Anzac Day is Saturday, but the holiday will also be marked on Monday with a public holiday.RNZ / Reece Baker
Anzac Day is coming, and it’s one of the holidays when many businesses must close for part of the day.
On Anzac Day, most shops need to stay shut for the first half of the day till 1pm, which means if you plan on stopping at the supermarket after taking in a Dawn Service you might need to make other plans.
There are just three-and-a-half days a year which the Shop Trading Hours Act 1990 prevents most shopping – Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and the first half of Anzac Day.
Because Anzac Day falls on a Saturday this year, it’s also a “Mondayised” public holiday, which means many businesses will be closed on Monday – although the trading restrictions will only apply to Saturday.
What’s open?
Certain kinds of shops can open – limited to small grocery shops, pharmacies, service stations, takeaways, bars, cafes, duty-free stores; shops providing services (and not selling things) real estate agencies, public transport terminals or souvenir shops.
Shops without exemptions must stay closed during the first half of 25 April.
Monday-isation does not affect shop trading restrictions, because they only apply to the calendar date of Anzac Day.
Retailers can be fined up to $1000 if they open illegally.
As for alcohol, bottle shops will be closed on Anzac Day morning, but thanks to recent changes put through Parliament earlier this month in time for Easter, businesses that hold an on-licence can now operate under their normal licence conditions.
Are there going to be surcharges?
Cafes and restaurants can choose if they want to add a surcharge for opening on the morning of Anzac Day.
The surcharge covered the additional cost of wages on a public holiday and usually range from 10-15 percent.
The Commerce Commission has also said establishments must make it well-known to customers that a surcharge will be payable before they decide to purchase or engage the service.
“It must be clearly disclosed, for example, by adding information to their website for online sales or placing a sign outside,” it said on its website.
“In addition, the reason for any surcharge must be accurately described and must not be capable of misleading consumers. The surcharge should not exceed those costs, and the costs should actually be incurred by the business.”
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Though he lacks the top half of his beak, Bruce keeps a stiff upper lip.
Using his lower mandible as a spear, Bruce has never lost a fight and has secured his spot as the top bird at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch.
The kea was found injured in 2013, and has lived at the reserve ever since.
But despite his injury, or even because of it, Bruce has found an advantage.
“A way kea displace other kea is by biting them. Of course, Bruce can’t bite because he doesn’t have the upper mandible, so what he does is he essentially stretches out his neck and jabs with his lower beak kind of like a spear,” behavioural ecologist Ximena Nelson said.
“He will often twist his neck a little bit, and he targets different body parts than the other kea. You can really see that it’s very effective because the other will spring away when he does this.”
Bruce uses his lower mandible as a spear.Supplied / Dr Alex Grabham
Professor Nelson had been studying the kea at Willowbank with students and colleagues from the University of Canterbury.
When ranking the birds’ hierarchy, the researchers were surprised to see Bruce at the very top.
Nelson said Bruce’s signature move was so effective that the other birds were scared to challenge him.
“Bruce was so dominant that he actually doesn’t fight very often. We saw hundreds of fights but Bruce only fought 36 times or something, because all the birds would part like the red sea when he was around,” she laughed.
Bruce had been enjoying the perks of his position as best in the nest, with first dibs at dinner time.
“He completely dominates the feeding platform. There are four central feeding trays in the aviary at Willowbank, and the other birds just totally let him go to each feeding tray and he picks his own favourite foods without any interruption from the other birds,” she said.
“The other birds just watch from the side, and once he’s done with the four trays, then the other birds come along.”
Bruce the kea.Supplied / Ximena Nelson
Bruce was also the only male kea to be preened by the other males, and had the lowest level of stress chemicals in his poo thanks to the lack of challengers for his position.
But Nelson said Bruce had his fair share of challenges, eating highest among them.
Over the years he had found ways to chow down, but Bruce still had the lowest weight in his group.
“He uses his tongue essentially as sort of a top mandible, or he will press food against a rock and smush it up that way,” she explained.
“He’s got lots of behavioural innovations that he uses to compensate for the lack of his beak.”
Bruce compensates for the lack of his beak.Supplied / Ximena Nelson
Staff at the reserve suspected Bruce’s injury was caused by a trap.
Dr Laura Young, a field researcher at the Kea Conservation Trust, said traps remained a threat to native birds – but the situation had improved significantly in the years since Bruce was injured in 2013.
“In the past, many kea and other ground-dwelling birds, kiwi, weka, and so on, have been killed by traps of various types,” she said.
“Luckily now there’s been recognition of this and there’s better standards in place, there’s been banning of particular trap types in kea habitat as well, so we’re on the right track.”
Bruce has never lost a fight.Supplied / Dr Alex Grabham
Professor Nelson said Bruce’s rise to fame showed how adaptable some animals could be.
“Maybe animals, particularly animals that are fairly smart, they will actually be able to compensate for their disability and, in this case, compensate so well that they’re actually clearly dominant.
“Maybe we need to really look at the behaviour of animals before we decide about whether or not we need an intervention, because actually maybe the animal would be better off without it.”
Dr Young said the research was good news for conservationists, who were often left wondering if the animals they released could make it on their own.
“What’s really encouraging about the Willowbank study is to see that other birds can help out an injured bird,” she said.
“If the same applies to wild birds which I think it does, then that’s really encouraging because it means once they get released after their injury they will have help because they’re a social species.”
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For many midlife women busily juggling work and care responsibilities, an evening glass of wine can feel like the perfect antidote.
But that everyday habit comes with real risks. Beyond the familiar hangover, alcohol is linked to at least seven types of cancer, including breast, bowel, mouth and throat cancer. Even one drink a day increases that risk, and it rises further with each additional drink.
Around 70 percent of women in Aotearoa New Zealand reported drinking alcohol in 2024-25, according to national health data. Among women aged 35 to 54 who drink, around 16-18 percent consumed six or more standard drinks on a single occasion at least once a month, and around 5-10 percent did so at least weekly.
A glass of wine can feel like the perfect anecdote to the end of a day of work and parenting.
123rf
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Bruce the kea is missing his entire upper beak. Yet he is the alpha bird of his circus (the apt collective noun for a group of New Zealand’s famously playful alpine parrots).
As our latest research shows, Bruce achieved his alpha status not despite his disability, but because of it.
In a remarkable example of behavioural innovation, he has developed a novel technique to fight his opponents.
Bruce essentially weaponised his disability by using his sharp lower beak to joust other kea, propelling himself forward with such vigour that he nearly topples over, but not before the other birds jump back in a flurry of orange and green feathers.
Bruce uses his sharp lower beak to joust other kea.Xemina Nelson, CC BY-ND
Like other kea, Bruce will also kick to establish dominance, but the other birds simply can’t match his secret weapon because their intact upper beaks curve over the bottom beak, rendering this spear-like weapon unusable.
It is his jousting behaviour that has enabled Bruce to win every one of his contests and become the undisputed king of the circus.
So effective is this novel behaviour that Bruce seldom has to fight, making him more relaxed than the other birds over whom he reigns supreme.
Bruce’s origin story
In 2013, Bruce was found in the mountains of the South Island of New Zealand – the kea’s usual habitat. Missing his upper beak, he was brought into captivity at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch where it was believed he would have a better chance of survival.
Bruce was so small he was initially mistaken for a female and called Kati before genetic testing revealed he was male. How he lost his beak remains a mystery, but Bruce has used the intelligence for which these parrots are known not only to survive, but thrive.
We studied the dominance hierarchy of 12 captive kea at the wildlife reserve by observing all aggressive encounters between the birds, and measuring who displaced who and how often.
As is typical of kea, this circus is not a linear hierarchy, but rather one with some fluidity about ranks – except for Bruce, who never lost a fight and had sole access to food at feeding time, with other birds only coming in to eat once Bruce had his pick.
Other birds wait until Bruce has finished feeding.Xemina Nelson, CC BY-NC-ND
Curious about how stress hormones (corticosterone) mapped onto the circus hierarchy, we collected faeces from all birds and found that Bruce, contrary to our predictions, had the lowest level.
This was possibly because he was so dominant he simply did not need to scrap for position as much as the other troupe members.
Behavioural innovation
The beak of a parrot is like a third limb. It is used to dig for food, to climb, to grasp objects and to pry things open.
Bruce uses rocks to preen himself and mash up food.Alex Grabham, CC BY-NC-ND
Without an upper beak, Bruce‘s disability should put him at a disadvantage. But necessity is the mother of invention and Bruce has developed many novel behaviours to compensate for the loss.
He uses sharp stones he carefully selects from within his enclosure as tools to help preen himself. Being the alpha male, he also solicits and receives grooming from subordinate males. This includes them carefully cleaning out food stuck in his lower beak.
Instead of masticating with his upper beak, Bruce also uses rocks, fence posts, human feet and any number of handy objects in his enclosure to grind food to a fleshy edible pulp.
Animal minds have much to teach us
Kea don’t typically use tools in nature, but they are known to be exceptional problem solvers, comparable to primates. This is possibly because they need to find food such as tubers buried underground or dig for grubs in rotting logs.
It is this very attribute of cleverness that suggests well-meaning humans who might otherwise attach a prosthetic to a disabled animal may actually be doing them a disservice. Bruce’s disability has forced him to overcome problems and flourish in doing so.
Perhaps the ability to innovate behaviours is restricted to animals with complex cognition and the capacity to overcome a disability through invention may be limited to very smart species.
However, recent research shows many animals – including a cow named Veronika that uses a stick to scratch herself – astonish us in developing new behaviours. I would not be surprised if we have further revelations ahead, not only from Bruce the kea or Veronika the cow, but from many animals, including bumblebees and possibly other invertebrates.
When Rachel Carson wrote the environmental classic Silent Spring in 1962, she warned that unchecked human impacts might create a silent future.
Forty years later, biologists uncovered a striking effect of noise pollution on songbirds. They found that low-pitched traffic noise in European cities forced birds to sing at higher pitches. Songbirds in a noisy park beneath the Eiffel Tower sang at a pitch of 400 Hz higher than those in quiet forests outside Paris.
Yet even as Paris has grown quieter, birds have not returned to their natural song frequencies. Our research shows that great tits in Paris continue to sing at higher pitches than birds in wilderness areas outside the city.
Further noise-reduction efforts are vital, in urban areas throughout the world, to allow wild birds to communicate at their natural sound frequencies.
The devastating impact of noise
Human activity fills the world with noise. The sounds of cars, airplanes, boats and industrial activities produce a steady roar that impacts wild animals, birds and insects. We often overlook noise pollution as a conservation problem, yet it may have devastating effects on wildlife during an era of increasing urbanization.
Since the discovery that low-pitched traffic noise in European cities forced birds to sing at higher pitches, this pattern has been demonstrated in diverse bird populations around the world.
An automated digital recorder in the city of Paris.(Dan Mennill)
Automated noise cameras issue fines to excessively loud vehicles. A regional observatory called Bruitparif now monitors noise throughout the city and oversees noise-reduction efforts.
These noise-reduction efforts in Paris stand to make the city quieter for both people and wildlife. The city’s campaign in the war against noise prompts the question: can we turn down the volume on noise pollution to minimize its impact on birdsong?
Turning down the racket
In 2023, I travelled to Paris to record the songs of the great tit, a familiar European backyard bird closely related to the chickadee.
I used microphones and digital recorders to record birds in the streets, squares and parks throughout the city. I retraced the footsteps of my collaborator, Hans Slabbekoorn, the original biologist who recorded great tits in Paris in 2003.
Dan Mennill uses a microphone to capture birdsong close to the Eiffel Tower.(Dan Mennill)
When we compared background noise with bird songs, we found that great tits sing higher-pitched songs in noisier environments. By singing at a higher pitch, great tits avoid having their songs masked by the low-frequency noise of traffic sounds.
We also analyzed noise data collected across Paris by Bruitparif. We found that Paris is winning the war on noise pollution and the city has grown quieter in recent years. In fact, Paris today is approximately three decibels quieter than it was 10 years ago. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic, a three-decibel drop represents a major reduction in sound intensity.
Despite this progress, great tits in Paris continue to sing at higher pitches than birds in wilderness areas outside the city.
Birds can revert their tune
However, there is reason for optimism. Research has shown that when cities become quieter, birds in other locations have returned to their natural pitch.
These findings reveal that noise pollution affects diverse birds, even those whose songs seem well-suited to noisy environments.
Listening to the future
Our studies in Paris show that a three-decibel reduction is not sufficient to allow birds to return to their natural song frequencies. Further noise-reduction efforts will be required for us to adequately share the airwaves with our feathered friends.
Paris also provides a hopeful lesson about battling noise pollution. Cities can reduce noise by encouraging cycling and quieter transportation. Public policy also plays an important role, exemplified by Paris’s Bruitparif agency.
If we measure noise pollution, we can strive to reduce it, improve our own well-being and create the space for wild birds to communicate at their natural sound frequencies.
Businesses around Christchurch’s new stadium are buzzing about the first sports match at the $683 million arena on Friday night and making preparations for an influx of patrons.
Restaurants and bars closest to the stadium were gearing up for a bumper weekend, with 75,000 people expected at the arena over three days.
Dux Central owner Richard Sinke had been waiting a long time for this moment.
“I took the lease in 2014 thinking that the stadium was going to open in 2019, so it’s been a long wait from then until now 12 years. So yeah, thrilled,” he said.
Dux Central owner Richard Sinke.RNZ / Nate McKinnon
His restaurant was booked solid and his team had been moving furniture to make more space.
“We’ve got the Queensland Reds supporters club coming, lots of other big companies with their staff, lots of smaller groups. We’re looking forward to hosting lots of people and seeing Christchurch step into a whole new level of entertainment and opportunity,” he said.
Dux Central was one of a number of businesses that spent about a year buried in roadworks while construction was carried out.
But now Sinke was in a prime spot for tens of thousands of punters heading to events.
“It was a pretty hard disillusioning time with the roadworks on, loss of carparks, people couldn’t access us very easily, plus the country was in recession so it was a tricky time for trading for a lot of people in this area here so we’re really pleased to see it moving ahead,” he said.
A short walk away, Basel Al Zuhlof had only recently put the finishing touches on his Mediterranean restaurant Stadium Pirate Grill.
Stadium Pirate Grill owner Basel Al Zuhlof.RNZ / Nate McKinnon
He took over the lease of the business in December 2025 and had worked to ensure its opening would line up with the stadium’s first event.
“We just finished designing our shop and we finished designing the menu and we’re ready for this week the opening of the stadium. We’re very excited to start and rock and roll,” he said.
“The spot is a very good spot near Ara and the stadium in the heart of the city.”
Business Canterbury chief executive Leeann Watson said businesses had been anticipating the stadium’s opening for years.
