Paula Morris Zooms to writers from her dining table
8 May, 2021 06:00 PM
5 minutes to read
Paula Morris. Photo / Mike Brooke
By: Paula Morris
Last year, almost every Sunday morning for three months, I sat at my dining table interviewing writers in many different time zones, sitting at their own desks and dining tables, via Zoom. The big Covid lockdown had scuppered the Auckland Writers Festival, so director Anne O Brien created the 2020 Winter Series. Over 12 weeks I interviewed 37 writers and Tina Makereti interviewed another three on my one Sunday holiday. Total views for the series were more than 72,000, with people tuning in from all over the world – especially for big international names like Bernadine Evaristo, fresh from her Booker win, and Neil Gaiman.
KEVIN STENT/Stuff
Calls are growing for Wellington City Council to increase its borrowing cap to fix mounting infrastructure costs, but the council says it has already increased forecast spending and needs to leave some headroom. (File photo)
Wellington City Council is sticking to its guns over its proposed borrowing cap despite growing calls for it to spend more in the face of mounting infrastructure costs. The council is proposing to lift its self-imposed debt cap by 50 per cent from July, as it looks to fund major infrastructure costs, including a $2.7 billion water infrastructure bill, a one-third share in the $6.4b Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) transport programme, and a $179 million central library rebuild.
Steven Joyce: It s time we climbed out of the Covid bunker
5 Mar, 2021 04:00 PM
6 minutes to read
People are growing tired of the disruption that comes with repeated lockdowns. Photo / Michael Craig
NZ Herald
OPINION:
It s become increasingly clear in recent weeks that the Government needs a new Covid response playbook. It has done many good things since the epidemic began in earnest just over a year ago, but there are growing signs that it is developing a bunker mentality where the same old answers are brought out for each problem while the rest of the world looks more resolutely ahead.
“When you look at the shovel-ready projects, almost none of them have started, even though they were awarded conditional on being design-ready and ready to start within either six months or 12 months,” Bollard said. “That pushes us to another big issue which is our consenting process is complex, slow, legalistic, expensive, and we have huge room for people to be able to object to plans even when they are not actually closely impacted by them.”
MARK TAYLOR/STUFF
Dr Alan Bollard, chairman of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, speaks at the 2021 New Zealand Economics Forum at Waikato University. About 20 per cent of project budgets relate to consenting costs, and “in some cases a lot more”, Bollard said.
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