Tenar, Koto, Nomai, Haidim, welcome to Q&A, I'm Jack Tan. Today, Russia's ambassador responds to accusations linking New Zealand to spying in his country. I think that every New Zealander should be proud that the intelligence service is working somewhere efficiently. Then, what's the purpose of a street?
So, one of them being going for me to be. But it's also the place where we meet each other, it's the place where we linger, where we play, where we trade, where we greet each other, meet each other, basically what society takes shape. We'll have that for you shortly, but we begin today with the outgoing children's commissioner. Officially, it's an independent role, and commissioners are required to hold power to account.
But appointments are made on the recommendation of a government minister, and there's an inevitable tension between maintaining good working relationships and criticising government policies. Clare Eiffmann's original five-year tenure as children's commissioner was cut to three years by a law change last year. When she reapplied, she was overlooked. We sat down during her final few hours in the role this week, and before I asked her about her, I asked about some of the biggest issues facing New Zealand children.
MSD has released its latest Child Poverty Report this week. Honestly, it's the same old story. It backs up stats from earlier this year, which are poverty levels increasing, the number of young people in material hardship increasing. Why?
That's a great question, Jack. I think that it's a multitude of factors, but at the heart of it, I really think that New Zealand has simply not made children a priority to the extent that they need to be. We know that what goes on in childhood, it has the greatest impact on our lifetimes, and that is why we need to see a lot more focus on preventing things like child material hardship. I don't think that there has been enough political leadership that has been bold and courageous in New Zealand to truly address these problems, such as child material hardship.
We haven't yet seen that enduring cross-party commitment across the parliament to truly put in place policies that are going to really shift the dial and lift our children out of poverty, and that is clearly so urgently needed. When the Finance Minister was on our show last, she told us, quote, we could double benefits tomorrow and the child poverty stats would look better. But she said her government believes the long-term solution to breaking the poverty cycle is moving households off benefits and into work. In her view, doubling benefits wouldn't help with that long-term vision.
What do you make of that? Well, I think that we have to really look at what is going on for our children living in poverty. So if we unpack the data, so right now we have 170,000, almost children living in material hardship, that's going without seven or more of those absolute basic items every day. And that means being shut out of the basic minimum standard of acceptable living, which all children have a right to, of those 170,000 New Zealand children living in material hardship, around half of them are living in households that are in work.
So what that lays out to me is the fallacy of arguing that work alone is going to be the answer to reducing child poverty in Altea or New Zealand. That is simply not the case. It has to be work that pays. Right now we see that our incomes, they are simply not livable.
Families in Pano are working really hard, but their incomes are simply not keeping pace with the high costs of living. And ultimately the burden of that falls on children and young people. So I really strongly think that we need to see incomes lift in Altea or New Zealand both in terms of our wages so that they are livable. And our welfare support payments also need to be livable because we need to recognise that when you are accessing welfare support in Altea or New Zealand, that is in the majority of cases because you can't be in work for some reason.
So in your view are benefit levels at the moment at the livable threshold? No. I think we have to see a lift across the board in terms of ensuring that income and support that is going into households with children is truly livable. If we look at the wider data and report by the Coalition to End Women's Homelessness recently shows that 33,000 New Zealand children are living in severe housing deprivation.
And that means going without a safe, affordable, healthy and secure home. We know that the right to housing is actually one of the basic rights that we all have including children and that when children aren't living in conditions to support their health and well-being. We are then seeing New Zealand children suffering the consequences such as really preventable childhood illnesses such as rheumatic fever, bronchiopuses, rheicots, ciabes. These are conditions that are preventable that simply shouldn't be a reality for children in a small relatively wealthy nation such as ours.
In addition to benefits is income support for working families and low income families? Is that at the threshold that you would consider livable at the moment? Absolutely not. And the data clearly shows us that.
