The Sunday Newspaper Brunch Club

On the Sunday Newspaper Brunch Club today at 11am, Sky Digital 65, Co-host Wallace Chapman from Kiwi FM Breakfast and Union Activist Erin Polaczuk.

STORY 1 – Mortgage about to bite hard
In the next 12months, 30% of mortgage holders will come off 7% fixed interest rates to interest rates over 10%, how will NZers cope? As the property market is superheating will we see people being thrown out onto the street? Will the way of dealing with the poor stoop to these new levels?
Funeral director threatens to exhume body over unpaid bill
A Rotorua funeral director has threatened to exhume the body of a teenager because his family has not paid his funeral bill. Richard Bennison of Gray's Funeral Services says he would not be allowed to dig up the teenager's grave but had hoped the threat would prompt the family to pay. The teenager's older sister said Bennison "gave me the impression that it would happen".

STORY 2 – Another child abused
Nia Glassie was apparently beaten by those who should have protected her, and we have words like ‘subculture’ getting muttered and Wanganui mayor Michael Laws, in his Sunday Star-Times column today, writes: "These are sick perversions from a Maori subculture which is protected on a daily basis by their ethnicity” – do we want to understand the reasons why this happens or do we get too angry to even look at the issue?

STORY 3 – When child abuse is okay
Net porn hits Aussie quarantine service. Eleven Australian quarantine officers have been sacked and another 14 have resigned for calling up and storing pornography on work computers, with some of the material involving children. The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service has investigated 71 of its staff from Sydney, Darwin and Perth after being tipped off last September about widespread abuse of the computer system. The federal agency also fined 25 officers and reprimanded nine, while five had their salaries reduced. One officer is receiving counselling and six are yet to have their reprimand determined in the investigation, which is continuing. 25 out of 70, that’s over a third of Quarantine officers using porn including child porn, yet there is no suggestion here this is a national emergency that demands the army and police becoming involved and the loss of land rights for 5 years.

STORY 4 – But he’s a terrorist
'Terrorist' doctor goes free. Australia has released terrorism suspect Mohammed Haneef after the collapse of the case claiming he supported relatives implicated in last month's failed bombings in Britain. Federal Director of Public Prosecutions Damien Bugg yesterday dropped a charge of recklessly providing resources to a terrorist organisation against the 27-year-old doctor who was arrested on July 2. And Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews further backed down from his earlier determination to deport Dr Haneef on character grounds, instead releasing him from detention. But I thought he was a terrorist who recklessly supported terrorism, is there a charge of recklessly charging someone with recklessly supporting terror?

STORY 5 – Dozens of Afghan civillians die in air raids
Dozens of civilians, including women and children, have been killed in two foreign air strikes in southern Afghanistan, residents and a local member of parliament said on Friday. One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south. Wali Jan Sabri, a parliamentarian from Helmand, said he had credible information that between 50 to 60 civilians had been killed in a battle between the Taliban and NATO forces in Girishk. He said most of the victims were killed in air strikes. Are we doing anything good by remaining in Afghanistan?