Source: Radio New Zealand

A retired Salvation Army pastor is battling blisters and hunger as he walks the length of New Zealand to raise money for foodbanks.

It comes as food charities [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/580728/foodbanks-warn-of-closures-if-government-fails-to-give-ongoing-funding

call for urgent ongoing government funding] as they face unprecedented demand during the cost of living crisis.

Gavin Baxter is a ‘nobo’ – north bound – tramper, he doned his boots at Bluff on the first day of the year and expects to spend six months on the Te Araroa Trail.

“There are times when I’ve been walking that I’ve been hungry but it just helps me relate to the real need that there is even in New Zealand.”

Half a million people in New Zealand are turning up at food charities needing help every month.

“It’s staggering, it’s deeply moving to think that these are the people who have actually got the courage to turn up. How many more are out there that are in deep need of assistance and perhaps don’t have that courage.”

Baxter has a sponsorship website up and running and aims to raise $10 for every kilometre he walks – so far he’s on track.

Blisters on his feet and a heavy pack are no deterrent, he recently made it to Queenstown.

“There’s a whole thing in the hiking industry about ultra-light, I think I’ve gone into ultra-heavy.”

Top of his mind are those who are hungry because they cannot afford food after paying their household bills.

Baxter was the pastor at Greymouth’s Salvation Army and has recently had surgery to overcome prostate cancer.

The Salvation Army has 60 foodbanks across the country, its food security manager Sonya Cameron said there has been continued high demand for food parcels so far this year.

“Our centres are saying that they’re seeing a lot of new whanau needing support. I spoke to Cameron Miller who’s the core officer at Hutt City Salvation Army, he said that they’ve worked all the way through Christmas and the new year and that demand has been very high,” Cameron said.

“He said that they’ve got the basics but nothing more.”

It’s a similar story elsewhere.

“Whakatane were saying that they’d seen 24 whanau in just three hours the other day. They said that they’d never experienced that before at this time of year.”

The Salvation Army, Auckland City Mission and Food Network are among the organisations that received one-off grants till mid-2026, through the Food Secure Communities programme.

Late last year they warned of substantial closures if the government does not provide ongoing funding this year.

“For us, stable long term funding would allow us to plan with confidence, retain our staff, invest in infrastructure and respond to community need,” Cameron said.

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is evaluating the effectiveness off its one-off funding, including which households benefit from the programme.

A report is due to be provided to the Minister of Social Development and Employment next month.

MSD group general manager of insights, Fleur McLaren, said the evaluation has been done through interviews and a survey of organisations that have received the funding.

“It will examine how FSC infrastructure investment has made a difference to sector capacity and capability to support households experiencing food insecurity,” she said.

“It is also looking at which households benefit from FSC, in what ways and in what circumstances.”

Tracey Watene chairs the Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance, which has been interviewed as part of the evaluation.

“We’re hopeful that this will inform decisions about how crucial this funding is and the value it gives to communities across Aotearoa,” she said.

“Budget 2026 will be a key decider. We’re preparing to engage fully as that process unfolds.”

Meanwhile, Gavin Baxter is sticking to his quest to raise money for foodbanks, his wife Bev is his support along the way, driving a campervan so they can stay together when the trail meets a town.

“Because Bev’s with me every day, she’s my trail angel.”

He aims to raise $30,000 dollars during his six-month tramp.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A retired Salvation Army pastor is battling blisters and hunger as he walks the length of New Zealand to raise money for foodbanks.

It comes as food charities [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/580728/foodbanks-warn-of-closures-if-government-fails-to-give-ongoing-funding

call for urgent ongoing government funding] as they face unprecedented demand during the cost of living crisis.

Gavin Baxter is a ‘nobo’ – north bound – tramper, he doned his boots at Bluff on the first day of the year and expects to spend six months on the Te Araroa Trail.

“There are times when I’ve been walking that I’ve been hungry but it just helps me relate to the real need that there is even in New Zealand.”

Half a million people in New Zealand are turning up at food charities needing help every month.

“It’s staggering, it’s deeply moving to think that these are the people who have actually got the courage to turn up. How many more are out there that are in deep need of assistance and perhaps don’t have that courage.”

Baxter has a sponsorship website up and running and aims to raise $10 for every kilometre he walks – so far he’s on track.

Blisters on his feet and a heavy pack are no deterrent, he recently made it to Queenstown.

“There’s a whole thing in the hiking industry about ultra-light, I think I’ve gone into ultra-heavy.”

Top of his mind are those who are hungry because they cannot afford food after paying their household bills.

Baxter was the pastor at Greymouth’s Salvation Army and has recently had surgery to overcome prostate cancer.

The Salvation Army has 60 foodbanks across the country, its food security manager Sonya Cameron said there has been continued high demand for food parcels so far this year.

“Our centres are saying that they’re seeing a lot of new whanau needing support. I spoke to Cameron Miller who’s the core officer at Hutt City Salvation Army, he said that they’ve worked all the way through Christmas and the new year and that demand has been very high,” Cameron said.

“He said that they’ve got the basics but nothing more.”

It’s a similar story elsewhere.

“Whakatane were saying that they’d seen 24 whanau in just three hours the other day. They said that they’d never experienced that before at this time of year.”

The Salvation Army, Auckland City Mission and Food Network are among the organisations that received one-off grants till mid-2026, through the Food Secure Communities programme.

Late last year they warned of substantial closures if the government does not provide ongoing funding this year.

“For us, stable long term funding would allow us to plan with confidence, retain our staff, invest in infrastructure and respond to community need,” Cameron said.

The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is evaluating the effectiveness off its one-off funding, including which households benefit from the programme.

A report is due to be provided to the Minister of Social Development and Employment next month.

MSD group general manager of insights, Fleur McLaren, said the evaluation has been done through interviews and a survey of organisations that have received the funding.

“It will examine how FSC infrastructure investment has made a difference to sector capacity and capability to support households experiencing food insecurity,” she said.

“It is also looking at which households benefit from FSC, in what ways and in what circumstances.”

Tracey Watene chairs the Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance, which has been interviewed as part of the evaluation.

“We’re hopeful that this will inform decisions about how crucial this funding is and the value it gives to communities across Aotearoa,” she said.

“Budget 2026 will be a key decider. We’re preparing to engage fully as that process unfolds.”

Meanwhile, Gavin Baxter is sticking to his quest to raise money for foodbanks, his wife Bev is his support along the way, driving a campervan so they can stay together when the trail meets a town.

“Because Bev’s with me every day, she’s my trail angel.”

He aims to raise $30,000 dollars during his six-month tramp.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A climate scientist says it’s not too late for people to reduce emissions and slow the effects of climate change.

Last week’s storms in northern parts of the country brought a months’ worth of rain in a day to some areas. Six people are presumed dead in a massive landslide in Mt Manganui, while a woman and her grandson were killed when a landslip struck a home in Welcome Bay, Pāpāmoa.

