/on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/rss ¾ÅÒ»ÐÇ¿ÕÎÞÏÞ Sat, 23 Aug 2025 12:47:45 Z en /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-another-bleak-milestone-in-the-appalling-war-in-gaza/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-another-bleak-milestone-in-the-appalling-war-in-gaza/ I like to try and kick things off on Saturday mornings with a bit of cheer, but I tell you what, it’s hard to look beyond yet another bleak milestone in the appalling war in Gaza. Overnight, the UN-backed food security body has confirmed famine in Gaza City. It has officially reached that threshold, the first time famine has ever been declared in the Middle East.  As the UN Secretary General declared, this is a man-made catastrophe. There are many, many third party countries that want to get more aid into Gaza. A shortage of food is not a problem, access is.  Two years ago, immediately after the October 7th attacks, I said a few things on this show. I want to share with you again a few words from that day.  “Israel has the right to exist in peace. Palestine should have the freedom of statehood. Both of those things can be true. The deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians is an appalling, utterly inexcusable act of violence. The systematic flattening of Gaza, no water, no power, no food, is an unacceptably brutal collective punishment for a huge civilian population where almost half of people are children. Both of those things can be true, too.”  As the war has progressed, the scale and nature of Israel’s reprisals has made it obvious to many millions of fair-minded people that a country born from the gravest atrocities last century is now also responsible for them. Figures from a leaked Israeli database this week suggest 83% of those killed in Gaza have been civilians.  Of course, Israel denies genocide and war crimes. But independent verification is nigh impossible, as no journalists are allowed in and many of those on the ground have been killed in Israeli attacks.  One of the many great tragedies for all of this is that it has become increasingly clear that Israel has played into Hamas’ hands. Evil as the strategy might have been, Hamas wanted to spur an extreme and disproportionate response. Motivated by their own agendas and self-preservation, Israel’s leaders fell for it. And now we have kids, mere minutes from the Mediterranean, with ribs sticking out of their skin, dying of malnutrition.  The thing I still don’t understand is how any Israeli leader thinks this will ultimately make their people safer. Maybe in the short-term Israelis can sleep easy at night, but every innocent person killed in Gaza breeds hate in five other survivors. The war in Gaza has condemned generations of Palestinians and Israelis to insecurity.  I’ll finish with a line I wrote and shared with you immediately after the October 7th attack, which sadly feels just as relevant today.  “It’s a cycle. Hate and violence is a cycle. There is no way for any party to kill and fight their way to a lasting peaceful resolution. Hamas’ attack has spurred the Israeli reprisal. The reprisal will spur Palestinians into violence in the future, which in turn will spur an Israeli reprisal. Rinse the blood and repeat. Hate breeds hate breeds hate.”  Fri, 22 Aug 2025 22:25:18 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-transparency-and-the-flaws-of-the-covid-inquiry/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-transparency-and-the-flaws-of-the-covid-inquiry/ I think we are all served best by transparency in government.     Leaders should be accountable for their decisions, and they should be willing to take our questions and answer them in a public format.    But it’s pretty clear to me the Covid Inquiry has fallen victim to bad and even cynical design, shaped by politics rather than a sincere desire to get a full accounting of our response.  It’s a shame, because it threatens to undermine some of the inquiry’s more useful conclusions. It is a missed opportunity.    In my view, there’s plenty of blame to share. I think the first phase of the Covid Inquiry, introduced by the last government, missed some critical elements in its terms of reference. Worst of all was the decision not to include vaccine efficacy. For something so fundamental to the response, and so important to some New Zealanders that they were willing to lose relationships, jobs, and livelihoods over it, I think the effectiveness of vaccines and whatever slim risk they carried, should have been included. I think it’s clear that different vaccines had different impacts on different variants. You can see how this might impact our procurement decisions in future.  In principle, I supported expanding the inquiry until I saw the refreshed terms of reference. If it was to be a sincere effort to consider our Covid response, the good calls and the bad, in order to move forward and better prepare for the next pandemic shock, how could you leave out the first year of the response? Sure, much of the second phase of the Inquiry might have focused on vaccines, but it also focused on lockdowns and control measures. If you really cared about our Covid response, you’d start that line of inquiry with, you know, the start of the pandemic. To exclude the period when it wasn’t just Labour in government and to exclude what have proved to be the more popular components of the government’s response was disingenuous and cynical.  The Covid-19 response was vast and complex. It’s almost impossible to unpick every decision because you have to try and separate the information we have now from the information we had at the time. The virus has cast a long shadow in New Zealand. Our response undoubtedly saved a lot of lives, but it wasn’t without costs. The pandemic might have been over ages ago, but the economic and social impacts endure.  