A young person seriously injured after violence broke out at a party remains in hospital after surgery, and police say the incident was isolated, but neighbours say it’s an ongoing issue that needs to be tackled.
A vehicle drove towards partygoers, injuring two people, and two others were injured during wider disorder. Some reported that partygoers were attacked with machetes.
Detective Senior Sergeant Anthony Darvill said some what unfolded at the party was unacceptable: “I want to reassure people that we are working as hard as we can to get to the bottom of what happened.
Broken glass is on the corner of Springleigh Ave and Jerram Street.RNZ / Jessica Hopkins
“This behaviour won’t be tolerated in our community, and investigators are working diligently to identify those responsible and hold them to account for their actions.”
Police understood there was frustration and concern surrounding the incident, among the community, but the incident appeared to be isolated, Darvill said.
However neighbours said problems with out of control parties in the small street were ongoing.
Short term stay house creating problems, neighbour says
Neighbours have told RNZ the house the party was held at on Friday is listed on short-stay accommodation platforms, but said previous efforts to highlight ongoing disruptions connected with parties at the property – and another next door – had been unsuccessful.
Rosemarie PowellRNZ /Jessica Hopkins
Phyllis Street resident Rosemarie Powell said locals had raised the problems with local MPs and other authorities, and asked for measures making landlords more accountable, but nothing had changed.
“Our emergency services having to clean up these problems – you know, young people getting really hurt – these are all the symptoms of something that’s much broader that needs to be dealt with, and I think that’s landlord accountability for short-term rental,” Powell said.
“It is cheap and easy for teenagers to book this property for one night to have a house party that, as demonstrated last night and many times before, can get quickly out of hand.
“Neither the landlord nor the people booking the house have connections with the neighbourhood and community, there is no oversight or accountability if there is underaged drinking or drugs being consumed.
“No one has to face their neighbours on the street the next day, and noone cares about the many small children who live on the street. Not to mention the very real and demonstrable risk the young people are exposed to who attend these gatherings.”
Broken glass is on the corner of Springleigh Ave and Jerram Street.RNZ / Jessica Hopkins
The ongoing situation was frustrating, she said: “It does create a real lack of security in the short run.”
And in a city where there was a housing shortage it chafed doubly so: “In the long run it’s also just a waste of a home that could be housing a family.”
Powell said she understood the landlord was a foreign businessman who owned a number of properties across the city.
“These properties are essentially land banking, and are not in any way supporting local housing and accommodation needs. Some families have lived in these homes from time to time, but the long-term rent is too expensive for them. We have great local schools, sports teams etc. Close to supermarkets, public transport.
“These houses could provide a home for a family who would benefit from and contribute to the neighbourhood. Instead they are used to land bank, and as a venue for completely unaccountable parties that turn violent.”
Lack of regulation and enforcement for properties available for short-term rental was the underlying problem, she said.
“It is not acceptable that landlords can get away with accepting short-term bookings without any background reference, or proof of age for example, and oversight and responsibility for what happens on their property.”
Anna McKessarRNZ / Jessica Hopkins
Another neighbour, Anna McKessar, earlier told RNZ incidents that spilled out of earlier parties at the properties had “turned into this massive thing”, and included damage to cars and fences in the street.
“It’s pretty upsetting for neighbours, and the person that owns those properties has never shown up, never apologised, and shown no remorse,” McKessar said.
Powell hoped the latest incident would spark broader investigation and discussions on the issue, “so that we can help to hold landlords and the wider system accountable to help reduce harm in the future.”
Detective Senior Sergeant Darvill said police want to hear from anyone with footage from the event, or who had not yet spoken with police.
Information can be provided by calling police on 105 or visiting their Update Report page online at 105.police.govt.nz and quoting file number 260328/8294, while information could also be reported anonymously, through Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, or on their website.
Health NZ said there was the potential for identity overlay.RNZ / Peter de Graaf
A patient advocate is warning that the consequences of people receiving incorrect medical treatment due to mistaken identity can be catastrophic.
Health New Zealand has acknowledged people may have received incorrect medical treatment due to two people being mistakenly linked to one active National Health Index Number.
An NHI number is an alphanumeric identifier assigned to people who use health and disability services.
Health New Zealand told RNZ that although NHI numbers were unique, there was the potential for identity overlay, where two people were mistakenly linked to one active number.
”This can occur where two people’s personal information is nearly identical, and the health provider selects the wrong person. These cases are identified and corrected quickly by Health NZ’s NHI Data Quality team through daily reporting on potential duplicates and overlays,” it said.
”Health NZ acknowledges it is possible that people have received incorrect treatment when a health provider has selected the wrong person.
“However, Health NZ does not hold any centralised information on such cases, and any information, if it exists, would be held only in individual clinical records at district or provider level.”
Patient Voice Aotearoa chairperson Malcolm Mulholland said that’s not good enough.
”It’s not good and it’s something that shouldn’t be happening and Health New Zealand should be able to articulate the size of the problem.”
“The mere fact that they are unable to do so indicates to me that there are some problems and, without having them resolved, the consequences can be quite dire for patients,” he said.
“One of my areas of concern would be around medication. So a lot of certain medications are listed to be given to a patient and the medication is given to the wrong patient due to this problem. That to me would be ringing alarm bells and could lead to some catastrophic health outcomes.”
Health New Zealand was approached for additional comment.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
A driver has died in a crash at the Beachlands Speedway racetrack in Dunedin.RNZ / Kim Baker Wilson
A driver has died in a two-vehicle crash at the Beachlands Speedway racetrack in Dunedin.
Police were called to the scene in Waldronville at 7:10pm on Saturday night.
General Manager of Speedway New Zealand Zoe Irons told the New Zealand Herald a Speedway driver had died on the track.
“At this time, our thoughts are with the family affected and everyone within our speedway community,” Irons said, according to the Herald.
A Serious Crash Unit have conducted a scene examination and WorkSafe will be advised.
Anyone who witnessed the crash or have footage are being asked to contact police.
A car crashed over the four metre-high safety fence into the spectator area at Beachlands Speedway during a streetstock race on Friday 5 April, 2024.Supplied/ Mikaela Cruden
In 2024, a car flew over a safety fence in a streetstocks race at Beachlands Speedway.
A video posted to Facebook showed a streetstock turning a corner before suddenly hitting another car and launching over the fences around the track, flipping just metres from the crowd.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
It’s the first of two spacecraft of a satellite navigation demonstration mission in low Earth orbit.RNZ/ Nate McKinnon
Rocket Lab has successfully carried out its first dedicated launch on behalf of the European Space Agency.
The New Zealand-US space company’s 85th launch was carried out from its rocket pad in Hawke’s Bay on Saturday night.
It’s the first of two spacecraft of a satellite navigation demonstration mission in low Earth orbit.
An eventual new array of satellites some 500 kilometres above the earth will test next-generation technologies for uses like autonomous vehicles, maritime navigation, wireless networks, emergency services, and critical infrastructure projects.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Ford has written to owners of Escape PHEVs regarding a battery issue.STR
An owner of a Ford hybrid vehicle that has had a problem identified with its battery says it could not have happened at a worse time.
Ford said it had written to the owners of some Escape PHEVs regarding a battery issue that could create a fire hazard, if they were fully charged.
“A manufacturing defect in one or more of the vehicle’s high voltage battery cells may cause the cell to develop an internal short circuit. Ford globally has had no incidents reported and the batteries we’ve checked, again globally, less than one percent have shown it to even be a potential issue.
“In NZ, we’ve had no known incidents and no batteries have yet been found to have the issue in question.
“However, as an added safety precaution, Ford has asked customers to limit the charging to 80 percent and drive in auto EV mode only. This is not a ‘stop drive’ issue.
“Ford is investigating a permanent solution and will be in contact again with customers asap.”
Brian Holmes said it was very inconvenient to be told his vehicle could “burst into flames”, when he wanted to rely on the battery more than ever.
He told Ford that, given the fuel crisis and the increasing uncertainty of the future price of petrol, the need to avoid using the full value of the plug-in hybrid could not have come at a worse time.
He had asked for compensation, but was told that a decision had not yet been made about whether that was possible.
“They don’t have a technical fix and have stonewalled my enquiry about compensation.”
Earlier, Westpac New Zealand managing director of institutional and business banking Reuben Tucker told RNZ demand for electric vehicles through the bank’s greater choices home loan top up and other loans for electric vehicles had soared.
“In the last two weeks, the number of applications for EVs through these products has roughly doubled,” he said.
“Hey, man. Jean-Michel Jarre in the New Zealand bush – what do you reckon?” read an out-of-the-blue 2am text Sam Scott received from filmmaker Taika Waititi.
A few months later, the Wellington musician and composer learnt about Hunt For the Wilderpeople, and he and Moniker collaborators Lukasz Buda and Conrad Wedde began working on its soundtrack.
But several months after the trio had scored the whole movie in “a very Jean-Michel Jarre way”, they were told a new direction had been decided on, and they had three weeks to present a new soundtrack from scratch.
This video is hosted on Youtube.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
The joint US-Israeli war on Iran has thrust back into the spotlight a divisive debate about whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog.
Who is in charge of this war: Israel or the United States?
One side believes Israel lured Trump into a trap from which he cannot extricate himself. The tail is wagging the dog.
The other believes that the US, as the world’s sole military super-power, is the one that writes the geo-strategic script. If Israel acts, it is only because it serves Washington’s interests as well. The dog is wagging the tail.
Certainly, the idea that the tail, the client state of Israel, could be wagging the dog, the military juggernaut that is the US, seems, at best, counter-intuitive.
But then again, there is plenty of evidence that suggests advocates for the tail wagging the dog scenario may have a case.
They can point to the fact that Trump launched this war of choice on Iran despite winning the presidency on an “America First” platform in which he promised: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Rushed into war His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, openly stated that the administration was rushed into war, finding itself apparently unable to restrain Israel from attacking Iran.
Joe Kent, Trump’s top counter-terrorism official, noted in his resignation letter that the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Addressing the Israeli Parliament last October, Trump appeared to confess to being under the thumb of the Israel lobby. As he praised himself for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the illegally occupied city of Jerusalem, he repeatedly pointed to his most influential donor, the Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, before observing: “I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean, Israel, I must say.”
A video from 2001 shows Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s Prime Minister, caught secretly on camera, telling a group of settlers: “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”
Former US president Barack Obama, who ran up against Netanyahu repeatedly as Obama tried and failed to limit the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements, thought the same.
In his 2020 autobiography, he wrote that the Israel lobby insisted that “there should be ‘no daylight’ between the US and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to US policy.”
Any politician who disobeyed “risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election”.
Obscuring the relationship But any rigid, binary way of framing the relationship between the US and Israel obscures more than it illuminates.
I addressed this issue in my 2008 book on Israeli foreign policy, titled Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iran, Iraq and the Plan to Remake the Middle East. My conclusion then, as now, was that the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv was better understood in different terms: as the dog and the tail wagging each other.
What does that mean?
Israel is Washington’s most favoured client state. It must, therefore, operate within the “security” parameters for the Middle East laid down by the US.
In fact, part of Israel’s job — the reason it is such an important client state — is because it has, until now, been able to enforce those parameters on others in the region.
But the story is more complicated than that.
At the same time, Israel seeks to maximise its ability to influence those parameters in its own interests, chiefly by shaping military, political and cultural discourse in the United States, through the many levers available to it.
Mobilised by Zionist lobbies Zionist lobbies, both Jewish and Christian, mobilise large numbers of ordinary people to support whatever Israel claims to be in both its and US interests.
Mega-donors like Adelson use their wealth to cajole and intimidate US politicians.
Think-tanks with murky funding write legislation on Israel’s behalf that US politicians wave through.
Legal organisations, again with opaque funding, weaponise the law to silence and bankrupt.
And media owners, all too often in Israel’s camp, mould the public mood to stigmatise as “antisemitism” anything that opposes Israeli excesses.
This makes for a very messy arrangement.
The trouble with the idea that the US simply dictates to Israel — rather than that the two are constantly bargaining over what constitutes their shared interests — becomes apparent the moment we consider the two-and-a-half-year genocide in Gaza.
Desire to ‘disappear’ Palestinians Israel has long had a fervent desire to disappear the Palestinians, whether through ethnic cleansing or genocide.
