QUESTIONS FOR ORAL ANSWER

Wednesday, 17 October 2001

Questions to Ministers

1. Hon ROGER SOWRY to the Minister of Health: Will the Ministry of Health provide extra funding to National Women's Hospital if it needs to send pregnant women to Australia due to overloading of hospitals with sick newborns; if not, why not?

2. JOHN WRIGHT to the Minister for Economic Development: What contribution to economic development is made by public sector enterprises?

3. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Minister of Fisheries: Has he got full confidence in the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Fisheries; if so, why?

4. KATHERINE RICH to the Minister of Broadcasting: Will she guarantee that structural changes to Television New Zealand will not result in falling revenue, increased costs and declining audience share; if not, why not?

5. Dr MURIEL NEWMAN to the Minister of Social Services and Employment: How many unallocated notifications, classified as urgent, does the Department of Child, Youth and Family Services currently have that have not been allocated for over six months, and how many of these have been unallocated for over a year?

6. DAVID BENSON-POPE to the Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education): What evidence is there that tertiary education institutions are focusing on emerging skill and knowledge requirements?

7. ERIC ROY to the Minister for Biosecurity: Is he satisfied that the current border control management is providing adequate protection; if so, why?

8. NANAIA MAHUTA to the Minister of Education: What progress has the Government made in the implementation of the Information and Communication Technology strategy?

9. Hon MURRAY McCULLY to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises: In light of his statement to the House on 9 August 2001, in relation to the issuing of proceedings by New Zealand Post Ltd against the Hon Richard Prebble, that he had "asked the chairman of New Zealand Post whether he had sought board approval. His answer was yes." and of his earlier written advice from the Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit that if the chairman had not received such board approval "there would be strong grounds for seeking Dr Armstrong's resignation", what steps would he take if it was demonstrated that Dr Armstrong's assurance was wrong?

10. IAN EWEN-STREET to the Minister for Biosecurity: How many live black widow spiders per year would have to arrive in New Zealand on Californian table grapes before the Government would consider them a sufficient biosecurity risk to ban importation of Californian grapes?

11. Dr WAYNE MAPP to the Minister of Corrections: Why is the Government failing to implement the 1999 Act of Parliament empowering the Department of Corrections to monitor prisoners' phone calls?

12. MITA RIRINUI to the Associate Minister of Education (Tertiary Education): What steps has the Government taken to address skill constraints in the economy?

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>