Source: Radio New Zealand

There’s widespread support for the government’s new action plan to combat methamphetamine use, with the Drug Foundation commending its “health focused interventions”.

A mental wellness provider from northland is also welcoming the news, saying it’s a “fantastic start,” and the Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational and Organised Crime saying it was positive that multiple ministers were involved in order to address the issue in its “totality”.

On Sunday, the government announced what Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith called a “comprehensive action plan to combat methamphetamine harm in New Zealand.”

It’s the result of the Prime Minister’s ‘meth sprint team’ made up of the Ministers for Justice, Police, Customs, Courts and Mental Health, who were tasked with tackling the issue.

That came after a drastic rise in consumption of methamphetamine last year. RNZ investigated what community providers needed in response, which was largely more funding for grassroots solutions.

Paul Goldsmith said yesterday methamphetamine was something “we’ve been fighting for 20 years, and it’s been getting worse in the last little while.”

“We know that meth is a scourge on society.”

He pointed to parts of New Zealand who had been particularly affected, like Northland, where “communities have been blighted by meth.”

“Those communities are desperate for us to fight back, and that’s why we’re taking these extra steps to turn up the dial of our response.”

The response included a nationwide media campaign that will launch in the next few months, paid for by the proceeds of crime fund, that will raise awareness about the issue and the drugs harm.

An extra $30m over four years from the Mental Health and Addiction budget will go to front line services, increasing the services available to the hardest-hit communities.

Police will be able to intercept communications and search for electronically stored evidence with new enforcement powers, and an additional anti-money laundering unit will be set up.

It will also see more focus on disrupting supply chains in the Pacific Ocean, with Customs, the GCSB and the Defence Force conducting a series of maritime operations. There would also be consultation on strengthening border security.

Customs Minister Casey Costello said there was “a lot of risk” through South East Asia and South America, “but we are getting intercepts from all over the place.”

“We just had an arrest last weekend at the airport, 30 kilos of meth from citizens from the US trying to bring methamphetamine into the country.

“So it is coming at us from everywhere and we just need to be tighter across all of it.”

RNZ spoke to providers in Northland earlier this year about the spike in consumption.

Rākau Ora managing director Vanessa Kite told RNZ following the announcement she “absolutely” welcomed it.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have enough bloody money, to be honest. But right now it’s a fantastic start.”

She said the need was “huge” in Te Tai Tokerau, and it was “growing in a different way”, with younger people affected and more complex cases presenting.

What was required to tackle it was “long-term” and “sustained” investment, rather than the short term boosts they’d been getting, she said.

Kite welcomed the focus on meth as a social health issue, rather than an enforcement one.

“Prevention is everything,” she said. “We really need to be putting a lot of money into prevention, but also, education, support and connections.”

She suggested what was needed was more detox beds, and residential rehab options. She also wanted to see more focus on lived experience community providers.

“We’re often seen as the first port of call and the priority in meth help, and we’re paid the worst. In fact, many are doing voluntary work.”

Kite said at a community and grassroots level, she believed they had the solutions, “we just need the support to scale them up.”

The Executive Director at the New Zealand Drug Foundation Sarah Helm said she was “particularly pleased” with the health focused interventions.

“It’s good to see some emphasis on health approaches and additional investment that’s being made, because we know we can’t arrest our way out of the issue.”

What’s needed, Helm said, was treatment and assistance both earlier on in somebody’s journey, but also closer and more accessible to their lives.

She said it wasn’t about waiting until somebody’s experiencing the worst harms before they are offered help.

In order for the nationwide campaign to be effective, it would need to focus on destigmatisation, and promote the option of seeking help she said.

“Those communities who already experience the worst methamphetamine harms already know how negative the impact can be.

“So really grounding that campaign in what they’re experiencing and helping them to get information and support quickly will make that as effective as it possibly can be.”

Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational and Organised Crime Steve Symon told RNZ many of the planned actions were consistent with the recommendations made in the MAG’s reports.

Overall, he said the announcement is great, provided it is part of the solution to organised crime, not the whole solution.

“Methamphetamine is certainly an important issue, but it’s a subset of the bigger organized crime issue.”

The focus on health was also welcomed, because “as we’ve said in the reports, we don’t think locking people up is necessarily the solution,” said Symon. The government should be tough on those committing this crime and addressing that, but it wasn’t the only way to deal with it.

Looking at cutting off the supply coming into the country was important too, as well as “working on our customer base”, he said, “working on how many New Zealanders are willing to consume these drugs.”

The coalition government parties had campaigned on being “tough on organised crime” he said, and it was about understanding “what tough means.”

“It’s not just building more prisons and locking more people up.

“It’s certainly locking those up who need to be locked up because of the crimes that they’ve committed, but it’s also looking the broader social problem of how our country has been willing to consume twice as much methamphetamine as we did last year.”

Symon suggested being tough on crime could be possible by removing the customer base.

Ultimately though, what was missing was the coordination to pull it all together, “how to be accountable” he said, which was why the MAG had recommended a single minister in charge of responding to organised crime.

But he thought it was possible multiple ministers had come together to look at the issue of meth.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

“Bloody minded road vandalism.” That’s how many residents in Papamoa have reacted to news their previously asphalted roads are going to be resurfaced in chip seal.

Residents said they would rather their streets had no resealing work and were left as they were.

However, Tauranga City Council said roads were only scheduled for resealing if they were showing early signs of surface deterioration and leaving a road to deteriorate further would result in higher costs.

In October RNZ reported on the surprise many residents had when their roads were resealed with a different surface and a general public preference for asphalt.

Papamoa Residents and Ratepayers Association chair Philip Brown said residents of Santa Monica Drive, Montego Drive, Santa Barbara Drive, Checketts Place, Sovereign Drive and The Gardens Drive were not consulted by the council before discovering their roads were to be resealed this summer. All the roads were going from asphalt to chip seal.

He said the residents did not think there was a need for the resealing to happen at all.

“There is nothing wrong with the roads as they are now,” he said. “They look good, they are quiet, they are just nice stable roads, there are no engineering problems with them, council has never produced an engineering document saying that the roads are having a problem and they are just that well-built .”

Brown said the council should save money and just leave the roads alone.

“We cannot understand why they want to do the chip sealing.”

Tauranga City Council general manager of operations and infrastructure Reneke van Soest said each road was individually inspected before going on the maintenance schedule.

Van Soest said that depending on the condition of each individual site it might be possible to delay treatment for one or two years, but the Papamoa sites that had been selected for resealing were showing early signs of failure.

“If we do not address that deterioration, we risk significant damage to the structural layers beneath the road surface, which would result in greater repair costs and inconvenience for everyone,” she said.

Council said the most cost-effective way of maintaining a road was to intervene before potholes, cracking and other quality issues occur.

“So that we can prevent damage to the underlying road layers. [Road] repairs or rehabilitation are much more expensive maintenance processes, which can be managed by timely resurfacing to waterproof the road foundations,” van Soest said.

One of the issues was that Tauranga had many roads in residential areas that were surfaced in asphalt by subdivision developers. Developers likely know that people prefer asphalt which would be a motivation for using it.

“Those roads are progressively reaching the end of their serviceable surface life and maintenance is becoming a priority,” van Soest said.

The New Zealand Transport Agency funds 51 percent of local roads but for NZTA to co-fund resurfacing in asphalt, councils must show NZTA that asphalt was worth the investment as it was five times more expensive. This case was often unable to be made for suburban streets and so council would have to fund 100 percent of the road renewal if it went with asphalt.

“Using the example of Santa Monica Drive, the cost difference between chip seal and asphalt is almost $400,000.

“If that additional cost is divided by the number of households served by the road, resurfacing with asphalt would require each household to contribute approximately $3000 to make up the funding shortfall,” van Soest said.

The Papamoa Residents and Ratepayers Association had started a survey online of residents and Brown showed some of the feedback to RNZ. It was overwhelmingly against the resealing work.

One resident who had lived on the street for 20 years said they had already written to the council regarding the matter.

“There is nothing wrong with the road, there are far more urgent road resurfacing works that need doing!”

Another questioned how it would affect their children.

“My kids enjoy riding their scooters on our street and have recently purchased a skateboard too. If the street is covered with chipseal then they will lose this area to play outside.”

“I feel that the footpaths need more urgent attention than the road surface,” said one resident.

Brown said asphalt lasted longer so the cost may even out over time. He thought it would last 30-plus years.

NZTA told RNZ the longevity of asphalt was dependent on a range of factors, for example heavy trucks and electric buses would wear the surface much faster than a light vehicle. However, generally they would expect it to it last for approximately 12 years.

Brown said the association had reached out to council to ask them to hold a community meeting next week to work through the issues.

“Continuing on regardless would show a lack of care for the community.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A wall of smoke from the Tongariro National Park fire is providing a spectacular but worrying vista for a central plateau village.

The blaze has burned through up to 2500 hectares and is 20 percent contained.

Whakapapa Village was evacuated on Sunday, and the fire has forced the evacuation of trampers and closed lodges. All tracks and huts within the Tongariro National Park are closed, and State Highway 48 leading to Whakapapa Village and State Highway 47 at the intersection with State Highway 4 at Waimarino are also closed.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Education Review Office wants tougher action on struggling schools that do not improve.

In its annual report the office criticised the lack of support for under-performing schools and called for “stronger consequences” for those that did not demonstrate progress.

It told RNZ that could see high-performing schools provide intensive mentoring for the leaders of schools that did not improve.

It said school principals were the key to lasting improvement.

The report said ERO was involved with 168 “schools of concern” and published reports for 54 of them in 2024/25 year, recommending statutory intervention or Education Ministry support for 32.

The report said review office staff had increased their engagement and support for struggling schools but “results are mixed”.

Only one-third of schools receiving support had improved, a third got worse and a third did not change.

“Too many schools are not turning things around fast enough. There is a real need for a stronger, system-wide approach,” the report said.

“In particular, we need to provide better and more sustained support for school leaders, since strong leadership is key to making lasting improvements in schools and helping all learners succeed.”

“ERO’s view is that schools of concern will benefit not only from ongoing support, but also from stronger accountabilities placed on them as part of the education system. Clear expectations, regular and rigorous follow-up, and robust mechanisms should be in place to monitor progress.

“Schools that do not demonstrate the necessary shifts in practice and outcomes should face meaningful and timely consequences.”

The review office told RNZ in a statement that underperforming schools had low regular student attendance, a large proportion of students who were regularly and chronically absent, low student achievement, and a significant number of students leaving school without NCEA qualifications.

“These schools face complex challenges, including around health, safety and wellbeing, leadership and teaching capability – which impacts the ability for the school’s leaders to turn things around and drive the necessary improvements,” it said.

The office said the school system already provided support for struggling schools, but more was needed for their principals.

“As a system, we haven’t invested deeply enough in leadership capability. Investing in leadership development, targeted professional learning for teachers, and robust support systems for learner wellbeing is critical to narrowing the equity gap and ensuring every student achieves and can thrive,” it said.

“We need to wrap around our school leaders better than we have in the past, so they are set up to meet the unique challenges that their school is facing – turning things around, so that every child gets a quality education.”

Asked what “meaningful and timely consequences” should be applied to schools that did not improve, the review office said its approach was educative, not punitive.

“Where traditional intervention has not been able to shift the dial for these schools, we have to think differently. This could be intensive mentoring for school leaders and boards by leaders from high performing schools – sharing their insights, strategies and successes,” it said.

It also said higher-level interventions, like replacing boards with commissioners, needed “more vigour and fidelity”.

“Interventions need to be carefully targeted, better planned in relation to improvement actions signalled in ERO’s reports, tightly monitored with more resources and stronger accountability for everyone involved,” it said.

It’s not the first time the review office has criticised the support provided to struggling schools.

It made similar warnings in its briefing to then-incoming Education Minister Erica Stanford in November 2023 when it said the process for turning around the worst-performing schools was too slow and needed immediate attention.

In its 2022 annual report, the review office said responsibility for improving schools was shared across multiple agencies including ERO and was not a problem teachers and principals should deal with on their own.

Most schools on track to meet government goals

The report said ERO reviewed 745 schools in 2024/25.

It said most schools were not meeting government targets for regular attendance or achievement against new reading, writing and maths curriculums, but most were on track to improve.

But about a third were not doing enough.

It said only 29 percent of schools visited in the 12-month period were yet to see improvement in attendance and 33 percent were not making sufficient progress in reading, writing and maths.

The report said most schools, 92 percent, were offering “sufficient or rich opportunities to learn across the breadth and depth of the curriculum” but academic achievement was a complex challenge.

“While 13 percent of almost all schools are considered high performing in achieving learner success and wellbeing, over one-third of schools (35 percent) are not yet meeting expected standards for learner success and wellbeing.”

The report said a large portion of schools had not yet embedded student wellbeing and engagement practices and their leadership and strategic planning might lack the coherence to drive sustained improvement.

“These figures signal a significant systemic concern. When over one-third of schools are not yet meeting expected standards for learner success and wellbeing, it reflects a widespread vulnerability in the foundational conditions that support learner achievement and equitable outcomes.”

The report said overall the education system was making progress but it needed to be more widespread and urgent.

“High compliance with government directives, such as close to 100 percent of schools implementing “phones away for the day” and 98 percent delivering daily literacy and numeracy instruction, shows that schools are responding to clear expectations for urgent improvement and a stronger system.”

It said 14 of the schools it reviewed were not meeting the requirement for an hour-a-day of reading, writing and maths.

The report said ERO had monitored 517 schools over two years.

It found in that time teaching and learning improved at a quarter of the schools, but declined in 16 percent.

Teachers key to good early childhood education

The report said ERO completed 1260 ECE reviews in 2024/25.

It said the reviews included 567 stand-alone early childhood services and 53 percent of those met or exceeded the quality threshold, up from 36 percent in the previous 12-month period.

Results were less good for governing bodies that oversaw multiple early childhood services.

It said a sample of 14 governing organisations which were responsible for 545 services showed 58 percent were below ERO’s quality threshold and 42 percent were above.

The report said the figures indicated “system-level changes and leadership development are still required”.

The report said trained teachers were important.

“Well trained teachers foster rich learning environments leading to better cognitive social and emotional development. Centres with a strong professional learning culture show a better learning environment for children. This needs to be at the heart of early childhood education. It helps teachers stay current with best practise,” the report said.

“ERO finds high quality services encourage reflective practise and shared learning through professional learning development. Teaching in these services often work as a team around the child taking a collective responsibility for the child’s learning and development.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Residents and business owners in Auckland’s Point Chevalier are feeling optimistic as shoplifting is finally brought under control.

It comes just over a year after the local supermarket started closing early over safety concerns.