Communities were cut off and roads damaged in Gisborne, Thames, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Northland and the East Cape.

Professor James Renwick from Victoria University said while climate change was not necessarily creating more storms, it was adding to their intensity.

“Climate change is making the most extremes of weather more extreme.

“Higher amounts of greenhouse gases in the air traps more heat in the oceans and the atmosphere so there’s more energy around for storms to feed off.

“You get more intense rainfall because warmer air can hold more moisture, so when you get that moisture out of the air – by having a storm – you get more rain falling.

“You also get more intense droughts because it’s warmer and – when it’s not raining – evaporation’s working more efficiently and things dry out faster,” Renwick said.

He said the gradual average growth of the world’s temperature – while slight – was having a significant effect at the extremities of temperature and rainfall.

“The changes in the climate so far – 1.5 degrees of warming and seven or eight percent more moisture in the air – these numbers all sound quite benign. Who cares about a degree of warming when temperatures can change by 10 or 15 degrees a day?

“One degree of warming can increase the frequency of high temperature extremes by a factor of three or four and that’s the same idea with rainfall. An apparently small increase in moisture in the air – when you concentrate that and wring it out in a storm – can result in much larger – 10, 20, 30, 40 percent increases in rainfall intensity depending on the time frame you’re looking at,” Renwick said.

Renwick said research at this stage suggested the path and location of storms remained relatively unaffected by global warming.

“In New Zealand the West Coast of the South Island is the wettest part of the country because the winds blow from the west and we’ve got big mountains along the middle of the South Island and the northern half of the North Island closest to the tropics so it’s most exposed to these sub tropical storms and ex-tropical cyclones. None of that geographical information is changing.

“But the intensity of the weather events, that’s what’s changing,” Renwick said.

Renwick said witnessing recent storms and droughts as they impacted people and the country gave the climate science community “no pleasure” as decades of warnings and predictions come to fruition.

“I feel sad that the global policy community just hasn’t been able to find a way to take the response they need and reduce emissions of green house gases and even protecting communities from the changes we’ve already seen by adapting to the climate change we’ve already had.

“In that ten years [since the Paris agreement to combat global warming was signed off in 2016] instead of taking action we’ve just released more green house gases and there’s just no sign of any politicians, any governments around the world really taking this problem seriously.

“I don’t understand that. It’s an obvious threat to communities everywhere and aren’t governments supposed to protect their populations? They don’t seem to be too worried on this front,” Renwick said.

But Renwick said individuals still had the ultimate power to influence climate change.

“Don’t give up, don’t despair. If we stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow global warming at least would stop within a year or two. We know that know from recent climate model experiments. Yes, ice continues to melt. Yes, the oceans continue to expand and get deeper but the heating of the atmosphere, the change in temperature, that stops almost straight away.

“We don’t all have to become Greta Thunberg but if we all paid attention to what’s going on around us and acted appropriately that would make a huge difference. If everyone in the country drove their car one day less a week – or something like that – that would reduce our emissions a huge amount.

“People have a lot of power. I don’t think we realise how much power we do have,” Renwick said.

“Whether that’s personally by taking the bus instead of driving your car or helping your government to understand what they need to do – and why – by making some sort of political protest or writing to an MP. There’s a lot of actions people can take,” Renwick said.

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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 $5 per-hour parking fee at some popular tourist spots including Aoraki-Mount Cook raised $214,000 in its first month.

The Department of Conservation (Doc), began charging at Punakaiki, Franz Josef and Aoraki-Mount Cook in December, as part of a trial.

DoC’s operations manager at Aoraki-Mt Cook Sally Jones, told Morning Report, said at this stage the parking fee was working and $214,000 in a month had been a “great result”.

Jones said free parking was still available in the area on Hooker Valley Rd if people did still want to choose to park somewhere unpaid.

“We anticipated that it may become more of an issue with the introduction of the paid parking pilot so we brought in more staff who are trained on traffic management to manage that road throughout the day.”

Jones said parts of the road could also be closed off it was too dangerous due to being too narrow.

Along with the parking fee, Jones said speed limits had been lowered and an electronic board helped people find if there were any carparks free.

International visitors and locals alike did not seem to be phased by the charge, Jones claimed.

“In fact, some have asked us if that was all. I think they accept the fact that paying to reinvest in a site like a national park seems reasonable.”

Recently, there had been issues with tourists on the Hooker Valley Track ignoring warning signs and closures, but Jones said this too had lessened over Summer.

“I think people don’t want to be seen on camera,” Jones said.

“Also, I think because of the challenging Summer we’ve had people have not been able to see Aoraki so they haven’t been inclined to want to get a better view of it.”

Jones believed this Summer had been one of the worst they’d had in a long time and there hadn’t been many days when Aoraki-Mount Cook was visible.

“So your time on the track would be less than it normally would, so you’re less inclined to want to get around that fence or over the river to get that beautiful Instagram shot… it’s just not there.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Some families of children with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder have been blind-sided by South Cross Health Insurance pulling the plug on funding their treatment.

The insurer said it was not a change in policy but simply a “clarification”.

It has however has taken some specialists by surprise.

Are you affected? Tell us your story: iwitness@rnz.co.nz

In a letter to patients’ families, one paediatrician in Wellington said his practice had received a directive from Southern Cross that its policy was to “exclude coverage for ADHD and ASD, as they classify these conditions as mental health disorders”.

“It is important to note that Dr … does not share this classification.”

New consultations for the assessment of ADHD or ASD would be covered (provided patients had not been previously diagnosed by a doctor), subject to the terms of their policies.

The paediatrician had not responded to RNZ’s request for an interview.

Southern Cross Health Insurance chief sales and marketing officer, Regan Savage, said it wrote to paediatricians in November to “clarify” its existing policy regarding cover for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

“This was not a new directive or change in classification, but confirmation of how our policy needs to be applied.

“We issued the clarification as we had become aware of differing levels of understanding of our policy amongst providers, and our need to ensure our affiliated providers can administer our policy entitlements correctly.”

All consultations prior to a formal diagnosis were funded – but once diagnosis was confirmed, further assessments, consultations and related treatment would not be covered, he said.

“Southern Cross Health Insurance policies generally exclude cover for treatment of mental health conditions and these conditions are classified as mental and neurodevelopmental disorders under internationally recognised classification systems.”

Cover was usually limited to “short-term or unexpected health issues”.

“Conditions like ADHD can involve complex, life-long care such as medication, therapy, and specialist support which creates significant and predictable costs.

“Covering costs like this through insurance would mean much higher premiums for all members, making health insurance less affordable overall.”

Some policies however did fund GPs, nurse and Pharmac-subsidised prescriptions in relation to mental health, Savage said.