“The central city rebuild was largely led by the private sector. Many of these businesses made their decisions to reinvest back into the central city of Christchurch on the basis that they would have a stadium and a convention centre,” she said.
“The completion of the stadium is a huge milestone and so this is now payback for those businesses.”
Business Canterbury chief executive Leeann Watson.RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Christchurch NZ head of major events Karena Finnie said the Super Round was projected to attract about 13,500 visitors to the city who would bring about $6m in visitor spending over the long weekend.
“This weekend will be the icing on the cake for the biggest fortnight of events Christchurch has seen. Between the 65,000 attendees at the sold-out Supercars event and the 75,000 attendees expected at Super Round this weekend, we are projecting a total visitor spend of $16 million,” she said.
“These events have also extended our traditional late summer high season into the autumn, meaning high occupancy rates in hotels and even more visitor spending in the periods surrounding these huge events.”
Watson said the Super Rugby games would give the city big economic benefits.
“These are the sorts of events that really give us a huge economic boost. And of course all of the suppliers to the hotels and bars and restaurants as well so the food growers and producers, they also reap the benefits,” she said.
The stadium would host its first concert in May with Six60 and Synthony.
British pop superstar Robbie Williams was scheduled to be the first international act to play at the stadium in November, followed by rock legends Foo Fighters in January.
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The Wellington region and Wairarapa have spent the night under a red heavy rain warning, with downpours expected to continue through to late Tuesday.
Wellington was hit by widespread, damaging floods and landslides overnight on Sunday following a weekend of storms.
Authorities are urging lower North Island residents to stay off the roads and evacuate if they feel unsafe as the rain continues.
MetService said with continued rain over several days there was a possible threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips.
Follow the latest with RNZ’s liveblog above.
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Those who weren’t hit in the first deluge did what they could to ensure it doesn’t happen again with more rain battering the region.
Around the capital, bleary-eyed people stand in their shop doorways, covered in grime, donning gumboots and wet weather gear.
Too stunned to speak, they say no comment. Their homes, shops and livelihoods ruined. Sweeping, shovelling, pumping whatever they can.
Asha Patel – owner of Skin and Body Care in Newtown.RNZ / Charlotte Cook
Asha Patel from Skin and Body Care in Newtown narrowly avoided catastrophe.
Next door in Lychgate mall, a metre high wall of water pushed through the building, blowing out windows and destroying the property as vehicles floated in the car park.
“I’m lucky I’ve got concrete floors in Lino, so that was easy to clean up.
“But I do feel sorry for a lot of people in Newtown, especially the cafes across the road.”
However she was not out of the woods with more warnings and rain to come.
“I’m worried. I’m thinking of staying overnight.
“Just because I’ve got very expensive machines, you know, machines can cost anything up to $150, $200,000.”
She said this would make her anxious every time it rained now.
“It will make me worry … stay up at night. I might want to come back to Newtown in the middle of the night to check on my clinic.
“It’s hard work, you know, it’s your sweat and your heart. You work so hard to make something, you know. And it gets washed away so quickly.”
Owhiro Bay resident Nicole and her children getting ready to sandbag.RNZ / Charlotte Cook
Nicole in Owhiro Bay sandbagged and then left her place after seeing the torrent from the night before.
“If I had to make a call to leave to go to my neighbours across the road up the driveway, I’d have to evacuate quite quickly before water maybe got into my house because Happy Valley Road was so flooded that crossing the road would have been really unsafe.”
She said seeing the weather get worse and worse was terrifying.
“My oldest has just started intermediate school and he’s now missed two days of school, one for wind and one for flooding just in 2026, so pretty bad.”
A few houses away from Nicole a family evacuated in the middle of the night in waist deep water – the house is now filled with mud.
Too overwhelmed to speak, the owner told RNZ they are just getting ready for it to flood again.
A message other residents fear but are working to avoid.
Glen Christie spent Monday working on the gutters – doing his best to ensure the worst doesn’t happen again.
“It’s scary seeing the neighbours getting flooded and walking around and seeing a few other people flooded and a few cars smashed up by the little slips and things like that.”
Many residents will be anxious to open their curtains at first light this morning, to see what new damage awaits them.
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New Zealand’s Jayden Lennox is clean bowled by Bangladesh’s Nahid Rana during the second ODI, Mirpur, 2026.MUNIR UZ ZAMAN / AFP
The Black Caps have been beaten by Bangladesh by six wickets in the second ODI in Dhaka.
Pace bowler Nahid Rana ripped through the New Zealand batting order dismissing the tourists for 198 in the 49th over after they decided to bat first.
Rana took his second five wicket haul in ODI’s finishing with five for 32 from ten overs.
Opener Nick Kelly scored 83, but he had little support from his fellow batters with Muhammad Abbas the next highest with 19 runs.
In reply opener Tanzid Hasan scored 76, while Najmul Hossain Shanto made 50 as the home side reached their target in the 36th over.
Spinner Jayden Lennox took two wickets and Nathan Smith and Will O’Rourke one each.
New Zealand captain Tom Latham admitted after the game that Bangladesh’s start with the ball was defining.
“I think the pressure that Bangladesh were able to apply certainly in those first 10 overs, we never managed to build many partnerships,” Latham said.
“Then obviously trying to defend 200, it’s important to take early wickets. We took a couple, but credit to the way that they played.
“They came out and showed a lot of intent and put us on the back foot straight away. They played fantastically well.”
With the series level at 1-1 the two sides now head to Chattogram for the third and deciding game on Thursday.
“It’s important that we do adapt to those conditions. We know it’s going to be a challenge again and we’ll most likely be faced with something similar to what we have here,” Latham said.
New Zealand won the first game by 26 runs.
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Tenants are using artificial intelligence to help make applications to the Tenancy Tribunal.RNZ
Tenants using artificial intelligence to help them make applications to the Tenancy Tribunal are creating extra work and backlog, one property manager says.
Property Brokers general manager of property management David Faulkner said there had been a noticeable shift towards AI-written applications that tended to be longer, more complex and sometimes claiming excessive amounts of money.
He said his firm received a notice of hearing for a tenancy dispute just before Christmas. A tenant had claimed that she and her child had their safety compromised when they were renting a rural property with unsafe drinking water.
“There were other issues as well – a claim of retaliatory notice, breaches of quiet enjoyment, and a dryer breaking down, which took a total of four weeks to repair. Her claim was for $40,000.
“What we received was a total of 215 pages, made up of the application, evidence, photographs, and a 101 page written report outlining the claim and breaking down the costs that should be awarded to her. The basis of the claim was that the pH level of the water was at a level that made it dangerous to drink. There were two hearings, one remote and one in person.
“On 2 April, the adjudicator published the Tribunal order. The tenant was awarded a grand total of $80 for the inconvenience of the dryer.”
He said excessively long, seemingly AI-generated claims like this put pressure on staff as well as the owners of the property.
“[That] was probably the first one, and we’re thinking this looks very, very complex. Then you start to see two or three more come through asking for really big amounts, $40,000, $50,00, $60,000 and they’re all set out in the same format. It just becomes quite clear that it’s AI-generated.
“A tenant may have a grievance, they put it together, and, you know, in good old days they’d probably go to somebody like a tenancy union or a tenant advocate, and at least could have a conversation with them, but AI in some cases is just giving them information which is just not being verified. And they’re probably getting very excited about what they think they can get, and they submit it in. And it’s started to cause a few problems.”
He said Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators were having to go through all the pages of evidence and it slowed the process.
Faulkner said some claims did not have merit and others were exorbitant.
Landlords submit the bulk of Tenancy Tribunal applications, commonly for rent arrears. Faulkner said these cases often did not need to be dealt with via a hearing and the tribunal could speed up the rate at which it heard cases by dealing with hem remotely.
Sarina Gibbon, director at Tenancy Advisory, said it was true that cases were being lodged that were more complex and sometimes meritless.
But she said it was probably another stage in the evolution of technology.
Tenancy Advisory director Sarina Gibbon.Supplied
“If you look at the overall system in terms of the common challenges we have now which is to make the tribunal pipeline flow more effectively and minimise wait time so genuine applications are not having to wait months and months and months to get a hearing, in that sense having a very primitive grasp of AI is not helping.
“But if you take a step back and consider the overall intent of a tenancy-specific tribunal, which is really set up to promote cheap and expedited justice or dispute resolution … if AI enables more applicants to put forward applications, is that helpful? Yeah, I think it’s helpful. It’s serving justice and giving access to justice to more people.
“I don’t see a problem with AI as such, I think this is a reflection of simply that the technology is just so new and we’re still such naive and primitive users that we’re grasping with what this technology means. So right now what is happening is a lot of people are engaging with AI with very little knowledge of the RTA themselves. So they’re buying into AI hallucination, they’re buying into this tremendous amount of bloat that AI produces.
“I’m a lover of technology, over time I’m confident that AI is going to get us to a point where it’s going to be, it’s going to be a help rather than a hindrance.”
It comes after the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman warned last week that people should fact-check the information AI was giving them when they made complaints.
In one example seen by the IFSO Scheme, a Google AI summary suggested that insurance claim decisions are “frequently overturned” when consumers complained, and that “up to 80 or 90 percent of cases can result in success if people persist”.
But Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman Karen Stevens said that was misleading.
She said complaints that escalated were often complex and stressful, and not always able to be resolved in the consumer’s favour.
She said AI responses could make the process more frustrating for people when reality did not match their expectations.
“While AI can be very useful for general information, it can sometimes oversimplify complex policy wording, miss key exclusions, and rely on overseas information that doesn’t apply in New Zealand. We’ve also seen instances of AI hallucinating previous cases and using them as examples. This can result in it giving incorrect advice,” she said.
“We’ve seen complaints which are 300 pages long. But more words aren’t necessarily better. Clear information about what has gone wrong for someone is much more useful than multiple pages referencing legislation and case law.”
The Wellington region and Wairarapa have spent the night under a red heavy rain warning, with downpours expected to continue through to late Tuesday.
Wellington was hit by widespread, damaging floods and landslides overnight on Sunday following a weekend of storms.
Authorities are urging lower North Island residents to stay off the roads and evacuate if they feel unsafe as the rain continues.
MetService said with continued rain over several days there was a possible threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips.
Follow the latest with RNZ’s liveblog above.
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Prime minister Christopher Luxon says he has the full support of his caucus.RNZ / Mark Papalii
The prime minister says he has the full support of his caucus, as National MPs gather in Wellington for the first time in nearly three weeks.
Parliament’s first sitting day since 2 April comes after a 1News-Verian poll showing the government would be out of power, and a New Zealand Herald report the prime minister had evaded National’s chief whip, who was trying to tell him that caucus support was flagging.
Christopher Luxon has denied he was avoiding Stuart Smith, and was unaware he had been trying to get in touch.
“He hasn’t reached out to me. There has been no engagement with Stuart Smith from my office or with him,” Luxon said.
The pair were together in North Canterbury last Tuesday and Luxon said it was not raised, and he had not spoken with Smith over the weekend either.
“If there’s any issues that he had, he would have raised them with me,” Luxon said.
“I talk to my backbenchers all the time. I was with a number of them over the course of the weekend at a number of events. I reassure you, I have the confidence of my caucus, period.”
As they arrived at Wellington Airport ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Monday, ministers Mark Mitchell, Simeon Brown, Chris Penk, and Paul Goldsmith all defended Luxon.
Chris Bishop, Todd McClay, and Nicola Willis have also put their support behind Luxon in interviews in recent days, while Erica Stanford, stood next to Luxon at the post-Cabinet media conference, said she had not had any conversations with caucus colleagues about whether Luxon should stay on as prime minister.
“I think he’s doing an exceptional…” she began to say, before Luxon cut her off to ask if anyone had any other questions.
On Monday morning, Luxon told Newstalk ZB there were “probably five people” that were “moaning and frustrated”, a number he later walked back on by Monday afternoon.
The number, Luxon insisted, was in response to media reports he had seen.
“My comment was just in reaction to your media reporting quoting a number of sources that you said you had.”
Responding to the polling numbers and his personal approval ratings, Luxon was “absolutely” confident he would still be prime minister after the caucus meeting.
“I appreciate I’m not going to be the person that everyone wants to go to a beer with, but they know that I’m actually leading a government that is a great custodian of this economy. And in difficult and tough times, that’s what’s needed now: strong economic management and stable coalition government, and that’s what we’re delivering.”
Asked whether the matter would be raised at the caucus meeting, Luxon said there would be “pretty good” conversations, given the media interest that had been “sparked” over the last few days.
He would not expand on what would be talked about in caucus, but said the party had a good culture, and it had been “rebuilt and unified” over the last two-and-a-half years.
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Follow all the cricket action as the Black Caps take on Bangladesh in their second one day international at Shere Bangla National Stadium, Mirpur.
It’s the second of three ODI matches, followed by three T20I series matches, taking place during the Black Caps tour of Bangladesh.
First ball is at 5pm NZT.
Black Caps ODI Squad to Bangladesh:
Tom Latham (Canterbury), Muhammad Abbas (Wellington Firebirds), Adithya Ashok (Auckland Aces), Ben Lister (Auckland Aces), Josh Clarkson (Central Stags), Dane Cleaver (Central Stags), Dean Foxcroft (Central Stags), Nick Kelly (Wellington Firebirds), Jayden Lennox (Central Stags), Henry Nicholls (Canterbury), Will O’Rourke (Canterbury), Ben Sears (Wellington Firebirds), Nathan Smith (Wellington Firebirds), Blair Tickner (Central Stags), Will Young (Central Stags)
Black Caps captain Tom Latham.PHOTOSPORT
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A conceptual illustration of a blockchain system.AFP / Sergii Iaremenko / Science Photo Library
Cryptocurrency and blockchain experts, investors, financial advisors appear unfazed by immediate threats to the Bitcoin blockchain posed by quantum technology.
Topfer said the blockchain community was working at pace to secure blockchains against the quantum threat, and Bitcoin was no exception.
New Zealand Blockchain Forum executive director Trevor Topfer.Supplied / NZ Blockchain Forum
“It’s easy to point the finger at Bitcoin, but I think that there’s a lot of other things that are a much bigger fish to fry than Bitcoin.
“Less than 5 percent of the world’s population owns Bitcoin.
“It’s a small threat to a small group of people when the entire world trades on SWIFT rails (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), which would be much easier for quantum computing to undermine at a global scale than Bitcoin.”
“There’s no way we can let quantum loose on the financial system, because it will disrupt the entire financial system, whether it’s Bitcoin, whether it’s fiat currency, whether it’s Swift, whatever function within the financial system that Quantum goes after, it can hack and overcome and break. That’s the problem. That’s the quantum threat.”
However, he said anything quantum breaks would make it stronger.
“If you turn a quantum computer at blockchain to crack it, you can also turn a quantum computer at blockchain to build it right?”