On a main thoroughfare parallel to Auckland’s north-western motorway, the Point Chevalier shops are nestled between two worlds.

Despite being the de facto town square for one of Auckland’s more expensive suburbs, the strip has had a troubled history of crime and antisocial behaviour.

Residents like Bob have long lamented the closure of the Point Chevalier library, which was shuttered in late 2022 due to a leaky ceiling.

But a new interim library finally opened its doors to visitors on Saturday.

“I think losing the library for such a long time was a big deal because it was kind of part of the package. It was for me anyway, so it’s nice that it’s come back,” Bob said.

Margi Watson, the newly elected local board chair, said the library’s absence had been felt throughout the community.

“You know, when the library was closed off and the town square was all fenced off, there were some safety concerns,” she said.

“Now we’re hoping that the library’s open, the town square’s open, there’s less concerns from people about security.”

Last year, in response to brazen shoplifting and harassment, Woolworths Point Chev restricted its hours and boosted its security.

Since then, new high-density apartments, a competing New World supermarket, and the much-anticipated reopening of the local library have given residents and businesses hope.

Lotto shop owner Chirayu Patel said he hadn’t encountered shoplifters in some time.

“Better than last year. Like, yeah, the cops also coming and visiting here twice a week. And then Auckland Council security guys also visiting. Yeah, so it’s better than last year,” he said.

However, another shopkeeper who asked not to be identified told RNZ shoplifting was still a common occurrence at his store.

A spokesperson for Woolworth’s said its security measures had paid off, with a steady reduction in shoplifting over the past year.

“In line with our $45 million investment over three years, announced in 2023, we have put in place a number of both covert and overt security measures across our stores, including Pt Chevalier,” they said.

“We have seen an improvement and we will continue to work with Police, community groups and other retailers in our communities.”

Workers First Union retail secretary Rudd Hughes, who represented supermarket staff, said Woolworth’s deserved credit.

“What they’ve done is that they’ve actually now put on properly trained security people. Those security guards are able to stop shoplifters. They have two security guards on at the peak times, which is something that we asked for,” he said.

“So to be fair to Woolworths, they’ve picked up their game around this.”

He said other improvements had made the supermarket safer for staff and customers alike.

“They’ve changed the configuration at Point Chev a little bit, so there’s only one door for customers to exit,” he explained

“And the other thing is they’ve got the shark-teeth doors fixed and the trolley lock in place. So all those things have meant that verbal abuse, physical abuse and the shoplifting has calmed down in that store.”

Margi Watson hoped safety improvements and the new library would attract more people to the suburb.

“The new library will go back to a full-service library where there’s books, where there’s activity, there’s events like Wriggle and Rhyme for children, where there’s printing and computers to access. So it’ll become the heart of the community again.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

• Another serious assault at North Shore Hospital mental health unit
• The PSA says staff had been pleading for help
• Health NZ says it added extra workers before it opened five new beds last month.

A mental health worker was strangled by a patient a day after their colleagues pleaded for extra staff, but Health New Zealand has rejected the idea that short-staffing played any part in the incident.

Workers at North Shore Hospital’s He Puna Waiora secure mental health unit have been protesting for months about the violence, alleging they are bullied if they speak up.

Health NZ has confirmed there was a “serious assault” on 18 October.

This occurred just after the unit added five extra beds, and while HNZ was looking into a previous assault where a staffer was injured after hitting their head.

“On the 18th October there was another serious assault involving strangulation,” said PSA union national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons, adding this was partly due to being overstretched.

“Just the day before, our staff said they were pleading for staff numbers to be increased,” the union said in a separate statement.

“Their request for extra staff was only acted on for two shifts – staffing had decreased again at the time of the assault.”

Health NZ Te Whatu Ora group director of operations for Waitematā Brad Healey said the unit had added seven new positions this year before the 18 October assault.

“There is no evidence linking this incident to the recent bed increase, as it occurred in the high-care area of the unit, where no bed or staffing changes were made.

“At the time, the unit was fully staffed,” he said in a statement to RNZ.

He added the assault was “managed appropriately, with immediate support provided to those affected”.

The secure unit had five beds added in mid-October, making a total of 40 beds.

Healey said the beds were opened following extensive preparation and recruitment.

“The unit has been funded and staffed for this level of capacity for some time, with an increase of seven FTEs [full-time equivalents] this year prior to the opening of the beds.”

Fitzsimons pushed back: “This is wrong.

“We stand by our previous statement – there have been no additional staff recruited to cover the additional beds.

“There was a consultation period, but we disagree it was extensive. The PSA was not provided the documentation needed to do meaningful consultation, and Health NZ consistently misled both PSA officials and members of staff on what the process would look like.”

Healey responded: “We acknowledge we have more work to do to further improve our communication with staff and intend to raise this at the next meeting with staff and PSA.”

Fitzsimons said the core problem was the unit’s minimum safe staffing levels were too low, saying this illustrated why healthcare workers were striking nation-wide.

The latest violence came while the two sides were preparing to meet to talk about violence and a half dozen other problems listed in a safety notice in September that 50 of the staff had signed.

That meeting would now take place on 17 November.

The problems had mostly not been resolved and it would ask at the meeting for staff to be increased, the PSA said.

Part of the problem was four elderly patients that staff said they were not equipped to deal with, and who should be moved to a specialised facility. HNZ rejected moving them.

The unit lacked equipment to work with them, and staff lacked the training, the PSA said.

Healey acknowledged that training was “an area for improvement”. About a quarter of staff had been trained, and that was set to rise to a third by the end of the year.

Another problem – bathroom drains that regularly got blocked and flooded the unit, sometimes with faeces – had been fixed.

Health NZ had previously acknowledged that staff suffered “real and valid” trauma from witnessing another worker hitting their head when restraining a patient a few weeks ago.

That case and the strangulation have sparked internal reviews.

The September notice raised the “increased risk of physical violence; high likelihood of serious injury” at He Puna Waiora.

The secure unit has a troubled history, including a 2020 inquiry into two patient suicides, and critical Ombudsman reports in 2019 and 2022, including about staff shortages.

The government last week announced $60m of mental health funding over four years, including $7m a year for 40 more front-line clinical staff nation-wide and two new 10-bed acute services so fewer people would need to be admitted as inpatients.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

It’s 6am in Pukehina – a rural community down the coast from Tauranga. Leaves are rustling against the gentle breeze as tyres crunch through the gravel driveway.

The basketball court – surrounded by kiwifruit orchards and dairy farms – is getting busy.

The sun is not yet up, but car headlights cut through the darkness.

Tuesday is women’s bootcamp, an hour-long workout session run by Moses Mohi Beckham.

He expanded the bootcamp to the community after starting with friends in 2020.

“It was just myself and a vet and another farmer, we just started running around in a paddock doing push-ups, then it just evolved from there and we were probably getting up to 10 to 15 dudes a couple of times a week.”

After moving to Pukehina, two locals asked him to start one for women.

“We just started with just doing squats out in the paddock there and then a court was built, then just kind of evolved from there.”

Now, Mohi runs four bootcamps a week – two for men, two for women.

After bootcamp, Mohi works in many jobs, one of them being a facilitator for the Rural Support Trust, which he calls “have a cup of tea”.

The job has given Mohi insights into the mental health challenges faced by the rural community.

And he says it’s not all about having the right answers.

“[It’s about] sit and listen, and if you can carry some of that stress off them, especially if they’ve got no one to vent to, and if it’s been bottled up so long, it probably can be pretty tough. It’s weird, the more you listen, things just seem to kick in and words come out and seem to work.

“If I give them a hug by the end of it, I think I’ve cracked it.”

The 44-year-old says after going through a dark period in his own life, bootcamp was a way to boost not only physical health, but also mental health.

“We’ve developed friendships. When we first started, they were quite awkward, some of these fellas they wouldn’t even shake your hands, but now a hug is a normal thing.

“I’m just trying to break through that and actually yarn about the good stuff, the real things, like family. And once you start chewing the fat after the workout, then people start talking about anything. Farmers will have problems, but they may hold it to themselves, but once they share it out, someone may have a way to get around it, or someone knows someone that could help, and it kind of works out from there.”

He says rural living can mean “a lot of isolation”, making mental health a challenge, but the smaller community compared to cities means once they open up a space, it can be easier to support each other.

Mohi runs the bootcamp for free and has paid for equipment himself. But seeing how it’s bringing the community closer, he says all is worth it.

Cathryn Wattam has been coming here for three summers. While life as a dairy farmer and kiwifruit orchardist is busy, she says the group exercise keeps her body and mind strong.

“Mental health – it’s about getting out, having conversations with people that aren’t your husband, just having fun and just creating a community.”

This summer, she’s bringing her 14-year-old daughter to bootcamp.

“The alarm goes off and you get your clothes out the night before and you just make it happen. You just gotta get up. You gotta go.”

Hypnotherapist Tania Vinson recently moved to Pukehina for the beach life, and she says the bootcamp is a good way to get to know the community.

“Well, I haven’t died yet, so that’s good. I was a little bit sore, but a good sore.”

It’s her second time at the bootcamp, and she says she will be coming for the third.

Parents sometimes bring their kids, so the workout is designed for a range of fitness levels.

Mohi says even though men’s and women’s sessions run separately, it’s the same challenge.

“I do the exact same workouts with the men. I just say it differently, but they all have to do the same bloody thing. If you think about it, everything’s all based around the core, the groin, the hips. Because men are not very flexible, they think they’re tough, but some of these dudes can’t even tie their shoelaces up. Whereas for the women, most of them are the opposite. So across the board we try to do a bit of everything.”

And at the end of the morning, making sure everyone’s included is what matters most. Mohi says his trick is to always end on a round of high-fives.

“It’s just a finish, especially the new ones there and try to get them included.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The family of a mental health patient who killed herself after being allowed to go home for Christmas was not aware of her suicide attempt a week previously.

Gabriella Kathleen Ann Freeland – known as Kate – died on Christmas Eve 2021 at her family home in Auckland, the day after her father picked her up from the psychiatric in-patient ward at Palmerston North Hospital.

In her findings, released on Monday, Coroner Janet Anderson found the decision to grant the 28-year-old leave was “unwise”.

“I also have concerns about the adequacy of the information provided to Gabriella’s father at the time of her discharge,” she wrote.

“Robert Freeland was not properly informed about the seriousness of Gabriella’s situation, and he was not provided with information that might have helped reduce the risk of her ending her life while she was on leave.”

Her brother Jared Freeland, who was the one to discover her body, said the family wanted Gabriella’s death to be a catalyst for positive change within the mental health service.

He told the coroner that Gabriella’s case was not an isolated incident, and he wanted to draw attention to the “parlous state of mental health services” in New Zealand, which he described as a “national disgrace”.

Gabriella was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a child and treated with Ritalin, going on to complete a computer science degree at university.

Her mental state deteriorated from 2017, the year that her mother Lydia died of motor neurone disease.

She started drinking heavily, and her behaviour became increasingly erratic.

In mid-2020, she consulted several GP clinics and emergency medical centres about shortness of breath and other symptoms, which she feared could be caused by liver damage from alcohol.

Her symptoms were thought to be related to anxiety.

She left Auckland in August 2020 without telling her family, who reported her as a missing person.

It is believed she was living “itinerantly” when she was discovered by police in early June 2021, carrying several items that could be used for self-harm.

After being assessed by an acute mental health team she was discharged from care the following day because she had declined help and did not meet the criteria for compulsory treatment under the Mental Health Act.

However, the next month she was admitted to Palmerston North Hospital mental inpatient unit after being arrested for “train hopping” on top of moving carriages.

She had knives and other items in her possession, and admitted she was suicidal and had made other attempts to end her life.

“She was dishevelled, malodorous, quiet, contradictory, incongruent and at times perplexed. She reported that she believed people were trying to kill her and she was diagnosed with a psychotic illness, including schizophrenia. The opinion of multiple clinicians was that psychosis was a major part of her clinical picture.”

She was placed under compulsory treatment, as she had “a clear intention to suicide”.

The assessing doctor regarded her as “psychotic, at high risk of going ‘absent without leave’ from the unit and at high risk of suicide if she was not hospitalised”.

She was discharged in September and lived in a flat, where mental health workers continued to visit her.

On 17 December 2021, she was reviewed by her community psychiatrist, who found she was not suicidal, but noted her disorganisation and medication non-compliance put her at risk unless she was “closely managed”.

The next day, she tried to kill herself – but was saved by her landlady and re-readmitted to hospital.

During that admission, she told clinicians the suicide attempt was not planned and she was “happy to be alive” and looking forward to spending Christmas with her family.

The psychiatrist’s clinical notes at the time said it appeared Gabriella had ADHD, not schizophrenia, and they planned to reduce some medications and restarted her on Ritalin.

He later told the coroner he was of the opinion that Gabriella suffered from ADHD, in addition to depression and a personality disorder – mainly impulsivity and unpredictability.

There was a Zoom meeting with her father, who had been unaware she was back in hospital.

“Robert recalls asking why Gabriella was back in the mental health ward and being told it was because her ‘medications were wrong’, but that she was ‘all right now’.”

According to the medical notes from the meeting, the psychiatrist explained Gabriella had been readmitted because she was depressed and having thoughts of harming herself.

The notes show the father asked what clinical support she needed and was advised that Gabriella needed support and medication, i.e. Ritalin.

He arrived in Palmerston North on 23 December to pick her up, and had a meeting with staff and given some paperwork about medication.

He told the coroner he was not aware that Gabriella had been admitted to hospital because she had tried to kill herself, and that he did not know that she was a danger to herself.

“He recalls that one of the doctors may have said something about suicide or suicidal tendencies, but he was not sure.”

When they stopped at her flat to pack for the trip, one of the flatmates whispered to Robert Freeland that Gabriella had some specific items in her bag and he needed to “get them out”.

However, when he asked his daughter if she had anything potentially harmful in her luggage, she denied it.

Home in Auckland the following day, they had a great time as planned, he said.

They went shopping, bought groceries and had lunch together. Gabriella went for a walk and visited her aunt.

That afternoon, she spoke briefly to her brother Jared, and they “had a little laugh” before she went into her room.

That is where she was found dead a couple of hours later.

‘Tragic outcome’ continues to affect clinical team

MidCentral District Health Board held an independent review into the death, which found “Kate” had a tendency to downplay her risk and this was not taken into account in planning.

“During interviews some staff expressed disquiet about the leave process and were not confident that Robert knew about the suicide attempt.”

The reviewers said two indicators should have prompted staff to reassess Kate’s risk: the change in her diagnosis; and her risk history and the serious attempt to kill herself only two days before.

They made several recommendations, including improvements to assessment, treatment, leave and discharge planning and documentation.