Diagnosis ‘just the start’

A Wellington parent – who was not a Southern Cross member herself – said the public system was “already totally under-resourced, which is why people go private”.

“Some families reach crisis point with their kids – they know there’s something wrong, but can’t get into the public system for a diagnosis, which then opens to the door to some level of support and understanding of what’s happening for their kids.

“They can be in survival mode for months before someone will see them for an assessment – there are long waiting lists in both private and public systems, but at least you know you’ll get to the finish line with private.”

Yet getting the diagnosis was often “the very beginning of the journey” for many families, she said.

“For ADHD it can take months and many appointments to get medication right, for ASD I imagine there are a huge amount of secondary issues they need professional support with.”

More ‘funded’ services needed – advocacy group

ADHD New Zealand advocates for increased access to publicly-funded diagnosis and treatment.

Spokesperson Sarah Hogan said some people were fortunate to be able to get a diagnosis through health insurance.

“But health insurance is beyond the reach of many people with ADHD, so an equitable response requires publicly funded diagnosis and treatment.”

Beyond diagnosis and medication, people living with ADHD sometimes had ongoing physical and mental health needs – but unfortunately the public health system did not fund additional services “specifically for ADHD”, she said.

“When people with ADHD experience mental health issues, it can often be unclear how this may be related to their ADHD and this may be different for different people,” she said.

“The public system does not fund mental health services specifically for ADHD, but people with ADHD may access the same publicly funded mental health services that other New Zealanders access. This is not always adequate.”

In a bid to reduce wait times, the Government has signed off on new rules allowing GPs and some nurse practitioners to diagnose ADHD and prescribe medication.

The new regime will take effect from February 1.

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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 woman has been found dead at a Canterbury property.

Police have launched a homicide investigation over the the death of the woman in Burnham.

The woman was found early on Tuesday morning.

One person has been arrested.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Crews working on the Mount Maunganui recovery mission are hoping for sunshine on Tuesday, labelling moisture “the enemy”.

Work has resumed to recover six people presumed dead after a landslide at a Mount Maunganui campground last Thursday.

While the ground is slowly stablising, any rain risks further slips.

An independent review, announced by Tauranga City Council, will look at events leading up to the landslide. Meanwhile, WorkSafe says it will looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the Mt Maunganui holiday park.

Follow the latest in RNZ’s live blog at the top of this page.

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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 First has climbed into third place in the latest RNZ poll, recording its strongest result in the Reid Research series in more than eight years.

The RNZ-Reid Research poll, published Tuesday, also showed NZ First’s Winston Peters leaping up the preferred prime minister ranks, closing the gap on the Labour and National leaders.

The results, if replicated on polling day, would return the coalition government to power with a narrow majority of 61 seats.

Follow the latest in RNZ’s politics blog at the top of this page.

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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 local council representative drove through the Mount Maunganui campground and directly past three slips about two hours before a deadly landslide, a camper who contacted emergency services at the time says.

The woman, who was woken by one of the victims, Lisa Maclennan, early that morning, has spoken to RNZ about efforts to raise emergency services earlier that morning, including her own call to police three hours before the landslide.

She has also provided the first images of the initial slips that caused the calls to emergency services.

The victims of the landslide have been named as Lisa Anne Maclennan, 50, Måns Loke Bernhardsson, 20, Jacqualine Suzanne Wheeler, 71, Susan Doreen Knowles, 71, Sharon Maccanico, 15, and Max Furse-Kee, 15.

The woman, who did not want to be named, said she had been at the campground for about three weeks and was staying right next to Maclennan and her husband.

She said she was woken shortly before 5am on Thursday morning to Maclennan banging on her window.

“She’s like ‘Oh I’m so sorry I’m waking you up’, but the slip had pushed her campervan about a metre forward, so she said, ‘I’m just waking everyone up because I think everyone should move’.”

The woman moved her campervan straight away and Maclennan’s campervan was moved parallel to the shower block.

The woman said the group then went to the office, but there was no one there.

She said Maclennan had tried ringing the emergency number at the campground and could not get hold of anybody.

The woman said Maclennan told her she was going to try call Civil Defence. It was at that moment the woman called police.

Shortly before calling police, the woman took some photos and video of one of three slips, including one right at her campsite. An image, supplied to RNZ, was timestamped at 6.15am and the video, which shows the slips, was taken a minute later.

A call log provided by the woman confirms she called police at 6.18am. The outgoing call lasted eight minutes.

“I explained to them about the slips. I said, ‘look, I understand that you guys will be really busy, and this might not be anything, but this is what’s happened here’. 

“It was enough to push the ladies’ campervan forward, and there’s a homeless man in the toilet block, and he was actually going crazy and sort of banging on the walls and smashing things.

“And so I said, maybe you should send someone to have a look at that, just in case. You know, there’s a lot of kids here… and they said, yeah, it is a really busy night. It’s been a busy night. It’s a busy morning, we’ll try and get a unit there.”

The woman said no-one arrived until about 7.45am, when she said she saw what she described as a ute that was sign-written with Tauranga City Council. The ute stopped and the woman says she called out, “Look, I don’t know if you can see them from where you are, but there’s these slips up here, I think, you know, someone should look at them.”

The woman was unsure the man heard her. The woman said the ute then drove through the Pilot Bay side of the campground slowly past the slips that she had filmed directly in front of several campsites.

“I figured, well, everything will be fine. Someone from the council’s come, they’ve seen the slips, he’s driven past them, he’s driven through the water that was coming down from that corner that collapsed. So I had no worries after that.”

The woman then had a shower and left the campground to visit her parents.

It was not until about an hour after the fatal landslide that she returned. She said the emergency services at the scene were “amazing”.

It was about midday that she discovered that Maclennan was missing.

“The group of people that was … camping in the area, were all in tears. There was an older couple that we were sitting with in there, and he was heartbroken. It was just terrible and so incredibly unfair.

“I don’t think there was many people that were in the surf club for the day that weren’t, you know, in tears. It was pretty difficult.”

She said Maclennan, who worked at Morrinsville Intermediate School was “being a teacher”.

“She took control. She was making sure everyone was safe. She was, you know, literally rounding people and making sure they were all safe, and being the organiser.

“Lisa [Maclennan] and her husband were amazing. And if it hadn’t been for them there, I would imagine that there would have been many more people.”

Looking back, the woman said she believed there should have been staff at the campground at all times, given the weather warnings.

“I know nothing about running camping grounds, but it seems like a no-brainer to have had people in the campground during a red rain watch and a state of emergency. 

“Either they should have evacuated the campground, which is great in hindsight, but at the very least somebody, there should have been a number of people that worked for the campground or the council on the ground during a state of emergency, because the fact that there was no one there made us all think maybe it’s not that bad.”

She said the days since the landslide had been “awful”.