Blockchain seen as reshaping global infrastructure
Blockchain was invented to facilitate Bitcoin transactions, and had expanded to serve as a secure layer of the internet.
“Tthere’s an entire blue ocean of opportunity, because a blockchain is a better technology than what we have,” Topfer said, adding it had already completely rewired the global financial system.
“We’ve got a lot of different opportunities coming down the pipe. We’ve got identity, we’ve got personal data ownership, health records, there’s supply chain benefits.
“There’s already companies in New Zealand working in primary industry to use smart contracts and various other mechanisms that blockchain offers to find efficiencies and streamline those services.
“There will always be an underlying layer of blockchain when we need security, validation and automation. Blockchain exists for that.”
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Dr Falk Kalamorz and Rebecca Manners study a kiwivine plant within an outside level 1 containment area.Craig Robertson
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In 2010 the kiwifruit vine killing bacterial disease Psa-v was found in a Bay of Plenty orchard.
What followed was job, livelihood and monetary losses for many North Island kiwifruit growers as a variety of gold kiwifruit, Hort-16A, proved to be particularly susceptible to the disease.
Unfortunately, the disease spread to other kiwifruit growing regions in the North Island, including Northland, the Coromandel and the Waikato. But this aggressive version of the plant bacteria never made it to the South Island.
And so, a team of kiwifruit breeders and scientists devised a system to keep it that way.
North Island tissue culture
“The way we are doing it in New Zealand is more stringent than what we’re doing if we’re exporting material,” says the Bioeconomy Science Institute’s Dr Ed Morgan.
Based in Palmerston North, Ed leads a team of scientists responsible for doing a lot of plant tissue culture and moving plants around the world, and around New Zealand.
Following the Psa-v outbreak, the Bioeconomy Science Institute was approached by kiwifruit company Zespri about developing a plan to enable plants to safely move from the North to South Islands, without any risk of bringing the disease south.
This would allow South Island growers to purchase cultivars bred in the North Island and allow the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre (KBC – which is 50:50 Zespri and Bioeconomy Science Institute owned) to continue its work testing kiwifruit vines in different environments and different climates at its nursery in Motueka.
North Island cultivars to be moved are sprouted from budwood, and then four or five weeks later sent to the Palmerston North lab. From there, plant tissue cultures are established.
In this contained environment, the new plant tissue cultures go through several cycles of disease-checking in the lab, culminating in a PCR test by an external, independent lab which specifically looks for a piece of the Psa-v genome.
Only if they’ve been cleared through three or four checks, and the PCR test, will they be considered for sending south.
But that’s just the beginning.
Kiwivine plants are checked carefully for any signs of disease.Craig Robertson
South Island post entry quarantine
After they cross the Cook Strait, the tiny tissue culture plantlets, just 2-5 centimetres in size, with a few leaves and their first roots, will arrive in the Bioeconomy Science Institute in Lincoln, just Southwest of Christchurch.
Here they spend six months in a glasshouse where they are checked weekly for the tiny brown dots with yellow halos that are the tell-tale sign of Psa infection.
After that they are tested again by PCR. If they clear that stage, they then spend a further eight months across a new spring and summer growing season in pots in an enclosed outside area, again with weekly checks and a final PCR test.
Even then, there is one last step to go. If the plants are cleared, they will spend another year either at the onsite farm in Lincoln or in a nursery site outside of the South Island growing regions as an extra precaution.
While Zespri and the KBC are the customers, and the Bioeconomy Science Institute is providing this scientific service, it’s Kiwivine Health (KVH) who is the overseer of this pathway.
KVH was established in 2010 when the Psa outbreak occurred, with the mandate of managing the spread and impact to kiwifruit growers within the industry. The movement of kiwifruit plants falls under their pathway plan, a regulatory plan under the Biosecurity Act, and each year they audit the steps in the pathway.
Falk and Rebecca check the newly arrived kiwivine plants in the contained glasshouse.RNZ / Claire Concannon
While today growers use kiwifruit vine varieties that are less susceptible to Psa-v, it still has an impact on plants every year says KVH chief executive Leanne Stewart. “There needs to be active prevention programs in place every season, to make sure that it doesn’t become an issue and infections don’t run rampant on orchards.”
Currently the pathway can accommodate about 120 plants each year and so far they’ve not had any sign of Psa-v in any of the plants that have arrived in Lincoln. And Leanne is keen to keep it that way.
“In the South Island, we grow Heyward and Sun Gold and Ruby Red kiwifruit. If it was to get into the South Island, those varieties are susceptible to Psa. Not the same as Hort-16A, but there still needs to be active management of the bacteria. Because it’s a colder environment down there we could see a high level of infection, which we want to avoid.”
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The message is clear: cities and regions must lead, and their counterparts around the world should help them do it. The congress also calls on Russia to pay for the damage it has caused, pointing to frozen Russian assets worldwide as one source for those funds — an acknowledgment that recovery cannot wait for the war to end, since communities are already rebuilding under fire.
As a lead author of the report underpinning the congress’s call to action, I want to explain why it matters and why Canada, in particular, has both the track record and the responsibility to step up.
Behind every statistic is a community struggling to survive — a mayor trying to keep schools open under missile attacks; a municipal council managing hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons with dwindling resources; a city engineer repairing the same water system for the third time after it was bombed yet again.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko observes a burned out flat in a residential building damaged after a Russian strike in Kyiv in May 2025.(AP Photo/Alex Babenko)
Local and regional authorities across Ukraine face these situations every day. And it is precisely because the challenges are so local — tied to specific communities and capacities — that the response must also be local.
Ukrainian decentralization reforms since 2014 have expanded the fiscal capacity of the country’s municipalities, enabling them to respond to the unprecedented shocks of war far more effectively than before. In fact, local budget revenues quintupled between 2014 and 2021.
Russia’s invasion disrupted these reforms.
Why city-to-city networks are different
The call to action by the congress asks local and regional authorities in Council of Europe member states to use “existing co-operation platforms and bilateral partnerships to offer practical support to their Ukrainian counterparts.”
It’s an appeal for cities that have solved difficult problems — managing mass displacement, rebuilding after disaster, reforming service delivery — to share what they know with Ukrainian cities doing the same under fire.
City-to-city partnerships are fundamentally different from top-down aid. They are peer relationships built on what scholars call horizontal assistance — the exchange of practical knowledge and structural social capital between cities navigating similar challenges.
Research on municipal technical exchanges, including a study of Seattle’s city-to-city delegations, shows these networks generate direct benefits: lower costs of accessing policy information, facilitation of collective action and long-term institutional ties that outlast any individual project cycle.
As the researchers who conducted the Seattle research point out, the exchanges “disseminate information, and through the personal relations they initiate, have a potential for influencing future resource decisions among cities and countries.”
This matters enormously for Ukraine. The most effective city networks are those oriented toward concrete policy transfer such as sharing regulatory frameworks, governance tools and public administration practices.
Ukrainian cities need exactly this: working models of how to manage housing allocation for displaced persons, how to deliver trauma-informed social services and how to rebuild energy infrastructure with built-in resilience.
Canadian municipal engineers who might advise a Kharkiv counterpart on water system resilience wouldn’t just be delivering aid — they’d be sharing hard-won professional knowledge among equals. That knowledge sticks in ways that consultant reports rarely do.
Volunteers work on the reconstruction of a house destroyed during a Russian attack in December 2022 in Kyiv.(AP Photo/Roman Hrytsyna)
The lessons of past reconstruction
History offers clear guidance on what works. Comparative analysis of post-war and post-disaster reconstruction experiences identifies local community engagement and bottom-up leadership as the single most consistent factor separating successful from failed reconstruction.
Top-down donor interventions that bypassed local institutions, as in Iraq after 2003, produced waste, duplication and projects misaligned with community priorities. By contrast, programs that genuinely incorporated recipient input — like the post-Second World War Marshall Plan — achieved lasting results.
The review by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of Ukraine’s recovery architecture echoes this: Ukraine’s reconstruction ecosystem remains fragmented, with co-ordination gaps among federal government departments, international donors and local authorities.
City-to-city networks can help fill that gap at the most practical level by channelling directly applicable knowledge to the local officials who most need it.
Canada has been here before. Beginning in 2010, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), financed by the Canadian government through Global Affairs Canada, built exactly this kind of peer network in Ukraine through the Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance.
The $19.5-million, six-year initiative worked directly with 16 Ukrainian cities to strengthen local democracy, support small and medium-sized businesses and advance decentralization.
FCM’s municipal experts worked alongside counterparts in cities like Lviv and Dnipro, co-publishing Ukraine’s first municipal guide to local economic development and helping local governments design collaborative regional projects. A key partner throughout was the Association of Ukrainian Cities, a key municipal advocacy organization.
That program ended, but the relationships it built did not. And the decentralization reforms it supported are now widely credited — by the congress’s call to action itself, the OECD and scholars of Ukrainian resilience — with giving Ukrainian local authorities the capacity to respond as effectively as they have to the shocks of war.
People walk in front of a building heavily damaged after a Russian strike on residential neighbourhood in Kriukivshchyna, near Kyiv, on April 3, 2026.(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
The case for reinvestment
The congress explicitly notes in its call to action that decentralization reforms “have played a crucial role in Ukraine’s wartime resilience.” That is, in part, a legacy of Canada’s investment.
A new, scaled-up commitment through FCM building on existing relationships with the Association of Ukrainian Cities — drawing on FCM’s international programs expertise and connecting Canadian municipal professionals to their Ukrainian peers across the priority domains the resolution identifies (like in housing, social and mental health supports, economic recovery, emergency management, community energy and citizen participation) — would represent a return to a proven formula.
The congress’s call to action urges deeper, more focused work on local recovery and reconstruction. City-to-city partnerships stand out as one of the most cost-effective and sustainable tools: they share practical knowledge that endures, strengthen institutions over the long term and recognize Ukrainian cities as active participants in their own reconstruction.
Canada helped build local government capacity in Ukraine before the war. The Council of Europe’s Congress has now called on the world to do so again. Canada should answer that call.
The Fiji Police Force has launched a murder investigation following the death of wellknown drug pusher Jone Vakarisi, who died in military custody on Thursday.
Police spokesperson Ana Naisoro told RNZ Pacific that “investigators are gathering intelligence to establish the facts and circumstances surrounding the victim’s death”.
“The heads of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) and the police are reconfirming their commitment towards conducting a thorough investigation, appealing once again to members of the public to allow the investigative process to run its course,” Naisoro said.
Meanwhile, the Suva High Court has closed criminal proceedings against Vakarisi, after the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) made an application to stop proceedings.
Fijivillage.com reports that public prosecutors were appealing Vakarisi’s suspended sentence for having marijuana within the confines of a court in January 2023.
He was reportedly found with 15.2 grams of marijuana and sentenced to three months in jail, suspended for two years by the Suva Magistrates Court.
The appeal hearing was meant to be held on Monday.
Application granted Chief Justice Salesi Temo granted the ODPP’s application after reviewing medical evidence.
The court requested a copy of the death certificate, which was released by the police’s Director of Criminal Investigations.
Conflicting reports emerged over the weekend regarding the death of Vakarisi, who was reportedly linked to major criminal networks.
Fiji drug peddler Jone Vakarisi at a court appearance in March 2026 . . . his death in military custody blamed on “a pre-existing condition”. Image: FB/The Fiji Times/RNZ Pacific
News of his death broke on Friday, while top military and police brass were gathered on Bau Island, farewelling the late President and Speaker of the House, Ratu Epeli Nailatikau.
The RFMF said in a statement on Saturday that the death was due to “a sudden and severe emergency” during questioning at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks in Nabua, approximately 10 minutes’ drive from Suva City.
RFMF commander Major-General Ro Jone Kalouniwai said the victim, in his late 30s, had “voluntarily presented” himself with three others to the RFMF headquarters “to assist with investigations.”
Kalouniwai attributed Vakarisi’s death to “a pre-existing condition”. However, Vakarisi’s family has disputed the military’s account, telling local media that he was “not a sickly person at all”.
Later statement However, a later statement by General Kalouniwai corrected aspects of the initial military communication concerning the death of Vakarisi, saying that the RFMF acknowledged that the earlier description of the incident as a “medical emergency” did not fully reflect the medical findings now available, reports Fijivillage.com.
This followed the receipt of the post mortem report for Vakarisi.
The commander said the RFMF recognised the seriousness of these findings.
Queenie Osbourne, the mother of Vakarisi’s children, told The Fiji Times, that Vakarisi and others were taken from their home to the army barracks on Thursday night without any formal explanations.
A leaked death certificate, which first appeared on Fijian social media on Saturday, has now been verified by Fiji Police commissioner Rusiate Tudravu to be an official police document.
According to the document, the causes of Vakarisi’s death were listed as asphyxia, aspiration of gastric contents, severe traumatic head injuries, and blunt force trauma to both the head and chest.
“No one informed us of his death from the night he died. We found out when he was in the morgue,” Osbourne was quoted as saying by TheFiji Times.
Vakarisi’s family is calling for justice.
A high-level meeting took place in Suva involving the Prime Minister, security chiefs and military leaders before the police decided to issue a statement classifying Vakarisi’s death as murder.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A state of emergency has been declared in the Wellington region after it was hit with torrential rain.
Heavy rain warnings in Wellington and Wairarapa have been upgraded to red until Tuesday night.
MetService says the forecast rain presents a threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips.
Wellington Civil Defence Emergency Management (WCEM) said the declaration supports the response to ongoing severe weather, flooding and infrastructure impacts.
It gives responders the powers and co-ordination needed to keep people safe, support evacuations where needed, and manage impacts, group controller Carrie McKenzie said.
“The priority is life safety,” McKenzie said.
“We are asking people to take this seriously, follow safety advice, and act early if they are in low-lying or flood-prone areas, which are those that have experienced multiple flooding events in recent years.”
There is an increased risk of surface flooding, slips and rapidly rising rivers, with more rain forecast.
WCEM is warning people Wellington residents in low-lying areas, or those of who have experience flooding events in the past, to go somewhere else for the next 24 hours.
It encourages people to act quickly and not wait for official warnings if they think they need to evacuate.
See how the day unfolded with RNZ’s liveblog at the top of the page.
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Residents evacuate from Konini Street in Wainuiomata.RNZ / Mark Papalii
Authorities are urging lower North island residents to stay off the roads and evacuate if they feel unsafe, as torrential rain continues to pour.
A state of emergency was declared for the Wellington region earlier on Monday.
MetService has issued a red heavy rain warning for Wellington and Wairarapa until Tuesday night, saying the rain presents a threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips.
An orange heavy rain warning is in place for the Tararua district, with heavy rain watches for Taihape, Whanganui and Manawatu.