In its response to the coroner, Health NZ provided details of those new procedures, including the information that should be provided when a patient goes on leave and planning.

The psychiatrist who was treating Gabriella on the ward told the coroner that the decision to give her leave for Christmas was made by the multidisciplinary team after “an intense five days of assessment, treatment and observation”.

“It was in response to strong patient and father requests and was sanctioned when Gabriella appeared to be improving and future focused.”

Plans and support measures were in place.

“Despite that, and the team doing their best, a tragic outcome no-one wanted followed. The whole team and I remain affected by the tragic outcome in this case and our sincere condolences remain with Gabriella’s family.”

Experienced psychiatrist Associate Professor Ben Beaglehole, who provided expert advice to the coroner, noted the diagnosis of schizophrenia was the best explanation for the mental problems that emerged for Gabriella from 2017.

He said the change in diagnosis to ADHD over two days raised a number of questions, including whether it reduced vigilance to abnormal mental state, and influenced the decision to grant leave.

The timeframe for moving from a serious suicide attempt on 18 December 2021 to extended overnight leave on 23 December 2021 was “relatively short if the driver of Gabriella’s risk behaviours is thought to be partially treated psychotic symptoms”.

Ritalin did not help with psychotic symptoms, and could sometimes make them worse, although there was no evidence of this in Gabrielle’s case.

He noted however, that acute inpatient services often ran near full capacity with high-risk patients, and care must be taken “when applying the benefits of hindsight to evaluating outcomes from complex clinical scenarios”.

Coroner’s recommendations

Coroner Anderson said she was mindful of “the dangers of hindsight bias” and accepted it was not possible to conclude that Gabriella would still be alive if she had not been granted leave, or if her father had received better information.

However, she said the decision to grant Gabriella leave so soon after a serious suicide attempt, and a significant change in clinical diagnosis, was unwise.

“There was no opportunity to properly consider the impact of the changed diagnosis or the recent alteration in medication before Gabriella left the unit with her father.”

Furthermore, while there was uncertainty about exactly what Robert Freeland was told, it was clear he was not aware of the specific details of the suicide attempt days previously, nor the risks of taking her home.

The coroner acknowledged the changes MidCentral had made to policies and procedures, but has further recommended that Health NZ:

• Commission an independent review of culture at the in-patient unit, including staff communication
• Review the resourcing of the unit to ensure that it is appropriately and safely staffed
• Continue regular audits about compliance with the new policies and procedures, particularly those relating to Leave, Family-Whānau Meetings, and Multi-Disciplinary Team Meeting decision-making.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Climate scientists and advocates say the government needs to come clean on how New Zealand plans to meet its first international climate target.

A decade on from the Paris Agreement, and as a New Zealand delegation heads to the annual UN COP climate summit, the government says its climate ambition has not changed.

But it is yet to commit any funding, or announce detailed agreements, to purchase the estimated billions of dollars of offshore carbon credits it needs to meet New Zealand’s Paris obligations by the 2030 deadline.

Failing to act could soon start to jeopardise free trade agreements and leave New Zealand vulnerable to an international legal challenge, climate experts say.

The previous government pledged to slash net greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030, as New Zealand’s contribution to the Paris Agreement.

The overarching goal of the agreement is to limit warming to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and well below 2°C, and countries are required to present their pledges – known as nationally determined contributions – every five years.

The current government has confirmed it would continue to pursue New Zealand’s first nationally determined contribution.

It will also present its update contribution at this year’s COP30 summit, which starts today in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon.

New Zealand will put forward an updated target of a 51-55 percent reduction in overall emissions by 2035 – criticised as “shockingly unambitious” when it was first announced at the start of this year.

But first the 2030 target must be met – and climate experts say the government is rapidly running out of time to say how it will be achieved.

When it was first announced, then-Climate Change minister James Shaw said domestic emissions would not be enough to meet the target and New Zealand would have to purchase offshore credits to make up the shortfall, at a cost of about $1 billion a year.

An official tracking report submitted by New Zealand last year found the gap had narrowed, but still projected a shortfall of 84 million tonnes of emissions, taking into account all planned domestic reductions.

The amount is roughly equivalent to a full year’s emissions.

Lawyers for Climate Action executive director Jessica Palairet said successive governments had failed to act on offshore mitigation and it was time to commit.

“For the government to just remain in a state of indecision, she’ll be right, we’ll work it out nearer the time, my view is that is contrary to international law.”

An International Court of Justice opinion released earlier this year made it “very clear that we have to make best efforts to use all means at its disposal to achieve our [targets]”.

“Save some extraordinary technological advance that no one sees coming having effect by 2030, I think avoiding offshore mitigation is next to impossible.”

By insisting it was committed, but not explaining how it would actually meet the target, the government was “dancing on the head of the pin”, Palairet said.

Climate change minister Simon Watts and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have both affirmed New Zealand’s international target.

However, their coalition partners are opposed to offshore mitigation, and they also face opposition around the Cabinet table: forestry and agriculture minister Todd McClay told Morning Report last year that the concept was not “palatable” to New Zealanders.

Watts confirmed to RNZ that that there was no current Cabinet decision or agreement to purchase offshore credits and the focus was on domestic emission reductions.

“When we came in, the gap was 149 [million tonnes] or so, it’s now down to 84,” he said.

“Our emissions reduction plan does highlight that there is a gap and that is a significant challenge for us as a country, but the point that we’re optimistic around … is that, particularly in agriculture, there’s quite a lot of work underway that does have a material impact on [domestic] emissions reduction.”

The shortfall was continuously monitored and the government would keep re-assessing the situation, Watts said.

“It’s not cross your fingers and hope.

“We’ve got to do everything we can domestically … and as time evolves, as it will, more things are coming on to the plate.”

But independent climate change and carbon market expert Christina Hood said the government should be laying out a “really clear plan” right now for how it would meet the Paris target.

“These [offshore] emission reductions have to occur by 2030 in order to be able to count, so we really need to get our skates on. The key issue is that the government is not committing any real money to do this.”

Despite pushing for international carbon markets at successive COPs, New Zealand had done very little beyond signing a handful of “very high level agreements around just a general willingness to cooperate”, Dr Hood said.

“Other countries that are going to be needing international cooperation to meet their targets, like Japan, like Switzerland, have been really active for a number of years already, not just setting up partnerships, but they’re actually been establishing projects and getting emission reductions happening.”

Watts said there were no agreements at all in place when he came to office, and the cooperation agreements signed since then had been on his watch.

In February, Watts told a meeting of farmers that there was no financial liability on the government’s books if it failed to meet the target.

“No one sends you an invoice,” Farmers Weekly reported him saying.

Jessica Palairet said although that was true, there were plenty of other consequences.

“One is that we have free trade agreements with the European Union [and] with the United Kingdom that require us to effectively implement the Paris Agreement. So if we are seen to fall foul of that, it opens New Zealand up to the possibility of trade sanctions.”

That was not far-fetched, she said.

“Internationally, New Zealand is actually getting some pretty bad headlines for its backsliding on climate and you could see countries wanting to make an example of us.

“We know that the EU likes to … try to use their influence to shape international law and international trade norms.”

New Zealand could also face international legal challenges if it was perceived to not be genuine about trying to meet its targets, Palairet said.

“The International Court of Justice also opens the door to the possibility of one state bringing legal proceedings against another state if it is seen to be breaching its international obligations.

“You could imagine some of our Pacific partners, for example, looking at decisions being made in New Zealand and being really quite unhappy with those.”

There were wider reputational consequences to consider, too, she said.

“What side of history do we want to be on as a country?”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

There’s widespread support for the government’s new action plan to combat methamphetamine use, with the Drug Foundation commending its “health focused interventions”.

A mental wellness provider from northland is also welcoming the news, saying it’s a “fantastic start,” and the Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational and Organised Crime saying it was positive that multiple ministers were involved in order to address the issue in its “totality”.

Yesterday, the government announced what Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith called a “comprehensive action plan to combat methamphetamine harm in New Zealand.”

It’s the result of the Prime Minister’s ‘meth sprint team’ made up of the Ministers for Justice, Police, Customs, Courts and Mental Health, who were tasked with tackling the issue.

That came after a drastic rise in consumption of methamphetamine last year. RNZ investigated what community providers needed in response, which was largely more funding for grassroots solutions.

Paul Goldsmith said yesterday methamphetamine was something “we’ve been fighting for 20 years, and it’s been getting worse in the last little while.”

“We know that meth is a scourge on society.”

He pointed to parts of New Zealand who had been particularly affected, like Northland, where “communities have been blighted by meth.”

“Those communities are desperate for us to fight back, and that’s why we’re taking these extra steps to turn up the dial of our response.”

The response included a nationwide media campaign that will launch in the next few months, paid for by the proceeds of crime fund, that will raise awareness about the issue and the drugs harm.

An extra $30m over four years from the Mental Health and Addiction budget will go to front line services, increasing the services available to the hardest-hit communities.

Police will be able to intercept communications and search for electronically stored evidence with new enforcement powers, and an additional anti-money laundering unit will be set up.

It will also see more focus on disrupting supply chains in the Pacific Ocean, with Customs, the GCSB and the Defence Force conducting a series of maritime operations. There would also be consultation on strengthening border security.

Customs Minister Casey Costello said there was “a lot of risk” through South East Asia and South America, “but we are getting intercepts from all over the place.”

“We just had an arrest last weekend at the airport, 30 kilos of meth from citizens from the US trying to bring methamphetamine into the country.

“So it is coming at us from everywhere and we just need to be tighter across all of it.”

RNZ spoke to providers in Northland earlier this year about the spike in consumption.

Rākau Ora managing director Vanessa Kite told RNZ following the announcement she “absolutely” welcomed it.

“I don’t think we’ll ever have enough bloody money, to be honest. But right now it’s a fantastic start.”

She said the need was “huge” in Te Tai Tokerau, and it was “growing in a different way”, with younger people affected and more complex cases presenting.

What was required to tackle it was “long-term” and “sustained” investment, rather than the short term boosts they’d been getting, she said.

Kite welcomed the focus on meth as a social health issue, rather than an enforcement one.

“Prevention is everything,” she said. “We really need to be putting a lot of money into prevention, but also, education, support and connections.”

She suggested what was needed was more detox beds, and residential rehab options. She also wanted to see more focus on lived experience community providers.

“We’re often seen as the first port of call and the priority in meth help, and we’re paid the worst. In fact, many are doing voluntary work.”

Kite said at a community and grassroots level, she believed they had the solutions, “we just need the support to scale them up.”

The Executive Director at the New Zealand Drug Foundation Sarah Helm said she was “particularly pleased” with the health focused interventions.

“It’s good to see some emphasis on health approaches and additional investment that’s being made, because we know we can’t arrest our way out of the issue.”

What’s needed, Helm said, was treatment and assistance both earlier on in somebody’s journey, but also closer and more accessible to their lives.

She said it wasn’t about waiting until somebody’s experiencing the worst harms before they are offered help.

In order for the nationwide campaign to be effective, it would need to focus on destigmatisation, and promote the option of seeking help she said.

“Those communities who already experience the worst methamphetamine harms already know how negative the impact can be.

“So really grounding that campaign in what they’re experiencing and helping them to get information and support quickly will make that as effective as it possibly can be.”

Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Transnational and Organised Crime Steve Symon told RNZ many of the planned actions were consistent with the recommendations made in the MAG’s reports.

Overall, he said the announcement is great, provided it is part of the solution to organised crime, not the whole solution.

“Methamphetamine is certainly an important issue, but it’s a subset of the bigger organized crime issue.”

The focus on health was also welcomed, because “as we’ve said in the reports, we don’t think locking people up is necessarily the solution,” said Symon. The government should be tough on those committing this crime and addressing that, but it wasn’t the only way to deal with it.

Looking at cutting off the supply coming into the country was important too, as well as “working on our customer base”, he said, “working on how many New Zealanders are willing to consume these drugs.”

The coalition government parties had campaigned on being “tough on organised crime” he said, and it was about understanding “what tough means.”

“It’s not just building more prisons and locking more people up.

“It’s certainly locking those up who need to be locked up because of the crimes that they’ve committed, but it’s also looking the broader social problem of how our country has been willing to consume twice as much methamphetamine as we did last year.”

Symon suggested being tough on crime could be possible by removing the customer base.

Ultimately though, what was missing was the coordination to pull it all together, “how to be accountable” he said, which was why the MAG had recommended a single minister in charge of responding to organised crime.

But he thought it was possible multiple ministers had come together to look at the issue of meth.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Former detectives have been left “stumbling for words” by police reports of a secret meeting in 1985 between a Department of Justice official and the key Crown witness in the murder prosecution of Ross Appelgren.

Appelgren was convicted of killing fellow inmate Darcy Te Hira inside the Mt Eden Prison kitchen on 6 January 1985. Appelgren always claimed he was not in the kitchen when Te Hira was attacked

The key witness, a convicted fraudster-turned-informant, was offered the possibility of a pardon and early release just weeks before Appelgren’s trial.

The RNZ podcast Nark has today reported on police records which say the government sent a Department of Justice official to “reassure the subject he would be well looked after, after he did give his evidence and that he would not be put into a prison of any kind after the trial”.

Then-Justice Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer says, “if that was said, it’s a very bad thing”.

Former Detective Inspector Lance Burdett, who used to lead operations for the New Zealand Police witness protection programme, says he’s never heard of early release being offered to a witness before they testified.

“I’m stumbling for words. That’s flabbergasting…You certainly don’t say, ‘Hey, look, if you give the evidence, you’re going to be released at the earliest opportunity’. That’s fairytale stuff.”

The witness, who has permanent name suppression but is known in the podcast as Ernie, claimed to have seen Ross Appelgren murder Darcy Te Hira in Mt Eden prison on January 6, 1985. Appelgren was convicted of murder twice, but both times successfully petitioned the Governor-General to send his case back to the Court of Appeal. Appelgren’s last appeal has remained adjourned since 1994.

Appelgren died in 2013, and now his widow, Julie, is leading an effort to clear his name posthumously. Her lawyers hope to argue the appeal should continue in a hearing before the Court of Appeal expected next year.

When Ernie told police he’d seen the murder and police decided to make him their star witness, he demanded he be removed from Mt Eden for his own safety. Police agreed.

He was moved to New Plymouth prison, then to the Takapuna police station cells.

Ernie’s complaints about his conditions and concern for his safety escalated to the point the police and the Department of Justice decided to release him from prison. In June 1985, Ernie was moved to Christchurch, a month before Appelgren was due to stand trial.

Operation Icing

Police put Ernie up in a $50 per night suburban motel, guarded by police and prison officers, as part of a programme called Operation Icing.