It wants the whole of historic Palestine, and the Palestinians are an obstacle to the realisation of that goal. Should the opportunity arise, Israel is also keen to secure a Greater Israel that requires grabbing and annexing substantial territory from neighbours, particularly Lebanon and Syria — as it is doing again right now.
After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel seized on the chance to renew in earnest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians it began in 1948, at the state’s founding.
It carpet-bombed Gaza, creating a “humanitarian crisis”, to force Egypt to open the floodgates into Sinai, where it hoped to drive the enclave’s population. Cairo refused.
As a result, Israel tried to increase the pressure by slaughtering and starving the people of Gaza. In legal terms, that constituted genocide.
But the idea that the US was deeply invested in Israel carrying out a genocide in Gaza, or directed that genocide, or had any particular interest in the genocide taking place, is hard to sustain.
Washington — first under Biden, then under Trump — gave Israel cover to carry out the mass slaughter of the Palestinian population, and armed and financed the genocide. But that is very different from it having a geostrategic interest in the mass slaughter.
Indifferent to Palestinians’ fate Rather, the US is and always has been largely indifferent as to the fate of the Palestinians, so long as they are contained. They can be locked up permanently in occupation prisons.
Or ethnically cleansed to Sinai and Jordan. Or given a pretend statelet under a compliant dictator like Mahmoud Abbas. Or exterminated.
The US will bankroll whichever option Israel believes best serves its interests — so long as that “solution” can be sold by pro-Israel lobbies to western publics as a legitimate “response” to Palestinian “terrorism”.
What Israel could get away with changed on 7 October 2023. The US was prepared to approve Israel shifting from a policy of intermittently “mowing the lawn” in Gaza — short wrecking sprees — to the incremental levelling of the whole of Gaza.
In other words, Israel worked all its levers to persuade Washington that it was the right time for it to get away with genocide. It sold to the US the plan that Gaza could now be destroyed.
To present that as Washington’s plan is simply perverse. It was decisively Israel’s plan.
That doesn’t diminish in any way US responsibility for the genocide. It is fully complicit. It paid for the genocide. It armed the genocide. It must own it too.
Similar Iran war analysis A similar analysis can be applied to the Iran war.
The US and Israel share the same larger policy towards Iran: they want it contained, weak, unable to exert influence. But they do so for slightly different reasons.
Israel demands to be regional hegemon in the Middle East, an invaluable client state with privileged access to Washington policymakers. Its supremacy and impunity, therefore, depend on Iran — its only plausible rival in the region — being as weak as possible and incapable of forging effective alliances with armed resistance groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Equally, Washington wants Israel unthreatened, leaving its ally free to project US imperial power into the Middle East.
But it has a more complex set of interests to consider. It needs to ensure that the Arab monarchies remain compliant, and it does so by both wielding a stick — threatening to unleash the attack dog of Israel on them should they disobey — and proffering a carrot — promising to shield them under its security umbrella against Iran so long as they stay loyal.
The ultimate goal is to guarantee unchallenged US control over the flow of oil and thereby the global economy.
In other words, the US has to weigh far more interests in how it deals with Iran than Israel does.
Effects on the global economy Unlike Israel, Washington has to consider the effects of an attack on Iran on the global economy, to assess any impact on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and protect against rival powers like China and Russia exploiting strategic missteps.
For those reasons, Washington has traditionally preferred maintaining a degree of stability in the region. Instability is very bad for business, as is being demonstrated only too clearly right now.
Israel, by contrast, regards its struggle against Iran in existential terms. Many in the Israeli cabinet view it as a religious war. They are not interested in simply containing Iran – a decades-old policy they believe has failed. They want Iran and its allies on their knees, or at least in so much chaos that they cannot pose any kind of challenge to Israeli regional hegemony.
That point was highlighted by Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s former national security adviser, this week in an interview with Jon Stewart. He cited recent comments to him by Israel’s former military intelligence lead on Iran, Danny Cintrinowicz, that Netanyahu’s aim is to “just break Iran, cause chaos”.
Why? “Because,” says Sullivan, “as far as they’re concerned, a broken Iran is less of a threat to Israel.”
In other words, Israel wants to engineer instability in Iran, which is sure to spread instability across the region.
Those two agendas, as should be clear by now, are not easily compatible. Which is why Netanyahu has spent decades working every lever at his disposal in Washington to create an appetite for war.
Had war been self-evidently in US interests, his efforts would have been superfluous.
Israel deployed its lobbies Instead, Israel has had to deploy its lobbies, marshal its donors and recruit sympathetic columnists to slowly shift the public mood to the point where a war was conceivable rather than patently dangerous.
And most importantly of all, Israel nurtured an intimate, ideological alliance with the neocons — hawkish, zealously pro-Israel US officials — who long ago gained a foothold in the inner sanctums of Washington.
Each recent administration has been a cat-fight over whether the neocons or more “moderate” voices would win out. Under George W Bush, the neocons dominated, leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel’s short war on Lebanon in 2006, and a failed plan to expand the war to Syria and then Iran.
Under Obama, the neocons were forced to take more of a back seat, which is why his administration was able to sign a nuclear deal with Iran that held until Trump ripped it up in 2018, during his first term as president. Biden, as with so much else, dithered.
In Trump’s second term, the neocons seem to be firmly back in charge, again weaving their mischief. The result — an illegal war on Iran — is likely to be a strategic catastrophe for the US, and a potential, if short-lived, victory for Israel.
So isn’t this the same as saying the tail wags the dog?
Sole repositories of power No, not least because that assumes the visible realm of US politics — the President, the Congress, the two main political parties — are the sole repositories of power in the system.
Even in this visible sphere, support for Israel has dramatically waned since the Gaza genocide. As the illegal war on Iran grows ever more costly, both in treasure and lives, support for Israel among US voters is going to fall off a cliff.
Israel is for the first time a deeply partisan issue, dividing Democrats and Republicans, as well as a generational divide between the young and old. It is even splitting the MAGA base Trump depends on.
Americans’ sympathies in the Middle East crisis. Source: Gallup World Affairs surveys
This political polarisation will continue to get much worse, ultimately freeing braver figures in US politics to start speaking out in franker terms about Israel’s nefarious role.
But power in the US isn’t just wielded at the formal, visible level. There is a permanent bureaucracy, with an institutional memory, that operates out of sight. We have gained brief glimpses of its covert operations from the work of Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s publishing platform for whistleblowers, and from Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed illegal mass surveillance by the US state of its own citizens.
Both suffered serious consequences for their efforts to bring a little transparency to a profoundly corrupt system of secret power. Assange was locked away in a London high-security prison for many years as the US sought to extradite him on trumped-up “espionage” charges, while Snowden was forced into exile in Russia to evade arrest and long-term incarceration.
That bureaucracy — sometimes referred to as the Deep State, or the military-industrial complex — doesn’t play or fight fair. It doesn’t need to. It operates in the shadows.
Curtailing Israel’s influence Were it to so choose, it could undermine the Israel lobby, and thereby curtail Israel’s influence over the visible realm of US politics.
It could effectively do to the leaders of the lobby — AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organisation of America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, Christians United for Israel, and others — what it did to Assange and Snowden.
It could, for example, influence public discourse to begin questioning whether these groups are really serving US interests or acting as foreign agents. That would, in turn, free up space for the media and legislators to call for tighter restrictions on these groups’ activities, requiring them to register as such.
The permanent bureaucracy is doubtless capable of doing much darker, underhand things too.
The fact that it hasn’t chosen to do any of this yet suggests Israel’s goals are not seen so far to be significantly in conflict with US goals.
But that could be about to change. In fact, the current, all-too-public debates about Israel driving the US into a war against Iran — an idea already seeping into popular consciousness — may be the first salvoes in the battle to come.
If the war on Iran turns out to be a catastrophic misstep, as it gives every appearance of being, there will be a price to pay — and leading US politicians are likely to scramble to shift the blame on to Israel. It may be that they are already getting in their excuses.
The all-too-visible freedom Israel has enjoyed in Washington to buy, bully and silence could soon become a central liability. It will not be hard to argue that a system so clearly open to manipulation that the US could be bounced into a self-sabotaging war needs to be remade, to prevent any repeat of such a disaster.
This may be the biggest lesson Washington learns from the war on Iran. That it is time to stop the tail wagging so vigorously.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published on the author’s Substack and reepublished with permission.
“On my first day as a refugee lawyer – in three different jobs – they thought I was the refugee, not the lawyer’, Perera says in a clip of her stand-up posted to social media that many Australians related to.
“The best thing about comedy is saying something very personal, but having it resonate around a room, around the country. That’s what makes it really, really beautiful.
“I keep looking over my shoulder like, is this allowed for an adult to be having quite this much fun?” she tells RNZ’s Saturday Morning.
This video is hosted on Youtube.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Ford has written to owners of Escape PHEVs regarding a battery issue.STR
An owner of a Ford hybrid vehicle that has had a problem identified with its battery says it could not have happened at a worse time.
Ford said it had written to the owners of some Escape PHEVs regarding a battery issue that could create a fire hazard, if they were fully charged.
“A manufacturing defect in one or more of the vehicle’s high voltage battery cells may cause the cell to develop an internal short circuit. Ford globally has had no incidents reported and the batteries we’ve checked, again globally, less than one percent have shown it to even be a potential issue.
“In NZ, we’ve had no known incidents and no batteries have yet been found to have the issue in question.
“However, as an added safety precaution, Ford has asked customers to limit the charging to 80 percent and drive in auto EV mode only. This is not a ‘stop drive’ issue.
“Ford is investigating a permanent solution and will be in contact again with customers asap.”
Brian Holmes said it was very inconvenient to be told his vehicle could “burst into flames”, when he wanted to rely on the battery more than ever.
He told Ford that, given the fuel crisis and the increasing uncertainty of the future price of petrol, the need to avoid using the full value of the plug-in hybrid could not have come at a worse time.
He had asked for compensation, but was told that a decision had not yet been made about whether that was possible.
“They don’t have a technical fix and have stonewalled my enquiry about compensation.”
Earlier, Westpac New Zealand managing director of institutional and business banking Reuben Tucker told RNZ demand for electric vehicles through the bank’s greater choices home loan top up and other loans for electric vehicles had soared.
“In the last two weeks, the number of applications for EVs through these products has roughly doubled,” he said.
“We don’t take the Force lightly, especially on their home patch and after the loss to the Brumbies last week it’s important we get the little things right on Saturday,” – Chiefs coach Jonno Gibbs.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Liam Lawson experienced a frustrating day in Japanese GP qualifying.AFP
Kiwi driver Liam Lawson will provisionally start 14th on the grid for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix, after a frustrating day at the Suzuka Circuit.
Lawson got through the first qualifying session comfortably, finishing with the 11th-fastest lap, with the top 16 progressing.
With six more dropping out after the second session, Lawson needed a good time in his Racing Bulls car, but fell short.
Team-mate Arvid Lindblad made it through, with the 10th-fastest lap, 1.541 seconds behind top qualifier Kimi Antonelli.
Antonelli will start from pole position, his second pole in a row, after the Chinese Grand Prix, which he won convincingly.
The 19-year-old Italian was fastest in the third qualifying session, with Mercedes teammate George Russell alongside on the front row. Oscar Piastri, who missed out on the first two F1 races of the season, will start from three, alongside Charles Leclerc, with Lando Norris and Lewis Hamilton next. Lindblad will start from 10th.
In the earlier final practice session, Lawson had finished with the 12th fastest lap, showing anger, after claiming he was blocked by one of the Haas cars.
“What the f***, man, oh my God,” Lawson said on his Racing Bulls team radio. “He just literally parked it on the apex the whole way through.”
Lawson earned his first points of the season at the Chinese Grand Prix, with top-10 finishes in both the sprint and the grand prix.
He sits on eight points, in ninth place, with Russell leading the standings on 51 points, four points ahead of Antonelli.
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Cure Kids chief executive Frances Soutter.RNZ / Pretoria Gordon
Cure Kids warns 60,000 children in New Zealand each year are admitted to hospital with a preventable disease.
It is calling for the government to take action, following the release of the fifth State of Child Health report on Friday.
The report found the hospitalisation rate for children with respiratory conditions had increased by 60 percent since 2000.
“These are not rare or unavoidable illnesses,” Cure Kids chief executive Frances Soutter said. “They are, in many cases, preventable and our youngest children are carrying the greatest burden.”
Soutter said those under the age of one accounted for half the children in hospital for a respiratory condition.