One thing I’d add to the Royal Commission’s conclusions is that next time we need to find a better, respectful way to hear and consider dissenting views. Media obviously plays a critical role in this. But although I think we did a reasonable job last time, I reckon next time is going to be much more difficult.  Depending on the circumstances, it may not massively change government policy or the public health response. Given the conspiratorial nature of the fringiest elements, it may be an impossible task. Nevertheless, I think one of the key lessons from the Covid years is that somehow making people feel heard and respected instead of ostracised is a vital part in preventing the worst of the societal division that still afflicts us, years on.  Fri, 15 Aug 2025 21:55:14 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-love-a-bit-of-subterranean-mass-transit/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-love-a-bit-of-subterranean-mass-transit/ When I first moved to New York, I spent my first year living in a railroad apartment above an Ecuadorian fruit shop on Second Avenue.   It was a character-building experience. I went weeks without heating or hot water in winter, and my windows had almost no effect whatsoever in keeping out the ceaseless sound of trucks thundering past my bedroom enroute to restock the city.    When I arrived they’d just start construction on the Second Ave subway, a few blocks from my home. The project was hitting a few speedbumps. Bedrock turned out to be deeper than anticipated, a worker nearly died after being stuck in waste-deep slop on site, and what was supposed to be a controlled explosion sent rocks flying all over a busy Manhattan intersection.  Curiously, the Second Ave subway route was first proposed in the 1920s, which Wikipedia tells was about the same time that planners first mused over the possibility of the Morningside Deviation, a train tunnel in central Auckland.    Stage One of the Second Avenue subway was a 3.2km tunnel. The Central Rail Link is 3.5km.   Second Ave ended up costing more than $7 Billion. The Central Rail Link blew out however many times but at last check was $5.5 Billion.    The weird thing about a big underground tunnel development is that most of us never fully appreciate the scale of the work. It’s obvious I suppose, but even if you live and work in the city, while you get used to a few cones and traffic delays up above the ground, you have no real perspective about the extraordinary activities happening somewhere beneath your feet.  Auckland Transport has this week released its updated transit map with the CRL stations. Apparently they’ve done 1600 test runs so far. They’ve run trains more than 5000km – Kaitaia to Bluff two-and-a-half times. They’ve been driving trains at 70kmph directly underneath Auckland’s CBD and at no point have I felt so much of a rumble or a shudder. I reckon the vast majority of us up top have been absolutely none-the-wiser. The kid in me who briefly considered becoming an engineer (and even volunteered to spend a school holiday touring the Lyttelton Tunnel) can’t help but think that’s pretty cool.   After riding along on a VIP tour yesterday with all the politicians and movers-and-shakers, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown was in vintage form.    How was it? He was asked.   “It was a ride in a train.” He said.    “We don’t want excitement.”   Well, maybe not. But guilty as charged.    Maybe it’s the engineering. Maybe it’s the people-watching. Maybe it’s the broader sense of momentum and life, but whether it’s a tube, an underground, or a subway, I love a bit of subterranean mass-transit.     You know you’re a nerd when you’re less excited about the opening of New Zealand’s first IKEA than the transport connection you’ll take to get there.   After years of construction, the Second Ave subway opened two weeks before I moved back home. One of the last things I did on my last few days in New York was ride a loop. Not because I had somewhere to be but because I wanted to see what all that fuss and money and effort had created, out of sight, underneath my feet.    I can’t wait to do the same thing here.  Fri, 08 Aug 2025 21:45:44 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-new-zealand-v-aotearoa-what-does-this-bill-achieve/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-new-zealand-v-aotearoa-what-does-this-bill-achieve/ Are you better off than you were two years ago?    Are you bathing in the soothing waters of the long-promised economic recovery? Is your future more secure? Is your food more affordable? Your insurance? Your rates? Is your road smoother? Are your children better educated? Is your water less polluted?  Or do you think some of our most senior leaders’ time and attention is better used fussing over measures like the order of words on our passports and the transfer of payWave fees from a surcharge to the main bill?   The latest folly, announced by our Foreign Minister on a week in which Gaza was stricken by starvation, and the US thanked us for opening an FBI office here by increasing proposed trade tariffs, seeks to enshrine the name ‘New Zealand’ in law.    Ah yes, what a pressing issue. Tell you what, between that and the passport reordering, those tens or hundreds of thousands of kids who’ve fled to Australia are gonna be clambering over one another to get back home.  Here’s my view on the name of our country: call it what you want. You want to call it Aotearoa? Fine. You want to call it New Zealand? Fine. You want to combine the two? Go for it. You do you.  