Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Scrapping NCEA is seen as a chance to highlight the importance of the trades.
A New Zealand Initiative report argues replacing the main secondary school qualification could be a chance to help ease skills shortages in construction and healthcare.
Its calling for subjects to be designed with industry boards and students in mind.
NZI Senior Research Fellow Dr Michael Johnston says there's hundreds of apprenticeships available, and more students should be given 'industry training' for the trades.
"It could be electrical engineering, it could be mechanical engineering, it could be construction, animal husbandry, these kinds of things."
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

King Charles and Queen Camilla spent the day with the Trumps at the White House, beginning their four-day US state visit.
The royal visit follows the weekend shooting outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner - with a gunman charging a security checkpoint outside the Washington Hilton.
UK correspondent Enda Brady says the royals will be walking a 'diplomatic tightrope', given the tensions between the US and UK amid the ongoing Middle East conflict.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While most of the world will hold interest rates and wait out the energy shock, Australia and New Zealand are set to lift their rates up.
Both nations are looking to bring down inflation, and the ongoing fuel crisis is set to pose additional economic risks.
HSBC Chief Economist Paul Bloxham explained why this is the case.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

New Zealand and India have signed a landmark FTA - which is set to slash tariffs on Kiwi exports to India.
The agreement will now be examined by Parliament’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee before legislation is introduced to bring it into force.
The Country's Jamie Mackay explains how Kiwi farmers will benefit from this arrangement.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I’ll tell you what I found most surprising about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at the weekend: the number of people who do not believe it really happened or that it was a genuine attempt at all.
There are a remarkable number of people who believe the incident was staged and who are openly discussing that belief, including claims that Trump was not actually shot through the ear a couple of months ago.
Well, it was more than a couple of months ago - but you get the idea.
Within hours of the attempt on his life, the term “staged” appeared in more than 300,000 posts on X. A former CIA agent has gone public saying he thinks it was staged because security moved JD Vance before they moved Donald Trump, which he says is against protocol.
Trump, of course, hasn’t helped matters. In his first news conference afterwards, he argued the assassination attempt proves he needs to build a new ballroom because it would be much safer.
That is obviously not the logic of a normal person who has just been in the same building as someone with a gun who wants to kill them.
And if we’re being honest, it probably doesn’t help that Trump has now had so many assassination attempts on his life that it’s starting to feel like each time it happens, you care a little less. It also doesn’t help - frankly - that it’s Trump. He is so unconventional that it is more believable he would stage a false-flag event like this than, say, Barack Obama, who is far more conventional.
I’m resisting the temptation to take the mickey out of people who don’t believe the assassination attempts were real.
As silly as it seems to me - and I do think it stretches credibility to believe Trump would stage not one but at least two attempts on his own life, given how much could go wrong when weapons are involved - part of me actually takes comfort in the number of people thinking this way.
I might not agree with where they’ve landed, but I like the fact that they are assessing the facts for themselves and reaching conclusions different from mine, different from the majority view, different from the consensus.
It’s strange that this is where some people’s minds go. Clearly, someone tried to kill Trump at the weekend and thinking otherwise is a conspiracy theory.
But maybe conspiracy theories aren’t all bad if they at least show that people are exercising their brains independently.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.