Across The Ditch with Selwyn Manning and Peter Godfrey.
WOF & Transport Issues: South Australia is looking to require some vehicles be tested for road worthiness, and Selwyn Manning and Peter Godfrey discuss how it works in New Zealand.
The Antarctic Blast: There’s a polar blast moving up the South Island. Heavy snow falls have occurred in Southland and Otago – causing farmers to move some livestock to sheltered areas, and South Islanders to stock up on essentials. Yesterday evening 20 vehicles became stuck in snow in Southland on State Highway 6 overnight. And further north, flood warnings have also been issued. In short, Kiwis are in for a darn cold weekend!
The Metservice says every area of NZ has a weather warning of some sort.
Pokie Deals Done Dirt Cheep: After the National-led Government stitched up a ‘new convention centre for a law-change’ deal with SkyCity casino (effectively seeing the casino increase the number of pokie gambling machines at its Auckland City site) – The Government will reform the law to make community pokie operators cough up more of their profits returning the loot from gambling to the community.
The NZ Herald reports:
“Internal Affairs Minister Chris Tremain said Wednesday that the gambling reforms would make the non-casino gaming sector more transparent, save industry from compliance costs, and increase funding to the community.”
It adds: “At present, gambling societies or trusts which redistributed pokie proceeds had to return a minimum of 37 per cent of this money to sports groups and other community organisations.
“Mr Tremain said he had proposed that this threshold increase, initially to 40 per cent and later to between 43 and 45 per cent.”
But the Salvation Army, Labour and the Green Party are not happy. The Sallies say the new laws will not address a rise in the number of people addicted to gambling.
Across The Ditch broadcasts live weekly on 5AA Australia and webcasts on The Daily Blog.