The icing on the cake for Ernie was that – just eight months into his two-year sentence on more than 200 fraud convictions – he was doing his time in a motel with a large bedroom, a high-end TV, a video recorder, and a CD player.

As one police report said, the motel was “in a rural setting with access to large open grass areas”.

Taxpayers even paid for dinners at local restaurants and trips to Akaroa and Hanmer Springs.

Ernie went on to stay in the motel, then rental accommodation, from June 1985 to February 1987.

Operation Icing was, at the time, the most expensive witness protection programme in New Zealand history, costing more than $75,000.

In the weeks leading up to the trial, Ernie remained concerned about his future and doubted the police promises that he would not be returned to prison.

Seeking further assurance, Ernie wrote directly to the then Justice Minister, Geoffrey Palmer, in June 1985.

Police records report that Palmer dispatched an emissary, then-superintendent of Paparua prison, Charles Hood, to meet with Ernie at his motel.

Notes made by an unnamed police officer sitting in on the meeting recorded that Hood promised Ernie he would be “looked after” and said “the minister was looking favourably at a pardon after the trial and that while the minister was not in a position at the present time to guarantee anything, Mr Hood assured the subject [Ernie] that he would not simply be dumped and forgotten”.

A second report a day later reads, “Superintendent Hood had offered him a pardon as regards the remainder of his prison sentence”.

Further police reports show that 10 days later, on July 3, Hood returned to the motel to withdraw that offer.

The Department of Justice had decided no promises could be made until after the trial.

Ernie angrily said he’d refuse to testify.

When the officer in charge of the Appelgren investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jenkinson, heard of the Department’s decision, he intervened.

Jenkinson made it clear police had no intention of returning Ernie to prison because they needed to ensure the safety of their crucial witness.

Ernie never did go back inside.

‘Never seen anything like it’

Former detective Tim McKinnel, who’s part of the legal team working with Julie Appelgren, said he was astounded to read the police reports describing Hood’s meetings with Ernie and the fact they were never disclosed at either of Appelgren’s two trials.

“It is absolutely extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it”.

“ I can’t understand one, why you would put the department in that position and then, you know, perhaps easier to understand is why you wouldn’t disclose it because of its extraordinary nature and what it might tell you about what was going on.”

Sir Geoffrey Palmer told RNZ it was 40 years ago and he has no memory of the case or of Charles Hood.

“You have to understand that ministers act on advice. There are lots of officials doing work on this and they assure the minister and the minister signs things. I’m sure I gave attention to it properly at the time, but just have no recollection of it.”

Sir Geoffrey, interviewed in September this year, doesn’t recall any discussion of a pardon or early release, but agrees, “it’s a serious matter”.

“If that was said, it’s a very bad thing to say. I agree with that. But I have no memory of giving such assurances or giving him [Hood] any authority to say that… all I can say is that if an injustice occurred it needs to be sorted out in the courts now.”

Palmer said the juries who convicted Appelgren should have been informed about the Justice Department’s involvement with Ernie.

‘Quite possible there was an injustice done’

Hood died in 2021, and the police officer present at his meetings with Ernie is not identified in police documents.

While those notes are unambiguous and were written immediately after the meetings, further investigations by podcast host Mike Wesley-Smith have also uncovered an October 1986 letter from Palmer to Ernie’s lawyer, Roger Chambers.

It tells a different story from those described in the police documents.

Palmer wrote: “Department of Justice officials were at no stage involved in any discussion about the future relocation and protection of Ernie, nor were any promises made to him about future reward or assistance”.

Asked about the seeming contradiction, Sir Geoffrey said, “it’s quite possible there was an injustice done here”.

“I have to take ministerial responsibility about anything I did even back then and I do take it.

“But the difficulty is, the frailty of human recollection 40 years later when you have thousands of things as a minister to deal with, it’s really very difficult for me to say anything that’s very helpful to you.”

RNZ also asked the Police and Crown Law, which oversees prosecutions in New Zealand, about the revelations in these notes and reports. In an email, Detective Inspector Scott Beard, Auckland City CIB, wrote: “As this process is ongoing and has not been heard by the Court, it would be premature for Police to engage in detail at this point”. A Crown Law spokesperson told RNZ by email, “As with any other criminal appeal process that is before the Court, we will not be engaging with the media while it is at this stage”.

Nark is being released every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on rnz.co.nz/nark and all podcast apps. It airs at 7pm Sunday on RNZ National.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

[L1] Waimarino business owners hope for forecast rain

[L1] Concern tourists might cancel bookings

[L1] Wall of smoke provides spectacular but unwelcome backdrop to village.

A wall of smoke from the Tongariro National Park fire is providing a spectacular but worrying vista for a central plateau village.

The blaze has burned through up to 2500 hectares and is 20 percent contained.

Residents and business owners in nearby Waimarino are nervously watching on.

A long-term closure of the popular Tongariro crossing would keep away tourists – the area’s lifeblood.

It would be a stinging blow after tough years of Covid and then uncertainty over who would operate the ski fields on Mt Ruapehu.

Well into the evening on Sunday there was a constant hum of helicopters and planes fighting the imposing wall of smoke that loomed over Waimarino, formerly National Park.

Tour guide Stu Barclay, who owns Adrift Tongariro, took a group part-way up Mt Ruapehu on Sunday morning, before the access road was closed.

“The smoke was blowing upwards and the flames – when you saw the planes and the helicopters dispersing their water on the flames they were like midges on an elephant. They were tiny, so the flames must have been three to 10 metres tall.

“It was incredible.”

The group had a bird’s eye view of the fire, although initially some were disappointed they couldn’t walk the Tongariro Crossing.

“Tongariro’s really famous, so we talked to them about Ruapehu being similar but different.

“Their disappointment soon changed to excitement when they saw the fire from that angle. It was just terrifyingly exciting.”

He hopes forecast rain douses the flames so there’s no repeat of 2012, when the crossing was closed for weeks after a volcanic eruption.

He had also thought about what items were important at home to grab in case a quick evacuation was required.

Further stress after tough winter

At Adventure Lodge and Motels, owner Gillian Visser has had guests leave early or cancel – she reckons about a quarter of her immediate bookings.

It’s a devastating blow and one that’s caused her much stress.

“We’ve been through a really tough winter, financially – extremely tough. Then we get all this lovely fine weather and I have never in 10 years owning this lodge known of a fire like that in this area.”

She and other villagers struggle to comprehend how it could spread so fast.

Emma Klock, who works at Tongariro Crossing Lodge, also spent the day dealing with the changing plans of tourists.

“We have a lot of guests who want to do the crossing, but currently its impossible. They are little bit sad and disappointed.”

Like many locals she saw the blaze grow on Saturday evening.

“It was like a little fire and finally it grew a lot and a lot. We saw a lot of helicopters and aircraft. The siren rang lots of times.”

She’s returning in a few days to her home in France and hoped to walk the crossing one last time, but it wasn’t to be.

Tourists change plans

The village on Sunday was busy with people deciding their next moves.

Kaspar, Christian and Andreas, from Denmark, went up Mt Ruapehu before the access road was closed.

They were to have walked the Tongariro Crossing, but described the awe-inspiring sight of seeing the flames.

A group of four from Taiwan, David Chen, Judy Ho, Jerry Cheng and Jessica Lee, also had to adjust their plans.

Their tour guide took them on an alternative walk to the crossing, which they said was beautiful, so they weren’t too disappointed.

Connor de Bruyn, from Wellington, was on a guided walk up Mt Ruapehu yesterday morning, but the group had to avoid the summit and turn around early. The gondola was also suddenly closed yesterday.

He said a lot of the land was sacred to local iwi, so they’d feel a cultural loss.

Many State Highway 4 motorists were stopping to take photos or look at the plumes of smoke rising next to Mt Ruapehu – including Megan from Raetihi.

“It’s looking like it’s dispersed a bit more now,” she said yesterday afternoon, while sipping a coffee and looking towards the blaze.

“It was actually quite condensed when we were looking at it from Raetihi. Here, it’s looking like it’s quite spread out.”

‘What the heck can go wrong next?’

Businesses along the road have a front-row vantage point – but it’s not one they relish.

“Pretty much we can see the aerial fight that’s on and big clouds of smoke that look like an eruption,” said Jason Thompson, duty manager at Schnapps bar. There, the usually spectacular views of the plateau’s three cones have largely disappeared behind the fire.

He said locals were keeping a close eye on developments. “We could do without a big fire around here.”

Charm Thai food truck owner Nithian Barnett agreed.

She saw fire trucks rush past on Saturday and then noticed the smoke growing steadily bigger.

“I hope they’re going to stop the fire by [today] and let’s pray the rain’s coming and it’s going to be gone.”

Eivins Ski and Board rental owner Marie Lynghaug said as a former restaurant owner she was thinking of volunteering to make food for the firefighters if the blaze continued.

“You just wonder what the heck can go wrong next?

“This is truly devastating. It’s a world heritage national park. The tourists are only just coming back after Covid.

“As much as there are other things to do, it’s the Tongariro Crossing that is the key for people to come to the district.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Which bank consistently offers the lowest advertised home loan rates? And does it actually matter?

Data compiled by economists Ed McKnight from Opes Partners shows that since August 2023, across all home loan rate terms, Westpac most often advertised the cheapest home loan rates.

It had the joint lowest rates advertised 54.5 percent of the time, and it had the strictly lowest rates 19.3 percent of the time.

BNZ was jointly lowest 42.9 percent of the time but only strictly lowest 3.5 percent. ASB was joint lowest 38.5 percent of the time and strictly lowest 2.5 percent.

Kiwibank was joint lowest 37.7 percent of the time and lowest 18.1 percent, and ANZ was joint lowest 29 percent of the time and strictly lowest 4.2 percent.

Over this same time period Kiwibank was most often the leader for a one-year term.

It had the lowest or co-lowest one-year rate 65 percent of the time and the absolute lowest rate 17 percent of the time. That’s where they were unmatched by other banks.

McKnight said BNZ and TSB were close behind.

Westpac advertised the lowest two-year terms over the same period.

It was co-lowest 72 percent of the time time, followed by ASB and TSB co-lowest for 56 percent of the days tracked.

But McKnight said people generally spent too much time worrying about small differences in interest rates.

He said the advertised rates did not reflect the level of discounting banks would offer behind the scenes.

“ANZ typically advertises the highest four- and five-year interest rates. That’s because they don’t release special four- and five-year rates. So if you compare the long-term rates you see online between ANZ and other banks, they often appear more expensive.

“However, if you take out a mortgage through ANZ and choose those longer-term rates, they will typically discount them to a similar level to other banks.”

He said people should instead look at the difference between banking products.

“ANZ and TSB are both offering 10 years interest-only. That’s attractive for property investors who often want interest only for as long as possible.

“Or BNZ offers off-set accounts. So if you’re the type of person who likes to bucket your money in different accounts, this can be a good way of saving interest, compared to if you use a bank that only uses a revolving credit.

“These are the sort of quirks that are hard to understand as an everyday person, which is why a mortgage adviser can be very helpful, because they can help you choose the right bank based on the types of mortgages and structures the bank offers. “

Claire Matthews, a banking expert at Massey University, agreed. “I think everything that goes with the relationship is more important. I would be concerned about a bank that is consistently higher or can be substantially higher. But unless a bank is always lower, which is unlikely, there is always the possibility that at the specific time someone is renewing their fixed rate or getting a home loan that the bank is not offering the lower rate. So it’s worth looking at the comparative rates history, but I would not make it the focus of decision-making.”

David Cunnigham, chief executive of Squirrel, said over a longer term there did not seem to be much difference.

“The leader constantly changes, and there is no one bank that leads or lags consistently. A couple of years ago, Kiwibank was the market leader for many months – that’s when they had loads of capital, having just sold Kiwi Wealth, while ASB priced above the market. Kiwibank got hammered by a surge in volume and ultimately pulled back to the pack.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A staff member has been injured at a Youth Justice facility this evening.

Police were called to a report of an assault at a Kiwi Tamaki Road address in Auckland about 7.30pm.

Auckland’s Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice residence is on the same road.

An RNZ reporter at the scene saw an ambulance at the facility, before driving away.

Oranga Tamariki acting deputy chief executive youth justice services and residential care Neil Beales confirmed a staff member had suffered minor injuries.

He said the incident was appropriately managed, and the site was secure.

Beales said Oranga Tamariki tokk all incidents seriously and that steps had been taken to ensure the safety of everyone in the residence.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A staff member has been injured at a Youth Justice facility this evening.

Police were called to a report of an assault at a Kiwi Tamaki Road address in Auckland about 7.30pm.

Auckland’s Korowai Manaaki Youth Justice residence is on the same road.

An RNZ reporter at the scene saw an ambulance at the facility, before driving away.

Oranga Tamariki acting deputy chief executive youth justice services and residential care Neil Beales confirmed a staff member had suffered minor injuries.

He said the incident was appropriately managed, and the site was secure.

Beales said Oranga Tamariki tokk all incidents seriously and that steps had been taken to ensure the safety of everyone in the residence.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Warning: This story deals with the sexual abuse of children and may be distressing for some readers.

A brother and sister say they both lived with guilt, shame and confusion following sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of an older relative when they were children, more than four decades ago.

Only as adults had they realised they’d both been victims, as each had thought they were the only one.

They were targeted by Noel Raymond Candy, who is 65, but was just 18 at the time.

The siblings were staying with extended family, where he too was staying.

Candy continues to deny the historical offending for which a jury found him guilty on three charges of indecency with a girl under 12, and one of indecent assault on a man or boy.

In the Tauranga District Court this week, he was sentenced to nine-and-a-half months’ home detention.

A ‘little secret’ kept for years

Judge Melinda Mason noted the difficulty with the sentencing process in this case was the lapse of time.

“The tariffs in these charges have changed and even the nature of the charges have changed since then to what you would be facing today, both in the type of charge and in the actual penalties,” she said.

The Crown and defence had difficulty finding comparative cases from around the time, with the offending happening sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Over the course of one or two nights, Candy sexually assaulted both children, then primary-aged, by going into their room, and removing blankets and clothes to indecently touch them. One of the children was made to perform a sexual act on him.

One told him to “go away” and that she was worried her relatives would hear.

He told her to be quiet and it would be OK, and said it would be their “little secret”.

The other also told him to go away, but was told by Candy to “shush”.

Both victims told the court the long-term effects on them had been profound, with both keeping it a secret well into their adult years.

The woman said she first confided in her daughter, because she wanted to protect her from Candy, whom they still saw at family functions. She’d had years of being “unable to articulate the experience”.

She remembered the night of the abuse, but it wasn’t until her teens that she understood what Candy had done to her.