And when I kind of sit back from this picture because as children's commission I've had the opportunity to meet with children up and down the moto and including children who are living in a material hardship. And they talk to me about how hard their parents are working, how stressful it is for mum and dad to have to hold down two, three, four low paying jobs and that there is still a struggle in their households to put kai on the table to pay the rent and to be able to afford to heat the house. And then that's having real impacts in their lives meaning that they're facing barriers to get to school, can't afford to get to the doctor. They're being shut out of participating in the basic aspects of their childhood and that unfortunately the longitudinal data in New Zealand from the Dunedin study growing up in New Zealand shows that if we don't get this right in children's early years and in childhood we are actually going to see a lifetime impact on our children and young people into adulthood which is ultimately going to cost us as a society, across those systems that they will have to access as a result of the poverty that they experience in their childhood.
So there is an economic component as well as the kind of moral component which is often the way we frame this policy conversation but there is an economic flow on effect from having this many children in hardship today for any long-guided period. Absolutely, from my perspective the moral and the economic arguments to in child poverty in New Zealand they could not be more compelling because this is really costing us billions every year and it's going to keep costing us billions if we don't address it now and very clear that in order to in child poverty in New Zealand we are going to need to spend and invest money, significant amounts of money but that is such a worthy investment and the current government speaks about a social investment approach while all the evidence and data shows the very best investment that New Zealand could be making right now is to invest in our nation's children. Right I'm going to throw a very simple sounding question to you I want to step back for a moment would you agree that the role of the independent children's commissioner in representing children and young people is to support policies that make a positive difference and to sometimes speak truth to power and to criticise governments of the day? I generally agree with that and in fact the children's commissioner acts which I'm governed by in my work sets out those things very clearly.
So I've considered some of your advocacy over the last couple of years and where you've seen fit you've been complementary about the government's policy agenda things like mental health programs in Northland you've welcomed the focus on pediatric palliative care but if you are to think about the net effect of this government's policy agenda over the last three years have their policies improved child poverty measures in New Zealand or have their policies made of child poverty worse? The current government's policies have clearly not improved child poverty if we look at the data it tells us the clear story. So does that mean that made it worse? Well if we look at the data from 2022 until now child poverty in New Zealand on the material hardship measure has got measurably worse.
None of the child poverty reduction targets have been met we are not on track to meet the team year targets and that is inexcusable because there are choices that governments can make to prioritise children. In fact the child poverty reduction act requires governments of the day to do so and it's very clear it requires nothing less than a significant and sustained reduction in child poverty in New Zealand and over these last few years it's absolutely clear on the data we have been going The children's commissioner, Legislative Structure, has been a little bit of a hot potato of the last few years so the ordinary time of the key monitoring stuff was reassigned a board was introduced then last year the board was scrapped and under the new legislation your five-year term was cut. Did you reapply for the role? Yes.
Why didn't you get it? I don't know ultimately that is a question that you are going to need to put to the Minister for Social Development. I am not the one to answer that question. Did you ask?
I have asked I'm keen to understand that. Why I am keen to understand that is because I think in this role which the core purpose is ultimately to serve New Zealand's children and young people as they are independent advocates to be a voice for them in the places where big decisions are made to affect their lives and where their voices are often overlooked where children are not at the forefront and so I think it's really important that children and young people understand how these decisions are made. Children and young people have been asking me so why aren't you staying in this role? I've said to them well ultimately that was not my decision.
I dearly wanted to stay serving you and your rights and what a privilege it has been to do so over these last few years. So to be totally clear you've asked why you didn't get the role and you haven't had any feedback? I haven't had any specific feedback. No.
In fact I've had positive feedback in terms of how I've discharged my duties as Children's Commission over these last few years. We asked the Minister and the Minister wouldn't tell us either. Do you have a sense as to why I haven't been in this role for three years having reapplied for the role, having received positive feedback throughout your tenure so far, why you might not have been reappointed? Do you have any personal sense?
Ultimately the Minister has a prerogative to make a decision to appoint the candidate that they think is best for the role and as I say ultimately that has to be a question that is for the Minister to answer. What I know is that I have delivered for children and young people while serving as their Children's Commissioner. So I just want to be totally clear on the timeline here. You're appointed in 2023 for a five-year term that was then changed under legislation last year.
