Lindsay Perigo presents the issues of the day in depth. “When the new Minister of Police Roger Douglas gets his first official briefing from Police Commissioner John Jamieson on Monday, it will be against a backdrop of rising crime, especially violent offending. Figures released today show serious assaults rising out of proportion to other kinds of law breaking. As Rob Harley reports, acts of violence are producing a real determination in some police officers who put their quarry behind bars.”
Lindsay Perigo interviews Irvin Waller, Professor of Criminology, Ottawa University in the studio.
Angela d’Audney presents the news of the day. Waterside workers have warned that they are prepared to use violence if necessary to beat employers in their dispute over the national award. There was an emotional welcome in Fiji today for the Auckland woman Margaret Johnson who battled alone in the Pacific after her husband was swept overboard in a storm. An extensive search in the Far North has failed to find two fishermen last heard of since Tuesday. People in the East Cape settlement of Ruatoria are tonight living again in fear of arsonists after further fires. In the Far North conservation staff have shot four of the stranded pilot whales at Houhora Bay. This country’s largest psychiatric institution, Porirua Hospital, is under threat of closure as the Wellington Area Health Board struggles to control a $17 million budget blow out. The Board is yet to make a final decision, but is talking about moving the 700 patients to other institutions or out into the community. In Christchurch tonight about 1000 people braved the rain to protest hospital cuts. Christchurch’s geriatric hospitals Coronation and Jubilee are being shut by the Board as part of an effort to slice $30 million from its budget.
[Foreign news - Voyager II, Eastern Europe]
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