Her “lack of confidence, feelings of shame, confusion and self-doubt” hindered her from disclosing it.

She thought her parents wouldn’t believe her, and became introverted, emotionally isolated and started making “poor relationship decisions”.

“I was angry, hurt and confused,” she said in her victim-impact statement, read in court.

Nine years after she’d first confided in her daughter, she learned her brother had also been a victim.

“We both agreed to report this to the police, based on the fears that there may be other victims,” she said.

Her brother also gave a victim-impact statement, speaking about the particular shame and guilt he’d felt as a male victim of sexual abuse.

“I remember feeling confused, scared and ashamed, even though I didn’t fully understand what had happened,” he said.

“I didn’t know how to tell anyone and I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I stayed silent. As I grew older and began to understand more about the world, I realised the full extent of what had happened… what had been done to me.”

By that time, the “damage had been done”.

He’d become angry, withdrawn and introverted, which often manifested in fights or aggressive behaviour.

He carried “deep shame, embarrassment and fear about being judged, especially as a male victim of abuse”, he said.

“I worried people would see me as weak, different or damaged. Unfortunately, that’s how I saw myself.”

He’d struggled with his mental health and had been overly protective of his own children, fearing they too would be abused.

He had witnessed his sister’s behaviour when she was a teen, and was acting out and struggling in ways that caused “conflict and pain” in their family.

“At the time, I didn’t understand why she was behaving that way, but I later learned that she too had been abused by the same [man].”

Both siblings were confused by an offer of restorative justice that followed a trial, where Candy expressed no remorse nor took responsibility.

They had no interest in an emotional-harm repayment of $2500.

Dealing with ‘crimes as they occurred back then’

In terms of sentencing, the Crown said the aggravating factors included the breach of trust and the age of the children at the time.

The Crown said the degree of indecency was high, given that it involved skin-on-skin contact with the victims’ genitalia.

“The Crown highlighted that in modern-day times, your offending would have been defined as sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection, which has far greater seriousness in terms of the maximum penalties,” the judge said.

“Of course, we’re not dealing with that. We’re dealing with the crimes as they occurred back then.”

Defence lawyer Bill Nabney highlighted Candy’s young age at the time and that he’d not offended since then.

Several of Candy’s family members provided letters of support, describing him as a trustworthy family man.

Judge Mason adopted a starting point of 18 months’ imprisonment for the first victim, based on cases from the time that she felt were comparable. She uplifted this by six months for the second victim.

She applied a 10 percent discount for Candy’s age at the time and a further 10 percent for his personal factors, including his good character.

This resulted in an end sentence of 19 months’ imprisonment, which she agreed to commute to one of nine-and-a-half months’ home detention.

The judge said, were it not for the significant lapse in time since the offending, she wouldn’t have granted this.

“Given that you haven’t been in trouble for 47 years, home detention will be imposed,” she said.

Candy will be subject to six months’ post-detention conditions, but won’t be registered on the Child Sex Offenders Register.

Where to get help:

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

– This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Former world-rated boxing champion, turned debt collector Sean Sullivan has landed himself in hot water for unlawfully trying to repossess goods.

Once ranked the No.7 welterweight in the world, Sullivan fell from grace in 2009, when he became the first person sent to prison for ripping off Housing New Zealand.

In 2007, Sullivan was acquitted, alongside another debt collector, of kidnapping a car dealer and trying to extort $21,700 from him.

Now, the Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority has reprimanded and fined him for using a false authority in an attempt to repossess more than $11,000, including furniture and stock worth nearly $10,000.

According to a recently released decision, Sullivan was hired by a woman to repossess the items from her former business partner as repayment of a debt she claimed she was owed.

The business had failed, and both the woman and her former business partner had lost their initial investments.

The woman had abandoned the business 12 months before contacting Sullivan, while her former business partner continued working in the business, selling remaining stock to pay the rent and other debts.

Sullivan gave the woman an authority-to-act form, which had been given to him by a finance company, and asked her to complete it, including what she wanted him to seize.

The document claimed the former business partner owed her $11,336, which included $9836 in furniture and stock, and repossession charges of $1500.

Sullivan presented the former business partner with the form as justification for repossessing the goods.

The form stated Sullivan Recoveries Ltd was authorised to do so on behalf of a finance company.

False authority

Sullivan crossed out the name of the finance company when he was at the former business partner’s address, saying he didn’t want to delay the job or incur additional costs for his client.

The form contained a false contract number and contract date.

Apart from agreeing that Sullivan could take the furniture that the woman brought into the business, the former business partner didn’t acknowledge any debt.

In addition, there was no credit contract or other agreement authorising repossession, and no court order to enforce.

Sullivan didn’t have any documents to show that money was owed by the former partner.

The former partner said Sullivan was guilty of misconduct by attempting to carry out an unlawful repossession of goods from her business. Sullivan claimed he had the proper authority to act.

Sullivan acted unlawfully

According to the decision, Sullivan continued to say he was justified in taking action, “as the debt was real and acknowledged” by the woman.

Sullivan told the authority he accepted he made procedural errors and used the wrong processes, because he misunderstood the legal processes he should have followed.

Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority chairwoman Trish McConnell said Sullivan had acted unlawfully in attempting to use a false authority to act to attempt to repossess goods.

She found him guilty of misconduct and gross negligence.

Sullivan had held an individual licence in the class of repossession agent since 2019 and worked as a repossession agent for much longer than that, she said.

“He should know the documentation required and the processes that need to be followed before he is entitled to repossess goods.

“I do not accept Mr Sullivan’s submission that he only made a mistake as to process, as he failed to understand the proper legal processes required.

“Even though Mr Sullivan may have genuinely believed his client was entitled to recover what she claimed to be her share in the business, he had no basis for this belief, other than what his client told him.”

Sullivan’s attempt to repossess goods without any lawful authority was, at the very least, willful or reckless, she said.

McConnell was not convinced the incident was a “one-off” and that Sullivan had not made similar mistakes in the past.

He had been asked several times to explain the authorities and documentation required to lawfully undertake a repossession or collect debts, and had responded that he was not a lawyer, and could not or would not provide any further answer, she said.

“It is concerning that someone who has run a repossession business for as long as Mr Sullivan has such a poor knowledge of the documentation and processes required to lawfully conduct his business.”

A rap over the knuckles

Sullivan was formally reprimanded and fined $500. Conditions were attached to his individual licence.

He was told to only accept work from registered financial providers and prohibited from working for private clients.

Sullivan was told to engage an experienced, licensed repossession agent who is a member of a reputable security association to review his business practices and provide him with training on the due diligence required when receiving instructions from clients, and the documentation and processes required for lawfully carrying out repossessions.

Sullivan was ordered to file a letter or report from the licensed repossession , confirming he had completed the necessary training within 12 months of the decision.

Sullivan told NZME he respected the decision.

– This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The police commissioner has begun a process to revoke medals awarded to disgraced former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming.

McSkimming pleaded guilty to three charges of possessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material in the Wellington District Court on Thursday. He will be sentenced next month.

In a memo to staff on Sunday – seen by RNZ – Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said he had “initiated steps to revoke the Long Service and Good Conduct medals of former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming”.

“I will also be requesting he return any item of police uniform he may still be in possession of.”

Chambers said current and former police colleagues, who had received certificates or awards signed by McSkimming, had reached out to him.

“Some staff have asked for the certificate or award to be re-issued in my name and signature, which I am happy to do.”

Any staff who wanted him to re-issue documentation could email Chambers directly.

Following McSkimming’s guilty plea, Chambers released a statement saying McSkimming’s conduct was “disgraceful and it is right he has been held to account for it”.

“The outcome shows all police, no matter their rank, are accountable to the laws that apply to us all.

“Mr McSkimming’s behaviour was not only criminal, but goes against the core values of police. I will not allow this to tarnish my staff, who are as appalled by this as I am.

“This shameful episode has done their dedication an immense disservice.”

From the moment he was advised of the circumstances, Chambers said he had taken it “seriously and acted on it”.

“As soon as I was made aware of the nature of the material found, I raised it with the Minister of Police as a conduct matter to allow him to consider Mr McSkimming’s position at the time as a statutory deputy commissioner.

“Mr McSkimming subsequently resigned from police.”

He added that his conduct “has no place in police”.

Chambers also ordered a rapid review of the controls and security of police devices.

“I moved quickly to remedy the gaps it identified, and ordered auditing and monitoring of staff use of police devices.

“We will investigate any cases of staff found to have accessed inappropriate or objectionable material, and will take action where conduct falls short of standard and expectations.”

Chambers ended his statement acknowledging the “the outstanding work of more than 15,000 police staff across the country who work day and night to help keep our country safe”.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand could benefit from Australia building a wall of military drones to keep China at bay.

A defence analyst said Ukraine provides the inspiration for a much larger wall, possibly of three layers of air drones and sea drones too.

Dr Malcolm Davis has written about this for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), saying the Australian platform may work better, if allies co-operated.

“To essentially add in a New Zealand layer to an Australian drone wall, that could be very useful,” he said.

“If, for example, China were to get a forward military presence into the southwest Pacific, I think that it would be highly useful to have a New Zealand component to this.

“That would effectively plug-and-play into the Australian system, and we’d be working together to ensure the defence of both countries.”

The layer with the furthest aerial reach – out to 2800km off the coast – could comprise a Boeing drone called the ‘Ghost Bat’.

At well over A$10 million each, the Bat is costly compared to many of Ukraine’s shoestring creations, but 10 times cheaper than an F-35 fighter jet, with sophisticated sensors.

Behind them, he proposes a second layer of much cheaper interceptor drones.

“They would operate over the Arafura and Timor seas, intercepting any threats that evaded the Bats.

“This would be the mainstay of the drone wall and would need cheaper expendable platforms, performing a single role, but acquired in large numbers.”

Canberra has put A$1b into developing the Ghost Bat within Australia, creating hundreds of jobs. It has been testing how the drone can operate in concert with jet fighters.

“There’d be no reason why New Zealand couldn’t invest in the Ghost Bat programme itself and reconstitute its fixed-wing air combat capabilities,” said Davis. “It wouldn’t have to necessarily buy sort of fighters like the F-35 and so forth.”

Deterring China

The drone wall could also “plug-and-play” into an American system, he said.

The US Navy had a plan called ‘Replicator’ to field thousands of drones in the Indo-Pacific. It hit problems, and Reuters reported last month that the Pentagon was trying anew to quickly introduce hundreds of American-made drone models and a training programme.

“We’d be wanting to acquire capabilities that could work with the United States, and indeed with other partners and allies, so Japan, for example,” Davis said. “We’d be wanting, for example, to have common data links, command and control, that sort of thing.”

Rather than provoking China, a drone wall would be an effective deterrence.

“No-one’s talking about sinking Chinese ships in international waters in peacetime, but we do actually have to have the ability to maintain a watch on what they’re doing, to maintain surveillance and, in wartime, take action to defend our interests.

“I think that this is where greater investment in autonomous systems in general and concepts like a drone wall really come to the fore.”

Drones second to space only

New Zealand’s new defence industrial strategy puts drones second, behind space, among the top three strategic industrial base priorities.

The Defence Force and Space Agency are under orders to come up with a “base statement” on drones and counterdrone systems.

Alongside that, the NZDF has put out a tender to set up a technology accelerator like the Australians have, to identify, develop, test and integrate new and emerging technologies into defence capabilities.

“Many promising innovations outside the traditional defence sector are being missed from consideration, and the proposed accelerator programme could provide structured and agile pathways to engage with such innovations,” its tender said.

Davis said drones would not be in place of conventional systems – Australia plans to buy Japan’s Mogami-class frigates and NZ is moving closer to following suit, after meetings in Malaysia this week – but in addition to them.

“What we’re talking about is complementing those ships at sea and those fighter aircraft with drones.

“You would have forces both on the sea, under the sea and in the air, and you’d probably have support from satellites in orbit.”

Janes has reported that “Japan and New Zealand have begun government-to-government talks on the improved Mogami-class frigate and how it might fulfil the Royal New Zealand Navy’s (RNZN’s) requirements”.

Davis said the Ukrainians were using much smaller, lower-cost drones.

“The idea would still be to have low cost of acquisition in comparison to crewed platforms, so that we could get large numbers of these drones.

“The whole point of this is to generate mass.”

It was early days and he did not think the partner militaries were talking this way yet.

“We’re just starting to find our legs with this.

“If we can develop these systems so that we can produce them in high volume at low cost and do so rapidly, then you have a magic combination there that allows the Australians and New Zealanders, the Americans and so forth to dramatically boost combat capability in the face of that threat from China, and I think we’re just starting to get started on that process.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand has extended its pause on direct payments to the Cook Islands government, after it signed partnership agreements with China earlier this year.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the total amount of paused funding was NZ$29.8 million and covered two financial years.

“We took this step reluctantly and after careful consideration.

“Direct funding to another government relies on a high degree of trust. The Cook Islands government breached New Zealand’s trust through a series of actions that are well known.”

The spokesperson said New Zealand’s concerns about the Cook Islands actions “need to be addressed and trust restored, before we can release this funding”.

“Significant development assistance to the Cook Islands continues, including in areas such as health, education, governance, security and humanitarian support. This is being delivered through New Zealand agencies and regional programmes.

“New Zealand remains deeply committed to the Cook Islands and its people. We share a unique constitutional relationship and the people of the Cook Islands are New Zealand citizens.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters informed the Cook Islands government of the initial decision to pause funding in early June.

The Cook Islands operates in free association with New Zealand. It governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief, and defence.

The 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration signed between the two nations requires them to consult each other on defence and security, which Peters said had not been lived up to.

In February, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China.

New Zealand reviewed its development programme in the Cook Islands as a result, and in early June informed Brown the funding would be paused.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Two crashes – including one involving a police car on its way to the earlier smash – have closed SH2 River Road in Upper Hutt.

Police said motorists should expect delays in the area.

Emergency services were called to River Road, Clouston Park, between Fergusson Drive and Totara Park Road, about 5.50pm Sunday, after reports of a two-vehicle crash.

Police said moderate injuries were reported.

A police car driving to the crash “under urgent duty” was also involved in a three-vehicle crash on River Road, near Gibbons Street.

While no serious injuries were reported, the road was closed for a scene examination.

Diversions were in place.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

State Highway One between Longbush and Kennington, near Invercargill, was closed and the power was out for 62 properties, after a truck hit a powerpole.

Emergency services were called to the crash at 2.30pm Sunday.

There were no reports of injuries and detours were in place.

NZTA said road users should expect delays in the area.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Health New Zealand says one new measles case has been found in Nelson with no links to others that have had the disease.