The thing about language is it’s fluid. It changes over time. There’s a reason we don’t all speak in Shakespearean prose. And it has nothing to do with compulsion.   To those who say an increasing use of Aotearoa is some sort of affront to our collective values, I’d have thought freedom of expression is a value more worthy of protection. And for what it’s worth, if New Zealand First was trying to enshrine the name ‘Aotearoa’ in law, I’d have the same response.  One of the justifications given for this member’s bill is that using Aotearoa threatens NZ Inc., our international brand. Is there any evidence that our exporters are being compelled en-masse to send their products overseas with the name Aotearoa, instead of New Zealand? Who, pray tell, is risking that international brand value by forcing this change on the packaging of our top products? I’d suggest it’s a pretty unsophisticated exporter who would voluntarily confuse their international customers. Or, you know, maybe this just isn’t really a big deal.   I’ve a real distaste for performative politics that either drum up angst about a problem that doesn’t exist or do something symbolic at the expense of real action.   I never cared for the trend of councils and governments declaring Climate Emergencies and patting themselves on the back, while simultaneously doing nothing new in a policy sense.   There is a very simple way to see through this specific bill. Consider the timing. If the name of New Zealand is seriously so threatened, why didn’t New Zealand First introduce this bill 12 months ago? Why not six years ago? Why not negotiate it into the coalition agreement when they formed a government?   My instinct with this kind of move is always the same. Don’t ask ‘What does this achieve?’ or ‘Why is this an issue? Instead, ask ‘what are they try to distract us from?’   The ‘meh’ jobs report? The lame economic growth figures? The gang numbers ticking over 10,000 for the first time ever, this week? Or could it possibly be the fact that a few hours before the New Zealand (name of state) member’s bill was announced, Australia and the UK achieved comparatively lower trade tariffs with the United States, while our government’s top officials were apparently surprised to learn that our tariff had been increased? Actually, maybe we should call ourselves Aotearoa. Who knows? It might have confused Donald Trump just long enough to keep us at 10%.     Sat, 02 Aug 2025 03:00:14 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-coldplay-kiss-cam-and-what-it-reveals-about-human-nature/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-coldplay-kiss-cam-and-what-it-reveals-about-human-nature/ In the end it was only a matter of time.   It took a day or two of virality for the CEO caught cheating in the now truly infamous Coldplay kiss cam to publicly announce his departure from the company. I’m frankly surprised it took much longer for the woman caught canoodling in his arms to do the same thing. She was, after all, the Chief People Officer for the same company. On top of what I can only imagine is a personal calamity, the incident strikes me as a fairly grave professional conflict of interest. Indeed, the company that employed them both has announced that she is now gone, too.  I’m not gonna pretend to be all high and mighty. Like however many hundreds of millions or billions of people around the World, I found myself titillated by the video. It’s so dumb. So clumsy. Perfect fodder for a viral sensation.  But in the last few days, as the stories have continued, I’ve also found myself thinking a bit more about what the whole thing says about us more generally.   As consumers and sharers of information on the internet, loling, liking, and sharing, there is no way for us to collectively manage a degree of proportionality in a viral screw-up.  They did the deed and they can suffer the consequences, you might argue. Sure, but at the same time, these people didn’t commit a crime. They have been dishonest, absolutely. Unprofessional? For sure. But while I don’t want to be too much of a downer, I can only imagine that right now, it feels like the price they’ve each paid is the complete and absolute destruction of their entire lives. And even if you do think that in this instance they deserve the consequences whatever they might be, what’s to say you’ll feel the same way the next time someone goes viral? There is no controlling the wildfire. And once it’s shared and shared and shared again, the scale of a viral humiliation compounds faster than at any point in human history.    And how about their families? Would you want to find out your husband or partner or parent was cheating? Most of us might say yes, painful as it might be, that truth in that situation is for the best. But what if it meant a fifth of the world’s population found out at the same time? What if it meant every student at your kids’ school knew what had happened and would bring it up for the next twenty years.    Again, I’m not being miserable and saying it wasn’t funny. It was funny! My point is that once a moment like this hits the internet, there is absolutely no controlling it. And there’s a little sliver of this whole saga that has felt a bit Black Mirror.  A few years ago, I read that amazing book, ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’, by Jon Ronson. It had some extraordinary examples of people who’d gone viral for saying or doing really dumb, offensive things. But it also articulated something primal, something a bit ugly, a hunger in as a species to hunt as a pack, and the collective glee we take in casting someone aside and making an example of them in public.    