Strong wind watches have been issued for Taranaki, the Kapiti Coast, Wellington, Marlborough Sounds, Buller, Grey and Westland.
More than a hundred households are without power after high winds brought down power lines.
MetService has issued a red heavy rain warning for Wellington and Wairarapa until Tuesday night.Screenshot / MetService
Wairarapa
An emergency mobile alert was sent to phones in Wairarapa on Monday night, due to further rain expected overnight.
“If you see rising flood water evacuate immediately to higher ground. DO NOT WAIT for an official warning,” it said.
“If you need to evacuate, seek shelter with friends and family if you can. Take pets and essential items.
“Call 111 if your life or property is at risk. Emergency services could be delayed.”
Part of State Highway 2 is closed just south of Masterton, from East Taratahi Road to Cornwall Road, because of flooding.
Waka Kotahi is also warning that State Highway 53 at Waihenga Bridge, near Martinborough may need to close for safety reasons.
Emergency management teams said three rivers in Wairarapa are higher than usual – Ruamāhanga, Mangatārere and Tinui.
Carteron’s mayor is warning people in the area to be vigilant and take precautions.
Steve Cretney said the Mangatārere Stream has risen close to where it was when it flooded in 2004.
He said the stream has eased a little but is expected to peak around 1am, so people should still be very careful.
He said several local roads are closed.
South Wairarapa District Council said Ponatahi bridge over the Huangarua River is closed.
The council said river levels in the Ruamahanga and Mangatārere rivers were likely to increase significantly and advised people to leave low lying or flood prone areas.
The council said all three libraries in the district would be closed on Tuesday – as well as the council’s reception on Kitchner Street.
Hutt Valley
Emergency management teams have been door knocking some residents along the Waiwhetū Stream in Lower Hutt, to tell them to relocate for the night if they are worried their home will flood.
Wellington Region Emergency Management said the stream and the Hutt River are at higher levels than normal and more heavy rain is forecast overnight.
Hutt City Council said the rising Hutt River has forced the closure of two bridges linking the city to State Highway 2.
The Kennedy Good and Melling bridges closed about 8pm and would not reopen until they had been assessed by engineers on Tuesday.
The council said Ewan Bridge remained open for now and advised residents to keep an eye on council channels for notifications on the potential closure of Silverstream Road Bridge further north.
The Transport Agency said State Highway 58 between Pauatahanui and Haywards is closed because of flooding.
Rising water levels had earlier forced evacuations in the suburb of Wainuiomata.
People at the northern end of Konini Street, as well as Wetherby Street and Rata Street, were told to evacuate on Monday evening.
The council said people in affected streets should not to wait to be told to leave.
It said welfare centres in Kōraunui Stokes Valley Neighbourhood Hub, Wainuiomata Neighbourhood Hub, Walter Nash Centre (Taita), War Memorial Library (Central Hutt) and the Eastbourne Neighbourhood Hub will remain open during the night, but displaced people should seek shelter with friends and whanau if possible.
Flooding near Black Creek on Konini Street, Wainuiomata.Karoline Tuckey/RNZ
Wellington
Wellington fire crews attended nearly 200 weather related callouts between 2am and 4.30pm on Monday.
Te Upoko region manager Bruce Stubbs said up to 20 personnel – with enhanced rescue and water capabilities – had been stationed in Hutt Valley and Wairarapa.
“This is where we ask the public to be really safety conscious. Please, we ask people to stay out of the floodwaters – as there’s often hidden obstacles or holes that you can’t see – and, if flooding does enter your home, turn off any appliances,” Stubbs said.
Wellington City Council said a small number of houses are uninhabitable following Monday’s heavy rain.
A council spokesperson said it will likely take officials a few days to understand the full extent of damage caused by flooding and slips.
He said people living in about 10 houses in the suburbs of Berhampore, Mornington and South Karori chose to leave, after their properties became flooded and inaccessible.
Flooding outside Duckworth Lewis guesthouse in Wellington.RNZ / Rachel Helyer-Donaldson
Meanwhile, a search and rescue operation for a Karori man in his sixties has been put on hold because of unsafe conditions.
A family member called emergency services on Sunday after being unable to make contact with Phillip Sutton.
Police search and rescue teams spent hours at his Karori South Road residence clearing the property and nearby areas, after it was hit by stormwater and debris.
Wellington District Prevention Manager Inspector Fleur de Bes the search will resume as soon as conditions allow.
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The owner of a superette in the Hutt Valley suburb of Wainuiomata says he’s not sure if sandbags will be enough to stop rising flood waters.
A state of emergency was declared in the Wellington region after it was hit with torrential rain with heavy rain warnings in Wellington and Wairarapa being upgraded to red until Tuesday night.
Earlier on Monday afternoon Hutt City Council urged residents at the northern end of Konini Street – up the road from Konini Superette – to evacuate.
Owner Jay Gandhi said he’s been putting sandbags in place ahead of closing up for the night.
Jay has sandbagged the area around his shop but isn’t sure if it will be enough to stop flooding if levels continue to rise.RNZ / Mark Papalii
“Once we close the shop we’re going to put sandbags on our front door as well. That’s all we can do – we have almost 45 sandbags at this stage – but I don’t know if that’s going to save us or not,” Gandhi said.
Gandhi said waters were quickly building up about a bridge which crosses the creek near his store.
Wainuiomata creek during heavy rain.RNZ / Mark Papalii
He said the vegetation around the creek needed to be cleaned as it was the reason there had been so much clogging under the bridge.
MetService had said the forecast rain presents a threat to life from dangerous river conditions, significant flooding and slips.
A Wainuiomata creek during heavy rain.RNZ / Mark Papalii
An orange heavy rain warning remained in place for the Tararua District while Wairarapa and Wellington excluding Porirua were under a red heavy rain warning until 9pm Tuesday.
Other areas such as the Horowhenua, the Kāpiti Coast and Porirua, Hawke’s Bay south of Cape Kidnappers, Taihape, Whanganui and Manawatū were under a heavy rain watch.
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It was in the fourth biopsy that the woman was confirmed to have gastric adenocarcinoma – stomach cancer.123rf
A 74-year-old woman’s cancer diagnosis was delayed by nine months after three biopsies missed signs of cancer, and she died the following year.
The Health and Disability Commissioner has found Awanui Labs, and the doctors responsible for her care, erred in their treatment.
Mrs A, a retired nurse and caregiver for her husband, was in “excellent health of body and mind”, until in 2021 she was referred to Southland Hospital by her GP for recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding.
Biopsies in April, June and October 2021 came back as benign, with no malignancy. But a fourth in December 2021 confirmed gastric adenocarcinoma – stomach cancer.
Following that diagnosis, a review of the earlier samples found cancer cells were present in April and October, but had been missed.
“Sadly, despite [her doctor’s] urgent referral and the cancer treatment received after her diagnosis had been confirmed, Mrs A passed away on 17 May 2022.”
Response from Awanui Labs
In response to the commissioner’s investigation, Awanui Labs, known at the time as Southern Community Laboratories, acknowledged there were errors in diagnosis in May and October 2021.
“[The] May diagnosis missed a subtle area of cancer. The diagnosis of limited (small) amounts of poorly differentiated gastric adenocarcinoma is difficult.”
Regarding the incorrect diagnosis in October, it said its pathologists had been influenced by a lack of clinical suspicion for cancer in the referral, alongside the two previous negative results.
“Anatomical pathologists cannot perform optimally unless they have access to all relevant clinical information, and if the request forms had been more fulsome, it is likely that the negative slides would have had more scrutiny back in May 2021 and the correct diagnosis of gastric adenocarcinoma made at that time.”
The doctors responsible for the misdiagnoses individually apologised for the mistakes, with one saying she wished she “could go back to that time and change things”.
Health NZ Southern responded that the underlying reason for providing a biopsy was to establish a diagnosis.
“It is not reasonable to suggest that the request for analysis of a biopsy not stating a high suggestion of cancer is at the root cause of the cancer not being identified.”
However, it did acknowledge that the work was challenging and “always made easier in hindsight”.
Ultimately, Mrs A’s treatment was delayed by nine months. Experts note in the report even a two-month delay would have led to “clinically meaningful cancer growth”, due to the aggressive nature of her cancer.
In her final report, Deputy Health and Disability Commissioner Vanessa Caldwell recommended those at fault provide written apologies to Mrs A’s family.
HDC finds breaches of code
Awanui Labs was found to be in breach of code for failing to ensure its pathologists provided the right diagnosis.
But only one doctor – the lead GI pathologist – was found in breach of code. The others had either sought a second opinion, or made mistakes that other doctors would have made, according to a blind review.
The surgeon should have noted his suspicions for cancer in his biopsy request, it found, which would perhaps have made the pathologists more cautious.
Since the incident, the doctors involved had sought additional training, or changed their practices to include more information in requests.
Awanui Labs said all pathologists were now required to look up the patient’s endoscopy report at the time of the biopsy, to make sure it had all the relevant information regarding suspicions of cancer.
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The Albanese government on Wednesday will unveil the biggest source of cuts in the May 12 budget, when it announces a sweeping overhaul of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
It wants to get the $49 billion-a-year scheme, now growing at 10% annually, down to a growth rate of about 5%.
Minister for the NDIS Mark Butler will announce the changes now not just to prevent the bad news overshadowing the budget, but to give the government an opportunity to manage stakeholders, especially the states. On Tuesday Treasurer Jim Chalmers will meet his state counterparts in a video conference to discuss the Commonwealth’s plans.
Previously, federal NDIS changes have run into resistance from the states, which have to take up more responsibility for disability as the Commonwealth cuts back.
Chalmers told a Monday news conference:“The NDIS is growing too fast for Australians to afford.” Without change, it would reach a cost of $62 billion annually in 2028-29, he said.
Chalmers said overhauling the NDIS had been “a really big part of our pre-budget deliberations”.
“It is easily the most important part of the savings package that we will present on budget night. There have been many, many hours of deliberation”.
Chalmers has been determined to use the opportunity of this budget – the first of the parliamentary term – to get NDIS spending under control. Those lobbying Butler about the scheme in recent weeks have been left with the firm impression that strong pressure for cuts was coming from above.
An earlier round of reforms was produced by former minister Bill Shorten. Shorten, a driving force behind the scheme originally, and now Vice-Chancellor at the University of Canberra, wrote in The Australian last week: “Australians […] know the NDIS matters, they value it and they don’t want it trashed. The message is clear – the scheme needs to be sustainable, but it must be strengthened, not torn down.”
The reforms are expected to reduce the large number of children going on to the NDIS for developmental delays, make a fresh attack on fraud, rorts, and overcharging, and tackle the registration of providers.
Chalmers, who has just returned from the G20 finance consultations in Washington, said “we’re now into the home stretch of the budget preparations,” although there was sill a lot to finalise.
He indicated the budget’s total savings package would not be as big as envisaged in January or February, given the havoc the Middle East conflict was causing in the global economy, “but it will still be substantial”.
He said the fuel excise cut the government made to ease the burden of the fuel crisis would be “one of the bigger new spending items in the budget”.
“This budget will be a responsible budget. It will be focused on resilience and reform. There’ll be tax reform, there’ll be a productivity push, and there will be savings.
“Cutting compliance costs is a big focus of the government and a big focus of the budget as well.”
Chalmers pointed to likely changes in taxes affecting housing. Changes are expected to the capital gains tax discount and probably to negative gearing.
Chalmers indicated decisions were yet to be made, but said “I think the housing market is where some of those intergenerational issues are most obvious. We are working through a range of options to see if we can deal with them or address them in a responsible way”.
It is not yet clear whether the government will respond to the strong political pressure to have some sort of extra tax on the profits coming from increased prices for Australian gas exports, coming as a result of the Middle East crisis.
The budget is set to show growth slowing and unemployment rising. Chalmers said while it would have only one set of bottom lines, “we are in discussions right now about how we describe a downside scenario, a situation that plays out worse than the central case”.
Coalition parties campaign together in Farrer
Days before the budget the May 9 Farrer byelection, for the seat of former Liberal leader Sussan Ley, is expected to bring bad news for the Coalition.
The Liberals and Nationals, each almost certain of defeat in the New South Wales seat, have joined forces to promise money for a hospital for Albury and cleaner water for the town of Narrandera.
At the weekend Liberal leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan promised $200 million to deliver a healthcare package centred on Albury-Wodonga including “kicking off work on a new hospital”.
On Monday the two parties promised $16 million towards the construction of a new water treatment plant to deal with poor water quality in Narrandera.
The joint campaign promises come despite the two parties being competitors for votes.
The promises are largely theoretical, given they could only be delivered if the Coalition won the next election, due in 2028, which appears unlikely given the size of Labor’s majority.
On present indications the Farrer contest is between independent Michelle Milthorpe and One Nation’s David Farley.
Preferences will be crucial, with the Nationals flagging their preferences will go to Farley and the Liberals also expected to preference One Nation.
PSA National secretary, Fleur Fitzsimons.RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Public Service Association says a faulty fire alarm system at a Dunedin hospital is an unacceptable risk to staff and patients.
The union says the alarm system at Helensburgh House, which caters to people with intellectual disabilities and mental illness, was damaged about a month ago and is still not working properly.
National secretary, Fleur Fitzsimons, said there was currently no early warning fire system or evacuation system in place at Helensburgh House.
“This is an adult inpatient unit and what we are seeing in response is increased security, more smoke alarms and air horns being used,” said Fitzsimons.
“These are all temporary measure but it should never have come to this. We need to see Te Whatu Ora act urgently to make sure there is a fire alarms system at Helensburgh House that is working.”
“This poses a serious risk to patient and staff safety. Fire alarms are criticial and we know the results can be tragic, that’s why Te Whatu Ora needs to act urgently.”
Health New Zealand said it would replace the system as soon as it can.
Health New Zealand Te Waipounamu Regional Director of Infrastructure Rob Ojala said Health New Zealand identified an issue with the smoke detection and evacuation panel notification systems at Helensburgh House on March 30.
“We immediately put in place an interim fire and emergency response plan and updated evacuation plan to ensure the safety of our staff and patients.” said Rob Ojala.
He said that appropriate signage had been erected to inform anyone visiting the site after-hours, and signage was also posted on fire alarm call buttons to notify of the need to manually call 111 in an emergency.
“We are working urgently to replace the systems as quickly as possible and have commissioned a contractor to undertake this work.” said Ojala.
“This will include upgrading call points, smoke detectors, annunciators, and remote-control units throughout the building, as well as the main fire panel.”
Rob Ojala said that as part of Building Warrant of Fitness compliance requirements, external assessors regularly assess alarm systems, and the Helensburgh House system was on the list for replacement, but had passed monthly testing prior to the recent events.
