent. Economist at Bagri Economics, Cameron

(01:12):
Bagri says the last six quarters haven't been great either.
Were treading water.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
We haven't been going anywhere for a while and this
is just playing the piper.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
You are the penance when you've got a lot of inflation.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
The Energy Minister is blaming labor for a lack of
cash for electric vehicle charges. Parliamentarians are holding committee hearings
on the budget, which includes more than three billion dollars
of cuts to climate initiatives. Funding set aside by the
last government for a public EV charger network survived. Labour's
Megan Woods's Press Minister Simeon Brown on why there isn't

(01:46):
more when National campaigned on boosting EV infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
The previous government are in the last financial year to
take fifteen million dollars out of their allocation just prior
to the election.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Health New Zealand is denying it has as a recruitment freeze.
Dennica McLean has more the.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Nurses organizations claimed Health New Zealand as freezing employing graduate
nurses to manage budgets. It suggests midyear intakes will be
paused other than those recruited externally, and one person who
was in the recruitment phase claims her application to be
a mental Health nurse was thrown out. Health New Zealand
says there's no hiring freeze and its changing processes so

(02:26):
jobs are approved regionally rather than nationally.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
A man who abandoned a baby on the roadside has
admitted stealing the car the infant was in, but denies
a charge of abduction because he didn't know it was there.
Michael J. White was caught on CCTV putting the baby
on a grassy area after taking the car from a
dairy in Taranaki's Whiteter the last month. Open Justice reports.

(02:50):
White says he wasn't trying to deprive the parents of
their child, so a kidnapping charge is inappropriate. He'll stay
in custody until a court appearance in August. In Sport,
Kane Williamson's reiterating his priority is playing for the black
Caps after landing back in the country in the wake
of his decision to turn down a central contract with

(03:11):
New Zealand Cricket and give up the white ball captaincy,
departing loose forward to Ketty Yuanni believes he's leaving the
Blues in a good spot whatever the outcome of Saturday
Super Rugby Final against the Chiefs. New Zealand squash player
Paul Coles beaten Diego elias As of Peru to go

(03:33):
to from two at the World Tour Finals in Washington State.
I'm railing Ramsey. That's your latest news fix. We'll be
back with the next update tomorrow morning from the news
Talk set B news Room