The structure of the role was changed so that it would end the end of July, start of August of this year. You reapplied for the role, you weren't appointed for the role but you weren't given any feedback as to why you weren't reappointed. At what point were you told you wouldn't get the role? It was relatively recently and I think you can see from the Minister's public statement when the new Children's Commissioner was announced that children and young people in this country and all of the partners that we've been working with over these last few years have had barely three and a half weeks notice of this change.
So how long before the new Commissioner was announced were you told you hadn't been successful? Just a few weeks before then. Right and how much notice were you given in the role team? It was a matter of weeks.
So yeah it was it was a relatively short time. So you've publicly criticised the book camps, the under 16 social media ban, the school lunch program. Do you think that being an independent voice that has at times said uncomfortable things to this government has cost you the job? As I say ultimately that is for the government to answer.
What I have been very clear on is the importance of independent child-focused advocacy rounded in children's rights and I think I have been a fear and balanced critic where that has been required. As you said I have welcomed positive developments that have occurred for children and young people in New Zealand over these last two and a half years but I find it deeply problematic that we are living in a country right now where there is such an affront to children's rights on so many different accounts. How did we become a country where we are considering having move on orders that will apply to children where children could be citizens arrested where we are looking to legislate into law military-style academies as a youth justice response. These kinds of approaches are deeply problematic and they actually go completely against New Zealand's duties and obligations under the children's rights conviction.
They must be part of you that he is the word coming out of your mouth right now and thinks that this is the reason the government doesn't want you in the position. Well right to the end of my tenure I will not reside from advocating for our nation's children and young people and to do that advocacy well it must be grounded in what the data and the evidence tells us and what is good for their rights. My last question on this if you're able to set aside your case as much as possible for a moment what does it do to the independence of this office if the government of the day can decline to reappoint a commissioner who has publicly criticised its policies and give no reason either publicly or privately. Well I think over the 35 years or more that there has been a children's commissioner in New Zealand in fact we were one of the first nations in the world to establish a children's commissioner as the independent children's rights institution and over that time I think the golden thread has been that there has always been independence that sits at the heart of this role.
I think that is crucial that that is maintained. I do look around the world and I look at some of the other models of independent children's rights institutions for example we see in some other countries that children's commission is our officers of parliament and so they are appointed on the recommendation of the parliament as a house. I think that's going to be important over time for New Zealand to consider some of those different models that might ensure the same mandate and functions are maintained which is absolutely crucial that we continue to maintain the range of functions and the broad mandate that the children's commissioner has but to bring that even greater level of total independence with appointment from recommendation of the whole parliament I do think that's something that we should be considering in New Zealand. You have really tried to distinguish your tenure by centering young people in your work and over the last couple of weeks they've launched a petition supporting you what did it mean to see that?
Well that came as a surprise to me. I think over my tenure as a children's commissioner and actually across the course of my career as a children's rights advocate I have always been a strong champion of children and young people should get to have a say in the big decisions that are affecting them actually that's the basic right out of call 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Chubs Superclear children have a right to participate in the decisions that affect their lives and I think what we see in this petition is that children and young people are saying hey this role exists to serve us to work for and with us to provide us with that independent advocacy and they're saying we think we should have a say in how that decision is made. I've always over the course of my time as children's commissioner empowered children and young people with knowledge about their rights that they are rights holders and I've looked to build a movement of children's rights in Altaira, New Zealand. Part of that is that now more children and young people are empowered to feel that they can advocate for their rights.
They can raise their voices. They can speak up about the issues that matter to them and I guess this petition is an example of that. You've laid down a way to your successor to keep centering young people but also encouraging her to keep holding decision makers including the government to account. Why did you feel that needed saying?
Is there a part of you that worries that children's commissioners of the future will not feel sufficiently empowered to criticise government policies of the day? I think it's really crucial that the next children's commissioner is successful in their work because that is important for New Zealand's children so I'm just encouraging the person who is incoming into this role to really give their role to that to lean into that mandate. It's a unique mandate and it is such a privilege to serve children and young people as their children's commissioner. There's no other role quite like it and I really wish the next children's commissioner well.