No policy, no force on Earth can stop a viral moment. It just has to burn out. There is no firebreak, no finger in the dyke. That video will have been viewed by eyeballs in every country and on every continent. But while that video said a lot about human nature, arguably its spread around the world has said just as much. Are you not entertained?  Fri, 25 Jul 2025 21:47:58 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-a-tribute-to-an-artist-whos-work-enriched-my-life/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-a-tribute-to-an-artist-whos-work-enriched-my-life/ I played the trombone in high school.    I know what you’re thinking: squeaky-voiced Jack running through a few scales on his big brass slide? Hello Ladies...    But honestly the fact that my instrument was seen as a bit quirky was kind of an attraction for me at the time. What the trombone wasn’t —at least back then— was very cool.   To my mind it was good for jazz band and good for a blast in orchestra, but I wasn’t creative enough to find or even search for a different sound with my trombone. Brass had its place and that was that.   But the year after I left high school, Based on a True Story hit record stores. I’d never heard of Fat Freddy’s Drop, but I was played a song by a friend and I bought the album the day it was released. I know it was 2005, because I can literally remember buying the CD from a Sounds record shop. I can remember walking down Madras Street in Christchurch with it burning a hole in my bag, so excited to play it.   Let me tell you, I’ve never thrashed an album so much in my life. The way it starts off so sparse, those simple plunking piano keys, and then builds and builds and builds.    The sound was so exciting. So different. So cool.  Man, I thought. If I’d known this kind of music existed, this blend of dub and reggae and jazz and soul, with its brass component, too! As much as I have enjoyed Glenn Miller arrangements, I might have branched out a bit further with my high school music mates and the old ‘Bone.   I’m no celebrated music afficionado but it occurs to me that Fat Freddy’s Drop are a prime example of musos’ musos. They’re a band which loosely formed from a crew who just like jamming. They’re a band that loves to play live, that still just loves to improvise. And, at least from the outside, they seem utterly unconcerned with the trappings of rock’n’roll stardom, with glossy magazine covers, fame and riches. Forget your 3-minute, four-chord tricks to sell into the top 40 radio stations, if you’ve been to a Fat Freddy’s concert, you’ll know it can be hard sometimes to know when a song begins and ends.    I also think there’s a real, distinct New Zealand flavour to their music. There’s something Pacific, something relaxed, unshaven, and unconcerned. The sound of the Kiwi summer road trip. For the year I lived in the States, I’d always crank it up any time I had an American in my apartment as if it were a statement of identity.  It probably says a lot about the band’s aspirations, motivations, and priorities that despite their incredible international success, the individual members of Fat Freddy’s Drop aren’t all household names in this country. I know next to nothing of their private lives. And of all the members, I reckon I’d only have been able to name two, off the top of my head, if you’d asked me earlier this week: Dallas (friend of the show), the singer, and Mu.  Chris Faiumu founded Fat Freddy’s Drop. He produced their music, and as DJ, his beats, blends, and samples were the foundation of so much of their art. I feel my experience with his work will be similar to that of so many others in New Zealand and around the world. I feel really saddened by news of his death, and so grateful, so grateful, for the music he made that seriously has enriched my life.  Fri, 18 Jul 2025 21:54:10 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-question-of-going-solar-is-when-not-if/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-the-question-of-going-solar-is-when-not-if/ Last month we set a new household record.   Blame the baby, the extra washing, the old house, the cold weather, the dehumidifier, and whatever else. But despite booking in hours of free electricity across the month, between the gas heating and electricity, our family energy bill for June 2025 was the highest it’s ever been: $540.    I know we’re very comfortable relative to so many families, but even so, that has gotta change. But while of course there are things we as a family can improve upon, I’m very aware that there are only so many gains to be won from policing light switches and shower times. I’m seriously wondering about solar.   I read an amazing set of stats in the New Yorker magazine this week about the scale and development of solar energy around the world. This is all big picture stuff... mainly the huge industrial solar farms, rather than household solar, but a couple of these numbers absolutely blew me away.   First of all, solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history. Globally, a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels is being installed every fifteen hours on average, which means if you set a stopwatch running right now, new solar panels equal to the entire electricity generation capacity of New Zealand will be installed and running by midnight on Thursday night. Next week? The same. And the week after that. And the week after that.    Another fact. It took 68 years from the invention of solar panels for the world to install the first terawatt of solar generation. That was 2022. It took just two years to install the second terawatt of generation. And it’s gonna take a year to 18 months to install the third.    By next year, the International Energy Agency says solar energy will generate more electricity than all the world’s nuclear power plants combined. By 2029, more than hydro dams. By 2031 more than gas and by 2032, more than coal. Globally, we are generating a third more energy through wind and solar than this time last year.    