There have now been 18 confirmed cases in the outbreak of measles — 17 of them are no longer infectious.

The latest case was not linked to any previous cases, which may indicate undetected measles circulating in the community.

Health NZ said anyone who lived in Nelson or had been there between 1 -7 November should check the Health New Zealand locations-of-interest page over the next few days.

The agency anticipated more cases, as the outbreak continued.

“New Zealand continues to remain at high risk from measles.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The government has unveiled a plan to combat methamphetamine harm in New Zealand, strengthening border security, and increasing addiction services and maritime operations to disrupt organised crime networks.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said the drug was an increasing issue in New Zealand.

“Meth is a scourge on our society,” he said. “Consumption doubled last year and, ultimately, increased meth use fuels organised crime and destroys lives.

“This government’s primary justice target is to reduce the number of victims of crime,”

Wastewater testing indicated a doubling of meth consumption from 732kg in 2023 to 1434kg in 2024.

There has also been an increase of 266 percent in meth seized in New Zealand and offshore over the past five years.

In 2024, the estimated social harm cost to New Zealand was $1.5 billion.

“Significant action is already underway, including investment in Customs, reviewing maritime security powers, police recruitment, establishing the Ministerial Advisory Group on Organised Crime and Border Security Bill amendments,” Goldsmith said.

“However, there is more we can do to disrupt international supply, sharpen enforcement and reduce demand.”

The actions announced include a four-year media campaign to raise public awareness about meth-related harm, funded out of the proceeds of crime fund.

About $30 million over four years would be allocated to increase the services available to communities hardest hit by meth, within the ‘Vote Health’ mental health and addiction budget.

A series of maritime operations would be conducted to disrupt organised crime networks operating across the Pacific Ocean and police enforcement abilities would also be increased, including being able to intercept communications and search evidence stored electronically.

Police could also reclaim ill-gotten gains from organised crime groups, and officials would also consult the maritime sector on a suite of proposals to strengthen border security and shut down opportunities for organised criminals to operate through the country’s ports.

The government has also agreed to an additional $23.1 million of funding to establish offshore liaison positions, as well as an additional money-laundering team, and fund the Resilience to Organised Crime in Communities work programme until December 2026.

Drug Foundation welcomes announcement

New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm said the organisation welcomed the announcement.

“It is good to see an emphasis on health approaches in the government’s announcement,” she said. “It’s clear to everyone that we can’t arrest our way out of this issue.”

Funding for increased support and services was sorely needed, Helm said.

“Methamphetamine use has surged to unprecedented levels over the last 18 months and with it, we’ve seen increased harm in the community. This has landed on a sector that has been significantly underfunded for many years.

“By helping people, communities and families to address substance use disorder, we can both reduce demand and make a dent in supply, because people with long-term addiction often have to turn to selling the drug to help them pay for their own.”

Treatment and harm-reduction were better uses of taxpayer money than criminalising people, as long-term, they helped prevent costs to the health and justice systems, and other social costs, she said.

“It is good to see more investment in community-level support, because people shouldn’t have to wait until they are experiencing the worst harms, before they can access support.”

The campaign would need to focus on destigmatising and encouraging people to seek help, Helm said.

“The communities experiencing the worst methamphetamine harms already know the negative impact it is having. A campaign that is grounded in what they’re experiencing, and helps people get information and support quickly will be the most useful.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A severe thunderstorm watch remains in place for Auckland and Northland, with intense rainfall possible.

MetService said rising temperatures were likely to cause heavy showers and thunderstorms, with the watch in place until 9pm Sunday.

Localised downpours of 25-40 mm/h were possible.

The forecaster said surface and flash flooding were also possible in areas around streams, rivers and narrow valleys.

Showers building!

Daytime heating is causing showers in areas of the North Island. There is a Severe Thunderstorm Watch out for Northland and northern parts of Auckland.

We’ve also got risks of heavy showers and thunderstorms down to Bay of Plenty as well.… pic.twitter.com/b3v9P4S8Re

— MetService (@MetService) November 9, 2025

There are risks of heavy showers and thunderstorms in Bay of Plenty, while the ranges of the Westland District in the South Island are under a heavy rain watch until Monday night.

MetService said the watch had a moderate chance of being upgraded to a warning.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Auckland CBD’s rough sleepers worry they will be kicked out of the city. (File photo) RNZ / Luke McPake

A tougher stance on rough sleepers in Auckland’s central city has some homeless people fearing they will be pushed out to unfamiliar suburbs where they could struggle to survive.

Earlier this week, the government confirmed it was considering new measures that could see people living on Auckland’s city streets forcibly removed.

Opposition parties and housing advocates raised alarm over the prospect of an effective ban on homeless people in CBD’s, warning such an approach only displaced the problem and caused more harm.

Along Queen St and the surrounding blocks, people were still bedding down in shopfronts, bus shelters, and on building steps.

Earlier in the year, an Auckland Council committee declared homelessness a crisis, with support teams working with more than 800 people sleeping rough. Police Minister Mark Mitchell said he supported giving officers more powers to move people on from public spaces.

Outside the Auckland Central City Library on Thursday, 27-year-old Jae sat with his puppy Snoop and said the solution was straightforward: put more money into housing.

“Instead of putting new stuff in the middle of the street, decorations and all, they should put their money into putting us somewhere, instead of kicking us out of the city. That’s the only place we know.”

Jae said forcing people into unfamiliar suburbs risked driving some into criminal activity.

“They’ve already tried to trespass us from the library and that’s, this is where most of the free dinners come. If you get trespassed and you can’t really eat. If they kick us out of the city, then how are we going to eat?

“It’s going to result to other things, like crime.”

Further along the street, 21-year-old Angela said crime might be her only way to survive. She had been in and out of jail for petty offending since she was a teenager.

“If I get moved on from the streets, I will go back to jail. [The government] has been trying, but I would just go back to prison again because of the things I do to survive.”

Nearby, 60-year-old Tane – who had spent decades sleeping rough – agreed moving people on would only make things worse.

Auckland Council has declared homelessness a crisis. (File photo) RNZ / Luke McPake

“This is our home, the streets. If it gets taken away from us, homeless people will probably break into things, they’ll start turning into criminals. They’ll move away from begging and go into criminal world.”

Another man, who had lived on the streets for more than 30 years and asked not to be identified, said shifting people away from the city centre would not solve the problem.

“There’s always places to go, you know, there’s… the country’s quite big. And there’s other streets, there’s other parks, there’s other hills, tracks.”

A few blocks away, John, 71, said the government seemed more focused on appearances than addressing the root causes of homelessness.

“We is what [the government] don’t want the tourists to see. And yet, in their countries, they have the same problem with homeless people. And I’m sure they don’t go around putting them into mental institutions.”

The government said details of its plan to crack down on rough sleeping would be released soon.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said any move-on orders would need to be paired with proper housing and support.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Ministry of Health is being accused of sitting on a state abuse survivor’s compensation claim. RNZ / Angus Dreaver

The Ministry of Health is being accused of sitting on a state abuse survivor’s compensation claim for weeks, knowing she had cancer and was about to die.

Wellington lawyer Sonja Cooper wrote to the ministry on 7 October, flagging her client had terminal cancer and “weeks left to live”.

“We would appreciate if the Ministry of Health could prioritise assessing [her] claim give the time-limiting circumstances,” the email said.

More than two weeks later, on 23 October, the ministry’s chief legal advisor Phil Knipe wrote back, “confirming that we will look to prioritise the claim”.

Knipe attached a criminal declaration form to his response, asking Cooper Legal to get the dying woman to complete it to “get that out of the way”.

The declaration asks survivors if they’ve been convicted of a violent, sexual or firearms offence for which they were sentenced to more than five years’ jail.

The options for selection are ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘unsure’, though it carries a warning that “random criminal conviction history checks will be carried out”.

The coalition has introduced these criminal checks to ensure the granting of financial redress “does not bring the state redress system into disrepute”.

Though a bill to legislate this criminal carve has only passed its first reading, survivors are already being asked to fill them out.

Cooper Legal wrote back to the ministry the day Knipe replied, pushing for an exception to completing this form.

“This is a considerable administrative task, especially considering the delays and hoops to jump through to get a valid form of ID if someone does not already have it.

“Considering [our client] has weeks left to live (and other survivors will be in a similar situation), these delays could be the difference between getting redress or not.”

Knipe replied the next day: “I’m not aware of any plans for an exemption for any survivors…there may be flexibility on the form of ID in those cases where there is a reason why they do not have one of the forms of ID requested.”

Cooper Legal got a signed declaration form to the ministry on Sunday morning. The client died that night.

Wellington lawyer Sonja Cooper. RNZ / Aaron Smale

The Minister leading the Crown’s response to abuse in state care, Erica Stanford, has since confirmed the criminal declaration form applies to all survivors, including those terminally ill.

Though she added: “If there’s anyone that’s been caught up and it’s delaying things, then that’s something I’ll go and talk to my officials about because it shouldn’t.”

Stanford’s office has since come back to RNZ about this case.

“The Crown Response Office has been in touch with the Ministry of Health and reminded them where a person is terminally ill, this exemption process exists and should be used.

“We understand the way is clear for the claim to be progressed and the Ministry of Health will be in contact with Cooper Legal to progress it.”

A Ministry of Health spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with the claimant’s whānau and friends at this time.

“The ministry has passed on its regret to the law firm representing the claimant that the claim was unable to be completed within time. The ministry has been treating this claim with urgency since it was received on 7 October.

“We sought clarification from the Crown Response Office regarding the ministerial exemption process and will ensure this is also followed for any future cases involving claimants with terminal conditions.

“We are working to finalise the claim as quickly as possible.”

The Minister leading the Crown’s response to abuse in state care, Erica Stanford. RNZ / Mark Papalii

Cooper said the system was “abhorrent”.

“Why should somebody who is terminally ill, hospitalised, unable to move, in their last few weeks or months of life, why should they be put through this additional hurdle to get redress when it is hard enough, in any event, to go through the redress processes.

“I just think it’s abhorrent and it just shows a complete lack of humanity on the part of the state, once again, towards survivors it abused, mostly as children, but also as vulnerable adults, in its care.”

The government has received one expedition request on the basis of a survivor being terminally ill to date. It was approved the day it was made.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Dr Michael Johnston is a senior fellow at the policy think tank New Zealand Initiative. New Zealand Initiative

Many agree NZ’s education is below par, but how to fix it is the subject of major conflict – as the government’s proposed curriculum has made clear

When Michael Johnston stepped onto the stage to speak at an education conference last week, the crowd was tetchy and tense. He wasn’t expecting a warm reception but for the first time in his long career in education, he was heckled and booed, according to one bystander.

Johnston is the lead educator for the think tank The New Zealand Initiative, and has played a key role in drawing up the government’s controversial draft curriculum, while the audience at last week’s UpliftEd event has largely been opposed to the overhaul.

He says he was invited to the conference several months ago by the organisers Aotearoa Educators Collective to speak about the state of boys’ education, “a much-neglected equity gap”.

“The reason I agreed to do it is I don’t think there’s enough talking across the aisles in education and I was very keen to try to bridge the gap.

“I’m not sure that worked but that was my intention,” Johnston tells The Detail.

Newsroom’s political editor Laura Walters was at the conference and says he was booed and heckled. Johnston says that’s an exaggeration, and the audience was mixed in its response. He challenges suggestions that he represents a right wing think tank.

“I would say what we are is a classical liberal think tank. We give policy advice to any political party who wants to talk to us. You know, [Labour leader] Chris Hipkins spoke at our members’ retreat earlier this year so it’s not true that we only talk to the right wing parties.”

Education minister Erica Stanford. RNZ / Mark Papalii

The incident reflects deep divisions in the sector over the contentious curriculum, labelled by critics as racist, deeply concerning, absolutely ridiculous and more.

In the latest development, the government’s decided to cut the requirement of school boards to give effect to the Treaty of Waitangi, a move that has shocked and angered some in the sector who say it will put Māori content in danger and undermine efforts to lift Māori students’ achievement.

Other areas of contention cross from arts to technology to Physical Education.

The full draft for Years 0 to 10 has been released in the last week and is open for consultation for the next six months, before a phased rollout over the next three years.

“To call it an education reform or overhaul wouldn’t be overstating it,” says Newsroom’s Walters. “What the government is asking teachers and principals and educators to do is pretty massive and educators don’t feel like they’re being listened to.”

She points to a loss of goodwill over the past two years between the government and the ministry on one side, and teachers and educators on the other.

“I can understand and I wasn’t surprised by that immediate and broad pushback from the sector that feel like they’re being asked to rush through these massive reforms at pace, that they’re not getting the support that they need; that they’re not being listened to.

“Meanwhile, they’re dealing with the day-to-day, these classrooms with children who have high learning needs, high behavioural needs. You kind of have to put the pushback or the reaction into that context.”

Johnston says the criticism is loud but it is not widespread or a balanced reflection of the sector.

“I suspect it isn’t a majority of teachers and principals but certainly there’s a lot of noise generated by some.

“I’ve talked to a lot of principals myself, I’ve been around the country in the last weeks and months and had a lot of conversations. A lot of principals are very supportive and certainly think things like this are urgently needed,” he says.

He believes there are legitimate concerns about the pace of change and the extent to which teachers will have to shift their practise.

“They’re going to need support to do that, so I understand that side of the worry. It needs to be backed with the right resources.”

For the past 18 months Johnston has been part of the curriculum coherence group, a panel convened by the Ministry of Education to review the rewrite.

“We look at the documents that the writers produce and comment on them from the point of view of knowledge-rich curriculum design, mostly.”

He explains the often-used phrase “knowledge-rich” means the content is carefully selected to be representative of a subject and that it is correctly sequenced.

“It’s knowledge that is related to other knowledge, so that when children learn it … it is built on what they already know.”

Walters says a lot has been dumped on the sector and teachers and principals need time to digest the details.

“I think that there will be more nuance and more context and a better understanding that will flow through over the next couple of weeks. It’s really unclear as to whether they will actually change their stance.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

Labour is promising to make cervical screening free for everyone, if elected, through its previously-announced Medicard scheme.

Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said the move would help prevent cancers and avoid costly hospital treatments.

“Each year 175 New Zealanders are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 55 die from it. Almost every case is preventable with better uptake of cervical screening and vaccination,” she said.

“Free cervical screening means earlier diagnosis, lives saved, and less pressure on our hospitals.”

Under the policy, from October 2027, anyone eligible for screening would be able to access it at no cost by presenting their Medicard at their local doctor or community screening event.

Cervical screening is available for people aged 25 to 69 every five years. The test is currently free for Māori and Pacific people, Community Services Card holders, and those aged 30 and over who have never been screened or are overdue.

