At a campaign event, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon responds to a deaf former dominatrix, telling her that her business's failure was due to a "demand issue". The dominatrix attributes her business's failure to public sector cuts in New Zealand's capital.
New Zealand's Public Service Association has created what they believe to be the world's first official translation of a Collective Bargaining Agreement into a Sign Language.
The move, pushed by union member Janet Stokes, the first deaf person in New Zealand on a union's bargaining team, has seen the translation of the Specialist Residential Schools' Collective Agreement into New Zealand Sign Language (one of New Zealand's 3 Official Languages)
Janet Stokes, a 20-year long union delegate of the Public Service Association, is a tutor co-lead at Ko Taku Reo, New Zealand's national Deaf Educational Service, which provides both residential schooling options, and individual tutoring for deaf children who attend mainstream schools.
Janet is fluent in both English and NZ Sign language, and found a large aspect of her role was translating the collective agreement to deaf staff who used New Zealand Sign Language as their first language. This led her to push for the official translation of the collective employment agreement covering staff at Ko Taku Reo into NZ Sign Language.
A majority of PSA union members at Ko Taku Reo are deaf, so this translation has come about due to a genuine accessibility need from union members.