You're feeling well in a couple of hours? How are you feeling? Look I'm feeling I'm feeling sad to be going. There's unfinished work for me to do.
I have had the privilege of building a fantastic organisation and team and I know that their professionalism and their deep commitment to children and young people is going to really serve the next children's commissioner well. I'm feeling a lot of gratitude as well. For our nation's children and young people they've been incredibly generous to me. They have opened their hearts and minds to me.
I have now had the privilege of sitting with children and young people who have been victim survivors of family and sexual abuse, who have been abused in the care of the state, who have faced in multiple areas because of their disabilities, who are rainbow and they are feeling so disrespected right now in this environment that we're living in. I've set and used justice facilities with children and young people deprived of their liberty and mental health facilities where children and young people are really struggling. Children and young people have shared a lot with me. That takes trust and confidence.
They've had to choose to place their trust and confidence in me as their independent advocate and I feel a deep sense of gratitude for that. I also feel really hopeful for the future of Altaira, New Zealand because the messages that I hear from our nation's children and young people, gosh, they are so switched on. They are deep holders of wisdom about their lives but also the solutions that are going to take us forward. They are about Kortaikana unity amongst one another and I think we need so much more of that in this world and so this generation coming through actually has left me with a lot of hope and going forward I'm going to continue to be a strong advocate for them.
So I'm just looking forward to our paths continuing to cross. That is former children's commissioner, Clare Ackman. So you know we reached out to social development minister Louise Upton. She declined to be interviewed on Q&A.
It's now two and a half years since the minister was last interviewed here. Since the start of 2025 we have explicitly requested her for 35 episodes of Q&A. She's declined every time. The company by a dramatic video of the arrest rushes FSB security services.
A Russian citizen has been detained in the country's far east after spying for New Zealand. The man is accused of proactively approaching the SIS. I sat down with Russia's ambassadors, Stannis Lovecrans at the Russian embassy this week and I started by asking him, where's the evidence? Actually there is investigation is underway and of course you know when something like that happened some services in many in the country around the globe.
So they do the same jobs of the covering evidence. They do some investigations. They open criminal or non-criminal cases and we need just to wait until some official investigation will be finished and after that we will get more information. At this moment no one it's not talking about Russia but New Zealand, US and many other countries are doing the same way so they will not disclose any information until the investigation finished and they can get some final understanding that it happened indeed and will provide evidence to the court.
How long do you expect that process will take? Oh it just depends on many factors and it's very difficult to see now. I hope that if we get some information from Moscow we will be ready to share with Dzumtas as well. So you say it's important to protect the integrity of the investigation at this stage.
Then why release the footage that shows the many hundred dollar bills that were reportedly or allegedly in the Sennan's position? Surely that should be an important part of the investigation. Yeah sure so they disclose what they can do within the framework of our legislation. So they can do that so they disclose this information but all other information will be I hope will be disclosed later and you know that when we are talking about national security in any country so there are some limitations of distribution of information and all information in regards to hope will be open soon but we still can just stay calm and wait until get to some of the new statements with the statements from the Federal Security Service of Russia.
You say though that the integrity of the investigation is very important which is why you haven't released any evidence so far. Russia hasn't released any evidence so far. Yet you have released video that shows a man who has allegedly had hundreds and hundreds of dollar bills as part of this investigation. Actually it was not an evidence they didn't say that it's an evidence it was just a video footage of how the suspect was detained not more than they didn't say nobody said that this is the proof or this is just a picture and I'm not sure of course I was not behind this making this movie and of course I can't say everything because we are here in New Zealand and we didn't participate in these actions and of course I hope that we will get some more information later.
But the video was edited so the man was arrested outside and then that showed the bills being counted in a different setting so why release that footage why should we believe that that has anything to do with the judge crime. So you don't need to vid for the public because actually if any organization any state of the organization private organization if we would like to make some press statement so you consider that some part of press statement they did it in this way. Why these questions should be redirected to the FSB? When were you first advised of the accusation?