The policy would make it free for the remaining half.

Labour estimated the expansion would cost $21.6 million in its first year, to be funded from within the existing health budget.

The policy is one which Labour also campaigned on at the 2023 election.

“Today, we’re committing to finishing the job and making sure that there’s free screening for everyone who needs cervical screening,” Verrall said.

She said when last in government, Labour had introduced self-test options, and extended free screening criteria.

She said the self-testing had been a “game changer” for screening, and removing the costs for Pacific women had led to a 20 percent increase in screening rates.

“Now that women, we’re screening ourselves, it’s very hard to argue that we should have to pay, and it’s never been right that cervical screening is the only screening programme where the users have to pay.”

New Zealand has committed to eliminate cervical cancer by 2030.

“Free cervical screening and HPV vaccination will help us reach that goal,” Verrall said.

“Labour’s Medicard is about making sure every New Zealander can get the care they need, when they need it.”

Labour announced its proposed Medicard in September, promising to use revenue from a new targeted capital gains tax to provide every New Zealander three free GP visits a year.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Greens Party’s new chief of staff Kevin Hague. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

Former Green MP Kevin Hague is returning to politics to be the party’s new chief of staff.

In a social media post on Thursday, Hague said he was coming “out of retirement” to take up the role after Eliza Prestidge-Oldfield stepped down.

Hague said his home would remain on the West Coast, but he would also be setting up a “second base” in the capital.

“Got any furniture you want to sell? I will pick up the reins in a couple of weeks.”

Hague entered Parliament as a list MP in 2008. Despite being considered a frontrunner for the party’s co-leadership in 2015, he was beaten by James Shaw.

Hague left a year later to become the chief executive of environmental organisation Forest and Bird.

The party has not had a permanent chief of staff since September when Prestidge-Oldfield resigned.

At the time, co-leader Marama Davidson said Prestidge-Oldfield had left “to focus on her health, well-being and her whānau”.

“This has not been an easy decision for her to make, given the huge contribution that Eliza has made to the Green Party over many years,” Davidson said.

“However, the party fully supports her decision to prioritise her health and whānau.”

The opposition party has had a fairly high turnover of staff this term. Its director of communications Louis Day also resigned several weeks after Prestidge-Oldfield.

“I felt that now was the right time for me to move on from Parliament and take a bit of a break before finding a new challenge for my career,” Day said in an email to journalists.

“I leave with a lot of love for the co-leaders, MPs and party, as well as a lot of hope for the Green movement I have had the privilege of being part of for almost four years now.”

RNZ understands another member of the party’s media team has also recently departed. The Greens also saw an exodus of senior staff in early 2024 connected to the resignation of then-co-leader James Shaw.

The Green Party has had a particularly difficult time since the 2023 election.

The term has been marked by scandals and resignations: Golriz Ghahraman quit after being accused, and later convicted, of shop-lifting. Darleen Tana was ejected from Parliament amid allegations of migrant exploitation at her husband’s bicycle business.

Most recently, Benjamin Doyle quit Parliament after facing threats of violence and abuse in response to historical social media posts. In a valedictory speech last week, Doyle described Parliament as a “hostile and toxic” environment.

The party has also been struck by tragedy: Fa’anānā Efeso Collins suddenly died in February 2024, and Davidson took time off for treatment after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A cyclist has died in collision with another cyclist in Carterton.

Emergency services were called to the scene on Kokotau Road at 11:30am on Saturday.

One of the cyclists were airlifted to hospital, where they later died.

The road was closed while police completed a scene examination.

The crash investigation is ongoing.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Groups including Catholic school principals and kindergartens have united to oppose government changes to the teacher registration and disciplinary body the Teaching Council.

In an open letter to Minister of Education Erica Stanford published today, 10 organisations said she had gutted the council’s independence.

They were speaking out following Stanford’s announcement last week she would reorganise the council’s governing board so it had a majority of ministerial appointees and move its responsibilities for professional standards and initial teacher education to the Ministry of Education.

The minister considered a similar change late last year, but chose not to proceed after receiving advice from the ministry.

However, the council recently announced its chief executive Lesley Hoskin was on “agreed leave” while the Public Service Commission investigated the council’s management of procurement and conflicts of interest.

That prompted the government’s change of heart.

“With multiple investigations underway into the Teaching Council, we’re responding urgently by reconstituting the board so we can ensure good governance and better ensure the Council acts in the sector’s best interests,” Stanford said.

The government said the changes would bring the council’s governance in line with similar bodies such as the Nursing Council.

But the open letter said the changes “represent a fundamental shift in professional autonomy and independence”

It said the signatories had already warned “that direct political control of professional programmes and standards by Ministers through the Ministry would be an over-reach and was tantamount to political interference”.

“Under your changes, the Ministry will assume responsibility for all professional standard-setting functions, including standards for teacher education programmes, Teaching Standards, criteria for registration and certification, and setting the code of conduct. The Teaching Council will retain only registration, quality assurance, and discipline functions,” the letter said.

It said the council had developed Treaty of Waitangi-centred professional standards for teachers and that was now under threat.

The letter’s signatories were the NZEI Te Riu Roa, PPTA Te Wehengarua, NZ Principals’ Federation, Te Akatea, Catholic Principals Association, Pasifika Principals Association, Aotearoa Educators Collective, Montessori Aotearoa NZ, Kindergartens Aotearoa and the Tertiary Educators Association of NZ.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

“​The ​blatant, ​blatant ​bias ​of ​the ​New ​Zealand ​media ​makes ​you ​want ​to ​weep,” an exasperated Mike Hosking told his Newstalk ZB listeners last Thursday.

A new unauthorised biography of Jacinda Ardern by journalist David Cohen triggered that complaint.

“One ​of ​the ​things ​that ​most ​upset ​me ​during ​that ​period ​was ​the ​acquiescence ​of ​the ​New ​Zealand ​media ​to ​her. ​Their ​journalistic ​integrity got ​completely ​and ​utterly ​blown ​up,” he said.

David Cohen interviewed dozens of people about her for the book – including Mike Hosking, who complained about the media “falling in love” with Ardern when she was PM.

“When you’re a journalist, you’ve got to put that to one side and cover it in a fair and balanced way. But fairness and balance just went out the window,” he said.

But over the years some of his critics have said similar things about the friendly tone of Hosking’s own interviews with other PMs he clearly liked more – including the current one.

Back in 2013 he even endorsed John Key while MC’ing the PM’s state of the nation speech. Petitions were launched to take the job of moderating TVNZ election debates away from Mike Hosking.

Bias is in the eye of the beholder, but he’s far from the only one questioning the media’s trustworthiness out loud these days.

The latest annual report of the official broadcasting watchdog – the Broadcasting Standards Authority – said formal complaints for the public for the year were down. The BSA found only eight breaches of standards all year.

This month the BSA released another report – zeroing in on public trust in the media.

Several surveys in recent years have shown our trust in news sliding significantly, but the BSA’s online survey and focus groups didn’t just add more numbers to the others. They asked people who’d lost trust in it why – and what, if anything, might restore it for them.

Large majorities told the BSA they wanted news backed by credible evidence, more neutrality, prompt corrections and more in-depth reporting. They also wanted more transparency, accountability and facts distinguished from opinion and advertising.

They also wanted less clickbait, sensationalism and aggressive attack style journalism.

So far, so much like many other surveys.

But while bias was also cited as a major reason for slumping trust, respondents also acknowledged that their perceptions of bias were coloured by their personal views – and whether their own views were reflected in the media.

Why has trust slumped?

“Why do news outlets continue to exhibit the sort of behaviour that contributes to declining trust when the solutions are so obvious?” former New Zealand Herald editor turned scholar and commentator Gavin Ellis asked this week.

“A day does not go by when I do not witness the opinion of a reporter indelibly over-written on reportage. I – and the rest of the audience – am left to my own devices in separating one from the other,” he said in an article about the BSA research, claiming solutions to declining trust are staring news media in the face.

“The practice not only transgresses journalistic boundaries but also provides ammunition for those seeking every opportunity to diminish and discredit media outlets with claims of bias.”

Ellis also said we saw clickbait headlining and story selection all the time, particularly on news sites that use artificial intelligence algorithms and analytics. And while consumers applied higher trust scores to outlets offering hard news rather than light lifestyle or entertainment content, that stuff keeps coming in spades from the mainstream media too.

While he was at it, Ellis said reporters should be “off-limits for commercially-linked stories”

As if to illustrate that problem, TVNZ 1News viewers in the ad breaks currently see the hosts of TVNZ Seven Sharp, nominally still a current affairs show, promoting their upcoming ‘Swede As’ national roadtrip to hype the launch of Ikea.

Daily prizes are on offer and being in to win requires signing up to the Ikea Family loyalty programme via Seven Sharp’s website. It’s the kind of thing that confirms for some the news media are for sale when the price is right.

Yet some of the same ad breaks also feature urgent and persuasive messages for immunisation which could save lives in the current measles outbreak, showing the medium as a force for good.

Almost three in 10 respondents in the BSA research said there was nothing a news provider could do to reverse their lost trust – but more than twice as many said they could.

“The forms of redress in the BSA report are quite simple and represent no more than the re-emphasis of traditional journalistic values,” Ellis insisted.

“Transparency and accountability, clear editorial boundaries and commitment to impartial and fact-based reporting were – and should still be – the cornerstones of journalism.”

Fixes – easy and hard

RNZ’s executive editor of podcasts and series Tim Watkin once worked under Ellis at the Herald in the time before online technology and social media changed the nature of public trust.

In his new book – How to Rebuild Trust in Journalism – he sees the relationship between the audience and the media of today as like a relationship on the rocks. And he believes it’s the media that need to change and come to terms with the fact that the public are “just not that into them anymore”.

“The trends (in the research) are really clear. It’s very easy to say we are well-served by media in New Zealand and our journalism is of a high standard. But people don’t see that, and are making some pretty serious claims about what we do,” Tim Watkin told Mediawatch.

“The Reuters Institute research across 47 countries points to the fact most of the public does not trust most of the news most of the time. Edelman does research across 28 countries and 64 percent say journalists purposely mislead people.

“Here in New Zealand, RNZ is at the top of the trust tree. But we’re still only getting about half of the people reliably trusting us. I think that speaks to a burning platform.

“People have turned against us for some time now and it’s been a pretty clear trend for a generation or two. The people have spoken.

“If we fail to take it seriously, the news business might start running out of public to serve – and might not have much of a business left to do.”

The BSA research on trust found fewer than one in five who experienced a drop in trust as a result of a particular event or period report an improvement since that time. The loss of trust appears locked in for them.

But the same survey also found that of people who have experienced an event which strengthened their trust, almost 75 percent are more likely to maintain or increase their levels of trust.

Those people are there to be won back?

“It is not irretrievable. If you go back to the end of the First World War, there was a global pandemic, real social upheaval and political discord,” Watkin said.

“And at that time, there were a lot of commentators saying the trust in our news is falling apart. There was a reaction to that, especially in the US, but around the world, in the form of objectivity.

“Journalism decided as an industry to say ‘we are different from public relations, we’re different from government information, we stand apart, we try and write detached, factual information that describes the world as it is’. And that worked pretty well for us for the best part of a century.

“Now the media landscape is way more complicated, but the principles and the lessons are still pretty sound. We can work our way back.”

But is it really ‘them’ and not ‘us’ that’s changed?

Does asking people about their trust in media actually invite – or even incite – increased scepticism? Asking people if they use and value news media in spite of their reservations might yield different results and less definitive conclusions about loss of trust?

“It’s true if you highlight something, it creates a situation where people start to see a problem. But I think we’re well past it just being journalists or news media being able to really take any comfort from that,” Watkin told Mediawatch.

“Trust is around human connection and relationships. If the other partner in a relationship perceives you as a problem, then it doesn’t really matter what the facts are,” Watkin said, who did research in the philosophy department at the University of Glasgow.

In the relationship with the public, the media also have money problems and insecurity. And Watkin said the news media needed to do the work of the “cheating spouse”.

But in decades gone by, the public did not express huge distrust. They’re now the ones who often aren’t paying for news, have stopped valuing journalism and using free and alternative sources of news and content online.

“We could absolutely say: ‘Come on public, stop cheating on us with social media, stop running off with Instagram and Facebook – and come back to your good solid relationship with mainstream news media that actually knows how to treat you well,” Watkin told Mediawatch.

“But the reality is that people are dallying with TikTok and all the others and we can blame them or we can do something about it. In a world where… nobody is complaining about having not enough information, we can control the quality of that information that we provide.

“We say in a lot of cases that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck – it’s a duck. The problem with journalism is there are a lot of things that walk and quack and look like journalism, but they’re not journalism.

“We need to protect our specialty as journalists, I think, and we haven’t been very good at doing that.”

Powering up superpowers

Watkin’s book identifies four “superpowers” to differentiate journalism’s “duck”.

The first is objectivity, the subject of many inconclusive and often frustrating debates among journalists.

Some say it’s not realistic or achievable – or even really desirable if it fosters ‘both sides’ equivalence that can actually mislead the audience. Others say it’s the only way to overcome – or at least moderate – inevitable biases.

“I thought long and hard about this and concepts around impartiality. But sometimes journalists do need to be partial towards their communities, towards democracy, for example, towards a free press.

“So I kept coming back to objectivity. We all come with our baggage and bias. But what people don’t get – and it’s incredibly frustrating that we have to keep having this argument – is that it’s because people are biased that we have an objective method.

“As a journalist, you sign up to a method of telling a story. An Iowa professor defined objectivity as describing the world as it is, not as you want it to be.

“That shows that we are putting the interests of the people we serve ahead of our own opinions. Frankly, the public does not give one hoot about our opinions.

“Verification links in with transparency, which is the third superpower. Verification is the one that we kind of take for granted. You should be able to go to mainstream journalism and know that we have, as part of our professional creed, checked things.

“Balance is important, but how much better that we go beyond balance to actually verification? What we then need to do is be transparent and show our workings.”

Do the public want the workings? Does it risk clogging up stories and content like long labels on American food products that no one really reads? Or software licensing T’s and C’s of which almost everyone simply scrolls to the end?

“As journalists we are better at communicating than those ingredients labels. But those labels are actually useful and they do build trust in products. I’m not talking about sodium at 0.5 percent, but we can certainly be a lot more open in our journalism about how many people we spoke to, who refused to comment – and explaining some of the context or some of the history behind the story.

“Research consistently shows the public does not understand how journalism is different from the rest of the content that’s so much part of their lives these days. We actually have to do a much better job of saying why you can trust us more than Bill on TikTok.”

The fourth of Watkin’s superpowers for media is “caring”.