“Prior to this incident, we were already progressing urgent scoping work to replace the fire panel and associated components, as routine testing had identified that we could not be fully confident in the reliability of the system. This incident confirmed those concerns were well-founded and reinforced the need to continue working closely with staff and fire safety specialists on appropriate interim measures while the replacement programme is completed.”
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Residents of a Newtown boarding house found their rooms swamped by metre-high floodwaters during the early morning flash flood in Wellington on Monday.
The Duckworth Lewis guesthouse, formerly the Caledonian Hotel, is across the road from the Basin Reserve cricket grounds. The torrential downpours flooded nearby streets and cars were submerged for at least half an hour.
One resident Mōkena Spooner-Hokianga, whose room is on the ground floor, said he woke up around 4am to find metre-deep water in his bedroom.
“It came up to the window, it was pretty high. All our rooms had been completely saturated by the flood water that came through… the whole hallway was full of water and heaps of rubbish.”
Duckworth Lewis residents Mōkena Spooner-Hokianga (left) and Bernie Harrison.RNZ / Rachel Helyer-Donaldson
Another resident, Mike, said he heard something go “pop, saw foot-high water in my room and coming in through the front door. It was a deluge.” He woke other residents up. “It was quite dangerous, the water was up past my knees. I’ve never seen anything like that before. At that stage the water was only six inches high but I couldn’t open the door.”
Video footage filmed by Spooner-Hokianga showed the metre-deep water right across the four-lane stretch of Adelaide Road. “It’s receded now, but there was no warning, and some of us were asleep and were none the wiser to what was happening.”
A car submerged nearby.RNZ / Rachel Helyer-Donaldson
About 35 to 40 residents live at the two-storey guesthouse, half of them on the ground floor. The residents went upstairs to take shelter during the early morning deluge before cleaning up.
But they had no idea where they would sleep tonight, he said. “I haven’t thought that far.”
Streets near the boarding house have flooded.RNZ / Rachel Helyer-Donaldson
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Southland-based Niagara Sawmilling Company has begun a $115 million expansion of its timber processing operations, marking the largest growth phase in the company’s 91‑year history.
The investment includes construction of a new state‑of‑the‑art sawmill at Niagara’s Kennington site, on the outskirts of Invercargill.
The sawmill is being built in Canada and is expected to be installed and operational by late 2027.
Alongside the South Island expansion, Niagara is also expanding in the North Island through the acquisition of Ōtorohanga Timber Company (OTC), a 94-year-old timber processor based in the Waikato.
Niagara managing director Ross Richardson said the expansion was the next step in the company’s long‑term strategy and would significantly lift processing capacity.
“These investments support Niagara’s long-term strategy of growing and strengthening our remanufacturing business,” Richardson said.
In the timber industry, remanufacturing means turning basic sawn timber into ready‑to‑use building products, such as smooth, finished boards or engineered wood.
Once complete, the new sawmill will allow Niagara to more than double its current output, increasing log intake to over 500,000 tonnes a year.
The increased capacity is aimed at allowing more timber to be processed locally, rather than being exported offshore in raw form.
Richardson said that would enable Niagara to “remanufacture more premium timber products in Southland and add value to logs locally, rather than seeing them exported and processed overseas”.
Over the past decade, Niagara has invested heavily in its Kennington operations, building what it describes as world‑class remanufacturing facilities.
Group sales manager Jamie Barton said the combination of Niagara and the newly acquired Ōtorohanga Timber Company would strengthen Niagara’s market position in New Zealand and Australia.
“With OTC’s product mix complementing that of Niagara’s, we are now able to offer an even wider range of quality timber products to both our domestic and export customers,” Barton said.
The expansion is also expected to deliver broader economic benefits to the Southland region.
Niagara currently employs nearly 400 people, and Richardson said the increased production capacity would support continued growth, giving more job security to its employees.
“Niagara has longstanding roots in Southland and has an ongoing commitment to the region and its workforce,” he said.
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The Prime Minister says comments from Shane Jones warning of a “butter chicken tsunami” coming to New Zealand after the signing of the free trade agreement with India are unhelpful – but stopped short of saying whether he thought they were racist.
New Zealand First does not support the India FTA, meaning National needs Labour’s support to pass it through the House.
In a video circulating online, the New Zealand First deputy leader said his party would “never accept” the FTA, and that “unfettered immigration” would drive down the value of wages, clog up roads, and overwhelm the health system.
“I don’t care how much criticism we get. I am just never going to agree with a butter chicken tsunami coming to New Zealand,” Jones said.
RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
At his post Cabinet media conference on Monday, Christopher Luxon said he had not seen Jones’ comments, but thought they were a “gross misrepresentation” of what the FTA was about.
“I don’t know. I’m just saying the immigration story that they are scaremongering around is absolutely false. We have taken them through the data, we have taken them through the details of that deal. We’ll continue to do so, because we would love them to rethink their position,” Luxon said.
“I appreciate they’ve got a pretty hard no against anything around free trade agreements. I just think that makes New Zealand poorer.”
Pushed on whether he thought Jones’ comments were racist, Luxon said it “doesn’t sound right,” and it was “alarmist” and “unhelpful” language.
“You can call it racist, you know, the colourful language from Shane Jones, we’re used to Shane Jones doing lots of oratorial flourishes as he is prone to do. But the bottom line for me is he’s wrong. There is not going to be an influx of immigration. This deal is well thought through.”
Luxon said he appreciated New Zealand First had its own position on the FTA, but that the position was “frankly wrong”.
“It creates huge opportunity for people that I would have thought New Zealand First would have cared about. Foresters, aquaculture, our farmers, our horticulturalists. This is a great deal.”
Standing next to Luxon, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said the comments were “not helpful.”
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The woman and two young children who died lived at the property.RNZ / Anusha Bradley
A man considered a “person of interest” in relation to the deaths of his wife, baby and toddler is unconscious in hospital.
A homicide investigation, dubbed Operation Train, is under way after emergency services were called to a property on Avenue Road East, Hastings about 6am Sunday, after reports of several people being seriously injured.
Three people died – a woman and her two children, a 3-month-old girl and a 17-month-old girl.
The woman’s husband, who is the father of the children, is in Wellington Hospital.
Do you know more? Email sam.sherwood@rnz.co.nz
On Monday, Coroner Bruce Hesketh granted an interim non-publication order in relation to the names, or any particulars likely to lead to the identification, of any of the four people.
Coroner Hesketh’s ruling said the mother and children died of stab wounds.
The Coroner said police were yet to speak to the man, who also suffered stab wounds.
“He is currently unconscious and in Wellington Hospital.
“Police wish to speak to [the man] so he can assist with their inquiries. He is considered a person of interest”.
Police also wanted to speak to extended family members, including both the man and woman’s former partners.
Coroner Hesketh made the orders until 4 May.
Two children aged under three years old died alongside a woman at a Hastings house.RNZ / Anusha Bradley
Detective Inspector Martin James earlier said on arrival one person was found dead.
“Two others were found to be in a critical condition and one in a serious condition, and were transported to Hastings Hospital.”
The two critically injured people had since died.
On Monday, James said police could now confirm the three victims were a woman and two young children who lived at the property.
The woman’s family declined to comment to RNZ on Monday.
A man who lived at the property was also transported to hospital and was undergoing surgery on Monday, James said.
“Police are not seeking anyone else in relation to the incident, however no charges have been laid at this time.
“A team of 30 is working on the homicide investigation, and a scene examination will continue today.”
James earlier said police appreciated it was a “distressing incident that will no doubt be concerning to nearby residents”.
“I would like to reassure the community that this was an isolated incident, contained to this specific group of people, and there is no risk to the wider public.”
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As Australian leaders scramble to secure fuel supplies on the international market, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has been quick to pitch a domestic option: begin extracting the “sea of oil” in the Taroom Trough, a geological formation near the town of Roma.
The state government is strongly backing extraction as a way to shore up fuel security. Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt has reportedly asked Queensland to give details “without delay”.
It seems like common sense – extract domestic oil to reduce dependence on oil imports. But scepticism is warranted. Exploration has just begun. Many challenges would need to be overcome. Extracting the oil would require fracking, a controversial technology with clear harms to human health.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli (left) is strongly backing extraction of oil from the Taroom Trough.David Crisafulli/Facebook
From self-sufficient to dependent on imports
In 2000, Australia produced and refined more than 560,000 barrels of domestic oil a day, meeting 98% of its needs. Now, 26 years later, most Australian refineries have closed and major domestic oilfields are running out. The nation produces just 5.6% of the crude oil it consumes each day.
Australia now imports about 90% of its fuel needs, either as refined fuels or as crude oil for the two remaining refineries to turn into petrol, diesel or other fuels. This cost more than A$51 billion last year.
Why now?
The Taroom Trough isn’t a new discovery. Its potential has been known for decades.
What’s new is its location and the fuel crisis. It’s located in the much larger Bowen Basin, home to many coal mines. In recent years, this basin has become a gas hotspot. Oil and gas majors Shell (through a subsidiary), Origin Energy and Santos extract gas and export it through the Port of Gladstone.
But gas isn’t the main reason we’re hearing about the Taroom Trough. It’s oil.
Australian oil and gas company Beach Energy, and exploration companies such as Omega Oil and Gas and Elixir, are now exploring the area.
Shell is the most advanced, as its pilot project already supplies 200 barrels a day of oil to the tiny Eromanga refinery, 1,000km west of Brisbane, which can produce up to 1,250 barrels of diesel and other petroleum products.
Given Australia burns more than one million barrels a day, the Taroom Trough has a long way to go.
Would Taroom actually help?
Australia’s two remaining refineries produce 22% of the nation’s diesel, petrol, jet fuel and other petroleum products. Last week’s fire at the Geelong refinery will slightly alter this equation.
Backers believe the Taroom Trough could produce enough oil to meet the needs of these two refineries – around 176,000 barrels a day.
This would be significant, as it would be equivalent to Australia’s largest oil-producing field, Kingfish, in the largely depleted Gippsland Basin off the Victorian coast.
Is this plausible? Early exploration results indicate the Taroom Trough does hold gas and oil. If extraction is commercially viable, these products may find a market.
Exploration is underway in parts of the Taroom Trough, such as this Omega drill site.Omega Oil and Gas
What’s less clear is whether Taroom’s type of oil – light crude – is the right type. Oil comes in many varieties, requiring different distillation techniques and producing different outputs.
When refined, light crude yields more petrol than diesel or jet fuel. It would likely do little to tackle Australia’s most pressing issue – a diesel shortage.
About 54% of the oil Australia consumes each day is diesel, followed by petrol (25%) and jet fuel (about 15%). Australia’s refineries produce 40% diesel, 32% diesel and 10% jet fuel. This means the refineries cover about 37% of the country’s petrol – but only 13% of its diesel.
There’s another challenge. Hydrocarbons in the Taroom Trough are trapped in rock 3-4km underground. These resources are known as tight gas or tight oil. Extraction requires hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking.
Fracking uses large volumes of water, which companies would likely look to draw from the Great Artesian Basin and the nearby Dawson River, or use recycled water from the fracking process.
Either way, the region’s large agricultural sector may oppose oil and gas interests using water – especially given concerns around possible pollution of groundwater. Previous attempts to frack agricultural areas triggered strong resistance from groups such as Lock the Gate.
Backers may see this year’s fuel crisis as a way to fast-track to open up the Taroom Trough. But it’s not the only domestic option. The Dorado oil field was found off Western Australia’s coast in 2018. Its potential resources could almost double Australia’s commercial oil reserves. Despite interest, it has been deferred several times.
History repeating?
In 1964, oil began to flow from Australia’s first oil field, Queensland’s Moonie. This success drove significant interest in domestic oil and led to exploration of the Gippsland Basin, which has supplied more than 5 billion barrels of oil.
In 1973, an oil shock hit the world economy for the first time amid the Arab embargo. In Australia, the “Rundle Twins” – Southern Pacific Petroleum and Central Pacific Minerals – promised a solution: open up the Stuart field near Gladstone, which, they claimed, boasted 20 billion tonnes of shale oil – bigger than the enormous North Sea field. The two smaller companies drew oil giant Exxon to the project – only for it to walk away when the project didn’t stack up economically or environmentally.
Despite state government support, both companies went into receivership in 2003.
It’s too early to say whether the Taroom Trough will pan out. It could be another Moonie, leading to a renaissance of domestic oil. But it could easily be a long-lost Rundle sibling – heavily hyped but failing to deliver.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor of Physical Geography (Climate Science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
At their most intense, the downpours that drove widespread flash flooding across Wellington early on Monday morning would have counted as extreme even by tropical standards.
But here in 2026, it is part of an increasingly familiar pattern reminding us that our communities and infrastructure aren’t yet prepared to cope with what a warmer, wilder future holds.
Over a 48-hour window, the capital saw rainfall totals that nearly tripled monthly averages, with some residents describing it as the worst flooding event since Wellington’s disastrous 1976 storm.
MetService reported that more than 70mm of rain fell in just one hour in parts of southern Wellington early on Monday morning. That is more than half the total rainfall typically recorded at the city’s Botanical Gardens over the whole of April.
Impacts were similarly immediate and severe. In some suburbs, entire streets were flooded. Vehicles were left floating in floodwaters; others were simply carried away.
Local emergency services were stretched, responding to more than 150 weather-related calls in a single morning, as hubs were set up in the suburb of Lower Hutt to support displaced residents.
Infrastructure across the region struggled to cope. Multiple sections of local state highways were forced closed by flooding and slips, with continuing disruption to Metlink transport services.
Wellington’s 1976 disaster cost tens of millions of dollars. The bill for this one is now being counted.
A tale of two storms
While the rainfall intensity may have felt distinctly tropical, the system behind this event was very different from Cyclone Vaianu a week earlier.
Vaianu began in the tropics, carrying warm, moisture-laden air south. This latest system, by contrast, developed out of the Southern Ocean. It was a large, slow-moving low-pressure system that drew cold air north as it moved over unusually warm seas in the Tasman.
That contrast in origins matters less than it might seem.
Once a system has access to enough moisture and instability, the end result can be much the same: intense rainfall falling over a short period. In this case, cold air moving over warm seas helped generate widespread convection: clusters of thunderstorms producing heavy, localised downpours.
This helps explain why such a broad system could still produce highly uneven impacts. While forecasters were able to identify the risk of severe weather well in advance, pinpointing exactly where the heaviest rain would fall would have been extremely difficult.
That comes down to scale. Weather systems can be understood well across hundreds or thousands of kilometres.
But the most damaging rainfall often depends on processes playing out over just a few kilometres, or even less, where small variations in temperature, moisture and wind can determine whether one place is inundated while another escapes relatively lightly.
The weather system as shown over Wellington at 3am Monday, when nearly 80mm of rain fell in some locations within the space of an hour.MetService, CC BY-NC-ND
In Wellington’s case, such fine-scale dynamics made all the difference. Converging winds along the south coast helped drive moisture upwards and hold intense rainfall over the same areas for extended periods.