The report called for a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus or RSV to be funded.
Auckland University professor of paediatrics and emergency medicine Stuart Dalziel said RSV was the leading cause of bronchiolitis, which hospitalised one in 12 children per year.
Nirsevimab would prevent that, Dalziel said.
Auckland University professor of paediatrics and emergency medicine Stuart Dalziel.RNZ / Pretoria Gordon
The report also called for the influenza vaccine to be funded for children under five.
“We know that young children have the highest hospitalisation rates for flu and it plays a major role in spreading it within communities,” Soutter said. “This is a really practical, really cost-effective step that would protect our children and those around them.”
While the hospitalisation rate for those with rheumatic fever or heart disease had returned to the same level as before the pandemic, Pacific children were 43 times more likely to be admitted to hospital with the disease than other children.
University of Auckland researcher, associate professor Anneka Anderson.RNZ / Pretoria Gordon
University of Auckland researcher and associate professor Anneka Anderson said that rate could be reduced by more than 85 percent, if the inequities were eliminated.
“Rheumatic fever is one of our country’s most glaring health inequities, and the extreme disparities we see in hospitalisation rates for our tamariki Māori and Pacific children, compared to non-Māori, non-Pacific children, are unacceptable in a country with the resources Aotearoa has,” she said.
“With co-ordinated prevention strategies and sustained investment in research, this disease is entirely preventable.”
Health Minister Simeon Brown told RNZ that the government was focused on prevention, as well as improving the health of children and young people.
“Making sure children can access timely, quality healthcare close to home is a fundamental part of that.
“That is why we are so focused on ensuring families can see a doctor when they need to, including through free GP appointments for children aged 13 and under.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Cuba’s Ambassador to New Zealand, Luis Morejón Rodríguez, last night made a passionate plea for his country’s sovereignty in defiance of the illegal US-led fuel blockade of the Caribbean nation.
Speaking at a packed Auckland Trades Hall, he warned that the three-month oil blockade and energy blackouts threatened the country’s public health system with dire consequences for many patients.
“In Cuba today, approximately 16,000 patients undergoing radiotherapy and more than 2800 patients receiving hemodialysis depend every day on a stable electricity supply in hospitals across the country,” he said.
“These are life-sustaining treatments that cannot simply be postponed without risk.”
He said Cuba would continue to oppose Washington’s escalating military threats and economic pressure on his country.
New Zealand supporters of Cuba at last night’s solidarity public meeting in Auckland with Cuban Ambassador Luis Morejón Rodríguez. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Speaking alongside Ambassador Rodríguez was Dr Josephine Varghese, a Canterbury University lecturer who shared an eyewitness account of her recent trip to Havana.
She praised Cuba and “our collective fight against the global imperialism system”.
Military assault openly discussed A military assault on Cuba has been openly discussed by US President Donald Trump and other White House officials since the illegal January 2 strike against Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and also during the current war on Iran.
The Nuestra America Convoy humanitarian aid arrives in Havana this week. Image: Asia Pacific Report
However, two Mexican sailboats on the Nuestra America Convoy that has just arrived in Cuba this week were reportedly missing at sea and coast guard authorities from Cuba and Mexico are looking for them.
Ambassador Rodríguez said solidarity aid flotillas were really important for Cubans as they demonstrated global support.
During his speech last night, Ambassador Rodríguez said that when energy availability became uncertain, hospitals needed to prioritise essential services, and non-urgent procedures often needed to be delayed, preserving electricity and fuel resources.
“In other words, restrictions on fuel do not only affect economic indicators. They directly affect operating rooms, diagnostic equipment, medical treatments, and ultimately the health and well-being of patients,” he said.
University lecturer Dr Josephine Varghese talks about her recent Cuban solidarity experience on a visit to Havana. Image: Asia Pacific Report
‘Coercion and collective punishment’ “That is why Cuba has described these measures as economic coercion and collective punishment.”
Ambassador Rodríguez said the world was living in a moment when the international system was being tested.
“Increasingly, we see the logic of power challenging the logic of law.
“For countries like Cuba — small countries — international law is not an abstract concept. It is our main protection.”
He criticised President Trump’s claim in January that Cuba represented an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security.
“Let us pause for a moment and reflect on that statement. Cuba is a Caribbean island of 10 million people,” he said.
‘We do not project power’ “We do not possess nuclear weapons. We do not have military bases abroad. We do not project military power internationally.
“And yet we are described as an extraordinary threat.
“But this declaration is not merely rhetorical. It has very concrete consequences.”
With Cubans continuing to live under prolonged blackouts and the government preparing for military confrontation, the audience last night celebrated Cuba’s courageous resistance, saying it was an inspiration to the world.
The fuel blockade, enforced by the US naval armada in the Caribbean, piles pressure on top of Washington’s economic embargo that has been in place since the early 1960s.
Discussing the impact of the blockade on Cubans that she witnessed on her travel to Cuba in January, Dr Varghese said the unjust US measures “denied working people access to the most basic necessities, from medicines to electricity and transportation”.
She linked the Cuban crisis to the Palestinian, Iranian and Venezuelan struggles for peace and justice.
The Cuba Friendship Society, which sponsoring last night’s meeting chaired by retired trade unionist Robert Reid, noted that the only crime of Cuba and its people was that of overthrowing a US-backed dictator in 1959, and then defending their sovereignty and other conquests of their revolution in the six decades since.
The ambassador is also due to speak at public meetings in Christchurch and Wellington.
The Cuban flag and an iconic image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine Marxist revolutionary and guerrilla leader who played a key role in the Cuban Revolution at a solidarity meeting in Auckland last night. Image: Asia Pacific Report
Police chose Habitat For Humanity as a suitable charity.NZ Police
A local charity will benefit from stolen property, after a North Canterbury burglar was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court last week.
Last year, police identified a pattern of late-night burglaries at residential construction sites in Rangiora and Rolleston between March and April, where ovens, cooktops, lighting and other new fixtures were being stolen.
Area prevention manager Senior Sergeant Rachel Walker said the offending caused considerable stress, delays, and financial loss for homeowners and builders across the region.
The 42-year-old man was sentenced to nine months and 14 days’ home detention, Walker said.
“Amongst the sentencing conditions, the judge ordered that all recovered property that had no known owner was to be donated to charity,” she added.
The stolen goods donated to Habitat for Humanity New Zealand.NZ Police
“This is a great outcome and ensures that the community benefits from the recovery of stolen property.”
Police chose Habitat For Humanity as a suitable charity.
The charity focuses on providing and improving housing lower-income families through initiatives like rent-to-buy programmes and community rentals, allocating warm, dry and safe housing based on need.
“The remaining 52 appliances and fittings that were recovered by police may now provide direct benefit to community groups and families who need them,” Walker said.
“This was a great piece of investigative work from the team and even better that this goes towards helping people in our communities.”
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Follow all the Super Rugby Pacific action, as the Blues take on the Fijian Drua at Eden Park.
“The Drua are a dangerous side when you give them space. They play with a lot of flair and confidence, so for us it’s about being accurate, controlling the tempo and making good decisions under pressure,” – Blues coach Vern Cotter.
Dual British or Irish New Zealanders have no exemption to the new UK border rule.RNZ /Gill Bonnett
The Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill has been debated in Parliament for the first time. The government bill, which would amend the Immigration Act, is being shepherded by National MP and Minister of Immigration, Erica Stanford.
The bill describes itself as aimed at better meeting the Immigration Act’s purpose of balancing “the national interest… and the rights of individuals”.
Amendments proposed in the bill would touch on both sides of that equation, with new tools to both deport immigrants and to protect them.
The bill’s main provisions are outlined below, followed by political responses.
The bill: Deportations
The deportation aspect of the bill strengthens the “deportation liability settings” for immigrants on resident visas. It also makes “deportation liability a more likely outcome for lower-level criminal offending”. (All quotes in this section are from the bill’s own Explanatory Note.)
After being granted a resident visa, a migrant remains liable to be deported for subsequent criminal offending. The period of continuing liability varies depending on the severity of the offence. Those liability periods (since receiving a visa) are lengthening.
For offences subject to imprisonment of at least three months, the period of liability lengthens from two to five years. For offences punishable by two-plus years imprisonment, the liability period changes from five years to 10. For offences culpable for five-plus years, the liability period changes from 10years to 15; and for offending punishable by at least 10 years’ prison, it changes from 10 years to 20.
The liability period resets if a migrant with a resident visa is absent from New Zealand for five years.
Criminal conviction outside New Zealand prior to a visa being granted always makes a visa-holder liable for deportation.
Other deportation liability changes aim to fill gaps in current legislation. The bill would clarify “the range of false and misleading submissions that can make a person liable for deportation; and that historic crimes that were committed outside New Zealand can give rise to deportation liability; and how administrative errors can give rise to deportation liability.”
Misleading and false information will also include omission of information that was potentially prejudicial.
More data sharing between government agencies would be allowed, to check things such as applicant’s claims, identity and character; or to check eligibility for funded services or benefits.
Anybody committing a criminal act while in New Zealand on a visitor or temporary visa, as well as those illegally in the country, would be unable to appeal a deportation order on humanitarian grounds.
Victims of serious offenders who are undergoing deportation proceedings would have “the right to be heard during their offender’s deportation proceedings, whether or not the offence against them is the basis of the offender’s liability for deportation.”
The bill: Migrant exploitation offences
The bill also includes changes to offences and penalties related to migrant exploitation. There are three particular changes.
The bill “extends the maximum prison sentence for migrant exploitation offending from seven to ten years”. (All quotes in this section are from the bill’s own Explanatory Note.)
It creates new offences relating to providing “incorrect or incomplete information to the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE)”, and also for failing to provide wage and time records when requested.
It would also extend MBIE’s timeframe for issuing infringement notices for some offences. Migrant exploitation offences have not always been readily or easily reported by victims, which has allowed some offenders to escape justice by dint of the time limits for proceedings allowed for by the Summary Proceedings Act 1957.
The bill will also seek to prevent the use of temporary asylum visas as a stalling tactic in order to apply for a different kind of visa. An asylum claimant who withdraws that claim would be ineligible for other visas.
Chris Penk.RNZ / Nathan McKinnon
Political agreement
The three governing parties are in favour, unsurprisingly. Chris Penk spoke for National, on behalf of the Immigration Minister Erica Stanford.
“This bill provides practical, targeted improvements so that our immigration system can detect, deter, and respond to risk in a firm but fair way, welcoming those who contribute while being clear eyed about misuse and criminal behaviour.”
ACT’s Parmjeet Parmar noted that while ACT supports the bill, they want to further extend deportation liability for residence class visa holders. The current 10-year liability is being extended to 20 years for serious crimes. Parmar wants more.
“Why should consequences expire after 10 years or 20 years if somebody is on a residence class visa? I am proposing an amendment that it should be an unlimited period – the extension of deportation liability should be for an unlimited period – and I’m talking about serious criminal offending.”
New Zealand First offered no amendments. Casey Costello argued the bill fits with the view of American conservative political philosopher Russell Kirk that “every right is married to a duty; every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility”.
Political opposition
Labour’s Phil Twyford (a former associate minister of immigration), strongly opposed the bill.
“This bill is a pretty naked exercise in election-year politicking at the expense of migrants and refugees. The minister of immigration wants to look tough.”
Speaking from his experience as a minister and electorate MP he spoke about humanitarian cases that sometimes involved disabled children.
“I can tell the House that there’s no shortage of cases where Immigration New Zealand has made a sequence of poor decisions, where the interests of the children have not been given the weight required under our international treaty obligations. Justice is, in a significant number of cases, only finally delivered through an appeal to the tribunal on exceptional humanitarian circumstances.”
Ricardo Menendez March.VNP / Phil Smith
Green MP Ricardo Menendez March was no less incensed, though his focus was on undocumented migrants.
“This is a Trump administration-inspired, MAGA-loving piece of legislation that deserves to be put in the bin. If you heard the minister’s contribution, you would think that this is a completely different bill from the one I have in front of me.
“In the bill itself, it’s quite clear: this is a bill that seeks to demonise and target undocumented migrants by giving more powers to our immigration officials to target them if they suspect that they may be in breach of their visa conditions.”
Duncan Webb raised an issue with the proposed changes to rules about cancelling an asylum claim. He pointed out that if an asylum seeker fell in love with a New Zealand citizen while awaiting a decision on their claim, they would no longer be able to cancel their claim (in order to obtain a partnership visa) because doing so would make them ineligible for any visa.