His book says journalism needs to be “more humble and care more about how it presents the verified and objective facts gathered in the public interest.”

Sounds nice, but does that alienate people who already think media care about the wrong things – and that their own values and motivations don’t align with the media?

“It’s not ‘caring’ in a way that takes sides. That would undermine the objectivity part of the superpowers and often the verification part too. It’s the kind of caring (like) friends in your life who… are prepared to tell you what you need to hear and are actually honest with people.

“They care enough to investigate the stories. They care enough to hire people who look like me – the different ethnicities, classes, rural, urban, university-educated and not university-educated.

“They should care enough to spell correctly, to have a podcast on their favourite app or a website that doesn’t glitch. All of these things show that we care about the information we’re providing.”

Fact vs opinion

Another persistent gripe that the research picks up is the blurring or even the blending of fact and opinion.

Watkin runs a separate site devoted to opinion – pundit.co.nz. In election years, he runs the podcast Caucus in which senior RNZ presenters give opinions on how the campaign is going.

Does that blur the line?

“Gavin Ellis is right that just slapping ‘analysis’ on the top doesn’t cut it. I think we need to be overly demonstrative in showing the difference between an article of factually-checked news – and an opinion piece which is based on facts but doesn’t have to be balanced because it’s their opinion.

“I’ve suggested that opinion pages on sites could be kept separate. In newspapers they could even be changed to a different colour so that it’s much clearer.

“On Caucus, we can probably do better on the transparency front but we’re really careful not to take sides, not to be partisan. We offer analysis and decades of experience covering politics to try and give people some quality information and some insight from our experience.”

Media are also often criticised for ignoring or marginalising some views and groups and featuring too narrow a range of sources.

“Again, when you go through the research and you see a lot of workshops and focus groups and so forth, they often get frustrated that they listen to the news and it doesn’t sound like them or look like them. 23 percent of journalists in the US live in three cities: New York, Washington DC and LA.

“New Zealand probably suffers from a similar thing in that Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch probably dominate. But local media are usually the most-trusted media – because people see that they care and are part of their community.

“We probably need to be better at finding people from all walks of life who can tell stories and help us understand because they bring an understanding of the world with them. If we are too narrow in the kind of people who we hire or the people we interview, then we miss a lot.”

“I really hope, regardless of my book, that people at least start thinking seriously about the importance of who they trust and who they don’t trust – and make good choices. And for journalists to actually work really hard at earning that trust.”

View from abroad

In 2019, Melanie Bunce pondered the current and future state of journalism here in a BWB text titled The Broken Estate.

She’s now the director of the new Centre for Media and Democracy at London’s City St George’s University, also researching trust in news around the world.

“If you get three different people telling you they don’t trust the media, they might have three different reasons so it’s a really hard one to counteract. But in a crisis, when people want to actually know what’s happened and where to for help they overwhelmingly still go to the mainstream media, even when they say they don’t trust those organisations,” Prof Bunce told Mediawatch.

“Here in the UK, the BBC for example is wrapping itself in knots around the coverage of Gaza and Israel, as it did during its reporting of Brexit, because people are trying to perform their balance and impartiality.

“But then you perhaps end up giving a lot of space to a side of the argument or interpretation of the argument that your audience at home doesn’t think should have any oxygen given to it whatsoever. So it’s incredibly hard.

“I think you need to explain to the audience as much as possible that you are trying to give due impartiality… based on where the evidence lies. But it’s not easy.

“A lot of the growth and distrust in the media over the last decade or so has resulted directly from political elites attacking and discrediting the media. Not giving the media a free ride or anything, but we should always wonder what’s in it for a political elite when they are saying you can’t trust that news and that ‘fake news’ media.

“In New Zealand because we’re lucky that there’s still high readership of local news. That genuinely is not the case in the UK. I live in London, one of the world’s global cities, but there’s very little news coverage of my borough, even though it’s larger than my hometown Dunedin.

“I can’t read the equivalent of the Otago Daily Times about the place that I live because of how the media ecosystem here works.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Barbara turns the radio on. It’s square and brown and has four perfectly round knobs along the bottom.

The voice from the wooden box says it’s 9am, so Barbara’s just in time for the news, and, once that’s done, the holiday programme. Not that she can hear anything over Joan’s laughter. It’s not fair. Barbara had always wanted a little sister to play with, but not one like Joan – she’s always getting into mischief, uses Barbara’s favourite pencils without asking, and only speaks at one volume: loud. And, when Mum said they must all finish the chores before listening to story time, all Joan had to do was dust the mantle. She didn’t have to press the linen, or beat the rugs, or mind the younger ones. Which is why Joan is playing blocks with Colin, rather than making herself useful.

‘Bang!’ Joan yells, knocking over a stack of blocks. ‘Crash!’

Colin claps his chubby hands in delight. ‘Boom!’

Barbara folds the last freshly-pressed table cloth, and rushes back to the radio in the corner. The voice on the radio is still talking about the men who climbed Mount Everest, so story time hasn’t started yet. Phew. During school holidays, story time on the National Broadcasting Service was the highlight of Barbara’s days. Yesterday’s tale was terribly exciting, and Barbara had wondered ever since: what would happen to the children who had been shipwrecked and were about to run out of food? Would they be rescued in time?

‘Look, Colin! It’s a bomb!’ Joan shouts as she throws a block against the wall. ‘Bang!’

‘Bomb!’ says Colin, laughing. ‘Bang!’

Storytime starts, but Barbara can’thear a word. ‘Please, Joan. Shhh.’

‘It’s not me, it’s Colin.’

‘It’s both of you.’

‘Bomb!’ Colin yells. ‘Bang!’

Joan picks up another block, grins at Colin, and throws it against the wall. ‘Bang!’

‘Please, Joan.’ Barbara knows she’s whining, but can’t help it. ‘Please be quiet. I want to listen to the story about the children.’

‘It’s not me.’ Joan shrugs. ‘It’s the bomb.’

Suddenly the air is cold and heavy. Uh-oh. Father stands in the doorway, arms crossed across his chest. ‘What’s this racket?’

Barbara feels ill. Mum said they mustn’t wake Father, not under any circumstances, for he was having a bad week. Joan and Colin stare – now they’re silent.

‘Barbara! What’s the meaning of this?’

Barbara slumps her shoulders. ‘Sorry, Father.’

‘You need to better control the children, especially when your mother is out running errands. This is not good enough.’

‘I … I’m sorry.’

Father glares at her. ‘Bombs are no laughing matter, believe you me.’

‘I said sorry.’

Father takes a deep breath, and says, ‘get outside, all of you. And keep your sister in line. She’s your responsibility.’

Barbara steals a glance at the radio. ‘But –’

‘Are you talking back to me, girl?’

‘N … no.’

‘Then get outside. Now!’ Father glares at Barbara once more, swivels around, and limps away. As soon as he disappears from sight, Joan scowls, and says to Barbara, ‘I wasn’t being loud.’

‘Yes you were! Why must you always be so …’

But Joan isn’t listening: she’s already out the door, Colin toddling behind her.

The voice on the radio is still talking, his voice animated: the children on the island have seen a ship! Could this mean they might be rescued? Or is it … pirates? But Barbara doesn’t dare listen further – Father might come back, and then what? She reaches out, twists one of the knobs to turn the sound off, and follows her brother and sister outside.

Barbara sits at the Formica table and sips her tea. The voice on the black transistor radio says its 9am, but Barbara can hardly hear, for her phone has begun to ring. Barbara sighs: such bad timing. She’s been waiting for the 9am news for over 15 minutes. Barbara wants to hear what’s happening with the tour – but mostly wants to know the weather forecast. How else will she decide whether to hang her brown corduroy skirt on the line in the garden, or inside the garage? Everyone knows clothes dry better outside, and she needs to look her best for the movies tonight: Goodbye Pork Pie, with the nice clerk from the bank. But it’s cloudy outside, and she doesn’t know if rain is coming.

Ring, ring. Ring, ring.

Maybe she ought to ignore it. If she waits until the 10am bulletin, her skirt might not dry in time for the movie, or get musty. But, no. She can’t. It might be someone important, or – dare she hope – the nice clerk, calling to chat. Barabara puts down her tea, and rushes into the hallway. She picks up the phone from its cradle, and holds the heavy green plastic to her ear. ‘Hello?’

‘Hi. It’s me.’

Me. Only Joan would be so self-centered to assume Barbara would recognise her voice after three words. Which, of course, Barbara does, but that’s beside the point.

‘I’m busy, Joan. I’m in the middle of … something important.’

‘I need your help.’ Joan’s voice is unsteady. ‘I really, really need your help, and now Mum and Dad are gone, I don’t know who else to call – ’

‘What happened?’

‘I was at the protest at Parliament, and the police turned up with batons.’ Joan’s words tumble over each other as she speaks. ‘And then I was pushed over! It wasn’t my fault my hand flew into a man’s face, and then he started to bleed …’

Barbara concentrates on her breathing: in and out, in and out. When she finally speaks, her voice is pinched. ‘Why can’t you ask Colin to help?’

‘You know he’s pro-tour, and thinks politics should stay out of sport. He won’t help me.’

Of course, Barbara thinks. Joan’s right – Colin won’t help at all. Barbara remembers her father’s words: your sister is your responsibility. ‘Joan, calm down. Tell me what you need.’

From the other room floats the last of the news, and some of the weather report. Not that it matters. She won’t be wearing her brown corduroy skirt anywhere tonight, let alone the movies. Eventually, Barbara puts down the phone, trudges into the other room, and turns off the transistor radio. She picks up her car keys, and steps outside.

It’s almost 9am. Barbara puts down the woman’s magazine, and turns to her new stereo system: a black stack of different ways to play music, her 55th birthday present to herself. It seems such an extravagance for a household of one, but look at how smart it is, sitting on the crisp white tablecloth in the middle of the sideboard. Barbara admires it once more: the LP player at the top, the double cassette player at the bottom. And, in between, the radio. Speaking of which. She pushes a button, just in time to hear the RNZ announcer welcome her to the 9am news.

Beside the stereo is a large bouquet of flowers, carefully arranged inside her second-best vase. Happy birthday, Barbara, reads the card, in Colin’s wife’s handwriting. Love Colin and family. At least they remembered. At least someone remembered. Barbara leans toward the stereo and listens: the broadcaster is talking about Princess Diana’s death the day before – what a shock that was. When Barbara first heard about it on the radio the previous afternoon, she’d been so alarmed, she’d dropped her best vase. And here she was: sitting beside a pile of broken porcelain that she still hadn’t cleaned up, because it hurt her knees, and her birthday wasn’t the time to remind herself of all her body could no longer do. Happy birthday to me, she thinks. At least I have my new stereo. And she’ll listen to the news, followed by a deep-dive story about Diana’s life – that will be interesting. After that, she’ll go out to get her hair done, and, at some point, clean up the remnants of the vase.

Bang bang bang!

There’s a loud knock, but whoever it is doesn’t wait for Barbara to respond – the door opens, and heavy footsteps clomp down the hallway. Barbara scowls. Only one person who would take such liberties. Joan.

Her sister bursts into the room: a mess of layered clothing and red lipstick and perfume. ‘Happy Birthday to youuuuuu!’ Joan dances on the spot, although her platform shoes are so high, Barbara wonders how she can walk, let alone dance. ‘Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear – ’

Joan steps on a shard of broken vase and tumbles, right into the rest of the shattered porcelain. From the floor, Joan looks at the blood covering her hand, and wails. ‘My hand! I think I’ve severed an artery!’ Joan waves her hand in the air, and reaches toward the sideboard. ‘This might be fatal! I need to clean this up! I’m too young to die – there’s so much more to do, like see more of the country – ’

‘No! Don’t– ’

But it’s too late. Joan grips the crisp white tablecloth in her hand, and pulls. The second-best vase falls first, crashing on the floor in a pile of glass and leaves and stalks. And next comes the stereo, landing with a sickening thud. The 9am broadcast falls silent. All Barbara can hear is ringing in her own ears, and, above that, her sister’s sobs. Then comes her father’s voice: your sister is your responsibility. Followed by another voice, that taunts her: happy birthday, Barbara. Happy birthday to you.

It’s almost 9am, and Barbara is ready for her day. She’s had her breakfast, and brushed her teeth. And now she’ll listen to the news, before a morning of pottering about to Nine to Noon. She pushes the button of the hot-pink device that Colin’s son gave her for Christmas, then presses the red RNZ symbol on her phone. Barbara still doesn’t understand how this works – something to do with teeth? Not that it matters, as long as it works, and here’s the birdsong now, followed by the beeps. The 9am news on RNZ: always different, yet still comforting in its sameness, especially after all these years.

Joan had better not interrupt her solitude. Her sister had been calling all week, even contacting her through the chat function on FarmTown, which was particularly irritating. ‘Come on a trip with me,’ Joan said, over and over. Joan and Colin’s widow had recently gone halves on a motorhome, but the other woman was busy this week. ‘I don’t want to travel alone, Barbara. Let’s go on an adventure and see the country.’

‘No, I can’t.’ Barbara had said. ‘I’m busy.’

‘You can bring your tablet with you, you know. You can play FarmTown, andwon’t lose your Wordle streak.’

‘I can’t come – I have other plans.’ And she did: Wednesday was her day for volunteering at the charity shop, Thursday was supermarket day, and she didn’t want to miss aqua jogging – her knees weren’t getting any better, and being in the water helped. Plans that seemed perfectly fine earlier, but now felt dull because they didn’t involve sleeping in cow paddocks or by the sea or God only knew where else. ‘I won’t join you. But have fun.’

‘Oh, I will,’ Joan said loudly – must she always be so loud? And, with that, she was gone.

The news report has started. A woman speaks from the hot pink device about Trump, about taxes, and about something a government minister has said. And then, ‘we report that two campervans have had a fatal collision on State Highway One ….’

Barbara gasps. Joan? But, no, she need not worry. Of course her sister wouldn’t be involved in a crash. Of course not.

The report continues: more political stories,then sport.

Joan will surely call soon, and interrupt Barbara, just like she always does. Her sister will have a long complicated story about some calamity that was of her own making, and speak so loudly that Barbara’s ears will hurt.

It’s now the weather, and the traffic report. From the echoes of time, Barbara hears her father’s voice: your sister is your responsibility.

Still nothing.

Joan? She thinks. Please call me. You can even message me through FarmTown, I promise I won’t mind.

Still nothing. And now the 9am report is over – she has listened to it, all the way through, without interruptions.

Barbara takes a deep breath, and reaches for her phone.

She turns the radio off.

Lauren Keenan (Te Āti Awa ki Taranaki) is an award-winning writer of historical fiction for both children and adults, as well as historical non-fiction.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand