Peter Bruce - Iri is a climate activist based in Whangarei who has written a quite remarkable book about the important role plants play in cooling our planet.

He says we humans have degraded about half of the vegetation of land and oceans and thereby destabilising the climate and warming the planet.

His message is that by stopping this destruction, revegetating as much as possible, regenerating soils and the water cycle, and eliminating our use of fossil fuels we can heal the climate sooner than we might might think.

I talk with him about his very readable book and his idea that we can use plants to heal the climate. I particularly like the practical advice on what you and I can do to help fix the climate mess we have created.( My favourite is not mowing the lawn!)

Head2Head is made possible thanks to the generosity of my paid subscribers. If you are receiving this post for free, please consider upgrading to paid. For $9 a month (less than a cup of coffee each week) will not only give you access to all my documentaries and premium posts, you will get to join a group of New Zealanders in our chatroom who comment on posts and discuss the issues that are important to all us who want to live in a fairer,more democratic society.

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Dr Gary Payinda is an outspoken Emergency Medical Specialist based in Northland

In this Head2Head interview he spells out why patients are waiting so long to see a doctor in our overcrowded hospitals, and hundreds of thousands of us are on waiting lists for surgery.

And what is the root cause of the problem?

Answer - a political ideology that panders to the wealthy few at the expense of the many, by cutting taxes and privatising essential services that should remain the collective responsibility of government.

For make no mistake, the agenda of the present coalition government is to privatise our public health system - and the sly way they are doing it , the speed at which they are doing it, and the impact it is having on our lives and society, is all made clear in this conversation.

But this interview is no hand- wringing excercise.

Near the end of our conversation we talk about what you and I can do to actively protest this assault on our hard- won public health system.

We have to make the invisible,visible.

So please listen to Gary’s frontline description of what is happening in our health system and stay tuned for action points, in the coming days, weeks and months that we can all take to turn this dire situation around .

You can find more of Dr Payinda’s writing here:

Head2Head is made possible thanks to the generosity of my paid subscribers. If you are receiving this post for free, please consider upgrading to paid. For $9 a month (less than a cup of coffee each week) will not only give you access to all my documentaries and premium posts, you will get to join a group of New Zealanders in our chatroom who comment on posts and discuss the issues that are important to all us who want to live in a fairer,more democratic society.

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Melanie Nelson has been deep diving into David Seymour’s very dangerous Regulatory Standards Bill and reveals how its real aim is to embed ACT’s libertarian agenda into our legislative process to the detriment of the public good.

You can find out more about Melanie and her highly researched writing here:

I attended The Child Poverty Post Budget Hui yesterday and managed to catch up with economist Bernard Hickey for his take on the 2025 Willis budget. He is so informed and such a good communicator. If you don’t read or listen to any other analysis make sure you listen to his one.

Please take 20 minutes to understand that we don’t have a debt problem. What we have is an ideology problem.

The quote of the day, for me, came from a young speaker from Kelston Boys High School.

He framed robbing women of pay equity in terms of mothers who are struggling to pay the bills while striving to give their kids a better chance in life. He put it poignantly:

“You can’t put down mothers and expect their children to rise up and do well.”

Such insight from a such a young man. It took my breath away.

If you are receiving this post for free, please consider upgrading to paid. For $9 a month (less than a cup of coffee each week) will not only give you access to all my documentaries and premium posts, you will get to join a group of New Zealanders in our chatroom who comment on posts and discuss the issues that are important to all us who want to live in a fairer,more democratic society.

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We live in a world where social media is expanding exponentially and dominated by tech giants such as Facebook, Google or X, who collect your data in order to exploit it. Which is why New Zealand developer Selwyn Manning has created PodTalk.live a community platform for Kiwis, like you and I, to allow us to talk with each other in a safe internet environment.

I recently spoke with Selwyn about his new platform because I’m interested in promoting local solutions that help us claw back control of our lives from the huge Multinational Corporations.

To give you a bit of background about Selwyn; among his many accomplishments he has a Masters Degree in Communication Studies with Honours from AUT University, and was editor, director, and former chair of the board of directors of Scoop Media Ltd. He was appointed as establishment chair of AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre (2007-2009), and chair of AUT University’s school of communications Industry Advisory Board (2012-2013),

These days Selwyn provides analysis, assessment, and evaluation of the political environment specific to New Zealand, Australia, the economies and island states of the Asia-Pacific region with a specialisation in the analysis of geopolitics, cyber-security, and, intelligence issues.

He is the author of the book: I Almost Forgot About The Moon – the disinformation campaign against Ahmed Zaoui, and director of the documentaries Morality Of Argument – sustaining a state of being nuclear free, and, Behind The Shroud – juxtapositioning the frailties of intelligence and trade craft.

His work has caused ministerial inquiry, legislative and regulatory change, and has been the foundation of Parliamentary debate.

So Selwyn Manning is a trusted name, and if you are interested in the safe online discussion space he has created, please go to the url PodTalk.Live , register for free, and check it out.

( Please note I am not profiting from Podtalk.live or promoting it for money. I am simply recommending that you check out a clever Kiwi .)

My Head2Head interview series is made possible because of my paid subscribers. (thank you )

For $9 ( inc gst ) a month - less than a cup of coffee a week - you can not only help me speak truth to power and give a voice to those who have none, but also gain access to my premium posts, documentaries and podcasts plus join a great bunch of intelligent New Zealanders who want to make a difference, in our chat room

In this episode of Head2Head I talk with two remarkable political economists who are passionate and informed advocates of the “compassionate economy “ - the idea that economy should serve the people and not the other way around and is kinder to our life sustaining planet.

Professor Liz Grant holds a chair in Global Health and Development at the University of Edinburgh and is responsible for developing and supporting global health partnerships with colleagues in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) communities, and for local and global advocacy translating global health research into action.

Liz is a co-director of the University’s Global Compassion Initiative developing work on the value base of the Sustainable Development Goals, the science of compassion, and the contribution that faith communities make to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Liz has led the development of a suite of global health MSc programmes, MOOCs and coordinates the Global Health PhD programme all specifically designed for students from resource constrained countries. She currently is the Co-Director of the Masters of Family Medicine and the MSc in Global Health Challenges

Her own research interests span planetary health and palliative care in contexts of poverty and conflict – new beginnings and better endings.

She sits on the Scottish Government NHS Global Citizenship Board and was on the Board of Directors for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, (CUGH), an association of over 170 Academic institutions training in Global Health, and currently chairs the CUGH Research Committee.

DR KATHERINE TREBECK is a political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change. She co-founded the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and also WEAll Scotland, its Scottish hub. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute and a Strategic Advisor to Australia’s Centre for Policy Development. She sits on a range of boards and advisory groups such as The Democracy Collaborative, the C40 Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy, and the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity.She is a New Economics Senior Fellow at the ZOE Institute, a Fellow of The Leaders Institute and a Distinguished Fellow of the Schumacher Institute. She worked for Oxfam GB for eight years’, where she developed Oxfam’s Humankind Index and led work on downscaling the ‘doughnut’ for various contexts.Katherine has Bachelor Degrees in Economics and in Politics (University of Melbourne) and holds a PhD in Political Science from the Australian National University. She was Honorary Professor at the University of the West of Scotland and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde.In 2019 she co-authored The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown Up Economy (with Jeremy Williams and published by Policy Press), and her report Being Bold: Budgeting for Children’s Wellbeing was launched in March 2021.

Head2Head is made possible because of the generosity of paid subscribers to my Substack who value independent public journalism that speaks truth to power, gives a voice to those who have none, and promotes positive ideas that will make the world a better place for the the many, not the few.

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On the eve of Trump imposing tariffs that will upend the world economy I interview renowned world political economist, and New York based, Prof Richard Wolff.

He is a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachuesetts Amherst and a visiting professor in the graduate program in international affairs of the New School. He has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Paris (Sorbonne) and The Brecht Forum in New York City.

If you listen to no other podcast on economics this year I urge you to listen to this one. Over the course of our hour long conversation Prof Wolff not only unpacks Trumpism and the impact his tariff agenda will have on the world economy, he provides a razor sharp analysis of Capitalism and offers practical solutions on how we could put an end to the rule of the oligarchs and a create a fairer society.

If you would like to know more about Prof Wolff’s work and how we can return to having a meaningful democracy in our daily lives please visit :

https://www.democracyatwork.info

His youtube channel has just over 500,000 subscribers and you can find here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/democracyatwrk/videos

Prof Wolff will be beaming in from the USA as a key speaker at the Post-Capitalist Aotearoa: Wellington Conference to Explore a New Economic Future at St Andrew’s On The Terrace

April 23 -24 2025 which you can find out about and register at

www.proutresearch.nz

Or contact

Bruce Dyer

Email: info@proutresearch.nz

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