Actually it's not a big deal because you are so no focused on this incident because SIS was named during this report and I was actually disappointed a bit by the reaction in New Zealand because you know that there was a lot of response and a lot of so-called experts was mentioning this event and saying that it's a they claim that Russian state media are not reliable source and saying that it's some kind of a basket of salt and so on so forth but actually it was not report of the state media it was a report made on the base of what the information they received from the federal state federal security service but what is it disappointing for me? I think that every New Zealanders should be proud that the intelligence service is working somewhere efficiently using not wasting taxpayer payers money and I think this should be different reaction from New Zealanders saying oh we pay our taxes and they pay it and we use it effectively. Not saying that it's not it's not it should not be considered that I confirmed that it was or not confirmed that it was SIS behind this operation behind this incident and of course we don't like that one of our citizens became traitor actually traitor and traitor and nobody likes traitors and of course as I said it should be investigation first completed and after that so we'll get much more clear picture what is happening what is happening and who is behind of it? But just I'm clear though you think New Zealand should be proud that the New Zealand SIS is alleged to have been behind us.
No no no no so it means it's everyone so consider that SIS you know that they have as many intelligence services around the group they should do their job. One of them is to gather intelligence in no one making some counter-intelligence activities and doing the just in front of other intelligence service from other countries and blocking them as FSB is a counter-intelligence service in our country leading in regard of any activity or foreign intelligence services in my country and I'm just surprised that if you say that there's your country's trying your country's governmental body SIS is doing their job so we should be considered maybe it's a good reason to say it's not wasting your money and doing their job so you should be proud that they do it against the country that you consider as an enemy. We don't consider New Zealand as an enemy actually we call New Zealand as unprintly country not hostile country we don't call New Zealand as enemies and we are not focusing on making our relations worse we have already reached our historical law in our relations but we don't want to make it worse at the same time so of course we are just talking about some case that actually it's a small case it's not a big deal that the intelligence service of one country doing something in our country and we know thanks to R&D that some agents from New Zealand SIS are working with CIA against Russia as well so maybe you saw these podcasts as well and the podcast alleged that in the past and in the what's it be for a decade ago never mind so I mean that's an important distinction is there any evidence that New Zealand security officials at the moment or intelligence officials are spying on Russia at the moment well I don't have any evidence and I will not get any information like this in my hands because it's a responsibility of our way so so I think this is an important point so far no evidence has been publicly presented about this case in Russia but why would an agency like NCDIS which has limited resources and which usually sticks to the South Pacific operate in an area where it has very little expertise if any expertise and why would they trust a Russian citizen rather than their own people you know that's if if this story so if you read it so you know that it was a Russian citizen who are proactively reached foreign intelligence service and agreed to provide some information to show some information for money so why he decided to do that so we only can guess we don't know we are not behind on this investigation and here in the embassy of course we don't know anything what is going on there they are not we I cannot just say that all of what we are talking today is something that is the real facts we just can guess and I believe that in this case so it's according information we received from the FSB so it was a Russian citizen who did it by himself he reached some person he I believe that he maybe knows personally and this was representative of your country maybe I believe that we can get much clear picture after the investigation will be completed and nowadays so I can just say that it was some coincidence maybe that it was NCSIS behind this but anyways it's also we know very clearly that there are many other uh intelligence services who could be behind it as well and sometimes we also know maybe it was a decade ago but it's very uh things to to this post-class we get a very clear picture that sometimes for example CIA or media some other uh intelligence services they use their partner organizations in our country to gather information and maybe it was CIA behind it I'm just I'm guessing not saying that it's indeed this so there's not no evidence has been presented because yes we should wait for evidence we should wait for some more information and after that we can get to get clear picture what is behind it what do you want from the New Zealand government in relation to these accusations oh nothing actually so I believe that's uh this case in this case so because it's what we're talking about Russian citizen uh who if uh who is a detainee he's not arrested yet he's just until the custody so it means that it takes some time and if he is uh it will be proved that he is guilty so it will be uh also the judgment of the court not by FSB or any other structures in my country after that so we will get the court decision and after it will be clear is it a criminal case this is a high treason or it's something else or maybe it's was some misunderstanding I don't know it will be a responsibility of the court and in this case so I think that we have nothing to talk with the New Zealand government at this moment because