“It’s dreadful, not sleeping. It’s terrible,” she said.

“I think it’s feeling extraordinarily lucky to not have been hurt and grateful that Lisa woke us up and then just incredibly sad for the families whose people didn’t get out.”

RNZ approached the Tauranga City Council and police for comment on Monday evening on the woman’s account.

“Once the recovery efforts are completed, we have secured the site and have geotechnical assessments that the landslide area is stable, there will be a process undertaken to examine the events that took place before and during this tragic event,” the council’s controller Tom McEntyre said.

“It would not be appropriate to make any comment now that could affect that process or pre-empt the outcome.”

In response to earlier questions from RNZ, Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler confirmed FENZ received a 111 call at 5.48am on Thursday, 22 January, from a person reporting a slip near the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park.

“Our call takers made contact with the Tauranga City Council, the landowners of the camping ground, and notified them of this information at 5.51am.

“The landslip that was referenced in the 111 call received at 5.48am did not impact life or property and therefore Fire and Emergency did not respond firefighters to attend, instead we notified Tauranga City Council as the landowner responsible.”

Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Tauranga City Council chief executive Marty Grenfell said there was no record of a 111 call being referred to the council.

However, a council statement released only hours later backtracked on this version of events.

“After further enquiries, we can confirm that the Tauranga City Council’s main Contact Centre received a call from Fire and Emergency New Zealand at around 5.50am on Thursday, 22 January.”

The council said the chief executive’s earlier comments referred specifically to information logged in the council’s Emergency Operations Centre, which did not receive a call.

At about 9.30am a slip came down at the Beachside Holiday Park at Mount Maunganui, smashing into campervans, tents, vehicles and an ablution block near the Mount Hot Pools.

WorkSafe’s head of inspectorate Rob Pope told RNZ’s Midday Report Tauranga City Council was one of the entities it needed to speak with and understand its part in the event.

When asked if it would be extraordinary for an investigation not to be launched given six people were presumed dead, Pope agreed but said they needed to understand the scope and context first before committing resources to a formal investigation.

A WorkSafe spokesperson told RNZ it was in the “very early stages” of assessing what its role may look like once the search and recovery phase was complete.

“We are currently bringing together a team of inspectors and will be working closely with New Zealand Police to determine next steps.

“We will be looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the holiday park, and whether or not they were meeting their health and safety responsibilities.”

Currently, the focus needed to remain on the recovery efforts, the spokesperson said.

“When the time is right, our inspectors will begin engaging with witnesses and technical experts and gathering evidence from a range of sources including the organisations involved in the operation of the holiday park and the scene.

“In the meantime, our local inspectors have also extended an offer of support to Emergency Management Bay of Plenty and other agencies to ensure that workers involved in the response are kept safe and healthy.”

Pope told RNZ WorkSafe was working closely with police to coordinate their responses after the “incredibly tragic event”.

He did not have a timeframe for when a decision on a formal investigation would be made but said the inspectors would be working at pace and focused on providing the right level of confidence for the families who wanted answers.

“We will be committed to addressing this issue as quickly as we can.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report he supported Tauranga City Council’s decision to conduct a full, independent review into the landslide.

“There’s lots of concerns that people have about why they weren’t evacuated sooner. I think they are very legitimate, very good questions that need answers.”

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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 First has climbed into third place in https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/poll/556774/rnz-reid-research-poll-view-all-results-and-charts the latest RNZ poll], recording its strongest result in the Reid Research series in more than eight years.

The RNZ-Reid Research poll, published Tuesday, also showed NZ First’s Winston Peters leaping up the preferred prime minister ranks, closing the gap on the Labour and National leaders.

Follow all the reactions and latest news on RNZ’s live politics blog

The results, if replicated on polling day, would return the coalition government to power with a narrow majority of 61 seats.

Labour remained out in front on 35 percent, up 0.7 points since September, while National slipped to 31.9 percent, down 0.6.

NZ First had the biggest bump in support, jumping 1.1 points, to hit 9.8 percent, its highest result with Reid Research since July 2017.

The Green Party fell 1.3 points to register 9.6 percent. ACT was on 7.6 percent, up 0.4 points.

And Te Pāti Māori continued its slide, falling to 3 percent, down 1.1 points.

Outside of Parliament, The Opportunity Party picked up support, climbing 0.9 points, to touch 2.3 percent.

The poll – which ran from 15-22 January – surveyed 1000 eligible voters online with a maximum margin of error of 3.1 percent. Undecided or non-voters made up 7.2 percent of those polled.

If those were the results on election day, National would bring in 40 MPs, NZ First 12 and ACT nine.

That would make 61 MPs between the current coalition parties, the slimmest possible majority in a 120-seat Parliament.

On the left, Labour would pick up 43 seats, the Greens 12 and Te Pāti Māori four. Together, that adds up to 59 MPs, not enough to claim power.

If Te Pāti Māori retained all six of its current seats, however, Parliament would have a two-seat overhang, resulting in a 61-61 deadlock.

NZ First’s lift in support was mirrored in Peters’ personal standing too.

On the preferred prime minister measure, Peters jumped a sizeable 3.7 points to hit 12.6 percent, his highest result in the series since January 2016.

His surge helped close the gap with the leaders of Labour and National, both of whom took a knock in support.

Labour’s Chris Hipkins remained the top choice of voters, receiving the backing of 21.1 percent of voters, down 1.9 points.

National’s Christopher Luxon dropped 0.2 points to 19.4 percent.

Almost 17 percent of voters declined to choose a prime ministerial candidate or said they did not know.

The poll also found an improvement in general sentiment since the lows of September, though it still remained deep in negative territory.

The results showed 36.3 percent (up 2.3) of respondents thought the country was heading in the right direction, compared to 46.6 percent (down 2.3) who thought the wrong direction.

That gives a net score of -10.3, an improvement of 3.3 points compared to the last poll in September.

Just over 15 percent of voters sat on the fence, while another 1.8 percent said they did not know.

National supporters were the most optimistic with a net score of +65.8, followed by ACT supporters on +28.2.

Notably, more NZ First voters thought the country was on the wrong track than the right track, recording a net score of -9.9.

The pessimism also showed up when voters were asked to consider their financial position compared to one year ago.

Asked about the cost of living, 57.5 percent of respondents said they were finding it harder to manage than this time last year. Just 6.4 percent said they were finding it easier and 34.8 percent said “about the same”.

Similarly, just 12.2 percent of voters said they felt better off financially compared to January 2025. More than 46 percent said they were worse off, while 40.1 percent said neither.

Politicians respond – or don’t

Both Luxon and Peters declined interview requests from RNZ. A spokesperson for Luxon said he was prioritising the weather event situation.

Te Pāti Māori also declined to be interviewed.

Speaking to RNZ, Hipkins said he was encouraged by Labour’s continued rise in the polls.

“This would suggest a neck-and-neck result,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more work to do… but being ahead of National, being the most popular party in New Zealand, that’s a good place to start election year.”

Hipkins said he would not read too much into Peters’ jump, saying NZ First’s support was always “very volatile”.

Greens’ co-leader Marama Davidson said, regardless of the polls, the party would stay focused on finding solutions.

“Understandably, people are exhausted and switched off, but this November, people get to use their power and agency to demand so much more.”

ACT leader David Seymour told RNZ his party started election year in a “very comfortable position” and he intended to build on it.

“We’ve shown that we can be effective and collegial in government… but we’re also prepared to say when the emperor has no clothes.”

This poll of 1000 people was conducted by Reid Research, using quota sampling and weighting to ensure representative cross section by age, gender and geography. The poll was conducted through online interviews between 15-22 January 2026 and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A homicide investigation is underway after the death of a woman in Canterbury.

Detective Senior Sergeant Karen Simmons said the woman was found dead at a property in Burnham in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

“Emergency services were called to a Burnham School Road address about 3.05am after a report of disorder.

“After arriving at the property, police located the body of a woman.”

Simmons said one person has been arrested and is helping police with its inquiries.

“Cordons are in place and a scene examination has commenced at the property.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Geotechnical engineers told Tauranga City Council two decades ago that buildings should not be allowed in the “runout” zones of potential landslides unless they have specially constructed protection like a retaining wall.

The runout zone is the area at the base of a slope that might be inundated in a slip.

A motorcamp and hot pools were struck by a landslide at the base of Mauao last week, killing several people.

It is not clear how engineer runout calculations might apply to the area.

The advice in 2005 has been superseded in part by new science that has led to the adoption of smaller runout zone sizes in the Mt Maunganui and Papamoa neighbourhoods, but the thrust was obvious – to steer clear.

“Only in rare circumstances would it be prudent to violate” the zone criteria, wrote two geotechnical engineers in the study into 300-plus landslides across Tauranga triggered by a big storm.

“Because of this we believe that the following changes to the criteria would be appropriate: 1. Buildings are not to be located within the [zone]. Only if special measures are taken, such as construction of properly engineered structures (ie retaining walls, piled foundations and deflection bunds) can these criteria be exceeded.”

The old runout zones in Tauranga were calculated as ‘4H:1V’ – four times the vertical height of the slope (V), extending horizontally from the base (H). The new zone in 2025 was suggested as half that – 2H:1V.

The study on this for the city council last year by engineering consultants WSP covered all the Pacific seaside neighbourhoods except Mauao itself. RNZ has asked the council why Mauao was not mapped, and also for comment on runout zones.

‘Directed away from areas with an unacceptable risk’

Auckland Council has been sharing its country-leading work on landslides with Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty region. Tauranga was “unique” in how prone it was to rain-induced slips, WSP said in 2025.

Mayor Mahé Drysdale told Morning Report they were setting up an independent review into the “facts and events leading up to the landslide”.

Auckland Council said because of that review it was inappropriate for it to answer queries about landslide risk on Mt Maunganui.

But it laid out its own advances on landslide mapping that it said meant the information people could get about landslides on Land Information Memorandums, or LIMs, was more reliable, and its controls over what got built and where were better.

“Before our 2025 mapping, we didn’t have good regional maps showing landslide susceptibility because we didn’t have the data available to create them,” chief engineer Ross Roberts said in a statement.

“This meant that it was more difficult to identify where activities were taking place in areas potentially susceptible to landslides.”

It was also difficult and complex to apply controls to existing activities.

Since last year it could statistically model the landslide susceptibility, which was feeding into plans and LIMs.

“This means it can be used by people when choosing where to buy or rent a house, and by infrastructure and asset owners… Together, these mean that future development can be directed away from areas with an unacceptable risk, and existing assets can be assessed and their use modified if appropriate,” Roberts said.

Checks on individual sites were still sometimes needed, such as when protective structures had been built, earthworks had changed the land profile or underlying characteristics were unusual.

‘Avoid building in run-out areas’

Martin Brook, professor of applied geology at University of Auckland, said understanding landslide runout on Mauao was important because the maunga had a history of slips.

“Understanding and modelling the runout of landslides and where the detached material is going to run out and end up and possibly inundate is really important,” he said.

“You should avoid building in run-out areas. That’s sensible, and people would follow that advice in most parts of the Western world.”

But the light-detection (LIDAR) tech used to detect historical landslides was not so useful for runout and he was not aware of much research on it.

“Most of New Zealand is under-researched from a sort of a geological standpoint.”

The country had woken up recently to tsunami risk and signs and advice had sprung up, but had only begun waking up to the risk of landslides since 2023 though they were the country’s most deadly natural hazard, he added.

‘Reliant on outside advice’

Northland geotechnical engineer David Buxton said councils nationwide had really struggled since the 1990s – when they began shedding expertise – to get their own technical advice to back their decisions on the likes of runout zones.

“They’re reliant on outside advice to give these things, but then they’re reliant on in-house people without that depth of technical knowledge to make that decision-making, and I think it would be really good if councils were able to invest in that in-house technical ability.”

Buxton himself, as a consultant, benefited from the current set-up, he said – however it was not just expensive, but led to patchy follow-through sometimes.

Auckland Council had invested in-house and that was paying off in its response to floods, Buxton said.

The WPS study for Tauranga last year had some gaps – for instance, it did not look at the likely size or volume of likely slips.

“The factors that determine the volume and runout characteristics of the landslide, and the consequent impacts on infrastructure in proximity to the slope, could be considered when looking at specific slopes as part of site-specific studies,” said the short study, that sits alongside two longer engineering reports into landslides in the city and region.

“This should be carried out as part of considering the risk posed to infrastructure or property at particular sites.”

The landslip map showed small zones of “failure” and runout at several streets, the largest of which were around Hopukiore Reserve.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The slash debate heats up – again – in Gisborne as forestry operators urge the government to remove their legal accountability for the devastating discharge.

When the rain stops in Tairāwhiti, the damage doesn’t.

Because when the rain hits hard, it floods wood. Lots of it.

On beaches, whole trees lie tangled like matchsticks.

Rivers choke with debris; bridges are smashed; roads are closed; and communities are left staring at a costly and heartbreaking mess.

The debris has a name, slash. It is the branches, logs and waste left behind after commercial forestry harvesting.

And now, it’s been revealed the industry at the centre of it is asking the government to remove legal accountability when slash escapes.

Under current law, forestry companies can be held responsible if slash causes environmental harm or property damage.

And in recent years, slash in the area has caused widespread destruction of billions of dollars of public and private infrastructure.

So, three years after the devastation left by cyclones Hale and Gabrielle, The Detail speaks to Dr Mark Bloomberg, an adjunct senior fellow at the School of Forestry at Canterbury University, about forestry, slash and who should be accountable.

“The [forestry] companies came in and let’s say, I don’t like to use the word good faith, but in good faith, they went in, and where they hadn’t complied, they took their licks and set about to try and be compliant with the consents they were operating under and contributing to clean up,” Bloomberg said.

“But then the bills kept coming, and the council came back and said, ‘yeah, well, apart from any liability in terms of complying with consents, there’s a broader liability under the RMA [Resource Management Act] because you guys did the logging, you are it’.

“I think that issue has got to be resolved.

“In the short term, we have a problem arising from harvesting practices over the last decade.

“But in the medium term, we have got to solve the problem by stopping the discharges.”

He said slash had long been a feature of forestry landscapes, but in steep, erosion-prone regions like Gisborne, it had become a recurring hazard.

Heavy rain mobilises the debris, sending it downstream with devastating force. Cyclone Gabrielle made the consequences impossible to ignore.

“This is probably where I am a little bit tough on the forestry industry,” Bloomberg said.

“I think these large, clear fells – they should have seen it coming. It was pretty foreseeable, actually, that large volumes of sediment and the accompanying slash would be triggered in the next storm.”

He recommended replacing large-scale clear-felling with “smaller coupes” (a coupe refers to an area of felled trees, resulting from a forestry harvesting operation).

“It’s the scale of the clear-felling that caused a lot of the damage in terms of slash and sediment. We have got to get those coupes down to small sizes. This is, in fact, what happens overseas. If you look at difficult erodible land being harvested in Europe, they’ll be down to coupe sizes, sometimes one to two hectares.

“It’s recognised that big commercial clear felling, on this kind of land, is just not a goer. If you want one take-home message, then these big clear fells have to stop, and they have got to stop pronto.”

In recent years, slash has blocked access to beaches, affected business and tourism, destroyed infrastructure and threatened safety. In some cases, debris contributed to loss of life.

And it has returned in recent days, albeit on a much smaller scale, following heavy rain in Tairāwhiti and surrounding areas.

“Unless we grasp the nettle and sort this one out, any of the outcomes [environmentally and economically] will not be good. I’d be pretty confident there.”

At its heart, the slash debate is not about whether storms will come – they will.

But whether, next time, the responsibility is owned or quietly slips away.

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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 survey from the Classifications Office shows two thirds of New Zealanders have seen extreme and potentially illegal content online.

The report Online Exposure: Experiences of Extreme or Illegal Content in Aotearoa was based on a survey of 1000 New Zealanders aged 18 and over.

The Classifications Office said it was believed to be the first of its kind to ask adults directly about their experiences with extreme or illegal content online.

It also found 49 percent of the population believed encountering extreme content online was unavoidable and 78 percent thought the likelihood of seeing it was increasing over time.

Chief censor Caroline Flora told RNZ it was essential people online understood the law.

“A big part of releasing this research is to communicate with the public – thank you we recognise your experience and we all have a part to play.

“Reporting this content is really important and understanding your rights and responsibilities when it comes to content is really important as well.”

Flora said it was necessary to note people were not incriminating themselves to have extreme content if they were obtaining it to provide to authorities.

“What I would say is if you come across something online to report it to the platform and to online safety organisations and law enforcement.”

She said it was important people did not create objectionable content – particularly given new technologies such as AI generated content.

“If you create objectionable content, it will still be objectionable even if it is synthetic or fake and the penalties for creating content are very severe.”

Research done by the Classifications Office last year found that young people had similar experiences to the findings in the latest survey, Flora said.

“The findings make it clear that exposure to extreme or illegal content can happen to anyone, but it is significantly more common amongst younger people.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Follow Our Changing World on Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Our brains never touch the outside world.

We experience a perception of the world that the brain builds based on all the sensory inputs it receives, as well as existing knowledge.

This is how our sensory systems, like vision, work. We see things because light reflects off a surface and then bounces off the back of our eyeballs, but from there the brain does a lot of work to create an image and fill in the blanks.

These interactions of physical inputs, sensory systems and our brains allow us to develop our sense of self, and how we fit in the world. And this is why neuroscientist Professor Vincent Reid is totally fascinated about where and when this all begins.

Studying sight in the womb

Vincent, now head of the School of Psychological and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, spent 25 years of his research career investigating how infants learn, including how infants perceive the world through sight. But he realised that he, and others in the field, were working off assumptions.

There was this idea that newborn abilities and preferences in the realm of vision were rapidly acquired directly after birth. But, Vincent thought, could it be possible that these visual abilities and preferences already existed in the womb?

“And so that’s when I started looking at the human foetus and realised that we really didn’t know very much at all about what was going on in the third trimester of pregnancy,” Vincent said.

“Specifically when you had sensory systems that are operational. But at the same time, we didn’t even understand the environment in which they were processing information.”

In 2017 Vincent, then based at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom, did a world-first experiment to investigate whether foetuses would respond to certain light stimuli. He did this using lasers and ultrasound.

On ultrasound images a third trimester foetus’ eye in the womb appears as a large, round, dark circle. As the eye moves, light reflects off the lens – a bright disc on this dark ball. By tracking this movement, researchers can determine the direction in which a foetus in the womb is looking.

By shining a red laser with three dots against the womb, Vincent and his team were able to show that the foetuses displayed a preference for a “top-heavy” T shape, compared to the inverse.

At the time other researchers in the field challenged these results. But in 2025 a group in Italy saw the same response in their study.

It is an intriguing finding because newborn infants show a strong preference for looking at faces, thought to be one of these rapidly learned abilities post-birth.

However, if the preference for a “face-like” T shape already exists in the womb, this disrupts this idea of how the visual system develops.

Since those early findings, further work by Vincent’s group at the University of Waikato indicates that these third trimester foetuses also show an effect called “anticipation” where they react to a sound cue and look towards a light source before it switches on.

Part of the challenge in the field was that it remained unclear how much light actually gets into the womb, so Vincent set out to address this question by recruiting some mathematical colleagues.

A red moonlit night

Associate Professor Jacob Heerikhuisen’s research involves mathematical modelling of all sorts of different things. But modelling how light particles, called photons, would bounce, scatter and move through clothing and tissue to get into the womb was a new one for him and Dr Zac Isaac, who was doing his PhD research with Jacob at the time.

With Vincent’s help, the team fossicked around in various biology textbooks to find the light properties related to all the different layers – skin, fat, muscle, the wall of the uterus and the amniotic fluid.

Then they built a model to account for all these layers, set realistic parametres for each of them and investigated how much light would get through.

“The level of light is comparable to a night sky with a full moon,” Jacob said.

“So certainly when I go outside now, every time there’s a moon, I’m like, oh, yeah, this is like the amount of light that gets through to a foetus. It’s significant.”