Storms such as this might not be unusual in themselves, as they occur often across the southern oceans. But when they strike highly populated areas, the impacts are amplified.
For the Wellington region, along with all those other areas of the country hit hard by this weather system over the weekend, timing also played a role.
Coming so soon after Cyclone Vaianu, the ground in many parts of the North Island was already saturated, increasing runoff and raising river levels. That meant this second system did not need to be as extreme in isolation to produce severe flooding.
Wellington flooding on Monday morning.Paris Ibell/RNZ
More warming, bigger downpours
Whether or not a formal climate change attribution study is carried out, this event again reflects the influence of a warming ocean and atmosphere.
As sea and air temperatures rise, more moisture is held in the atmosphere. This provides additional fuel for storms, allowing them to produce heavier rainfall and more intense downpours over short periods.
While climate change does not mean every storm will be extreme, it does mean the chances of extreme rainfall are shifting over time.
New modelling by colleagues at the University of Waikato shows this clearly. Even under a mid-range emissions scenario, the most intense one-and three-day rainfall events across much of New Zealand are projected to increase by around 10–20% by the second half of the century.
Those changes may sound modest. But even relatively small increases in rainfall intensity can push systems beyond critical thresholds: turning a heavy but manageable event into one that overwhelms infrastructure and causes widespread damage.
Reducing that risk ultimately depends on limiting further warming.
The only way to stop such events becoming more extreme is to stop adding greenhouse gases to the air, especially carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Anything our government, and all governments, can do to move away from fossil energy is something we would all be thankful for.
In the meantime, the focus must also be on adaptation, ensuring communities and infrastructure are better prepared for the intensity of rainfall events that are becoming more likely.
Displays of artworks from the permanent collections of state and national galleries are often overlooked. Critics tend to flock to a crowded calendar of blockbusters and temporary shows. These may offer greater novelty and relevance for current events. But this isn’t always true.
New Asian Art at the National Gallery of Australia is a case in point. Tucked away on the second floor, it would be easy to miss this showcase for new acquisitions and collection highlights.
But the culturally, stylistically and materially diverse display is a welcome treat for those who take the time to wander this far into the building.
The weight of moving images
Two groups of related works bracket the space, distinct in aesthetic but mirrored in concept.
A suite of new acquisitions created between 2012 and 2016 by Thai-born contemporary artist Korakrit Arunanondchai takes up one end of the gallery.
Visitors are invited to lay back on denim cushions to watch his 25-minute video. Painting with history in a room filled with people with funny names 3 (2014-15) is a multilingual reflection on globalisation, myth and identity.
Arunanondchai uses sculptural elements to lend weight to moving images. I found similarities with fellow Bangkok-based film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose meditative video installation A Conversation with the Sun (Afterimage) featured earlier this year at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Installation view, New Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2025.
Arunanondchai’s mannequins in painted denim embody themes of self-creation and costumed performance. They are avatars for a global culture that transforms all it touches – at least at face value.
The mirrored acrylic surfaces of Untitled (2557–2558) (Mirror 3) (2012) and Untitled (Ground) (2016) invite viewers to consider their own place in this cultural tide. Reflected faces are adorned with cast-off tech, scraps of denim and scattered twigs and soil. It is a bowerbird-like collage of trophies and scraps.
Weerasethakul transformed the algorithmic flow of a social media feed into a dream-like stream of half-seen images. Arunanondchai mimics the aerial viewpoint and slick editing of tourism promos and music videos. His work is just as captivating, but much more maximalist in tone.
Exploring cultural exports
At the opposite end of the gallery, a second group of mannequins showcase Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake’s Pleats Please Guest Artist Series (1996–98).
Designed in collaboration with contemporary artists Yasumasa Morimura, Nobuyoshi Araki, Tim Hawkinson and Cai Guo Qiang, these also exemplify the global flow of cultural forms.
Here, the Americanisation implied by acid-wash denim comes into contact with Japanese “soft power” narratives of design innovation and technological ingenuity.
Installation view, New Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2025.
Similar narratives can be read into Tokyo-based artist collective teamLab’s four-channel video Black waves (2016) and Yoshitomo Nara’s painting No War (2019).
Nara’s large-headed girl in acrylics on wood combines the child-like “cuteness” of kawaii culture with the graphic appeal of Takashi Murakami’s “superflat” aesthetic. Both are lucrative cultural exports.
TeamLab have found global fame as “ultra-technologists”. They are committed to a digital metamorphosis of Japanese artistic traditions. Black waves transforms the linear style of ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world”, into an ocean of living pixels.
Samples of these traditions appear throughout the space. Miyake, Nara and teamLab are tied to a longer lineage of cultural exchange.
A selection of nihonga, “Japanese-style paintings”, of Mt Fuji document an earlier era of soft power. They were presented to Australia by the International Cultural Appreciation Society of Japan in 1977.
Installation view, New Asian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2025, featuring: (left to right) Okumura Togyu, Mt Fuji, 1976, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, gift from the International Culture Appreciation and Interchange Society ICAIS, Japan, Fukuoji Horin, Mt Fuji in the glory of morning, 1976, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, gift from the International Culture Appreciation and Interchange Society ICAIS, Japan and Kato Toichi, Mt Fuji after snow, 1976, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, gift from the International Culture Appreciation and Interchange Society ICAIS, Japan.
Kato Shinmei’s Maiko, apprentice geisha (1976) is another nihonga work. It implies a connection between the Yoshiwara pleasure district at the centre of ukiyo-e and the contemporary “floating worlds” of global fashion and politics.
Kabuki actor portraits dating to the 1920s and 1930s exemplify the renewal of ukiyo-e as part of the shin-hanga or “new prints” movement.
This reinforces the exhibition’s overarching themes of performance, impersonation and surface appeal masking hidden realities.
Much more than a highlight reel
These themes are evident, too, in a stellar display of mostly Chinese photographic works lining the gallery walls.
Featuring iconic images by Hong Hao, Song Dong, Wang Qingsong and Yang Fudong newly acquired for the collection, this is a real stand-out.
Their conceptually complex, technically daring and aesthetically polished visions of consumerist excess, urban squalor and the fragile boundaries of self-identity illustrate the burst of Chinese photographic artistry during the 1990s and 2000s.
Contemporary art photography is one of several core collection strengths of the gallery celebrated in New Asian Art. They sit alongside contemporary Southeast Asian art, Japanese prints and Indonesian textiles (in a stunning display of contemporary batik shoulder slings and skirts).
The exhibition offers much more than a highlight reel. Curators Carol Cains and Shaune Lakin have carefully selected both new and more familiar works to draw out the fluidity of contemporary Asian identities, fusing past and present, myth and technology and local and global cultural currents.
New Asian Art is at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, until April 18 2027.
Relief teachers will get an increase to their transport allowances, as part of the government’s response to the fuel crisis.
It follows a similar move to increase mileage rates for home and community support workers, announced earlier this month.
Transport allowance mileage rates for relief teachers will be increased for 12 months, or until fuel prices ease below $3 a litre for 4 consecutive weeks.
The reimbursement rate for cars will increase from 37 cents per kilometre to 83 cents, and motorbike rates increase from 15 cents to 31 cents.
Rural schools with under 100 students will get a one-time cash grant of $2500 to help them pay for the expected increase to the reimbursement rates.
The conveyance allowance will be increased by 30 percent to help with the costs of getting children from eligible families to the nearest bus route.
“These measures are carefully targeted to where fuel costs are having the greatest impact,” education minister Erica Stanford said.
The government will also accelerate work to replace diesel boilers in schools.
It will put $37 million towards replacing boilers in 65 state schools and five state-integrated schools.
Stanford said it was expected to save around 600,000 litres of diesel a year.
She expected diesel boilers would be replaced in 20 schools by the end of the year. Bigger schools had “slightly trickier” infrastructure situations which would take until next year, while the largest schools would take until 2028.
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Over the past several days, there have been conflicting reports about the Strait of Hormuz. It’s difficult to know what’s happening from one moment to the next.
Iran said the waterway was open to commercial shipping again, then turned around and said it was closed.
Iran then fired at two Indian-flagged ships going through the strait, forcing them to turn around.
The next day, the US fired on an Iranian cargo vessel, which Tehran called a violation of the two countries’ temporary ceasefire and threatened retaliation.
What’s actually happening in the strait? Are both sides acting lawfully? We asked naval expert Jennifer Parker to explain.
What happened over the weekend?
There have been several key developments over the last 48 hours.
The first was the statement from US President Donald Trump and the Iranian foreign minister on social media that the Strait of Hormuz remained open. It was an interesting announcement because it was consistent with what the foreign minister had said at the beginning of the ceasefire a week and a half ago.
On Saturday, we saw a large number of tankers and cargo vessels move towards the top of the strait to follow what Iran has designated as a new passageway. Some ships that are clearly desperate to get out of the strait were obviously more confident they were safe to transit through at that point.
The Joint Maritime Information Centre in Bahrain said 18 ships were able to transit through, at least ten through the new Iranian-designated transit route, which is north of the normal transit route.
However, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy then reportedly attacked a number of civilian merchant vessels. One was an Indian tanker that was on an approved list with the IRGC to travel through the strait.
This suggests the Iranian military may have been disagreeing with the statement of the Iranian foreign minister, saying the strait remains closed.
Is the US blockade legal?
Then, on Sunday, the US fired on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Arabian Sea.
The US is blockading Iranian ports through what’s called a distant blockade. This means US Navy ships are not sitting right off Iran’s ports to stop vessels. Rather, they are positioned further back in the Gulf of Oman and the northern Arabian Sea, with a blockade line effectively drawn between the Iranian-Pakistan border to around the Omani-UAE border.
The US Central Command has reported turning away a number of ships – at least 23 as of April 18.
When a ship approaches the blockade line en route to or from an Iranian port, the US Navy will radio the vessel and say it is not free to go through. Most ships will then turn around.
This is allowed in a lawful blockade under the law of naval warfare. Once a conflict has started, a blockade is a lawful if it complies with certain provisions:
the blockade must be declared
it must be impartial, meaning it needs to apply to all ships
humanitarian goods must be permitted to go through
it must be effective, meaning you can’t declare a blockade, start doing it, and then not actually enforce it
it can’t close off neutral ports.
Many news reports have said the US is blockading the Strait of Hormuz. But it is actually blockading Iranian ports, not the strait. A blockade of the strait would be illegal because this would affect neutral ports in the Persian Gulf. Ships in an international strait enjoy unimpeded transit passage, which cannot be hampered or suspended by the coastal state.
Is the US permitted to fire on a cargo vessel?
The US says it warned the Touska, the Iranian-flagged vessel, to stop over a six-hour period.
If a vessel doesn’t comply with warnings like this, warning shots can then be fired, depending on your country’s rules of engagement. The country maintaining the blockade may also use “disabling fire” against the ship.
This is what the US claims happened – the US Navy destroyer fired on the Touska’s engine room to make it stop. My assessment is this is consistent with the law of naval warfare because the US Navy is enforcing an effective blockade. It also appears to have adhered to the principles of proportionality and necessity under international law.
The US also seized the ship, which is consistent with the law. In terms of the crew, the US has not announced what it intends to do with them. If the crew is non-Iranian, they would likely be released and repatriated. If the crew is Iranian, or if some of the crew are linked to the IRGC, they could be detained.
By contrast, based on current reporting, the ships fired on by Iran appear to have been neutral merchant vessels transiting an international strait. On the information publicly available, there is no indication they had become lawful military objectives.
This is not a lawful use of force because these vessels are not a lawful military objective.
Neutral merchant vessels are generally considered civilian objects under the law unless, by their nature, location, purpose or use, they make an effective contribution to military action. Therefore, it’s not lawful to attack them.
There are some exceptions to that, including a merchant vessel seeking to breach a lawful blockade.
Where do things go from here?
The US is not saying it’s in control of the strait, it’s saying it’s in control of the vessels going in and out of Iran, which is different.
Iran has claimed it’s in control of the strait since the war began. It has been attacking and threatening civilian, predominantly neutral vessels since then.
What I think we are seeing is a tussle for leverage to supercharge the negotiations between the US and Iran, should they continue this week in Pakistan.
This result is National’s worst in the1News-Verian poll since Luxon became leader in November 2021.
Labour is up five points on 37 percent, while National’s 30 is down four points since February.
For the other parties in the coalition, New Zealand First is steady on 10 percent, while Act has dropped two points to nine.
On the other side of the house the Greens and Te Pati Maori are on 11 and two, respectively.
It gives the centre-left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori the seats needed to govern with 66 compared to the coalition’s 58, if an election was held today.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Follow all the cricket action as the Black Caps take on Bangladesh in their second one day international at Shere Bangla National Stadium, Mirpur.
It’s the second of three ODI matches, followed by three T20I series matches, taking place during the Black Caps tour of Bangladesh.
First ball is at 5pm NZT.
Black Caps ODI Squad to Bangladesh:
Tom Latham (Canterbury), Muhammad Abbas (Wellington Firebirds), Adithya Ashok (Auckland Aces), Ben Lister (Auckland Aces), Josh Clarkson (Central Stags), Dane Cleaver (Central Stags), Dean Foxcroft (Central Stags), Nick Kelly (Wellington Firebirds), Jayden Lennox (Central Stags), Henry Nicholls (Canterbury), Will O’Rourke (Canterbury), Ben Sears (Wellington Firebirds), Nathan Smith (Wellington Firebirds), Blair Tickner (Central Stags), Will Young (Central Stags)
Black Caps captain Tom Latham.PHOTOSPORT
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Ngātiwai Trust Board Chairman Aperahama Kerepeti-Edwards.RNZ / Mark Papalii
A Northland iwi leader says some form of ongoing support is needed in order for marae to continue responding effectively to severe weather events.
The Government says it won’t set up another dedicated fund to reimburse marae for their work leading up to Cyclone Vaianu, but is encouraging marae to keep in touch with officials on the ground in case they need support.
Whakatāne during Cyclone Vaianu on 12 April 2026RNZ/Supplied
In the wake of the deadly weather that struck the North Island in January the government announced that a $1 million fund, administered by Te Puni Kōkiri, would go to marae who supported communities in need.
Ngātiwai Trust Board Chairman Aperahama Kerepeti-Edwards told Morning Report seeing those efforts recognised was heartening.
“It wasn’t so much the fund primarily it was the fact that there was recognition of the important role our marae play, recognition of the responsiveness of our communities, our hapū, especially in some of our remote rural areas who naturally and consistently respond in these times of crisis.”
There’s a sense of duty and obligation that runs deep which leads marae to swing into action time and time again, he said.