The Chinese are miles ahead of anyone else on this, but even gas-guzzling America is changing fast.    Why? Are we doing it because it’s the right thing? The moral thing? The climate-conscious thing?   No. The huge surge in solar is being driven by economics. Put simply, solar power is way, way, way cheaper than other forms of electricity generation. Between batteries and solar panels, the technology is only getting better and only getting cheaper. Ten years from now, as reported in that article, the International Energy Agency says solar power will become the world’s main source of all energy... not just electricity, but all energy.   I’m not naïve about solar’s limitations. Few of us need reminding —especially given the last couple of weeks— that there are times when the sun doesn’t shine. And right now, in the depths of winter, when our family’s energy bill is the highest, is the time of year when solar panels on our rooftop would likely be generating the least electricity.   But if I take a step back and think about solar in the context of the whole year, it makes increasing economic sense to me. In summer I reckon I could wipe off a massive chunk from our energy bill. And whatever savings I make then can contribute to offsetting the bills in the middle of winter.   All I knew when I looked at my energy bill this week is the status quo isn’t gonna be sustainable for our family. Rather than debating if we’ll go to solar, the only question for us now, is when.  Fri, 11 Jul 2025 22:04:05 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-guaranteed-drama-in-gallic-sporting-endeavours/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-guaranteed-drama-in-gallic-sporting-endeavours/ Let’s be honest, so far as All Blacks tests go, this is a bit of a funny one.     If you were just weighing the odds on paper, I suppose there’s good reason why you might favour Les Bleus.   I hadn’t realised it until this week, but we’re coming off a three-game losing streak against the French, and you’ll remember last year’s first All Blacks test in Dunedin was a nail-biting one-point victory. The All Blacks didn’t scream cohesion. Add to that the fact I still don’t think we have an emphatic answer for who should start at ten, and Tupou Vai’i, surely one of the World’s best locks, is playing blindside flanker!     And yet the French are playing eight debutants and have left a slab of their elite stars back home. If it were any other test nation, I think New Zealand Rugby would have the right to kick up a bit of a fuss about the whole situation. But given the French and their history of spirited unpredictability on the rugby football pitch, it probably makes sense to secure a dominant victory before moaning about the standard of the opposition.   You can just imagine it, can’t you? No sooner would we lodge a formal complaint than a French rugby team with a prop at first five or a winger throwing the line outs would intercept an errant pass in the 84th minute or accidentally charge down the match-ending clearance kick with their replacement fullback’s face in a freak moment of sporting brilliance to pip the All Blacks for yet another famous victory.   An All Blacks test is an All Blacks test and the first of the season always gets me fizzing, but truthfully I realised I’d crossed a curious little Rubicon of sorts this week when I noted in myself an even greater sense of excitement about a completely different Gallic endeavour which happens to coincide with tonight’s game.     The Tour de France kicks off tonight. And I dunno what it is, but over the last few years it has become appointment viewing for me on the international sporting calendar. I think the romance and agony of it all is just so alluring. The way that riders slowly decay over the three weeks and more than 3000km. The way teams have to work to secure individual victories. The spectators lining the road, running with the leaders, often getting far, far closer than would ever be allowed in any other sport. The psychology of it! It’s madness. Imagine cycling for hundreds of kilometres in intense heat or over a mountain range, only to get back to your bus and know you have to do it again the next day. And the next day. And the day after that.  I honestly thought after the Lance Armstrong saga that I was done with the Tour de France. But whether it’s the Netflix treatment or the incredible, generation-defining rivalry of the World’s two best riders, I’m very much back in the saddle.  So there’s my pick. I reckon the All Blacks are well-placed to blast the French in Dunedin. But if you haven’t watched it in a while, and you want guaranteed sporting drama... hang around a few more hours tonight for stage one of Le Tour. You will not be disappointed.  Fri, 04 Jul 2025 21:30:26 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-jeff-bezos-wedding-is-an-expensive-affair/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-jeff-bezos-wedding-is-an-expensive-affair/ $82 million.    As we go to air this morning, that’s a rough estimate for the amount of cash going up in smoke as Jeff Bezos marries his bride at a star-studded Venetian affair.    Eighty-two million. And I thought my wedding was an expensive affair!  Everything’s relative, of course. $82 million represents just a fraction of the total wealth of the world’s third-richest man. To try and appreciate the true magnitude of his $300 billion estimated wealth, I put his finances into a scale that I can better understand. If every Jeff Bezos dollar was one second —so that one minute was $60, and one hour was $3600— depleting Jeff Bezos’ wealth would take more than 11,000 years.    