Their model also revealed that the wavelength of light more likely to get through was in the red spectrum. Blue and green light did not appear to penetrate far enough.

The work has excited Vincent because of what it means for the environment within the womb that the visual system is already developing in.

According to this modelling the light that is getting through is enough for the foetus to have a visual experience, Vincent said, and he would like to know how that is shaping vision, even before birth.

From a psychology point of view, it was fascinating to think about, but the results have a practical application too, Vincent said, particularly in neonatal care units where pre-term babies are likely experiencing an environment very different to what they should be.

“This work can actually inform what those units should look like, what they should do… which then, in theory, would lead to downstream health benefits for those children.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Fundraising pages set up for some of the Mount Maunganui landslide victims’ families have raised thousands of dollars, with donors paying heartfelt tribute to those trapped by last week’s massive slip.

Six people were caught when a landslide came down at the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park, smashing into campervans, tents, vehicles and an ablution block at about 9.30am on Thursday, 22 January.

The victims have been named as Lisa Anne Maclennan, 50, Måns Loke Bernhardsson, 20, Jacqualine Suzanne Wheeler, 71, Susan Doreen Knowles, 71, Sharon Maccanico, 15, and Max Furse-Kee, 15.

A Givealittle page set up by Maclennan’s sister had raised almost $13,000 (12,876) within 13 hours for the Morrinsville teacher’s family.

“She lost her life trying to save everyone else,” the page said.

“We cannot put a value on the loss of a loved one but any donations will make a difference and help this whanau through this extremely difficult time.”

Many donors commented on Maclennan’s work with Morrinsville Intermediate School students over the years, while others paid tribute to the final acts of a “courageous, selfless woman”.

A separate page has also been set up “In Loving Memory” of Furse-Kee, with $35,435 donated to the teenager’s family in less than 15 hours.

Page creator and family friend Samuel Holliday wrote that he’d had the privilege “of seeing Max grow into the beautiful, much-loved child he is”, and said the family was “facing an unimaginable loss”.

“There are no words that can truly ease the pain of losing a child. Max was deeply loved, and his loss has left a hole in the hearts of his family, friends, and everyone who knew him.”

The funds raised would be used to help with immediate and ongoing costs, time away from work, and whatever support the family needed, the page said.

On Monday evening, about 100 people gathered at Auckland Domain to remember another Pakuranga College student and landslide victim, Sharon Maccanico.

Meanwhile, work has resumed to recover the six missing people, with tens of thousands of cubic metres of dirt to comb through.

Tauranga City Council is heading an independent review into the events leading up to the landslide and WorkSafe has announced it will look into the organisations involved in the holiday park.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Some of New Zealand’s least generous savings accounts are paying as little as 0.05 percent in interest.

A survey of bank rates showed the main banks have a number of products that offer very little return.

ASB’s Savings On Call account offers 0.1 percent.

ANZ has a Select account that pays 0.05 percent on balances over $5000 – there is a monthly account fee of $6 but that is waived if the monthly balance remains over $5000.

Westpac’s Simple Saver pays 0.05 percent – customers are sent “nudge” emails if they have higher balances to remind them of other options.

Co-Operative’s Smile On Call account pays 0.1 percent to balances over $4000.

Reserve Bank data shows the average rate across the market for unconditional savings accounts is just over 1 percent.

New Zealanders have almost $120 billion in savings accounts, a total that has increased over the past year.

Squirrel chief executive David Cunningham has previously said that people leaving money in low-paying accounts provide a lucrative income stream for the banks.

Banking expert at Massey University Claire Matthews said she had money in a Westpac Simple Saver account.

“I’ve just realised at the weekend how low the interest rate is. It changed substantially over 2025 as the OCR was cut and interest rates fell. I’m going to fix that shortly.”

Financial Markets Authority research showed across all age groups, people said that the highest interest rate was the most important factor in choosing a savings account.

But for those aged 65 to 74, the stability of the rate and how easy it was to access savings were equally important.

The FMA said the self-reported importance of finding a high interest rate peaked in midlife and declined thereafter as people began to attach more importance to other factors.

Lower-income earners also placed more importance on the ability to access savings than the rate they were getting.

The self-reported importance of a high interest rate increased with income, to a point, while the importance of access declined with income.

But Matthews said there could be a few reasons why people did not look for a better deal.

“Speaking personally, it is inertia – as far as I’m aware you can’t now open a Simple Saver with Westpac, so I don’t believe anyone would be actively choosing it. It’s possibly the same with similar accounts at other banks.

“So I think for most people it is likely to be historic, and they either haven’t looked at what interest rate they are receiving and the options available or they just haven’t worked up the energy to make a change.”

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said people might like the security of knowing they could access their money easily.

“People are clearly sometimes willing to compromise returns for access.

“There’s a wider conversation – people often talk about the lazy tax and how there’s all these people who pay the lazy tax because they don’t move their bank account, they don’t move their power bill or don’t move their internet or whatever. In dollar terms I completely understand it, but as someone who’s also tried to adjust some of these settings myself – it can sometimes take so much time.”

He said it could sometimes take a lot of effort to make a change.

Olsen said he kept some money in an account he was aware paid little interest.

“It’s a pretty small amount and so it is one of those things that it’s pretty minimal given I keep that as a bit of as emergency fund if I have to up and do something right now it’s always available.

“But if you’ve got half your savings or something in it and you’re hoarding that to buy a house or whatever and it’s not getting any interest, what’s the point there?”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Crews working on the Mount Maunganui recovery mission are hoping for sunshine on Tuesday, labelling moisture “the enemy”.

Work has resumed to recover six people presumed dead after a landslide at a Mount Maunganui campground last Thursday.

While the ground is slowly stablising, any rain risks further slips.

An independent review, announced by Tauranga City Council, will look at events leading up to the landslide. Meanwhile, WorkSafe says it will looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the Mt Maunganui holiday park.

Follow the latest in RNZ’s live blog at the top of this page.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Wild deer roaming the streets of suburban Whanganui are delighting some residents while raising concerns for others.

But authorities say there’s little they can do about the animals which are wandering off private farmland.

Paterson Street in the suburb of Aramoho borders steep farmland in East Whanganui.

Its manicured lawns and bountiful fruit trees have become a magnet for deer which have become a common sight in the neighbourhood.

Philippa Healy was a fan.

“We’re in Paterson Street just at the end of Kells Ave and very frequently we see the deer coming.

“It used to be just in the night time you’d catch them every so often, but now it’s even during the day they’re coming out and getting the plums off the trees and stuff like that, so it’s really quite cool.

“They’re just taking stuff that’s fallen on the ground and for us it’s not such a problem.”

Healey rushed to get her children every time she saw the deer, so they could see them too.

Near neighbour and evening worker Cherie Ball said deer numbers had been on the rise.

“When we do come home from work sometimes from 11.30pm until 1am we’ll just see them.