Te Pāti Māori did not speak in the first reading debate.
The Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Billis here.
The Regulatory Impact Statement for the billis here.
The Departmental Disclosure Statement for the billis here.
The Hansard report of the first reading debate ishere.
The Education & Workforce Committee page – for information on submissions etc ishere.
RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy ourarticlesorpodcastat RNZ.
The study was still in its early stages, but its aim was to deliver a wide range of protection against the flu, Covid and other diseases.123rf.com
A single vaccine to protect against several diseases would be convenient and according to one study it may also be possible.
Stanford University School of Medicine professor Dr Bali Pulendran is a senior author on the American experiment looking at a vaccine that could protect against the flu, Covid and other diseases.
He told Saturday Morning that the study was still in its early stages, but its aim was to deliver a wide range of protection.
“What the experiments show is that if you deliver this vaccine intranasally, it can induce immunity that seems to be remarkably broad in conferring protection against many different strains of viruses, different strains of bacteria, but also allergens.”
So far, the vaccine was being administered through the nose on mice.
“It’s administered through a pipette into the nostrils of mice and ultimately, we think that as we move forward into translation, that this could be a nasal spray that’s administered to humans.”
Pulendran added it was important that the vaccine be administered nasally.
“Because we were trying to protect against respiratory infections. And if you wish to evoke the kind of immune response in a tissue, in a local site, I think the best mode of delivery is through a route that’s proximal to that site.”
He said if successful, this would be helpful should we encounter another pandemic in the future that is more dangerous than Covid-19.
“So that’s where I think this kind of universal vaccine that could be administered broadly to the population at the very earliest signs of the pandemic could be useful as a sort of a stopgap measure in imprinting immunity on a population-wide level for some period of time.”
He said it could also be useful during non-pandemic times such as the flu season where it can be distributed as a nasal spray.
Historically the way vaccines worked was by teaching the immune system to respond to a bit of a pathogen.
Pulendran said for this immunisation the idea was to “integrate” the innate and adaptive immune system to launch a response that was “broad” and “pathogen agnostic”.
The adaptive immune system was made of antibodies and T-cells. The innate immune system was something Pulendran referred to as evolutionarily “ancient” and was “broader” in its ability to protect against infections.
“Unlike the adaptive immune system, the innate immune system is not very specific. It’s really quite broad.”
“Regardless of the pathogen, whether it’s a microbe or a virus or a fungi, the innate immune system can launch this incredibly broad response.”
Although broad the innate immune system was not very “long lived”, lasting only a few minutes or days, potentially weeks.
“The strategy that we came up with was to leverage the incredible breadth of the innate immune system, but the longevity of the adaptive immune system.”
“So, we could allow the adaptive immune cells in the lungs to teach the innate immune system to keep going for far longer than just a few days or a few weeks and in this case, in mice, up to about six months or so.”
He said mice that had been given the intranasal vaccine and later infected with bacteria, allergens and viruses such as SARS and some coronaviruses were protected for three or up to six months.
“What’s happening now is that we are planning a study in humans where we could test this concept to see if this vaccine is safe and efficacious.”
“If that proves to be successful, I think this would represent a remarkable departure from how we view vaccines.”
Following the testing on mice the next step is a toxicology study on rabbits.
If the toxicology study produces positive results, Pulendran said they would look to do a “dose escalation study” in humans, a process they were fundraising for.
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Kiwis icon Kieran Foran has been named coach of NRL team the Manly Sea Eagles.Photosport
Famed Kiwis playmaker Kieran Foran has been named interim coach of the Manly Sea Eagles for the rest of the season, after the NRL club sacked Anthony Seibold on Friday.
Foran, 35, retired from top flight play at the end of last season. He chalked up 318 NRL appearances over 17 seasons, including 17 matches for the New Zealand Warriors in 2017.
He played 34 tests for the Kiwis between 2009 and 2025.
Foran has been an assistant coach to Seibold this season. The axe came quickly for Seibold, with three losses in their first three games – all at home – enough for them to sack him.
He had been head coach since late 2022.
“I love this club and I want to do everything in my power to continue the success we have had over many decades,” Foran said in a Manly statement after his appointment was announced today.
“The Sea Eagles have given me so many opportunities over the years and I want to continue to help wherever I can.
“We have a tremendous group of players and coaching staff, and I have every confidence that we can achieve a lot together this season.
“All focus now is preparing as best we can for our next game against the Dolphins next Thursday.”
Foran won a premiership with Manly in 2011. He played 196 games for the club in two stints.
Sea Eagles chairman Scott Penn said Foran was “Manly through and through” and would pour all his energy into the new role.
“Kieran has given so much to this club over many years and the fact he has only recently finished his playing career is an advantage, he understands the current pace of the game and what we need to do to compete,” Penn said.
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ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on March 28, 2026.
Why is the West dancing to Israel’s tune? What’s leading us to disaster DOCUMENTARY: Double Down News The Middle East is in flames. Britain is being dragged into an illegal war, the aims of which are entirely unclear, reports Richard Sanders of Double Down News. “It’s a war of choice, and the man who chose it is Benjamin Netanyahu. Why, yet again, is the West dancing to Israel’s
Cameras have quietly appeared in thousands of US cities – now, their integration with AI is sounding alarms Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jess Reia, Assistant Professor of Data Science, University of Virginia For decades, cars dictated urban planning in the United States. Few could have predicted that they would one day also double as nodes for surveillance. In thousands of towns and cities across the U.S., automatic license plate
‘Torture and genocide’ – UN expert Francesca Albanese denounces Israeli abuse of Palestinians Democracy Now! AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. NERMEEN SHAIKH: An Israeli court has closed an investigation into the death of Walid Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the occupied West Bank who died in an Israeli jail six months after he was arrested, held without charges and accused of throwing
Ancient bones show dogs have been woven into human life for nearly 16,000 years Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Fairbairn, Professor of Archaeology, The University of Queensland Odin was a kelpie. Attentive and protective, with a happy smile and an endless hope for food, he succumbed to a terminal disease late last year. At his death, a deep sense of grief ripped through the household
The TGA wants to overhaul sunscreen labels. Will scrapping SPFs work? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Associate Professor in Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Queensland On Thursday, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) released a raft of proposed changes to improve how sunscreens are tested and sold, including simplifying sun protection factor (SPF) labelling. In its statement, the TGA highlighted
Why hasn’t the US military used force to secure the Strait of Hormuz? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justin Bergman, International Affairs Editor, The Conversation Since the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February, Iran has retaliated by targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shutting down the narrow channel of water. It’s caused a global fuel crisis,
Albanese gives tit-for-tat response to Trump’s criticism of Australia over Iran war Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Anthony Albanese has pushed back at Donald Trump’s crack at Australia for not providing the United States with as much backing over the Iran war as the president believed it should. Trump, who made his comment about Australia when asked
The Olympics’ transgender athlete ban is a legal and moral minefield Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Nichol, Lecturer in Law, CQUniversity Australia The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has confirmed it is introducing a controversial new policy that will ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s events. The IOC stated eligibility for women’s events will be determined by a “once-in-a-lifetime” sex test, which
Keith Rankin Analysis – The Enigma of the Iranian President Analysis by Keith Rankin. One puzzling feature of the present Israel-Iran war is the almost complete absence of reference – in the western media at least – to the Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian. The American president claimed that Israel had killed the Iranian President, but he was referring to the Supreme Leader. Killing Ali Khamenei,
Keith Rankin Analysis – USS Tripoli: What’s in a Name? Analysis by Keith Rankin – This analysis was first published on 26 March 2026. One of the United States’ navy ships heading towards the Persian Gulf is the USS Tripoli. (USS = United States Ship.) How the heck did it get that name? (Will the next two United States’ naval ships be called the USS
Keith Rankin Analysis – Has New Zealand just signed up for World War Three? Analysis by Keith Rankin – this analysis was first published on 24 March 2026. A minute after my radio-alarm went off this morning, I was ‘privileged’ to hear this deeply scary interview with the Deputy Prime Minister: Deputy PM Seymour on NZ, Iran and fuel relief, RNZ 24 March 2026. For most of the interview
Rift widens within French Polynesia’s ruling party following municipal election losses By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A rift within French Polynesia’s ruling Tavini Huiraatira party has widened this week, pitting the leadership “old guard” against a younger generation embodied by the territory’s President, Moetai Brotherson. The main reason for the rift is the outcome of the recent French municipal elections, especially in
Local Anna McKessar was putting her children to bed just before 10pm when a group of screaming teens came running towards her home.RNZ / Jessica Hopkins
Local residents had been growing frustrated by several out-of-control parties at two Mt Albert properties, before a violent incident last night left multiple people injured.
Police were called to Phyllis Street in the Auckland suburb shortly before 10pm after a fight broke out, and four people were taken to hospital.
St John said one person was in a serious condition, while three others were in a moderate condition.
Senior Sergeant John Nicol said police were still working to investigate and establish what occurred.
“Early information suggests that a vehicle was driven toward a group of partygoers, injuring two people – one with moderate injuries and one with minor injuries,” he said.
At least two other people were also moderately injured during the “wider disorder”.
Local Anna McKessar was putting her children to bed just before 10pm when a group of screaming teens came running towards her home.
“I was really worried about the young people that I could see and whether they were trying to get away, and whether they were safe.
Broken glass is on the corner of Springleigh Ave and Jerram Street.RNZ / Jessica Hopkins
“But I didn’t want to go out and put myself in danger or put my kids in danger. Once I heard the police arriving, I felt a little bit more comfortable that the young people who were out there were okay.”
Neighbours on the street are also reporting that partygoers were attacked with machetes.
The party was held at a property which has been listed on several short-stay accommodation platforms, McKessar said.
She said a few hundred people were gathered there before violence spilt out onto the road.
“They shouldn’t have been having this ruckus party.
“But I’m sure most of the kids that were there were just not thinking about the consequences, turning up to a party, just being classic teens. They didn’t come thinking all this would happen.
“They were all pretty freaked out, and I just feel really sad for them that that was what it turned into.
“You can have a big group of people, and only two or three need to come with ill intent to affect hundreds of lives.”
Anna McKessar said the party was held at a property which has been listed on several short-stay accommodation platforms.RNZ / Jessica Hopkins
She said locals had been growing frustrated after several parties at the property and a property next door, which were owned by the same landlord.
“We had a spate of parties a couple of years ago where we had real problems. The house was rented for a night or two to some teenagers, and it had just turned into this massive thing. They trashed cars on the street, and neighbours’ fences, and it was terrible. It happened at least twice.
“It’s pretty upsetting for neighbours, and the person that owns those properties has never shown up, never apologised, and shown no remorse.”
Another Phyllis Street resident, who did not want to be named, said she was woken by the sounds of the “violent” altercation.
“There was so many people out there screaming and shouting at each other and they were kicking the gates and fences of random houses down Phyllis Street. It sounded like people were getting really hurt.”
The broken glass is on the corner of Springleigh Ave and Jerram Street.RNZ / Jessica Hopkins
Residents of a nearby property Michael and Susan Wells said they had also seen the gathering and heard the screams.
The number of partygoers swelled, when news of the fight spread, Michael Wells said.
“We noticed more cars piling in, the traffic was quite busy, busier than usual.”
Residents of a nearby property Michael and Susan Wells said they had also seen the gathering and heard the screams.RNZ /Jessica Hopkins
Vehicles appeared to come from around the area, Susan Wells said.
“More cars coming down and doing burnouts at about 10, so people were still arriving at that point to try to check out what was happening and it looked like they wanted to join in”.
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State Highway 10 leading to the Far North had been flooded on March 26.RNZ
Kaikohe has avoided a water crisis, as residents and businesses quickly reduced their usage.
The Northland town was warned on Friday night that it could run out of water if residents didn’t start conserving it.
Civil Defence said reservoir levels have now risen to 64 percent, easing some of the immediate pressure on the supply.
Teams are working to restore the water treatment plant after problems from Thursday’s storm.
The Far North District Council had made a social media post on Friday warning residents that “taps could run dry” unless residents reduced their water use.
“The council is asking all Kaikohe households and businesses to reduce consumption immediately or risk the town’s supply reservoirs running out of treated water tonight.”
Kaikohe residents are being asked to continue conserving water.
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Around a third of Gisborne vape stores subject to compliance checks last year were found to have broken the rules.