You’re gonna think I have a particular thing for Jeff Bezos. I honestly don’t. I was one of those bagging his fiancée's space flight a few weeks ago, but I swear it’s nothing personal. I would just be so embarrassed to be spending that much money to get married in a place where it would appear a reasonable number of locals don’t want me.  I’ve spent enough time in media to know it’s hard to properly gauge these things from the outside. Protestors say Bezos has bought half the city and that his bash is an obscene example of money trumping every other concern. But the local mayor says that anyone blocking up the canals in protest or hanging out with banners and signs represents a tiny minority of Venetians, and actually the vast majority of Venetians are happy to welcome Bezos, his big bucks, and his blockbuster mates.    Consumption in these European hotspots is clearly becoming a greater sore point. The backlash to the Bezos wedding recalls the protestors in Barcelona who’ve been going around and squirting visitors with water guns to protest the impact of overtourism on housing and infrastructure in the city. Whether it’s Italy, Spain, or Portugal, qualities that made coastal European cities so romantic and alluring in the first place are swiftly destroying them in the Airbnb, cheap flights, and mass-tourism age.   Would you still go? I can confess to having visited both Venice and Barcelona during backpacking trips fifteen odd years ago, but I’m not sure I’d return anytime soon. Increasingly as I travel, I’m a little repulsed by the crowds at the absolute hottest spots. And I’m aware that like a driver complaining about a traffic jam, I’m part of the problem.  The Mayor of Venice who has so staunchly defended the Jeff Bezos wedding says he’s embarrassed by the protests. The wedding is a great source of much-needed revenue for the city, he said. Italy’s tourism Ministry put out a report suggesting it could provide the city a tourism boost of more than $1 billion dollars. It’s a great way to put Venice on the map.   I dunno. I’m not sure Venice needs to be put on the map! Maybe I’m wired differently but watching the scenes in Venice has, if anything, made me less likely to go back.  Fri, 27 Jun 2025 22:28:01 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-travelling-with-a-baby-what-could-go-wrong/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-travelling-with-a-baby-what-could-go-wrong/ Everyone says the best time to travel with a baby is before it can walk. Makes sense, when you think about it. Most toddlers, once they’ve learnt to trot around the place, live for nothing more. All they want to do is walk. In fact, if you think about it, you really don’t want to get close to even blurring the line between rolling and crawling and waddling away. The moment your child is old enough and independently spirited enough to drag themselves around, you’re done for. There is no reasoning with an exhausted one-year-old on a packed 777. You can’t calmly explain that actually the pilot has just put on the fasten seatbelt sign. You can’t even vegetate them with a screen. As the old advice goes, if you’re going to travel with a young one, you’re best to do it when they’re really young. Hold them tight and they’ll mistake turbulence for rocking. Chuck them on the boob or the bottle if their ears are popping. And hey, you’ll be at your destination in no time! Or not. As someone who usually prides themselves on embracing new experiences, even I’ll concede that as our departure date approached, I felt an unmistakably growing sense of anxiety about our journey: 24 hours to Toronto with a four-month-old little boy and his eight-year-old brother. It all seemed so easy when we booked the tickets! The stress really kicked in the moment the taxi arrived to take us to the airport. Having purchased a special travel carseat secondhand, it was a rude shock to discover that it didn’t really fit our cab like it fitted the cars in the instructional YouTube videos. Cue ten minutes of wrestling and cursing and a t-shirt neckline already drenched in sweat. Timing an 8pm flight with a baby means being at the airport at 6pm, which means getting a cab at 5.15pm. Our boy is fine in a carseat so long as he’s moving. But when it’s the beginning of a long weekend and everyone is leaving Auckland at once, nobody’s moving. You’re lucky to get more than a couple of car lengths without coming to a standstill again. By the time we arrived the airport he’d already screamed his lungs out and my blood pressure was sitting somewhere between concerning and see-a-medical professional immediately. Just 23 hours to go. I’ve travelled enough and been sat next or near enough babies to know a lot of the theory around flying with little ones, but the thing you only fully appreciate once you’re in charge is how precarious any moment of peace always seems.  