we of course we are not glad that foreign intelligence services doing some business in my country of course nobody will be glad but at the same time at this moment we have nothing to talk or discuss between our governments agencies about this case I think that we should wait maybe some further development of this situation but I hope that anyways so we will consider that it's some kind of uh case that will be uh finalized within the legislation and within the borders of Russia and after that we will forget about it the New Zealand is named Russia as one of three state actors that participate in foreign interference in New Zealand do russianspires operate in New Zealand um I don't to frustrate you but actually New Zealand is not in the focus of my country unfortunately or fortunately I don't know it will you will decide by yourself but anyways of course we uh we understand that New Zealand is maybe would like to become our enemy as I said we are not considering New Zealand as an enemy enemy and of course we are not going to say that uh uh to say that we would like to uh to get to influence the position of New Zealand in regard of Russia of course me as ambassador since I was appointed here to develop political relations my personal uh task what I would like to realize is to bring our countries closer to restore good relations between our countries to make more exchanges between our countries to promote economic political cultural cooperation of course and of course I'm will do all my best to realize it but at the same point that I am at the same time so I would like to point out that we still looking at New Zealand government uh for uh better understanding that unfortunately for me and maybe fortunately for the government that New Zealand is not in the focus of Russian policy at all unfortunately because including spying including spying including trade including something like political communications and of course all that we had before and we have a very uh a huge number of delegations coming here we're sending going to there in 2010 we started uh negotiations to conclude FTA actually and we were very close to that and we were a very huge market for agriculture product for New Zealand starting from 1960s and it we still are but at this moment so the trade has closed very many sanctions imposed against us we do not impose sanctions we impose on the travel ban song because we don't have sanctions we do not recognize unilateral sanctions we impose on the travel ban only as a reaction to the sanctions imposed by New Zealand government and in this case so of course we are what I'm trying to do I would like to uh to let New Zealanders get more information real information about what Russia is and what we can do together and of course we also promote New Zealand to Russia as well and of course I don't want to promote some bad things to Russia I would like to promote some good things that will be good for both countries and will be mutually beneficial that's Russia invested as lovecrans so you know we had a longer conversation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and New Zealand's relationship with Russia you can see the full version on our YouTube page what is the purpose of a street is it just to facilitate the movement of people and things or should it do more who and what should be prioritized? Professor Margot De Bruelstrud holds the cheer on urban mobility futures at the University of Amsterdam and spoke at the public transport association conference at Topapa this week during his time in New Zealand so far his family has of course been cycling and I asked him about the experience we were cycling with the family and my son is 11 year old and he was cycling on a slightly big bicycle behind me and then a woman in an SUV turned up next to us opened her window and shouted first at my son and then to me shouted that my son was being a danger so she basically said your son is being a danger to me and at first I was like we were both shocked then at the next traffic light I could sort of knock her window she opened her window and asked what did you say she said what your son is a danger so I asked her what do you mean so why is my son a danger to you while you are driving the 2000 kilo truck and she said well he's wobbling and that may be sort of sort of realized we have a minute I'm from the Netherlands children who wobble that's sort of the starting point of how we design our streets the children are allowed to wobble they're the right to wobble and you are bringing in the danger so that's created immediately sort of this background discussion about what are streets for who is dominating that space who creates the danger for who and how do we accept that so that's that was a real sort of eye opener on day one what is the purpose of a straight well I think that's an excellent question I'm social scientist so I think that questions should be asked much much more often so I don't have the answer to it but what I think is fascinating is to see that we decided to answer that question about 90 years ago and since then we have never reopened that question and what we have decided 90 years ago that was not a referendum it was sort of a technocratic decision is that streets should serve mainly as efficient pipelines to shuttle people as efficiently as possible for A to B as individuals but I would say that streets before that were considered the remaining spaces between buildings there are complex public spaces that belong to all of us and actually should serve all our societal needs so one of them being going from A to B but it's also the place where we meet each other it's the place where we linger where we play where we trade where we greet each other meet each other basically with society tech shape the design of our streets are now defined by a limited group of professionals traffic engineers mostly they have a limited number of KPIs and goals to meet like congestion relief and travel and savings and bees of parking and through these principles they basically define how we design the pressures and scars of its space how does New Zealand compare to other urban centers you're familiar with?