Of the 18 stores subject to controlled purchase operations (CPO), four failed for selling to minors and three failed for other reasons, including the sale of disposable vapes.
The results, from 1 February, 2025, to 28 February, 2026, were revealed in a Health New Zealand Official Information Act response to Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) questions.
According to the OIA, all 18 controlled purchase operations took place in June last year.
The data did not specify what each store failed for, and some retailers failed more than once.
Retailers told LDR they had since made changes to meet compliance, with one store saying they no longer sold vapes.
Which stores failed?
Gisborne retailers that failed a vape-related CPO in June 2025:
Friends Indian Takeaway & Dairy (61 Gladstone Rd)
Elgin Vape Shop (signposted as Elgin Dairy, 683 Childers Rd)
Grocery Hutt (384 Palmerston Rd)
Roebuck Road Superette and Takeaways (141A Roebuck Rd)
Bridge Store (19 Roebuck Rd)
De Lautour Road Superette (92a De Lautour Rd)
Of the stores that gave comments to LDR, Pushwinder Kaur of Friends Indian Takeaways and Dairy said failing compliance was a one-off. It had not happened in the 16-17 years they had operated the store.
They had paid their fine and now checked every ID for those who looked like they could be under the age range of 18-25.
Owner of Roebuck Rd Superette and Takeaways, Simranjid Singh, also owned De Lautour Rd Superette. Singh said both of his stores failed because of a lack of staff training and awareness of the rule changes for the sales of disposable vapes.
Singh and Kaur both said they did not sell the fruity flavoured vape products.
Manager of Grocery Hutt, Sidharth Chawla, said they no longer sold vapes but were looking at applying for a licence in the future.
Owner of the Elgin Vape shop, Shao-Qing Li, said, through an interpreter, she believed there was a mistake in the CPO results but had paid the fines.
Six Gisborne vape stores failed vape-related Control Purchase Operations in June 2025.Gisborne Herald
Vape sales compliance education ‘far more active’ – medical officer of health
Douglas Lush, a medical officer of health in the region, said vapes could be bought at 84 places (not only dedicated vape stores) within Gisborne city.
Lush said a store could be targeted for a CPO if there were any concerns from the public or a reason for suspicion.
Tai Rāwhiti now has a permanent compliance officer, who visits suppliers, educates them on the legislation and ensures they adhere to the rules.
“We’ve been far more active with vape sales than we have been in the past.”
On 17 June last year, intending to discourage youth from vaping, the government banned disposable vapes, which were cheap and had adverse environmental impacts, Lush said.
“Vaping has a small and declining role in helping long-term smokers kick smoking, but has no benefits for rangitahi who become rapidly addicted to the nicotine that is contained in the vapes.”
The National Public Health Service would continue to “investigate, educate and then prosecute retailers who do not adhere to the law”, he said.
The infringement fine is $2000 for each offence, and retailers can be fined for multiple offences.
Infringements ‘very concerning’ – mayor
Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz said it was “very concerning” to see retailers failing to meet compliance checks.
“Particularly where young people may have been able to access vaping products.”
As a response to an increase in young people taking up vaping, the council’s smoke-free and vape-free policy was updated last July to include vaping and the city centre.
According to the council report, results from a 2024 survey undertaken by the Action for Smokefree 2025 revealed that 21.9 percent of Year 10 students in Tai Rāwhiti vaped daily – 63 percent of these Māori.
Stoltz said the policy was “focused on promoting healthy public spaces and taking steps to ensure harmful habits are less visible and less normalised, especially for rangatahi”.
“Compliance and enforcement at the point of sale are matters for health agencies, but as a community we should all expect better when it comes to protecting young people.”
What do schools say?
LDR approached some schools near stores that failed the CPO.
Ilminster Intermediate is near De Lautour Road Superette, which failed. Principal Jonathan Poole said it was concerning that children were able to get hold of vapes with “ease” and how the various flavours available appealed to young people.
“It’s the accessibility that our kids have to these things… they’re either buying them, they’re getting other people to buy them, or they’re just bringing them from home.”
He believed other principals were experiencing the same issues.
Poole said he had seen an increase in vaping last year, but the school seemed to be “on top of it” this year. It was not just at intermediate and high-school level.
“Kids are vaping at a very young age.”
Poole was concerned kids were addicted to their vapes, which is why they were bringing them into school.
“It’s because it’s become a long-term habit already.”
When asking some children last year why they vaped, they responded with: “Oh, we just like the taste.”
“It’s the flavour, it’s like a lolly,” Poole said.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Though the worst is likely over, MetService is currently forecasting rain and strong winds for Northland throughout Sunday.
Mita Harris leads the Kerikeri Cadet Unit, and with his military-grade Unimog, can access flooded properties that others cannot. A former reservist himself, he has owned the vehicle for around a decade, and has been able to help evacuate households and lift supplies.
RNZ/Tim Collins
He says this week saw the worst floods in the Far North so far this year.
“It was fast, it wasn’t slow, thank goodness for that,” Harris said. “If an event kept going like this for three or four days, we’d be in serious trouble.”
He said he had spent the week preparing the vehicle, following forecasts and keeping in close contact with low-lying areas where he had seen extreme flooding in the past. By the evening they were in the thick of it.
Northland flooding near Kerikeri – 27 March 2026RNZ/Tim Collins
On a crumbled gravel road in a paddock in Waihou Valley, with flattened shrubbery and scattered debris everywhere, Harris said the high tide coupled with intense levels of rainwater had rendered the whole area submerged.
The area began to flood at around lunchtime on Thursday, rising with the tide at around 4pm until 10pm, he said.
“It just looked like a rippling moving desert, it’s ripped up the tarseal and just carried stuff off, it’s a huge volume that came in with a high tide as well which pushed everything out.”
Farming households in the area who depend on those roads were effectively stranded, though Harris was occasionally able to access them on the Unimog. One farming family had been completely cut off after part of their road collapsed into a stream underneath.
“On the Unimog, those levels were up to the bonnet, which is six foot two (1.88m).”
Northland flooding near Kerikeri – 27 March 2026RNZ/Tim Collins
Northland Regional Council said 410 cubic metres of floodwaters were flowing down the Awanui River every second, a record.
In a statement, Regional Councillor Joe Carr credited the upgrade Awanui flood scheme from stopping communities like Kaitaia from an outcome comparable to the infamous 1958 floods, which recorded nearly half as much floodwater.
“This was an extraordinary event with very intense hourly rainfall which tested the scheme to its limits,” he said.
“There was some costly flooding and associated evacuations as stopbanks did overtop both upstream and downstream of State Highway 1 Bridge Waikuruki and in the lower Whangatane Spillway, all of which are works in progress, but overall the $15 million-plus, multi-year scheme upgrade performed very well.”
Northland flooding near Kerikeri – 27 March 2026RNZ/Tim Collins
Harris felt as though there was very little that could be done to future-proof the communities in the actual floodplains.
“The infrastructure has been like this for a long time since they started putting roads in off the state highway in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s.
“Technology’s giving us some early warnings about when these events are coming, so when to prepare… so families will do that, but the infrastructure, it is what it is.”
Northland flooding near Kerikeri – 27 March 2026RNZ/Tim Collins
Scanabull is a new mobile phone app to estimate the weight of cattle from four and a half metres away.supplied
Waikato can lay claim to the development of the electric fence in the 1930s, thanks to inventor and farmer Bill Gallagher.
Now another another start-up from the same region is hoping to take the danger out of weighing cattle.
Scanabull co-founder Dan Bull grew up on a sheep and beef farm near Te Akau northwest of Hamilton.
After spending four years managing stock, he’s working full-time for his company, which has just raised $1.1 million to commercialise its WeighApp.
“Some animals are really easy to weigh, those really passive friendly lifestyle cows,” Bull said.
“When you get a big Friesian bull from 600 to 700 kilos – you can not weigh that if it doesn’t want to be weighed.
“They’re huge, they break posts, they break people, they do all sorts of random stuff, they fight each other.
“If you get in the way of that you’re in trouble, there’s a layer of danger there.”
Traditionally farmers use a bull pen or weigh crates, or experienced operators use their eyes to estimate the weight of cattle.supplied
Bull concedes farmers are used to handling unruly stock, but the new app should make life easier by measuring in a flash.
He said a cell phone can now be used to weigh cattle in the yards, from a range of about 4.5m away.
The technology uses a iPhone’s LiDAR sensor to scan the animal in 3D, sending out pulses and measuring how long they take to bounce back form different points.
Trials are underway with Silver Fern Farms, and the new technology was the talk of a recent Angus breeders tour when farmers visited a range of studs in Northland.
Bull said another handy tool in the pipeline can weigh stock out in the paddock.
“When they go for a drink at the trough, it can take an image of them, reports back and the farmer can see that on his or her computer at night.”
He said access to more accurate data across the supply chain will be an advantage.
From left: Scanabull founders Paul Sealock (founding engineer), Dan Bull (chief executive), Daniel Stuart-Jones (chief technology officer), and Ursula Haywood, (chief commercial officer).supplied
“Many animals are bought and sold based on visual estimates rather than objective measurements.
“And processors often have very little reliable data about animals before they arrive at the plant.”
The company’s raise was led by Sprout Agritech, with support from Enterprise Angels and Callaghan Innovation’s Deep Tech Incubator programme.
It’s hoping to get the new app to the market by the middle of the year following trials.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Ngarimu scholarship board member and past winner Dr Kahurangi Waititi (left), 2026 scholarship recipient Uenuku Jefferies (center) and Māpuna host Julian Wilcox (left).RNZ/Pokere Paewai
The Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarships continue to uphold the values of the Battalion even after the death of its last surviving member, Sir Robert “Bom” Gillies.
The recipients of the Scholarships were announced on Thursday in Parliament.
The scholarships were established in 1945 to assist Māori achievers to succeed in education and to contribute as leaders in New Zealand and overseas. Over 300 of them have been awarded.
Past winners include Willie Apiata VC, Professor Whatarangi Winiata, Hekia Parata, Dr Patu Hohepa and Dr Monty Soutar.
Ngarimu scholarship board member and past winner Dr Kahurangi Waititi told Māpuna the scholarships are about honouring the legacy of the 28th Māori Battalion and Te Moananui-a-Kiwa Ngarimu VC.
“Now that we have lost our last mōrehu (survivor) they actually become really important. They’ve always been really important and it was beautiful in the time where the soldiers and the widows were on this board selecting.
“I was selected for one of my scholarships in that time. And so I think with them all gone now, it becomes really important that we remember what their key and core values were. But more so, how do we carry those values forward in the application of these scholarships? How do we remember? And what’s it going to look like in 50 years when there’s that degree of separation from our soldiers?”
Waititi’s father Major John Waititi, also known as “John the Major,” was the last surviving commanding officer of the Battalion and a former scholarship board member, he died in 2012.
“He absolutely loved this board, which is why I said yes when I was asked to come on. I know this was a heart kaupapa for him, and I could do nothing else but say yes to it when I was asked,” she said.
Waititi described her father as a “weaver of people” and there was some pressure stepping into a role with the board.
When she first applied for the scholarship there were still veterans and widows of veterans on the panel that she had to present to.
“They will ask the questions, they will interrogate you if possible. Yes, it was such a scary, scary situation for me. But I think my whole premise there was that at the time we were making stories, short stories about my father through video and through film. And so I actually had a really good visual presentation to give them and by the end they had tears,” she said.
This years applicants are really pushing the envelope and establish stories for their own time, she said.
There are scholarships available for Doctoral, Masters, Undergraduate and Vocational training, as well as the Ngarimu Video and Waiata competitions which Waititi said gives people different methods to express the stories of the 28th Battalion.
“There’s something about [Battalion soldiers] wanting a better future and them wanting their people to thrive. And I think that’s a key tenant within these scholarships as well. And so, yeah, in terms of the legacy, I think I’m actually excited to see where it goes in the future in terms of how we express and how we retell these stories.
“As scary as it is to have them all gone now, I think we’re in control of, you know, not over-romanticising, understanding the whakapapa of the trauma that came into our communities because it had nowhere else to be processed,” she said.
Doctoral scholarship recipient Uenuku Jefferies credits his koro as the reason he is receiving the scholarship and the reason he speaks te reo Māori every day.
His rangahau, or research, is centred around tikanga, especially around pre-colonial ceremonies and traditions and weaving that with his work as a filmmaker.
“So the main pātai is how might a Māori approach documenting pohoro or tāmoko alongside the reclamation of pre-colonial ceremonies and traditions.”
In May 2022 Jefferies said he was fortunate enough to reclaim his puhoro, tattoos on his legs, thighs and back.
“Just like my practice as a filmmaker, decolonising narratives is a big thing. But not only just narratives, but also our beliefs.”
As part of his PhD, he will create four short documentaries.
“There are so many aspects in a documentary that create beauty. And that may be that that footage, or the kōrero that is captured is actually given back to the haukāinga. It may be that my whānau took place within the production, or the economic value of the project went back to the people and so that’s how we measure success… we can’t just think inside the box and I know that the 28th Māori Battalion did that.”
The 2026 Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarship recipients:
Doctoral:
Uenukuterangihoka Tairua Jefferies (Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Awa, Te Whānau a Apanui, Ngāti Maniapoto)
Arna Whaanga (Ngāti Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa)
Warriors reflect on their comprehensive loss to Wests.Andrew Cornaga/Photosport
Analysis: After sweeping all before them over the opening weeks of the NRL season to sit atop the competition table, the Warriors have crashed back down to earth with a limp defeat to Wests Tigers.
Against a team given little chance without one of its most decorated players, the Auckland side took their foot off the throat way too early – midway through the first half – and paid a heavy price on the scoreboard, falling 32-14.
The Warriors were welcoming back star half Luke Metcalf from a season-ending knee injury that had kept him on the sidelines for nine months and his addition was supposed to take them to a new level.
It did, just not the one envisaged.
To some extent, this seemed one of those games where the ball simply didn’t bounce their way, but coach Andrew Webster wasn’t buying that.
“I’ll give you an example,” he said. “When they put up those kicks and they’re challenging for high balls, there’s a deflection and they score a try, there’s a reason they’re getting those good field-position kicks, and it’s from our mental errors or us doing something wrong.
“When you think, ‘Oh, the ball didn’t go our way,’ we’ve got the opportunity to earn everything and make our own luck, but we just weren’t highly concentrated enough.”
He also didn’t accept the return of major contributors like Metcalf and co-captain Mitch Barnett from their long-term injuries would inevitably disrupt the continuity built up without them.
“Last week, we were unsettled,” he said. “We went to Newcastle with last year’s NSW Cup spine in the second half, but next man up, everyone knew their job.
“We had three-four guys out last week – no Capewell, no Charnze.
“Good players come back in. We probably had one session together and it was a good session, I though they clicked really well.
“We will get better with cohesion as we get more fit bodies and everyone’s training more, but I don’t put it down to that.”
Sometimes you need a setback to keep yourself truly grounded with a sense of desperation. The coming weeks will show how the Warriors respond.
Jacob Laban scores a try against Wests Tigers.Andrew Cornaga/Photosport
Here are some of the takeaways from the loss to the Tigers.
Best player
Halfback Tanah Boyd had another influential game, despite the presence of Metcalf outside him, but perhaps the top performance of the night came from second-rower Jacob Laban.
He scored the Warriors’ second try, was centimetres away from another in the second half and made several impactful runs, breaking three tackles and making one linebreak, with 26 tackles in his 46 minutes on the field.
Veteran wing Roger Tuivasa-Sheck led his team in running metres (168), but also made two horrendous errors under the high ball that saw the Tigers score back-to-back tries before halftime.
Dally M-leading front-rower Jackson Ford put in another sterling shift of 69 minutes and emerged as top tackler with 45, but also made a couple of costly errors.
Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad scored two tries from centre, but missed six tackles.
Bear in mind, the Warriors collectively missed 50 tackles, so this wasn’t a complete performance by any means. Even Laban missed five.
Key moment
The Warriors were ahead 10-0 and cruising midway through the first half, when centre Adam Pompey was sin-binned for impeding the Tigers, as they rushed to take a quick tap from their 20 to start a seven-tackle set.
Somewhere in his absence, they drifted off the rails.
Pompey was back on the field and his team were at full strength, when they scored three tries in quick succession to lead 16-10 at the break, and then they continued that momentum with the next try to put the contest out of reach.
Webster identified where it all went wrong: “Discipline in the back end of that first half, I’d say.
“Sin-binning, offsides at the wrong time … we went from a team that was trying to earn everything really well and had the right things at the front of our mind, but we conceded a try and kicked off, forced a turnover and didn’t get to dummy half, those sorts of things.”
Best try
Boyd worked the rightside attack for all three Warriors tries, sending the ball wide for Nicoll-Klokstad’s pair, but finding Laban with a delightful short ball to punch through closer to the posts.
Notably, that was the only try Boyd managed to convert and his other misses really put his side under pressure late in the game, when they tried to stage their comeback.
Injuries
The Warriors seemed to come through the game relatively unscathed, although Leka Halasima left for a concussion check during the second half, which he passed, and he subsequently returned to the field.
Leka Halasima left the field for a head check after being tackled on the tryline.Andrew Cornaga/Photosport
Before kickoff, Webster made a last-minute tweak to his line-up, bringing Taine Tuaupiki into fullback, moving Nicoll-Klokstad to centre and dropping Ali Leiataua to the reserves side for NSW Cup.
“I thought Taine did a fantastic job, when he came on in round two and what he did last week at the Knights, so I thought he deserved to retain his position,” Webster said. “Charnze certainly didn’t deserve to be left out of the side and he’s played international footy at centre.”
Tuaupiki left the game late, apparently cramping up, allowing Nicoll-Klostad to slip back into his more familiar role.
In his first run since suffering his season-ending knee injury last June, Metcalf seemed to get through without setback, but that will become more obvious in the next few days.
“I thought Luke did some really good things,” Webster said. “Like very player tonight, I reckon he’s got some things he wishes he could have his time back on, but I think everyone’s in that boat tonight.”
What the result means
The Warriors’ brief flirtation with the top of the table ended, slipping behind unbeaten Penrith Panthers for now, but in danger of falling further, with Canterbury Bulldogs, Melbourne Storm and Newcastle Knights also still to play this weekend.
Their winning run ends at three games, so they lose the chance to match the 2018 side that won five to start their campaign.
Wests Tigers
When both their veteran halves limped off last week against South Sydney, few believed the Tigers had enough on their roster to make up for their potential absences.
Jarome Luai will miss several weeks with a knee injury, but Adam Doueihi took the field against the Warriors and cut them to shreds with his running game, while Luai’s replacement, Jock Madden, had them in fits with his kicking game.
Doueihi’s suspected hamstring strain was actually a groin strain and coach Benji Marshall was proud of how his newlook halves combination performed.
“It’s a credit to him,” Marshall said. “He could easily have pulled the pin and said, ‘Don’t play me.’
“He had a halves partner [Madden] who had no footy this year. He’s been on the bench for two games, biding his time, but had a great pre-season – I thought he was the difference tonight.
“He put Adam into positions where he could just run, he did all the kicking and took all the pressure off Adam, and let him just play.
Jock Madden had the Warriors in fits with his kicking game.Andrew Cornaga/Photosport
“His grandfather died last week and he didn’t make the funeral, because he wanted to play for the team. He said his grandfather would have wanted him to play … his grandfather would have been really proud of him.”
Obviously, this is not the same Tigers outfit that collected three consecutive wooden spoons and Kiwis should be cheering for Marshall, who is the only NZ or Pasifika coach operating in the NRL.
They are now locked in a five-way scramble at the top of the table and visit Parramatta Eels next week.
What’s next
The Warriors are away for their next two fixtures against Cronulla Sharks on Easter Sunday and Melbourne the following Saturday. In two weeks, they could easily be 3-3 for the season.
These games will give them a solid understanding of where they sit among the contenders or pretenders, before they return home to host Gold Coast Titans.
The Sharks have won one of three heading into this weekend, while the Storm dropped their Grand Final rematch against Brisbane Broncos last week.
“We’re not overreactive in there,” Webster said. “We’re not happy, we’re very frustrated and we missed the mark tonight – we know that.
“We know what we’ve got to work on – it’s clear already for us. We have to work on the ‘how’ and play the way we want to play.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
The government says for now there is sufficient supply of fuel and no need for stockpiling.Quin Tauetau
With prices at the pump rising and some having to choose between fuel or food, drive-off thefts have become a concern at gas stations.
The Motor Trade Association (MTA) is talking to its members over the increasing possibility of people driving off without paying for fuel.
The government has outlined the triggers that could force the country into fuel rationing but says for now there is sufficient supply and no need for stockpiling.
MTA spokesperson Simon Bradwell said drive-offs are nothing new, but could worsen because of tough financial times.
“Already people are feeling the pressure on their household budgets in their back pocket anyways.
So in a situation like that there’s always going to people that do try, you know, drive-off theft, try and alleviate the financial pressures on themselves.”
Bradwell said people need to remember station staff are not responsible for their fuel woes.
“The person behind the counter isn’t to blame for any of this, they’re just doing their job. Nobody deserves to cop an earful about what’s happening.”
He said businesses are doing what they can to keep prices down.
“It’s actually in their best interest to keep people coming to their businesses.”
Chief executive of Māngere Budgeting Services Trust Lara Dolan said some people can no longer afford the rising cost of fuel.
Dolan said demand for food had risen by a quarter in the last three weeks as fuel price rises hit, and most of their clients could not afford the increases.
“We are all hoping that the conflict is not going to go on for much longer because it does hurt and it does hurt everyone.”
She said people filling up can face paying nearly $20 more each time.
“It does hurt people with children, people without children – it just hurts everyone.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
We’d love to hear more of your questions about money and the economy. You can send through written questions, like these ones, but even better, you can drop us a voice memo to our email questions@rnz.co.nz.
I am new to homeownership, and I wondered if you could do a piece sometime on how international conflict influences New Zealand’s mortgage rates and house values.
I am sure there are a few others like me who don’t really understand how an international conflict can influence domestic house prices!?
I can understand why it probably seems weird that something happening on the other side of the world can affect what people pay for their houses in New Zealand.
Here’s a very broad overview of how it works!
Interest rates: The war in the Middle East has disrupted the flow of oil around the world, and pushed up its price. That has made the cost of fuel more expensive. The concern is that this could make a whole range of other things more expensive, too – both in New Zealand and around the world. We use fuel to get things here, and the cost of that will increase, and we use fuel to make and distribute things within New Zealand, too. So prices are expected to rise.
The Reserve Bank’s job is to make sure that prices don’t rise too much. (Other central banks around the world are doing this in their countries, too.)
There is a concern that if prices rise in a sustained way, the Reserve Bank and other central banks may have to start increasing interest rates to try to slow the rate of inflation.
Already, we’ve seen wholesale markets (where banks borrow their money) pricing in the expectation of increases later in the year. So that means home loan borrowers have to pay more.
House prices: Rising interest rates tend to reduce buyers’ willingness to pay higher prices, because their home loans cost more to service. On top of that, this war and the resulting pressure on fuel prices is making a lot of households a bit nervous about how high prices can go, how they’ll cope – all that sort of thing. When people are feeling nervous or uncertain, they tend to be less likely to be willing to make big investments like house purchases – or to compete hard on price when they do.
So those factors combined mean that home loan rates are likely to be higher and house prices are likely to be lower than they would otherwise this year, because of the Middle East war.
An Israeli self-propelled howitzer artillery gun fires rounds towards southern Lebanon.AFP / JALAA MAREY
How likely do you think it is for any government to remove the option of withdrawing KiwiSaver money to buy a first home?
This is something I’ve heard discussed a bit over the years. New Zealand is a little unusual in allowing people to tap into their retirement savings to buy a house. There are valid questions about whether it’s appropriate.
But I think it would be very politically difficult for any government to take this option away. It’s a big part of how a lot of people get into the housing market, and I can imagine the backlash would be intense. A lot of people have made their savings and investing decisions on the understanding that they’ll be able to use it for a first home.
We do need to improve retirement savings rates for New Zealanders but I don’t think removing the withdrawal option will be top of the list.
How much does each married superannuitant get per fortnight after tax from 1 April?
Couples in which both people qualify will receive $854.08 after tax (assuming the tax code M) a fortnight from April 1.
“It’s a war of choice, and the man who chose it is Benjamin Netanyahu. Why, yet again, is the West dancing to Israel’s tune?
“I’ve made a number of videos exposing Israeli crimes. This one is different. It’s directed at conservatives and people generally who support the state of Israel.
“I believe our indulgence of Israel is not just morally wrong. It’s against the interests of the US and the UK and ultimately against the interests of Israel itself.
“It is leading us all to disaster. Palestine is the place you come thundering, crashing into the buffers, the limits of the Western liberal moral imagination.
“The tragedy and complexity of Israel is that it’s both a product of the most unspeakable racism and a cause of it. Zionism was born from the suffering of Jewish people in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, from a desire for a safe haven, a territory where Jews would for once be the hosts and not the eternal guests.
“It was framed as a return to a historic biblical homeland. and for its supporters. These two factors give it an entirely different complexion morally from other enterprises where predominantly European populations have settled far-flung parts of the world.
Dispossession and subjugation “There’s no doubt that the Zionist dream has enormous emotional power. The problem, of course, is the other side of the equation, the people. It was inflicted upon the Palestinians whose experience of dispossession and subjugation was no different from that of countless other peoples subjected to European colonialism.
“In fact, arguably, it’s been considerably worse than many, precisely because of the licence and indulgence granted to the Israeli state.
“Let’s lay out the bold, indisputable facts. In 1948, more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population of what became Israel fled their homes. Now, if you want to believe this was not an act of deliberate ethnic cleansing, fine.
“What’s undeniable is that they were never allowed to return. In 1947, they were there. In 1949, they were not. The granting of the vote to that small fragment of the Palestinian population that remained provided a democratic fig leaf for the new state, one that was blown away once the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1967.
The End of Israel Documentary: Double Down News
“There Palestinians have no right to vote for the political entity, the state of Israel that controls their lives. Jewish settlers, on the other hand, occupying the same territory do.
“Even in East Jerusalem, which as far as the Israeli government is concerned has been formally annexed to Israel, Palestinians cannot vote. Political rights depend upon ethnicity. That is not democracy.
“Israel is and has always been a state whose defining feature is that it’s structured to ensure the domination of one ethnicity over another. What else does the term a Jewish state mean?
‘Elephant in the room’ “This is the elephant in the room. the simple, blindingly obvious, undeniable fact that the Western political media class has decided that we must never mention or acknowledge, despite the fact that all of the world’s leading human rights organisations, including the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, have denounced Israel as an apartheid state.
“Now scour the history of the modern world. No people has ever resigned itself to being second class citizens in their own country. Spend just 10 minutes at a checkpoint in the West Bank and you get it.
“The disfiguring dehumanisation, the humiliation of elderly men and women forced to stand in the sun for hours waiting for 18-year-olds to search them.
“The brutalisation of young men in particular, the daily control of rage that is the lot of every Palestinian. It is simply emotionally, psychologically intolerable.”
After a two-month absence sparked by her 84-year-old mother’s apparent abduction, Savannah Guthrie will return to NBC’s Today show next month.
Former co-host Hoda Kotb said after her emotional interview with Guthrie aired that the broadcaster will return on the 6th of April.
“I can’t come back and try to be something that I’m not. But I can’t not come back, because it’s my family,” Guthrie said.
“I think it’s part of my purpose right now. I want to smile and when I do, it will be real and my joy will be my protest. My joy will be my answer. And being there is joyful and when it’s not, I’ll say so,” she continued.
Nancy Guthrie was reported missing on 1 February. Authorities believe she was kidnapped or taken against her will.
The FBI released surveillance videos of a masked man who was outside Guthrie’s front door in Tucson on the night she vanished.
Guthrie shared that she and her siblings knew that their mother’s disappearance wasn’t a case of a person wandering off, given the pain she was living with and knowing that blood was found on the front doorstep and a camera had been yanked off.
She said they knew something was very wrong and her brother knew immediately that their mother had been kidnapped for ransom.
The longtime co-anchor said they don’t know that their mother was taken because of her, but acknowledged that it would make sense and that was “too much to bear.”
While she said some of the purported ransom notes were fake, Guthrie said she believed the two that she and her siblings responded to were real.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
On Friday Heinz Wattie’s confirmed it would go ahead with shutting its frozen packing lines in Hastings, as well as manufacturing sites in Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland.Roberto Machado Noa
The mayor of Central Hawke’s Bay says the region has been hit hard by back-to-back announcements of factory closures.
On Friday Heinz Wattie’s confirmed it would go ahead with shutting its frozen packing lines in Hastings, as well as manufacturing sites in Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland.
The closures would affect about 300 jobs, although some people might be redeployed.
Central Hawke’s Bay Mayor Will Foley said it was a huge blow.
Central Hawke’s Bay mayor Will Foley.Supplied
“It’s just come at a really bad time when there’s a lot of bad news happening out there and a lot of pressure on households and businesses already with increased costs, uncertainty and now you’ve got people’s jobs that are lost, and associated businesses that would’ve lost a lot of work as well directly for this supply chain,” he said.
“I guess we’re all sitting here wondering why what we think is a pretty good food producing region is struggling to produce and compete with imported food products. That’s what we need to get to the bottom of and work out why is that happening and what can we do to address it.”
Buy NZ Made, an organisation that supports Kiwi-made products, said the closures were a stark reminder of the mounting pressures local producers faced.
Executive director Dane Ambler said they were facing rising costs, weaker demand and competition with international firms.
Buy NZ Made executive director Dane Ambler.Supplied / Business NZ
“I think now is really the time to get behind local producers. I think we need much stronger and more deliberate backing of New Zealand made goods and services both by government and consumers,” he said.
“The government can go a long way to ensuring that local industries survive by basically changing procurement practices that prioritise local suppliers and targeted support. I don’t think that New Zealand made businesses have needed as much support as they need right now.”
Canterbury vegetable grower Alastair Clemens, who grew processed peas and carrots for Heinz Wattie’s in Barrhill, said the closures were devastating for growers.
“A lot of guys in our area grow processed peas, there might be 30 or 40 growers in our area that grow processed peas that had gone to the factory in the past, so that’s quite a hole left there that’s got to be filled up with something,” he said.
“Processed carrots have been a significant part of our rotation for quite a number of years, we’re sort of investigating other options for them.
“The area we’re in is good for root crops, potatoes and carrots and that sort of thing, so we’d like to think we could find something for that but it does leave a pretty big gap and it is pretty devastating really.”
Clemens said he might end up growing food for the dairy industry, or becoming one of the “many people who are converting to cows” because that was where the money and demand was at the moment.
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Police were urging anyone with information about the incident or the alleged offenders to come forward.RNZ / REECE BAKER
Christchurch police are appealing for information after and aggravated robbery in the suburb of Hornby on Friday,
Detective Sergeant Rebecca Podmore said four masked people entered a store on Main South Road at about 7.30pm, stole items and fled in a car.
During the robbery, one staff member was assaulted and their arm was broken, she said.
They were taken to hospital in an ambulance.
The escape vehicle was later found in Ellesmere Road in Lincoln, but suspects have so far evaded police.
Police were urging anyone with information about the incident or the alleged offenders to come forward.
They were particularly seeking anyone who saw or has footage of a Grey Toyota Rav 4 around Main South Road between 7pm and 8pm Friday.
Information could be provided through the police 105 number or online, quoting the reference number 260327/8118, or anonymously through Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
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KMD has delayed the release of its financial results.RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Over the course of this week, one of the country’s most well-known retailers has delayed the release of its financial results, not once, but twice.
The moves by KMD Brands – owner of well-known outdoor goods brands Kathmandu and Rip Curl – have been called “unusual” by one investment expert, with questions being raised about what is going on behind the scenes.
Leading up to this week, on 16 March, the dual NZX and ASX-listed firm indicated it was working with investment bank Goldman Sachs to help with its treasury and capital management strategy.
It said “no decision” had been made around measures to raise capital, and it had not reached an agreement on refinancing its long-term debt facilities.
On 18 March, KMD said it intended to release its half-year results on Wednesday, 25 March – a fairly standard announcement by listed companies.
Fast-forward to Tuesday this week, a day before the results were due to be announced, and KMD made another statement to the stock exchange.
This time, it revealed it had rejected a proposal by US firm Stokehouse to de-merge Rip Curl into a separate listed company and then merge it with Stokehouse, saying it created “no value for shareholders”.
Then came results day on Wednesday, and around half-an-hour before the scheduled investor briefing at 10.30am, KMD made another announcement.
“KMD is not presently in a position to release its results as intended today. We expect to release our HY26 Results on Thursday, 26 March 2026 and no later than Friday, 27 March 2026,” the company said.
Just over a couple of hours later, KMD made another statement, revealing its intention to launch a capital raise by way of a placement and AREO.
AREO stands for accelerated renounceable entitlement offer – a fast-tracked offer allowing existing shareholders to buy more shares.
KMD shares were also placed in a trading halt, having last traded at 19.5 cents on the NZX.
Later that afternoon, it gave a few more details about the capital raise.
“KMD has commenced a confidential wall crossing process with select investors. KMD is continuing discussions to finalise the terms of the capital raising,” the company said.
The statement indicated the company had approached a small number of large investors privately.
No result was announced on Thursday and, on Friday morning, KMD requested a further trading halt on the NZX and a voluntary suspension on the ASX until Monday 30 March.
KMD said it was still working on launching the capital raise and finalising terms for a refinancing of its existing bank loans.
“KMD is not presently in a position to make an announcement regarding the capital raise and refinance, as the final details, including pricing, are still being determined. Discussions regarding these matters remain ongoing.”
KMD said those matters needed to be sorted before the half-year results could be finalised.
Unusual move by a listed company – investment expert
Speaking after the initial announcement of the delay, Craigs Investment Partners investment director Mark Lister said the timing was “interesting”.
“The timing suggests that something has caused the company to rethink what it needs or how it will approach this and adjust the timing of what it had in mind,” Lister said.
He said it was hard to know without more detail.
“Whether the company was intending to raise capital at some point and it’s brought that forward, or whether some of the current uncertainty around the world has made it adjust its plans.”
Lister said that while it was difficult to say, it would be “interesting” to see what led KMD to change its plans.
“The timing is unusual – I’m sure KMD Brands didn’t intend to release the result [date] then delay it,” he said.
KMD has been going through a difficult few years amid a sharp downturn in the retail sector.
Last year, the company announced a full-year loss of $94 million, nearly doubling the previous year’s loss of $48m as its margins came under pressure amid tough trading conditions.
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Economists are warning about possible stagflation.RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
New Zealand could be facing into a period of stagflation, economists are warning.
Stagflation describes a situation in which an economy experiences the unpleasant combination of high inflation, high unemployment and stagnant economic growth.
This could happen as a result of the Iran war because higher fuel prices are expected to create higher inflation, while the impact of those cost increases and the wider confidence blow could slow economic growth.
Mike Jones, chief economist at BNZ, said it was a “stagflationary-type shock” because it had hurt growth prospects and put pressure on people’s disposable incomes and business margins at the same time as it pushed up inflation.
“We’re also vulnerable given the economy going into this was only starting to find its feet,” he said.
“There are some buffers out there – most notably elevated commodity export prices and a falling NZ dollar – but it’s unlikely they will be enough to prevent a decent hit to the economy. I think, at this stage, it’s more a case of the recovery being disrupted or paused for a quarter or two, rather than being curtailed. So weaker growth but still growth.
“But there are still many scenarios in play. Much hangs on how long the conflict goes on for.”
Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, said stagflation was discussed as a prospect three or four years ago but did not happen.
“It was inflation followed by ‘we need a recession to rein that back in’.
“I feel like this time is a little bit different because it’s a supply shock that is, one, pushing up prices and, two, going to negatively impact growth.”
He said businesses had told him they had to pass on cost increases.
“I’m not talking about transport businesses putting up their prices. I’m talking about everybody who is using the transport services then being forced to put up their prices, because we’ve had an economy where for the last three years, it’s gone sideways. And people have been trimming and trimming, and there’s nothing left to trim.”
He said while the Reserve Bank expected fewer price increases to be passed on because there was less demand, that was not the full picture.
“Sure, there’s no demand, but you’re going to put your prices up rather than simply just go to the wall because you don’t have any money left.”
He said even if the situation were resolved immediately, there would be another up to four months of flow-on effects.
“Who knows where oil prices would settle… you wouldn’t expect them to probably go back to US$70 a barrel… there’s got to be more risk associated with that. But the longer it stretches on, the bigger the impact is in terms of just delaying or preventing the economic recovery.
