Television One News

Television One News

Parliament - Modelling Industry Sleaze - Hunger Strikers Free Tomorrow - Yeltsin Ill - Northern Island Coalition

Day of firsts in Parliament - Labour and Alliance MPs arrived at Parliament today for their first caucus meetings of the new leading parties.
National MPs mulled over defeat.
The Labour/Alliance coalition deal could be done and dusted by Monday. Instead of a nine week lottery the parties this time are promising a smooth transition, daily briefings and no surprises.
A full ceremonial welcome was offered to the new and re-elected MPs. Prime Minister elect Helen Clark continues to be cautious while Alliance leader Jim Anderton is rushing to set the agenda.
Helen Clark says the coalition will be signed formally on Monday and the Cabinet makeup will be announced after around mid-week.
The Green Party co-leader Rod Donald says the greens will make no concessions for the Labour/Alliance coalition as neither party has made a concession for the Greens in recent years. That is unless it benefits Green policy.
National is facing an electoral post-mortem examining where it went wrong. Deputy leader Wyatt Creech says the people wished for a change and did not oust National for what it had done.
Labour’s Maori MPs met today in a special Maori caucus led by Dover Samuels. He said he is encouraged at the team approach showed by the new MPs.

Modelling Industry Sleaze - A warning for kiwi models - Last night’s Assignment documentary exposed slease and corruption within the world’s major fashion and modelling companies. An aspiring kiwi model says she was shocked by the revelations which show “disgusting” practices going on at the highest level.
Maysie Bestal-Cohen says she has met one of the men said to be using young teenage girl models for sex. She said he had seemed a nice man.
Rachel Hunter’s mother says modelling is not a glamorous job.

Hunger Strikers Free Tomorrow - The asylum seekers applying for refugee status in New Zealand will be given temporary visas and will be released tomorrow. Labour justice spokesperson, Phil Goff, says the men, who were on a hunger strike for over a month and imprisoned in Mt Eden Prison, should only have been imprisoned should they have posed a risk to New Zealanders or were likely to have disappeared. He says neither of these situations seemed to have been likely in this case.

Yeltsin Ill - Russian president Boris Yeltsin is ill with pneumonia and has been hospitalised. Yeltsin has been sick for years, had a quad-heart-bypass and recovered, but constant illness has followed. Russia’s presidential elections are scheduled to take place in six months. Prime Minister Putin is expected to be elected and take over from Yeltsin.

Northern Ireland Parliament - Northern Ireland has set up its power-sharing coalition between Protestant and catholic factions, with representation also from Sein Fein. Britain is expected to transfer powers to the coalition later this week.

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