They might be fast asleep in their mother’s arms as the plane taxis to the runway, but he’s never more than a little jolt away from potentially stirring and screaming. It’s like you’re cradling a pink, chubby little grenade who’s missing a pin. He might go off and it might be catastrophic. He might scream and scream until all the babies on the flight slowly tip off each other, like a cadre of car alarms at 30 thousand feet. Or he might just sleep. The potential for either option is never more than a few seconds away. Of course, some things are just destined to go wrong. The moment you put your baby in the bassinet and he goes to sleep, there will be turbulence and you’ll be forced to take him out, bright and alert as a little meerkat. The moment you successfully navigate the Row 48 bathrooms and their slippery changing table and make it back triumphant to your seat, you will recognise a familiar straining expression on your baby’s face. The moment you’re sure that your son couldn’t possibly have any more burps and you just happen to lower that spill cloth for a couple of seconds, he will make sure to exploit that sartorial weakness so before long, his dried milk can mix in with that dried sweat from the taxi, earlier on. The moment you land, you will discover there’s been a mix up with the luggage and the carseat that’ll take a long time to fix and jeopardise your connection. It will be Lord of the Flies in the customs queue, you will miss your connecting flight and the replacement will somehow fail to have to transferred the infant’s booking... so what, you ask, do you suggest we just leave him in Vancouver? Most of this isn’t any one person’s fault, but rather the inevitable hiccups when navigating the crazy logistics of internal travel. In fairness, Māni did about as well as anyone could expect of a four-month-old, but travelling long haul with a baby has certainly tested my enthusiasm for the whole new experiences thing. Sure, he might have spewed in the middle of the aisle while half the plane was watching him. He might have gone through a dozen nappies, three rompers, a cardigan and no fewer than five bibs, but next time I’ll remember that I’m the one who needs to pack extra clothes in his carry on. After it all, there we were, more than 24 hours since we left home, pulling into a quiet street in a little town on Lake Ontario. It was almost 3.30am, local time, the dead of night. Māni’s grandparents were waiting to meet their grandson for the first time. Māni’s great-grandparents were waiting to meet him for the first time. Bleary eyed and teary eyed, we hugged and cried in the warm summer air. Sons, daughters, aunties, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Four generations, together. And it was all worth it. Fri, 20 Jun 2025 21:35:43 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-what-skills-should-we-actually-be-teaching/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-what-skills-should-we-actually-be-teaching/ I still remember the exact seat where I was sitting.    It was 20 years ago, and I was primed for one of the key exams in my tertiary education. I’d passed Teeline shorthand at 40 words a minute. 50 words, 60 words, 70 words. To progress on my journalism course and ultimately earn a degree I had one final challenge: I had to pass a Teeline shorthand exam at 80 words a minute.   We learnt Teeline from a wonderful tutor, a woman named Julie with exacting standards, a wicked sense of humour, and a way with words. She’d peer over your shoulder when you were tracing out different characters.   “That’s a squitty-looking outline,” she’d say with a wry smile.  The moment I realised I’d passed 80 words a minute, I walked up to the front of the class and kissed her on the cheek. It took five months of work with daily lessons. I drilled myself with cassette tapes at home. But in a stuffy room on Madras Street, finally, I’d done it.  But here’s the crazy thing. That was the very last time I seriously used Teeline shorthand. That’s no reflection on Julie. She was an amazing tutor, and shorthand skills had been fundamental for journalists for however-many decades. But back in 2005, what no one had apparently stopped to consider was whether those skills would be necessary in a world on the cusp on smart phones. What’s the point in trying to keep up with shorthand when your phone can record a verbatim interview and even transcribe it in real time?  Since our son was born, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about my shorthand experience in the context of AI. And I kept returning to a fundamental question: what skills and knowledge should we actually be teaching our kids?   In the UK, surveys have suggested that 90% of university students are using AI to help with assessments. I’m frankly surprised it’s not more. But educators around the world are trying to grapple with how to get around the likes of Chat GPT, Claude, and DeepSeek in assessing students’ learning. So far at least, technology which purports to scan students’ submissions for signs of AI is having mixed results at best. Many assessors are advocating for a complete return to in-person exams with hand-written essays.  And yet in stewing over this, I couldn’t help but wonder if in some ways that misses the point. It’s like long division in the age of the calculator. Sure, it’s a nice-to-know. But be honest. Do you actually use it? How many of us actually need manual long division skills in the modern age? What’s the point in rote-learning historical dates when they are but a Google away? What’s the point in learning where to place a semicolon when you can always spell and grammar check your work?  When it comes to AI, instead of trying to work around it, I wondered, are we not better just to fully embrace it and try to teach our kids how to maximise the utility of the technology?   Ultimately, two points have given me reason to pause. First of all, it occurs to me that we’re not very good at foreseeing what skills will and won’t be relevant in the workplace of the future. It was only a few years ago that everyone was urging young people to drop everything and learn how to code. Now, coding jobs are among the first ones being gobbled up generative AI.   And it’s easy in reflecting in my Teeline shorthand example to miss the even greater lesson. It’s true, Teeline skills haven’t been necessary or helpful in my almost-twenty years of journalism. But what has been helpful is the discipline that experience taught me. What has been helpful is the organisation skills, the accountability, the professionalism. In learning Teeline, I learnt shorthand. But more importantly, I learnt how to learn.  