“It’s almost a bit of a repeat of 2025 where we had the tariff situation hit us and knock confidence and therefore knock growth. And this is looking like the same again, except probably worse, to be fair.”
But Westpac’s chief economist Kelly Eckhold said he still expected some growth in the economy this year – although there was the potential for that to change.
“In the forecast update that we put out a couple of days ago, that assumed that things were going to get better within a month. If that doesn’t happen then things get darker quite quickly. Confidence levels about forecasts are quite low right now because there’s a lot of things we don’t know.
“You can’t discount the possibility [of less economic growth]. The only thing is that we are coming from a starting point where we were expecting a pretty solid year. So we’ve got further to fall before you get into that genuinely negative growth environment that we experienced back in 2024.”
The big concern was how long the conflict lasted, he said.
“We have to keep in mind that significant damage has already been done and it won’t be fixed quickly. There may also be risk premia built into concerns about fuel availability, prices… I’m very worried. I think this is a very, very serious situation.”
He said the lower exchange rate would make the price of imported goods higher, and make travel overseas more expensive for New Zealanders. But it was a positive for exporters.
“Nobody in New Zealand can protect us from the loss of standard of living that has come from this shock. The government can’t buy our way out of this. They can smooth the edges off for the most vulnerable. But in the end, it’s just a cost that is going to sheet home to us.
“The way out of this is by having the external sector ultimately be able to export our way out of this. And a lower exchange rate is part of the adjustment that facilitates that to occur.”
Flooding caused serious damage to the road surface on Whakapara Bridge, on State Highway 1 north of Whangārei.RNZ / Nick Monro
Weather-hit regions are set to get a reprieve as warnings lift and the rain moves to other parts of the country.
The red heavy warning which had been in place for parts of Northland expired 4am on Friday, but the Far North and Whangārei remain under a state of emergency until Thursday.
Damage to the Whakapara Bridge.RNZ / Nick Monro
MetService meteorologist Juliane Bergdolp said the deep sub-tropical low had moved to the east and many parts of the country were now in the clear.
“There is still some rain coming into the West Coast of [the] South Island and we still have some showers making their way into eastern parts of Bay of Plenty.”
Bergdolp said rain was expected to develop in the west of the South Island on Sunday, spreading to the west of the North Island on Saturday night or Sunday.
There were no rain or wind warnings in place for any regions.
Far North community member Mita Harris had been using a Unimog to help evacuate people and lift supplies as heavy rain hit the region. Harris said the storm did not last for long, but had impacted the region.
“This has been the biggest one this year so far, came in hard and fast – it was kind of a day or two and that was it, it was all over.
“The ground is saturated now and any more water coming in would certainly raise the levels quite quickly.”
State Highway 25 just north of Whangamata, crews clear a fallen tree.RNZ / Yiting Lin
Northland Civil Defence teams were assessing the damage after the latest storm.
Far North Mayor Moko Tepania said it would be a costly recovery with heavy rain and winds continuing as the low made its way across the country.
“This one is going to cost a lot of money to recover fully from both for us as a council with the infrastructure that we own and look after on behalf of the people but also for whanau themselves.”
Tepania said he was expecting the level of need to far exceed that of the January storms.
Whakapara Bridge bridge after the storm.NZTA
The Far North District Council said up to 410 cubic metres of floodwaters were flowing down the Awanui River every second – a level not seen since 1958.
Hundreds of people were evacuated in Kaitaia on Thursday night and more than 400 households and businesses were still without power on Friday morning after the heavy rain.
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Joseph, Patrick and Abraham Land with the bullock teamRNZ/Sally Round
Their story was intriguing: no tractors or cellphones, off-grid, subsistence and organic, relying on hand and bullock-power rather than fossil fuels to feed three generations of 25 people off a slip of land bounded by bush on the banks of the Whirinaki River.
So, with not a small measure of excitement, I found myself driving along a bumpy track leaving behind the main road through South Hokianga to meet the Land family.
Hmm – very timely, I thought, given the surging fuel crisis.
“Part of our ethos here is to see how many people you can feed off a small piece of land,” Joseph Land told me as the family gathered in a cosy room lined with books and pictures.
“A policy of ours, or a value, is that once you start using fossil fuels, you actually use up more calories than you produce. So eventually that’s not going to sustain the world.”
They had motor vehicles “to stay integrated” but did not need fuel to farm, they explained.
The family’s Catholic faith and respect for Māori knowledge and values also infused their way of farming and living, Joseph said.
Catherine and Joseph Land in their homeRNZ/Sally Round
As members of the Catholic Worker Movement – founded in the 1930s out of the Great Depression – helping the poor and marginalised, farming communally, and pacifism, were principles they worked by.
Heavy farming work was done by a team of four bullocks, and Archie and Buster, two Clydesdale horses.
The rest of the work to feed four households – from about six hectares – was done by hand.
In a paddock over the river, a crop of maize stands tall, almost ready for harvest.
One of Joseph’s sons Abraham hitches up his team of bullocks to lightly till the soil of a bare strip nearby for planting lupins – good for nourishing the soil after the potato harvest.
“When I first got into bullocks, I thought two would be enough, and when they were about four years old, they weren’t really pulling as much as I wanted, so I got a couple more, but they kept on growing for another two years. There were six before they stopped. And so now I’ve got much more power than I need.”
The bullocks are named Gordon, Cob, Fergus and FingleRNZ/Sally Round
The bullocks at workRNZ/Sally Round
Abraham drives the bullocks which are hitched to a disc harrow, lightly tilling the soil for a crop of lupins to nourish the soil after harvestRNZ/Sally Round
The Lands grow olives and a variety of fruit and vegetables, graze a few sheep and cows, make their own butter and rely mostly on their staple maize crop which they kibble and grind for bread and porridge.
A few things are bought in like wheat flour, sugar, tea and coffee, with money earned from part-time work off the farm.
Daughter-in-law Marissa, for example, works as a nurse, to pay for extras for her household.
“Two days a week gives us more than enough money, bit too much money – to live off.”
She enjoyed being part of the community and said the family was anxious not to be seen as survivalist or “exclusionary”.
With homeschooling her three children, cooking, gardening and helping build their new cob house, with husband Patrick, it was busy 24/7, she said.
“It’s very physical. Yeah, it is. And there’s never a moment in which your job is done. There’s always something you think, ‘oh, I could, should, probably be doing’.”
Patrick Land – in the foreground – is constructing a cob home with the help of his brother-in-law AndyRNZ/Sally Round
Patrick and Marissa are building a house made of cob and are using horse power to mix up the material needed for buildingRNZ/Sally Round
The Land family’s roots here were laid by Peter and Judith Land who bought a block of bush in the 1970s.
Joseph’s parents had been teachers in Fiji and were inspired by their life in a Vanua Levu village to recreate a similar subsistence style of living, alongside their Catholic faith.
“Dad was a visionary, not practical,” Joseph said, pointing out a photo of his late father who lived here into his 90s.
He did, however, set up a power source from a nearby waterfall. Now the Lands have solar power for lighting and biogas and wood-fired ranges for cooking.
Marissa shows me how she grinds the maize by hand using a Corona mill after it is kibbled – the kernels removed from the cob – at another hand-powered machine in the farmyard.
Marissa grinding maize for bread using the family’s Corona millRNZ/Sally Round
Lucia grinds the kibbling machine which removes the kernels from the cobsRNZ/Sally Round
The corncobs are stored in elevated storehouses nearby, like small hutches on stilts.
“They were everywhere in Hokianga, every farm had big gardens, small herds of cows, like 10 cows, big gardens, pig sties and lots of corn for animals and people,” Joseph said.
Store houses used to store maize are based on a traditional designRNZ/Sally Round
He arrived here as a boy and remembered when the roads were much quieter.
The local kaumatua taught him gardening skills including the knowledge needed for growing kūmara. He nurtures several heritage varieties on his kūmara tāpapa.
“You get really attached to the different varieties.
“I learned all this from the last gardens in Whirinaki in the ’70s. They vanished within five years, but I just got a glimpse of the lifestyle. So, a lot of this is just copying what was everyone’s experience here up until the ’70s.”
Joseph has a kūmara tapapa and sprouts many heritage varietiesRNZ/Sally Round
Joseph and his wife Catherine have seven grown children, four of whom have remained on the farm.
“It was very hard to get rid of me out of the valley,” Patrick said. “I did travel a little bit, but I just always wanted to be back here. Yeah, I find it very hard to be somewhere where you’re just eating food that you don’t know where it’s come from.”
The pumpkins have been harvested and maize is next, then it’s time to lightly till the soil and plant lupins to tide it over winterRNZ/Sally Round
Joseph is regarded as a kaikarakia among the local people, leading blessings and prayers and spending a lot of time at the local marae.
He told me the Land family acknowledged the mana whenua of the local hapū, and that the Lands stayed here by their goodwill.
“I think the big thing is having a mindset, this is our base economy, our life here, and so it’s real. What we grow we really depend on.”
Life was “full and rich”, however he acknowledged “come a disaster, we can go and get money and buy food”.
“So, in that way, we’re not as real as a peasant farmer in other parts of the world who don’t have those other options. But we don’t avail ourselves of that option. We don’t need to. We continue here. The average wage to us is enormous.”
The Land family are able to feed 25 people and more from six hectaresRNZ/Sally Round
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The tomatoes contain little seeds and are acid-free.Supplied
Red, bell-bottomed tomatoes with green crowns growing on sprawling vines in a glasshouse along Wellington’s south coast help keep Nina and her mother Teresa Cuccurullo connected to their heritage.
The Island Bay family has been growing tomatoes originally sourced from seeds brought over from the Italian island of Capri in the 1960s, for more than six decades.
It is a rich tradition first started by Teresa’s father Luigi Ruocco and carried on by her husband Antonio, before daughter Nina took it up after his death.
“It’s part of our history and it’s a time where you think about your grandparents,” Nina told Country Life. “I think about my father and [how] we are now getting it out to the rest of the community and to the family.
“It’s great to see how some of the younger people are starting to grow these tomatoes too, because then that legacy has continued.”
Their family was part of the “chain migration” from Italy to the Wellington suburb of Island Bay last century, Nina explained.
“They were coming here to better themselves, to start new families,” she said. “Nonno was one of the early ones in the 1920s, but there were others before him that were here as well.”
She said the family maintained its Italian identity by gathering as a community through its Catholic faith, via the cultural group known as Club Garibaldi, or by keeping up with family traditions – like eating octopus and tomato salad at Christmas time.
Nina Cuccurullo and mother Teresa Cuccurullo, who continue the family legacy of growing capri tomatoes first brought back from Italy by Teresa’s father in the 1960s.Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
Food is also key to feeding their heritage. Particularly growing tomatoes to be used to make passata.
“The sauce is central to all the other food because … that’s the sauce for the macaroni, it’s the sauce for the lasagna, the ravioli, the parmigiana. So the sauce is used quite a lot in the cooking and that’s why it was sort of bottled so it could be used during the year.”
Nina said the type of tomatoes they grew were “quite identifiable”, mostly through their distinctive shape.
“They’re an elongated shape, and they sort of go a little bit green at the top. There’s not much seeds in them, and they’re acid-free, and the skin is quite thin, so it’s not a thick skin.”
The tomatoes had a distinctive, elongated shape with a green crown on top.Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
They harvest the seeds from each season’s crop to keep the variety alive – growing them in the glasshouse to avoid cross-pollination with other tomato varieties.
“We get the best tomatoes on the crop – the bigger ones,” Teresa told Country Life. “Let them ripen on the stem, bring them in, cut them, take out all the seeds that there are – it’s not many – and separate them.”
The seeds are then put through a sieve to separate them from the membrane before being placed on the window sill to dry for the next summer.
For over a decade, Nina Cuccurullo has been growing tomatoes from her glasshouse in the Wellington suburb of Island Bay.Gianina Schwanecke / Country Life
Nothing goes to waste, Teresa said.
“All the pieces that you’ve cut up to get the seeds, they can be made into a sauce.”
They share the seeds with friends, family and others in the wider community to help keep them going – and also sell small plants during the peak growing period.
Nina said it was a privilege to be able to continue the legacy first started by her grandfather, and carried on by her father.
She said he loved being out in the garden.
“As well as a vegetable gardener, he was a very good flower gardener.
“He had a lot of plants, up to about 60 inside the glass house, and then quite a few more outside. So he was kept very, very busy.
“It was a passion. He was happy there.”
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