for me it compares it's really similar much more similar than I expected to US cities and this whole traffic engineering mindset language and narrative also comes from from the US it was first invented there and then sort of exported to the world so it's quite remarkable how well they did that right so if you think about it like in everywhere you go around the world the same principles seem to apply there's almost no place in the world that's completely excluded even in Netherlands we have bicycle infrastructure but it's still sort of within the same traffic engineering mindset of that but New Zealand and the cities are still I would say quite dominated by this large motorized vehicles the cars that get a lot of space get a lot of rules even so you need traffic lights on every intersection basically that's something that in many European cities are removing traffic lights because reintroducing human interaction is a very important quality of public space and here you see that even in all that logic it really solidified this focus on using the streets to efficiently bring people in their private cars from A to B and is there a problem yes or no it depends but we see that many of the societal challenges that we face as a society a New Zealand society as well as anywhere else many of these challenges are connected to that right so the car dependent system that we created through this is related to environmental problems it's related to air pollution it's related to scarce resource use it's related to enormous financial burdens on society and on families but it's also related to centenary lifestyles to obesity to asthma to children losing their autonomy to Rome so all these things are sort of happening and I would say they're very strongly visible and present in New Zealand cities I'm going to put you the obvious critique I mean you compared us with the US and distinguished us from the changes that you've observed in European cities the difference with Amsterdam for example is obvious Amsterdam is flat dense and was cycling before it had cars Auckland is none of those so why should a Dutch transport solution be at all applicable for New Zealand I would argue that the Dutch solution should not be applicable everywhere and there's two main reasons for that and one already mentioned like context differs but also is the Dutch really the real solution that we should go for because what is it essentially that we did since the 1970s when the citizens and residents of the cities sort of created an uproar and stopped politicians from creating similar cities like here what we've done since is we have created safe spaces for cycling within that same system but that system is still a technocratic traffic engineering approach to our streets right it still didn't bring back the streets for children to play or for people to meet they've changed the color of the asphalt but we didn't change the logic of how we think about streets I think that's the key thing that we need to bring back to society and that is that applies everywhere we need to rediscuss how are we solving these big societal challenges how are we creating transport options for people that are now car dependent for all kinds of reasons and sometimes the bicycle can be a part of the solution sometimes the e-bike is a big part of the solution in topography in challenged cities sometimes it's public transport but I think one of the main things that I see everywhere is that through these decades of seeing streets as efficient pipelines we've also created societies where we are not saving travel time we are chasing travel time politicians find this the most important metric saving travel time solving congestion but what we see in the data is that we are not saving travel time we are losing proximity so about 56 years ago the average person in New Zealand was spending around seven to eight kilometers per person per day now it's 42 right so it's six times as far that we have to travel for the same activities that is the key problem so I think that the key solutions doesn't necessarily lie into cars versus bikes versus public transport first and foremost we need to think about how can we create systems that are not dependent on these energy consuming expansions that we have sort of caped for in the last decades and think much more about proximity valuable streets where life takes place and maybe in many cases I think that the bicycle is one of the simplest means to reach those complex goals unlike by far it's not the only one so what other opportunities are there in a New Zealand context to envision this kind of transport system I'm very negative I would say that the opportunity will arise by itself because the system that we have created we know that it can only exist because we extracted scarce resources from the earth to create the asphalt steel and concrete of which the system is built in the last 70 years they're running out secondly we've externalized many of the costs that means that they are not so that if you drive a car you love the freedom of driving the car you should be aware that 60% of the cost of driving the car is actually externalized in society both of these things cannot sustain themselves in the long term right so there will be a future that will not be that far from now that we that the system will itself probably change we can't keep all the flyovers all the bridges all the tunnels and all that in place it's simply impossible so that will happen either way I would say you saying we would run out of resources for concrete and yeah yeah if you look at the numbers that's very clear that we are heading towards that we have been able