“As these events become more and more consistent I suppose the toll of that comes to the fore but, you know, you never hear grumbles, you never hear moans, our whānau just do what they do.”
Flooding around Wade Road blocks the main route south of Whitianga.RNZ/Marika Khabazi
As of April 10 $951,565 of the Marae Emergency Response Fund has been has been distributed to marae across Te Tai Tokerau, Tāmaki Makaurau, Waikato-Waiariki, Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, Te Tai Hauāuru and Te Waipounamu, to help reimburse costs incurred, according to Te Puni Kōkiri.
In a statement Te Puni Kōkiri said in areas such as Te Tai Tokerau and Ikaroa-Rāwhiti – where geographic isolation and weather-damaged infrastructure significantly constrained access – marae became central hubs for wider community response efforts.
“Many provided support not only for their own whānau, but for the broader community, including coordination of supplies, hosting displaced families, and supporting kaumātua and vulnerable people in remote locations.
“Funding payments have been made to individual marae and to umbrella organisations that coordinated response efforts across multiple marae. This approach recognises the collective, networked way in which Māori organisations mobilised during the emergency, particularly in regions where access challenges required local leadership and rapid decision-making.”
Kerepeti-Edwards said given there has been recognition of marae efforts there should be some form of ongoing support.
That said, marae will spring into action regardless, but that shouldn’t be taken for granted, he said.
“For a lot of our remote, rural and isolated communities, but even our communities in general the marae are some of the most significant infrastructure that are equipped to be able to look after the masses in times of need, from ablutions, to bedding, to the dining facilities it’s all the there. And the policy at the marae is nobody is left out.”
Every time there is a severe weather event there are costs incurred to marae, but with the contribution of the entire community that’s how they make it work, he said.
“If there was a, you know, a dedicated means of ensuring that the load that’s being carried voluntarily by those communities to support and strengthen the wider community [that] would be reasonable.”
Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka said the Marae Emergency Response Fund was designed to provide practical, immediate support.
It was a targeted, time-limited fund focused on the January events, and it has delivered support quickly where it was needed, he said.
“We know the pressure doesn’t stop after one event. Communities in parts of the North Island are continuously preparing for further severe weather, and marae continue to play a critical role in those local responses. Officials are actively monitoring impacts on the ground and working alongside Civil Defence and other agencies to ensure communities are connected to the support available.
“Marae can continue to access support through Civil Defence and emergency management channels, as well as working directly with Te Puni Kōkiri and other agencies to identify the right support for their circumstances.”
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Awanui Primary School went into lockdown.Google Maps
Armed police were called to the Northland township of Awanui after reports that a person had a gun.
A police spokesperson said police arrived about 1.45pm and local schools and childcare centres were shut down as a precaution.
A firearm was not found and police are speaking to a person, they said.
Awanui Primary School was one the schools locked down.
The school’s board of trustees posted online, asking parents not to come to school.
Te Hiku Community Board chairperson Bill Subritzky, who lives in Awanui, said the incident took place on Southey Street, which was off State Highway 1 next to Awanui School.
He said State Highway 1 had been closed by police at the junction with State Highway 10, with some motorists having to wait an hour to get through.
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Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Essay by Keith Rankin, 20 April 2026
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
It’s commonplace, especially in The West, to think of wars in binary terms. In those terms, wars are either won or lost, like a sports match. And the symbol of victory is a trophy. In a match-up, the symbol of defeat is the loss of a trophy.
In the days of the Roman Empire, the trophy might be a ‘barbarian’ leader being paraded in chains; or maybe his head in a box. ‘Decapitation’ is a crude trophy word, still very much in vogue.
In the present Iran War, the trophy of victory might have been the ‘head’ of the 86-year-old ‘Supreme Leader’; Iran’s former equivalent of the United Kingdom’s late Queen Elizabeth II. But in reality, the Iranians were waiting for Ali Khamenei to die; and all the signs were, so long as Iran was left in relative peace, that a liberalisation process was already in place.
Further the assassination of Khamanei could never have been an adequate trophy for the United States. Because it was actually done by Israel, another country, another nuclear power, indeed a highly secretive nuclear power, a genocidal power which terrorises its part of the world. And we note that it has always been in Israel’s interest to keep Iran on a war-footing; to keep it from being anything other than an enemy. A progressive Iran would have very much stymied the Greater Israel project. Hence the need to assassinate Khamanei before he died of natural causes.
For the United States, another trophy had to be found. Having co-started the present war, the United States needs to end it, and with a victory trophy.
It would seem that the trophy being demanded is Iran’s enriched uranium. Apparently, the United States wants to be allowed to go into Iran, excavate the enriched uranium, and then to truck it and ship it to some undisclosed destination. To facilitate this, the United States is trying to make its victory arrangements with ‘negotiations’ brokered by an actual pro-China nuclear power in Southwest Asia; namely Pakistan, a country over which the United States has intruded upon its political sovereignty on a number of occasions, a country with no popular love for the United States and its proxies.
We need to note that, for Iran to allow the United States to acquire its trophy would represent a military defeat; a capitulation in the eyes of the world in general, the Iranian population (both those in favour of the present Pezeshkian regime, and those opposed to it) in particular, and to the global community of Shia Muslims. (The total Shia population is estimated to be 350 million, 250 million of whom are faithful, and 90 million of whom are resident in Iran.)
Japan
On the matter of understanding the shortcomings of binary victory and binary defeat, we may turn to the matter of Japan in 1945. The trophy at stake was Emperor Hirihito. And, on the basis of this binary, it was Japan, not the United States, which was victorious. Japan retained its trophy.
On 9 March 1945, the United States embarked on its campaign for unconditional victory; meaning that Japan had to unconditionally surrender, which in turn would mean that Hirohito would be Japan’s last emperor, and that his reign would end in 1945.
For starters, the United States slaughtered 100,000 residents of Tokyo in four hours of one night; the wee hours of 10 March. Total Japanese deaths from that spring and summer bombing campaign – including the nuclear deaths – was between 500,000 and one million people.
None of these bombings came close to resulting in Japan conceding its Emperor. The United States was preparing to drop three more atomic bombs on Japan that year – production criteria meant that these bombs were scheduled for November and December 1945. If Japan still refused to give up its trophy, the city of Kyoto was scheduled for removal from the United States’s non-hit list. Also, to note, the United States kept up its non-nuclear aerial assault on Japan until the day before the deal was signed.
In August 1945, communications were not good in Japan. The leadership in Tokyo had heard that there was an unusually large explosion at Hiroshima, and then another in Nagasaki, but they didn’t really have time to process their limited information. They had already been hit by plenty of other big bombs. Meanwhile, the people on the ground in Hiroshima were able to restore electrical power within three days of that explosion; locals did what locals do everywhere, pick themselves up if they can, and try to keep living.
What happened to finish the war was the threat from the Soviet Union. After the end of the war in Europe, the Soviet Union returned its attention to the East. There had been longstanding territorial disputes – and cold dispute still continues in the Kuril Islands – between Japan and Russia. Russia, having been embarrassed in the 1904/05 Russia-Japan War, potentially had a score to settle; Manchuria, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, had been territory contested between Russia, China and Japan.
But it was the United States which most feared the Soviet Union’s advance into Northeast Asia. In Europe, the United States was pushing the narrative that the Soviet Union, which had ‘liberated’ Eastern Europe from the German Nazi regime, was intent on pushing Communism onto Western Europe, and would use military means to do that. The hoary trope in Paris and London, that the Russians would soon be at their front-doors if they could not be held behind an iron curtain within Germany, was a narrative very much adhered to by the Americans with regard to the Far East as well as to the Far West. Indeed, by the time of the end of hostilities in August 1945, Soviet Russia had already ‘liberated’ half of the Korean Peninsula; Korea was a mirror image of the emergent East-West faultline within Europe.
So, the Americans caved in. They agreed that Japan could keep its Emperor. Japan saved face. Hostilities in the Pacific War ended the next day.
Iran again
2026 hostilities could end as soon as the United States removes its demand for a trophy which the Americans know the Iranians cannot accept. The barrier to ending the war is that the American regime would lose face without a compelling victory trophy. In the earlier Japan situation, by contrast, the American occupation after August 1945 meant that the United States could easily obscure the fact that it had had to make a major concession to secure the end of that war.
Enemies of Convenience: On the matter of Non-Binary War
At one level there is the matter of stated and unstated goals, criteria for ‘success’ (which is not necessarily ‘winning’), and knowing how and when to ‘vacate the arena’. Re the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, they contributed very little to ending World War Two, but were successful examples of ‘live testing’, and had the huge impact on the new Cold War arena in Europe as ‘demonstration devices”. With the Cold War setting in, Japan proved to be a World War Two enemy of convenience.
Introduction: “What if ‘who is winning’ is the wrong question? Because in many modern conflicts victory is not the only or even the main objective. … It opens streams of profit, and, for many, it creates a constant state of threat that justifies its own continuation. … Wars evolve, adapt, and sometimes sustain the very actors fighting them. … To understand why some wars don’t end, we turn to a leading voice in the political economy of conflict, Professor of Conflict Studies at the London School of Economics, David Keen.”
Keen suggests that some of the benefits of war include “making money”, “suppressing dissent under the cover of war”, “divide and rule”, “painting dissent as disloyalty”, “turning your enemy into the image that you’ve put about in your propaganda”, … “taking actions that are predictably counterproductive”. For certain aims “the enemy can be surprisingly useful”.
David Keen (unassuming, quiet, thoughtful): “This division of people into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ is incredibly simplistic, and goes back as far as the Vietnam War.” (And further, of course!)
The Soviet Union had proved so useful to the West, that from 1991, after the Cold War, a new bogeyman – convenient enemy – had to be invented. (Note Samuel Huntingdon’s influential 1992 thesis, The Clash of Civilizations, which facilitated the multi-decade employment of many people in high-paid jobs in Washington DC, and no doubt other federal capital cities with otherwise underemployed think tanks.) Iran had already become the enemy-in-waiting in the 1980s, albeit with a degree of secrecy, when a proxy leader for American interests (called Saddam Hussein) was called upon to deal to Iran. Saddam obliged; indeed, he over-obliged, taking his cut in the form of Kuwait.
In the midst of that Iraq-Iran War, in 1987, there was the Irangate scandal.
‘”Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy.” Secret Israeli arms sales and shipments to Iran began in that year, even as, in public, the Reagan administration presented a different face, and “aggressively promoted a public campaign […] to stop worldwide transfers of military goods to Iran”. … After a leak by Mehdi Hashemi, a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the arrangement on 3 November 1986″.’ From Wikipedia.
Revolutionary Iran (the new Islamic Republic of Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini) was becoming an enemy of convenience. It was, in the 1980s, being armed by Israel and the United States. Some of those arms will have gone to Hezbollah, established as a Shia resistance movement in 1982, in response to an Israel-led genocide in Lebanon. We note that, today, Hezbollah is a critical and convenient element justifying Israel’s grand expansionist venture.
Today, Russia and Iran – even China – are enemies of convenience to a few; and of great inconvenience to the many. Indeed, re Russia and China, there is talk of the New Cold War. See, for example, The New Cold War: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, Fred Saberi, The Times of Israel, 19 April 2026.
Re Russia, the Cold War of the twentyfirst century represents the Third Cold War. In The First Cold War, historian Barbara Emerson discusses the ‘war’ against Russia that led to New Zealand’s fortifications on North Head and other places in 1885. (I also draw attention to this 2016 extended critique of President Obama’s ‘weakness’: War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, by Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris, and its unsavoury ‘adversaries of convenience’ premise.)
Modern history (which includes 1885) matters very much; Biblical history (or even the slightly more recent Koranic history) matters less. But ancient history can still matter; it tells us some pithy stories about war trophies.
————-
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Interviewer: “You’ve warned that the world could face famine within months … an extraordinarily stark prediction.”
Keen: “Thirty percent of the world’s fertiliser passes through the Strait, which has now been disrupted for over a month. There’s no sign of this war stopping any time. … There’s not going to be enough fertiliser available. Without fertiliser the carrying capacity of the world is about two billion people. Six billion of us are alive because fertiliser flows freely. … This could have catastrophic effects in all sorts of countries which could not ever imagine that they might face a famine. … That could apply to places like England. … The usual bias we have is that it’s always going to be a problem for brown people; let’s be frank, we’ve got masses of racism in the way we think about the world, and the West doesn’t worry when brown people die; well, what will happen when white people start dying; people might pay more attention.”
While Keen overstates the case, given that seventy percent of the world’s fertiliser flows through other pathways or is used near to where it is produced (though high transport costs, more generally, impede fertiliser flows; not just the blockade of the Hormuz Strait). Thirty percent of six billion is potentially 1,800,000,000 people at risk. And of course there is much food wastage at present. And many people, indeed most people in ‘England’, could survive eating less than half of what they do eat; they may even be less malnourished, by eating better food. Keen later acknowledged the issue of first world food wastage.
Nevertheless, when there are food shortages, ‘rational’ market behaviour – as understood by ‘game theory’ – means that much food would be bought up by speculators and hoarded; profiteering, in other words, a not uncommon feature of famines. (This is similar to the issue of ‘ticket scalping’.) Keen is correct to point out the problem of Euro-supremacism. One feature of the new world food order, noted by the Indian panellist on the program – Avinash Kishore – will be export bans. India, for example, is an important exporter of wheat and rice.
Keen: “Because it has such a market-oriented non-government approach to virtually everything, the United Kingdom has insufficient stocks of fertiliser, diesel fuel, and it imports about forty percent or more of its food. It’s very vulnerable to being told ‘we cannot supply you’. And it doesn’t really have any bargaining ploy in the opposite direction [unlike Australia].”
People assume that, whatever happens, Aotearoa could always feed itself; after all it’s a ‘specialist’ food producer, isn’t it? I’ll come back to that. But we note that the United Kingdom could survive foodwise with a reduction of 40% of its food supply, given that its domestic food production is in better domestic-international balance than is New Zealand’s. The fertiliser question becomes the bigger issue for the United Kingdom, and I’m guessing that it has nearly enough fertiliser stocks for 2026 spring planting, and could redirect some food exports to the domestic market. 2027 though? Incidentally, in the later 1980s, under pressure from Rogernomics, New Zealand got by for a few years with substantially reduced fertiliser usage.
Interviewer: “Just how vulnerable are modern food systems to international shocks like this?’
Keen: “The Trump administration [ie regime] had no idea what it was blundering into when it started this war. … We have a mindset of ‘perfect competition’ which implies numerous different sources, if one supplier gets knocked out then others can [immediately] take its place [as in the case of the New Zealand apple crop after Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023]; there’s no sense of urgency for the physical imports to production. … [Most] economists are completely naïve about the production systems. … There is such a thing as a critical input, and four of them pass through the Strait of Hormuz. … Yes, it’s too late to fix it, you cannot make up for missing ships.”
