Seafarers are the forgotten essential workers. “We enjoy the goods and services they bring us all our waking hours, but we do not know what some suffer for us to do so,” said Father Jeffrey Drane, writing in the Marist Messenger. “A tough life is precisely the way it is for the 1.6 million seafarers Read more
You hear people say it takes a village to raise a child; some new research supports this intuition. A recent report suggests that women’s social networks positively affect her child’s cognitive development, says Dr John Shaver from the University of Otago. The analysis also suggests that religious women have stronger support networks. Shaver says that Read more
Christchurch-based anaesthetist John Hyndman is no stranger to complicated medical machines. He’s used them for decades. But he prefers them when they are working properly. Otherwise, they are kind of scary. Particularly for his patients. So he was shocked when, in the early 2000s, he was doing voluntary work in small hospitals in the Pacific Read more
For decades their story has been told by others. Now the people of Parihaka have the opportunity to make sure they are the ones telling it. In June the Parihaka Papakāinga Trust was granted $14 million from the Provincial Growth Fund. It will be used to build a visitor centre and other infrastructure to cope Read more
The Waitangi Tribunal has found the way the Crown is managing claims under the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act is in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi and prejudicially affects Māori. The legislation replaced the controversial Foreshore and Seabed Act in 2011. It allows Māori to gain legal recognition of their customary rights Read more
The editor NZ Catholic, Michael Otto, has won a second-place award from the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada (CPA). The 2020 awards were announced during the 2020 Virtual Catholic Media Conference on July 2. Otto’s award was in the category, Best News Writing on National or International Event – International Event, Read more
New Zealand recently launched a government safety campaign that provides content to help parents to protect children from pornography on the Internet. It gained positive attention this month through a video ad about Internet pornography, using their motif of every parent’s worst Internet nightmare knocking on their front door. “What is interesting about the New Read more
A Catholic secondary school principal is among community leaders who have signed up to a new alliance of people who will work to oppose any attempt to legalise cannabis in New Zealand. Patrick Walsh, principal of John Paul College in Rotorua, is among those in Smart Approaches to Marijuana NZ (SAM-NZ), the formation of which Read more
Almost half of the women imprisoned in New Zealand have not been convicted of the crime that is keeping them behind bars. A sweeping 2013 law change designed to create greater bail hurdles for violent offenders has had an outsize effect on women, and Māori women in particular. Continue reading
Mother Suzanne Aubert somewhat surprisingly featured in Wednesday’s Jesse Mulligan interview with James Borrowdale about his new book, Weed: A New Zealand Story; a book about cannabis. The book once again raises the conjecture that Aubert was New Zealand’s first commercial cannabis grower. Mulligan asked the author to expand a bit on what he had Read more