especially in Western society to ignore that for a long time but asphalt steel and concrete are very energy heavy resources that actually require oil to be produced we know that oil is going to run out at one point in time so the moment that we can no longer ignore these external costs right for instance the infrastructure that we built we tend to forget to write them off in time so a concrete bridge looks like it will be there forever but it has a life span of about 70 years so most infrastructure in Western societies is about 70 years old so this means that we have to replace it it's it's hard if not impossible within the current budgets to do that so we need to have a conversation but what are we going to do to allow people that are now sort of take this this car dependent or mobility dependent lifestyle for granted how do we take them on board working towards a city that will still support their quality of life but with different means that are more fitting to the limits of the resources and and and are also limiting the externalities like in New Zealand every day one person gets killed in the traffic system imagine right so who's paying for that that's the cost of the current system if we don't if we no longer want that like if we no longer ones that are 100 people every day go to the hospital because of traffic questions if we no longer want children to be involved in this violent machines on the street if we want them to get their autonomy these are all externalized costs of the current system I think if we change the discussion and we start having a conversation as politicians but also as society at large I'm pretty certain that that's what we measure everywhere that there's a huge majority that actually is is willing to to to go on this adventure towards this different society a huge majority a huge majority yeah we find in conservative or progressive cities across the world that this majority indeed is around 80 but you don't find that 80 if you ask them like do you want coffee streets or do you want to pay for parking or do you want to introduce road pricing or bike lines all bike lines what you will then get is you will get violent loud minority positions to dominate this discourse but if we instead ask them more citizen oriented questions so not a consumer but citizen so then you ask people like okay what do you what do you prefer if you have to choose the autonomy of children and the fact that they deserve places to play or your freedom to put your car everywhere you want which you have to make a choice because street space is limited and if we ask it in that way we find actually that by far the most important things and even in the most conservative cities that we did the studies in we find that people know that the the children are facing mental physical and social health problems they know that they are increasingly lonely and they need their streets for all kinds of other functions they know that we need to have to climb that adaptability they know that they need less heat stress and need more space for green rain and then if you ask them in this way they also will tell you that the place of the car on that list of the of the rank list of things that need to be sorted in public space the car actually ranks very low it's professor marco de bloomus truth you can see more of that interview on youtube this week's meme is bill comes from green in pay Lawrence june in my name is larry sinaan i'm a green party MP and the title of my members bill is immigration relationship with human rights act and men and bill my members bill fundamentally will align our immigration act with the human rights act so that our migrants and particularly disabled migrants are not being discriminated against under our immigration sitting so it repeals any discriminatory aspects of the immigration act but it also allows applicants to challenge decisions by immigration New Zealand on the basis of human rights violations to the human rights commission not many people know that our immigration act consistently violates the human rights act the united nations convention for rights of people with disabilities has addressed this concern with new Zealand around the fact that our immigration settings fundamentally discriminates against people on the basis of disabilities what we are seeing in terms of cases is we are family you know like say a family of four three of the members of their family parents and one of their children could have received visa but their other child would have been denied visa and had to be deported as a people i think new Zealanders think of ourselves as a warm welcoming and compassionate people and i think people will be shocked and horrified to know that our immigration setting is discriminatory to the point that is splitting families apart there's no evidence to suggest that migrants are of course to the systemic deficit we're seeing in our public infrastructure whether it is transport or health or education but what we're seeing is that our fundamentally unfair and outdated tax system meant that these migrants who are here are paying their fear share of taxes whereas the super rich in this country are paying half the effective tax rights of many of these migrants so the idea that they are the reason and we shouldn't have people who are desego they're going to be a burden on our system is fundamentally untrue it's greening p loran's junan and his meme is built kurumata let's give a nice for this week from the q and a thank you for watching namikhi kakoto thanks for your feedback hey tira we'll see you next sunday at nani q and a is made with the support of new zealand on here