Keen: “I’m not overstating the potential. It might not happen, we might be lucky, shipments might arrive just in time. … The other possibility is still there. Now what happens if you don’t talk about it. … I would rather have people be too alarmed than too ignorant.”
Keen: “We think we eat green stuff. Ever since we invented fertiliser, we’ve been eating brown stuff. The green wrapping on the outside is basically us turning fossil fuels into food. … We think we have enormous resilience, but in fact we have enormous fragility. This was going to be exposed by global warming, but Donald Trump is like a Force Six cyclone coming in before the natural ones start turning up. … Our production systems are very dependent on specific inputs from specific locations. They cannot be easily replaced once damaged, and at the moment the supply is shut down completely.
Avinash Kishore, from the Indian ‘Food Policy Research Institute’: “The worst outcome would be if production itself suffers and then trade also suffers; [for example] with export bans. … China is the largest producer of fertilisers. If it restricts exports of both urea and phosphate … that makes the situation [much] worse. If trade keeps flowing, we’ll have less vulnerability, as we saw after the Ukraine crisis.”
Interviewer: “If the Strait of Hormuz were somehow to open tomorrow, and calm somehow holds, does this crisis end quickly, or has lasting damage already been done?”
Keen: “Lasting damage. One of the urea plants has already been damaged, and is not producing urea. We have to replace that facility, and these things take time. … This is showing the danger of the ‘just in time’ efficiency versus robustness [business model].’
I would note that ‘just-in-time’ can be robust, given the prevalence of the specific conditions which Keen mentioned; the conditions that most economists presume to be almost always true.
But geography can be capricious, and so can concentration of production reflecting the giant international economies of scale we see in production and transport; economies which minimise cost when disruptive forces are not at play. I would also note that many components of supply chains come as complements; thus, air freight remains largely a complement of passenger movements, fertiliser is a complement of fuel, and shipping works best when ships can carry a return load or an onward load.
New Zealand’s food security depends on its exports continuing to justify high two-way shipping capacity. What if, due to consumer prioritisation, demand in say China for New Zealand’s exports falls away; the reverse of the recent booms? This is the capriciousness of ‘income elasticity of demand’.
Some sobering statistics about New Zealand’s food and fertiliser imports
New Zealand’s Food and Fertiliser Imports
$NZ million
World
% Australia
three years ended:
1990
2001
2025
2001 to 2025
1990
2001
2025
multiple
wheat
41
65
311
4.8
82.8%
77.2%
100.0%
rice
10
27
105
3.8
69.0%
71.9%
25.6%
prepared cereal
41
181
722
4.0
78.3%
76.7%
45.5%
incl. pasta
8
33
153
4.6
64.6%
58.5%
17.4%
prepared vegetables
59
143
529
3.7
54.9%
49.4%
16.8%
fodder
25
113
1,531
13.6
78.9%
46.6%
20.3%
ALL FOOD
778
1,937
8,637
4.5
41.2%
46.3%
29.2%
fertiliser
55
260
839
3.2
1.7%
3.0%
3.6%
ALL IMPORTS
12,759
27,966
77,306
2.8
20.9%
23.0%
10.9%
These ‘harmonised trade’ data (from Statistics New Zealand’s soon-to-be discontinued Infoshare database) cover, for us, in particular the period from 2000 to 2025. Inflation for imported food has been low for that period, given that the exchange rate for the $NZ was at an all-time low in 2000, and that not-so-high New Zealand inflation has been consistently dominated by non-tradable items. We also note that New Zealand’s population has grown by 40% since 2000.
These data are ‘value-for-duty’, meaning for our purposes (and given that New Zealand is a free-trading nation) that they are exclusive of transport and insurance costs. Of course, we now know that transport and insurance costs are going to increase dramatically; especially for a geographically marooned population.
New Zealand’s spending on imported staples has increased from 3½-fold to five-fold since 2000. Annual increases in spending on food imports were even more dramatic in the 1990s, though tradable CPI-inflation will have been higher then. (New Zealand’s data on tradable inflation only commences in the late 1990s.)
New Zealand is dependent on Australian wheat. For other staple food items, the huge increases in food imports have come from other countries. Rice, the best staple food of all, soon will become much harder to get from the non-Australian sources we now prevail upon. Pasta, rice, and pre-prepared vegetables have become dinner-staples of student flats and other income-poor or time-poor households. Further, firms which process New Zealand grown vegetables – Watties and McCain – are planning to scale back their domestic operations. (See my Frozen Vegetables, Food Security, and the New Zealand Dollar, Scoop, 312 March 2026.)
Three other points are noteworthy.
First, spending on imported fodder – imported animal food – has increased dramatically, nearly fourteen-fold, since the three years centred on 2000.
Second, most imports of fertiliser, which have increased more than threefold since 2000, are not from our neighbour across the ditch. (They – the unassembled food matter which underpins the supermarket food we eat – are byproducts of the petroleum industry; hence they come to us from Singapore and South Korea.)
Third, total imported food is now 12% of all imports, up from 6% in 1990 and from 7% in 2001; and now less than 30% of it comes from Australia. ‘Total food’ includes a huge category of imported food simply labelled ‘miscellaneous’. (We also note that little more than ten percent of New Zealand’s total goods’ imports now come from Australia.)
New Zealand’s ‘Perfect Storm’ of food vulnerability
New Zealand’s worst – or at least most immediate – problem might not be fertiliser. Rather, it might be dependence on imports of both human food staples and animal feed. New Zealand’s food production system is now so specialised re the international marketplace, that the short-run and even medium-run supply costs of pivoting to a robust more domestically-oriented model are probably prohibitive.
New Zealand’s main source of staple food is still Australia, but to a much lesser extent than in the 1990s. (Before the 1980s, New Zealand produced most of its own starch-carbohydrates.) How well will we be able to persuade Australia to keep sending us food when there will be many more other mouths to feed in the Indo-Pacific region? And how much will Australia’s food production be curtailed by restricted fertiliser and other supplies?
In terms of the Indo-Pacific food and fuel supply chain, we already see most other (indeed much bigger) nations facing major impacts from the supply-chain crisis, and putting their domestic interests ahead of international considerations; they are effectively queue-jumping, undermining the rationing process by reducing fuel taxes and by increasing food subsidies and export barriers. (Note RNZ today about Asia.)
Not all governments are as complacent as New Zealand’s. The reduced fuel taxes do not only lead to queue-jumping; they also constitute a fiscal stimulus which may help in the process of a reorientation towards more secure staple food supplies. The New Zealand government is obsessively and irrationally opposed to any kind of fiscal stimulus.
Since 2000, New Zealand has enjoyed an export windfall and rising terms of trade, thanks to the high income elasticity of demand for dairy and other protein-rich foods. That’s due in particular to high per capita growth in East and South Asia. The problem for New Zealand is that when those economies stop growing – indeed when they recess – the fall in demand for luxury foods can be equally dramatic.
On RNZ’s Business News this morning, Corran Dann noted: “For a country like New Zealand, we’re a trading nation, we need to see growth in our trading partners because they buy our goods. That is how we make our way in the world. And likewise, for them.”
Reciprocal trade – ie multilateral exchange – is economics’ foremost example of a win-win ‘game’. But humans can be capricious, narcissist, supremacist. ‘Win-win’ competitive games can be disrupted by stupid players, or even by advocates of disruption as a greater good; giving way to rivalrous zero-sum, negative-sum, or ‘lose-lose’ games. (On ‘stupid players’, we may note, in passing, Carlo Cipolla’s 1976 essay – recently republished – The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.)
New Zealand’s highly specialised export-oriented food production system can be expected to face sudden and simultaneous supply and demand shocks. Supply shock because New Zealand farming is now so dependent on imported fuel, fertiliser, and fodder. Demand shock because New Zealand specialises in the production of luxury foods, not staples, and faces a steep fall in the demand for luxury foods.
So, in terms of Steve Keen’s comments, New Zealand is arguably much more food-vulnerable than the United Kingdom, which Keen cites. And note Avinash Kishore’s comment about the food consequences of a general breakdown in international trade. (Unlike Keen, Kishore is an optimist!)
A crisis on top of a crisis
On present food insecurity in New Zealand, this from Google’s AI overview (search: ‘NZ food insecurity’): “Food insecurity is a widespread issue in New Zealand, affecting 1 in 3 households (33%) in 2025, with 18% facing severe insecurity.” See One in Three New Zealand Households Faced Food Insecurity in 2025, IPSOS, published by Scoop15 April 2026.
It can only be regarded as disgraceful that when, under the most favourable of circumstances in the food-supply system, a food-specialising country such as New Zealand has such record-high levels of food insecurity before the coming food crisis. This ‘insecurity despite abundance’ reality is not helped by Australia also having higher levels of food insecurity than most so-called developed nations. Continued access to Australian-produced staples is New Zealand’s main means to famine-avoidance.
Another part of the possible perfect storm is New Zealand’s lack of inclination and ability to queue-jump. When staples are scarce, ‘game theory’ comes into play. The staples of game theory are scarce-product-hoarding, joining queues to gain access to these staples, and a willingness to pay a bounty for such scarce essentials. New Zealand – marooned in the South Pacific – can expect to be at the end of the queues this country finds itself having to join.
(Other concepts of game theory include: ‘arms race’, ‘race to the bottom’, ‘prisoners dilemma’, ‘tragedy of the commons’, ‘survival of the fittest’, and Hobbes’ ‘war of all against all’. Game theory assumes that individuals and nations adopt ‘economic man’ postures of ‘rational self-interest’; meaning selfish strategies. Other thought perspectives suggest that such strategies are ‘stupid’ rather than ‘rational’, and that they miss out the widely-held concept of enlightened self-interest which incorporates visions of the public good and the public interest. Adherents of rationalism usually dismiss their academic adversaries as ‘altruist’; whereas they are really public-minded, not the same thing.)
Historical Points of Reference
New Zealand faced a similar trading and shipping crisis almost exactly 100 years ago. Though it was not a food crisis then; New Zealand was not then reliant on imported food staples, though it was reliant on other imports.
The issue was the 1926 British General Strike, which focussed minds in New Zealand then on how dependent New Zealand had become in its crucial trading relationship with the far-side if not the dark-side of the world. The New Zealand economy started to tank in late-1926. 1927 then became New Zealand’s own particular annus horribilus.
New Zealand already faced very high levels of private debt, falling export prices, and a tightwad government. With the shipping constraints tipping the country over the edge, farmers walked off their farms in greater numbers than during the later Great Depression, rural New Zealand depopulated, bank balances plummeted, and the country went into a sharp recession.
The Reform (think National) government had been elected in 1925 with 47% of the votes and 69% of the seats. In the 1928 election, that government was unceremoniously turfed out of power, falling to 34% of the vote and 34% of the seats. The faded Liberal Party – under the new name of United – formed a government with the support of the new Labour Party. The economy recovered. Though the new governing arrangements didn’t last; Reform came back into government as the junior coalition partner. Eventually – in 1936 – United and Reform joined forces to create the National Party.
Another historical story of relevance is about how Germany lost World War One, through hunger. That war, in full, lasted 4¼ years; an amount of time the present Russia-Ukraine War will soon surpass. Essentially, Germany – on the battlefield, and with its lethal submarines – won the first four years (including a comprehensive defeat of its main adversary, the Russian Empire) but lost the last three months.
The critical factors in the end were the British Royal Navy blockade on German shipping, a staunch French fightbackin July 1918, and an influenza pandemic arising from an existing battlefield flu strain combining with a new strain brought over by greenhorn the American latecomers. The shipping blockade induced severe famine in Germany. That famine was so severe that it was later used to justify carpet bombing (aka area bombing) in World War Two, on the basis that no amount of RAF bombing could be as bad for German civilians as that blockade-induced famine.
Finally
The supply chokepoints around the Arabian Peninsula – the southwest of Southwest Asia – might ease sooner rather than later. Though I, unlike New Zealand’s Prime Minister, wouldn’t bet on it. New Zealand has engaged in a slow game of Russian roulette; there is now an extra bullet in the revolver’s chambers, and the pace of the game has quickened.
Will New Zealand, having played its game of chance, become collateral damage? New Zealand almost certainly was not Binyamin Netanyahu’s target.
Steve Keen focussed on the fertiliser chokehold; the core of the world’s food supply which is in fact a byproduct of the petroleum industry (and of the discussion about refined oil supplies). New Zealand’s plight is actually significantly worse than that; it’s a potential and dramatic shortfall of imported human and animal feed – a shortfall that would precede a fertiliser shortage.
What happens if or when the food ships are redirected elsewhere? Those ships burn a lot of fuel coming to and going from New Zealand. Would the world prioritise five million whitish lives, marooned in the South Seas, over ten million brown lives more easily saved? Should it? I guess not. Will future historians refer to the Great Aotearoa Famine of 2027?
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Pakuranga Bakery manager Pho Bok with a tray full of lo’i hossi pies.RNZ Ross McNaughton
Just three months after they were pulled from the pie warmers, Pakuranga Bakery’s horse meat pies are available again and proving just as popular as ever.
The pies, inspired by lo’i hossi, a Tongan horse meat dish, went viral on social media over summer. But the bakery had to stop selling them in January as the lo’i hossi mixture they were using contained horse meat that hadn’t been cleared for human consumption.
There is only one meat processor registered to slaughter and process horse meat for human consumption in New Zealand. Auckland Council and MPI both confirmed to First Up, Pakuranga Bakery was now sourcing their horse meat from that registered supplier.
A sign for the pies.RNZ Ross McNaughton
The lo’i hossi pies went back on sale on Friday, and by the time First Up, arrived that afternoon there were only two left.
Bakery manager Pho Bok said they had sold over 100 lo’i hossi pies that day.
He said a lot of customers had been asking when the horse meat pie would be coming back.
“They’re just happy, over the moon” he said.
He said other popular flavours like mince and cheese or steak and cheese sell between 40 and 50 per day.
While the bakery had previously bought the lo’i hossi mixture premade, Bok said they are now doing all the preparation themselves on site.
He said the horse meat needs to be cooked for several hours until it is tender “then you can try to shred it with your hands. And then you put it into the coconut cream, onions, and mix it all up together”.
The pie.RNZ Ross McNaughton
The lo’i hossi mixture is then put into pastry, and baked like any other pie.
While the idea of eating horse meat was a novelty for some people, it was common in many countries.
Bok said the cross cultural appeal was part of what makes the lo’i hossi pies so popular.
“Pies, kiwis, it’s a staple” he said, “and then when you’re putting two cultures together, you can’t beat it.”
Videos of Pakuranga Bakery’s lo’i hossi pie were already appearing on social media again, so it seemed they were on to a winning recipe, now that their meat supply was sorted.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