Whether it’s through long division, historical essays or anything else... surely that is the skill should aspire to educate in our kids.  Fri, 13 Jun 2025 21:55:52 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-trump-and-musks-alliance-is-imploding-in-the-most-spectacular-fashion/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/jack-tame-trump-and-musks-alliance-is-imploding-in-the-most-spectacular-fashion/ Who could possibly, in their wildest dreams, ever have imagined it?    Who could possibly have foreseen that the world’s wealthiest man and the world’s most powerful politician might blow up their bromance in the most spectacular fashion? Elon on Don? Feuding? Nooooo. Say it ain’t so!    The curious thing is the pair of them do have a few qualities in common. Hypocrisy, for starters. Having pledged many dozens of times to pay down his country’s debt, Donald Trump pushed forward legislation that will actually grow the debt by an estimated NZ$4 trillion. Having pledged to cut waste from the same government’s spending, Elon Musk heroically cut support for HIV-positive mothers while simultaneously taking billions of dollars in subsidies and contracts that benefit his own companies.    Another common quality? The speed with which they both go nuclear. In the space of a few hours we had Trump threatening to cut SpaceX funding, Musk threatening to decommission the rocket used to get US astronauts to space, and an accusation about the Epstein files made without any evidence, which nonetheless, I thought the White House was notably less-than-emphatic in denying.    In my view, Elon Musk has been heading for a fall for a long, long time. I think his behaviour is erratic. Whether it’s Nazi salutes or his public statements, I think he seems unbalanced. I think the reporting about his drug use is consistent with his appearance at the White House and the fact he’s in multiple custody battles with multiple women over children he’s barely spent any time with says an awful lot of awful about his character. And while, sure, at his best, he has achieved some extraordinary things, you only need to log in to X to see that one of the most productive human beings in the history of our species is these days dedicating an obscene amount of his time and energy to juvenile posts, lies and conspiracies on social media.    Unlike Trump, Elon Musk isn’t charismatic. He isn’t funny. The more people see of him, the less they like him and his products. And despite his threats to start a third political party and take down Republicans who support the President’s bill, he doesn’t have anything like the pulling power or cult support of the President. In April, Musk poured almost NZ$50m into a single judicial election in Wisconsin and his candidate lost. If anything, Musk’s money and his support hurt the guy’s chances.  Who knows where this feud is headed? Maybe they’ll cool off and make up in a few days. Regardless, there will only be one winner. It won’t be Elon Musk.    Fri, 06 Jun 2025 21:59:50 Z /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/francesca-rudkin-mcclures-ai-deepfake-bill-is-a-common-sense-move/ /on-air/saturday-morning-with-jack-tame/opinion/francesca-rudkin-mcclures-ai-deepfake-bill-is-a-common-sense-move/ It’s not often you will hear me unreservedly champion an ACT policy, but I am all in when it comes to their concern and policy response to sexually explicit deepfakes.   The US and UK are leading the way with legislative changes on this, New Zealand law lagging well behind.   ACT MP Laura McClure has prepared a bill to restrict the generation and sharing of sexually explicit deepfakes. Recently she announced "The Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill expands existing legislation around revenge porn and intimate recordings, and ensures that those who produce or share deepfakes without consent face criminal accountability, and victims have clear pathways to seek redress and removal of harmful content." This is a common sense move in a tech area which is so fast moving that we’re always playing catch up. Once upon a time we warned our children about nude pics. When it became apparent some just couldn’t help themselves, the recommended advice became that if they were sending pics, they should avoid showing identifiable features – you know, like their faces. The imagery that technology can now create in mere minutes far exceeds the considerable peril posed by the consented nude pic. Kiwi born Bloomburg journalist Olivia Carville has dedicated her career to unearthing the dark side of tech and the internet, and in her recent podcast Levittown focuses on the rise of deepfake pornography, and the battle to stop it. In the podcast she tells the story of how photos of young women were doctored without their consent, they were then shared on a website where men were encouraged to discuss what they would like to do to these women. It’s all a bit much for a Saturday morning I know, but it’s a fascinating podcast worth listening too, and even though it’s a New York story it has a crazy New Zealand twist to it. The point is though, the harm and trauma that comes from sexualised AI deep fakes is real and impactful, and victims must have legal grounds to do something about it. But it’s also about public clarity and drawing a strong line under what not acceptable. It’s thought 90- 95% of online deepfake videos are non-consensual pornography, and around 90% of them feature women.  McClures bill is a member's bill at this stage, but she has written to the Minister of Justice urging that the bill is adopted as a Government bill.  I hope they take her up on her offer.  Fri, 30 May 2025 21:48:14 Z