10 May 2017

Top Stories for Wednesday 10 May 2017

From Morning Report, 6:00 am on 10 May 2017

The number of New Zealanders granted permanent residency in Australia has plummeted. In 2012 the number was about 2500- but in the eight months to February the number was just 45. Labour MP Peeni Henare is backing the party's Maori campaign manager and list candidate Willie Jackson, who says a Labour government should not shut down all charter schools. Two MPs and party leaders who don't own homes, James Shaw from the Greens and David Seymour from Act lay the blame for the difficulty of home owning at the feet of those who have more than one home each. "The fact that the average National MP owns 2.2 properties of their own," says David Seymour, "might suggest why they've spent a lot of time introducing solutions that you'd almost suspect weren't meant to work - because they certainly haven't." The full horror of the throat slashing incident in a school production of Sweeney Todd in which two boys were injured is laid bare in a report by WorkSafe. St Kentigern's School in Auckland used cut throat razors covered in tape. In a major move that's gone largely under the radar, drug-funder Pharmac is widening access to an expensive medicine. It's Harvoni, for those who are extremely sick with Hepatitis C. Some people living in Edgecumbe say the stress of last month's flooding means they will never go back to the town to live. Staff at the Hanford nuclear waste site, 300 kilometres south east of Seattle, have been ordered to "take cover" after a portion of a tunnel contaminated with radioactive materials appeared to collapse. News sites in the US are reporting a portion of a storage tunnel that contains rail cars full of radioactive waste has collapsed forcing an emergency declaration at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington state. We talk to our US correspondent. For the first time in a decade South Korea has elected a liberal President, choosing former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in. It follows the impeachment of Park Geun-hye after a corruption scandal. Analyst Scott Snyder joins us from Washington DC.