“They’ll be on the side of the road, so you’re always cautious when you come around the corner into Paterson Street anyway because sometimes they are in the middle of the road

“But they are babies at the moment and they don’t know any better.”

Jack Cade recently brought a house with down a right of way on Paterson Street which borders farmland.

“I didn’t know anything about the deer when I brought it, but soon to my amazement there was about 20 or 30 every morning.

“I’ve just kind of inherited them, but they’re quite good they keep the lawns down for everyone and it’s quite a unique characteristic for the place.”

Whanganui District Council said its animal management team only responded to reports of wild deer if they were creating a traffic hazard.

Operations manager regulatory and compliance, Jason Shailer, said in those instances it assisted, with police where appropriate, to reduce the risk to road users.

“Deer are classified as a pest species and management is the responsibility of the landowner when it becomes an issue.

“The council doesn’t have the authority to cull deer on private land and is not resourced to carry out pest control for private property owners.

Shailer said people concerned about deer on their property could consider altering their fences to keep them out

A couple of kilometres from Paterson Street, deer were also a common sight on Dehli Ave.

Hadi Gurton lived at the Dehli Village co-housing settlement.

They had tried fencing them out.

“We’ve been having the deer coming down quite a bit. My dog, Bella, love to chase them, but they do eat the trees.

“We’ve planted a lot of trees on the hillside there and they tend to browse the trees, so we discourage them.

“We’ve put deer-proof fencing all across the top of our section, but the come down and then go back up and actually get caught up there.”

He said every few years the settlement organised a hunter to cull deer on its land.

The Department of Conservation was responsible for wild animal management on conservation estate.

But there was no public conservation land within about 15km of Aramoho.

DOC referred RNZ to Horizons Regional Council.

Its team leader animal pests, Daniel Hurley, said it was similarly hamstrung.

“Horizons doesn’t have the authority to deal with deer on private land as they’re not included in our Regional Pest Management Plan, and controlling deer is up to the individual landowners or occupiers.

“If Aramoho residents do see deer requiring control within their suburb, they should contact the relevant landowner or occupier.”

Cherie Ball wouldn’t be reporting anyone, she’d like the deer to stay.

“We are getting quite a few deer now, but I actually quite like them. They don’t annoy us, they don’t bother our gardens or anything.

“It’s actually quite nice having the deer wandering around and a lot of people in this neighbourhood know about the deer, so they know at night time not to go speeding down the street and stuff like that.”

Hurley said the regional council was reviewing its pest management plan next year for the first time in a decade.

It would start collating community views on potential issues and possible solutions later this year, he said.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Former Dunedin mayor Jules Radich has been remembered as a passionate leader and a gentleman who always put his community first with a smile and a twinkle in his eye.

Radich died earlier this month while starting his second term as a councillor after an unsuccessful bid to keep the top seat in last year’s election.

The Dunedin City Council held a special meeting to pay tribute to him on Monday.

Dunedin mayor Sophie Barker admitted it had been a tough few weeks to come to grips with the significant gap Radich left behind.

They joined the council at the same time in 2019 and shared good times and bad.

“Jules had the city in his heart and people loved him for it,” Barker said.

He strove for balance and consensus from the start with good humour, she said.

“He knew I loved my op shops finds or Mum’s hand-me-downs, and was nearly always spot on with what designer I was channelling on a day. It was almost a pop quiz for him.”

Barker treasured their fight to stop the Dunedin hospital from being downgraded.

“Wearing those t-shirts at every opportunity, even getting very told off for wearing them in front of the government at an LGNZ [Local Government New Zealand] meeting. But determinately sticking to his guns over our campaign,” she said.

Cherry Lucas, who Radich’s deputy and reclaimed the role this term, said he liked to solve the issues of the city himself and she was honoured to serve alongside him.

“Jules, you taught me so much. I valued your wisdom, your positivity and your intellect,” she said.

Council chief executive Sandy Graham said his death had been felt at all levels of council.

She fondly remembered discussing his many ideas and passions, including how to tackle erosion at St Clair beach.

“I spent a lot of time with him and a great many hours exploring topics as wide ranging as Japanese art, wine, groynes, pipe design, how to win at underwater hockey, travel hacks and groynes again,” she said.

Councillor Andrew Simms described getting an unusual call from a friend of Radich, saying they were meeting on Wednesday to discuss an art installation idea.

“The art installation that he’s proposing is a set of telegraph poles leading into the sea somewhere between Middle Beach and St Clair, and I think that’s got merit ’cause … wedding photos in Dunedin have not been the same since those poles disappeared,” Simms said.

He invited other councillors to join their determined quest.

Former councillor Andrew Whiley said his friend made time for everyone.

“Walking down the street could take you some time. I thought I knew a lot of people in Dunedin but Jules and I together, it took us longer to get to coffee than to enjoy it,” he said.

Former councillor Bill Acklin said he cared deeply for the community and was not afraid of putting in the mahi during the 2024 floods.

“Jules was hands on with contractors, community members, all hours of the day and night,” he said.

He wanted to understand what more could be done to protect the vulnerable areas of the city, Acklin said.

Radich recently secured funding for pipes and pumps to help protect South Dunedin in the long term plan.

Councillor Mandy Mayhem highlighted how he advocated for the city’s homeless.

“I would see Jules often speak to people in the street, to buy them food and simply have the time of day for everyone,” she said.

But she also spoke about his sense of humour.

“My mum had one funny story of their old student flat days, many, many moons ago. If you asked Jules if there was beer in the fridge, he would go over, pick up the whole fridge, shake it, put it back down. If no beer bottles rattled, there was no beer.”

Councillor Lee Vandervis said he always did what he thought was the best thing to do.

“He had his assumptions. He had his views. He did his absolute best and we are all lucky to have had a genuine and decent bloke like Jules to be our mayor,” Vandervis said.

His partner Pam Walker thanked his “work family” for their beautiful tributes after accepting his certificate of service.

“When Jules was no longer mayor and taking on the councillor role again, he was so excited to be doing that. He still said he had so much to do, ’cause I was constantly saying ‘are you sure you want to do this?’. But no, he was just so passionate,” she said.

A by-election for the now vacant seat will be held in May.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Officials are warning people of artificial images circulating online claiming to capture the fallout of last week’s weather, including the Mount Maunganui slip.

Images on TikTok show scenes of destruction with mud and wreckage not actually visible at the site – with captions like “Mount Maunganui Campground. Prayers for those possibly trapped”.

They depict destroyed tents and campervans – but also some seemingly completely unscathed amidst the ruin surrounding them – as well as a raging waterfall of brown water rushing down a mountain, and emergency workers digging.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said it was aware some AI imagery “relating to the recent tragic weather events” was being shared online.

“It is important that the public has trust and confidence in reliable and accurate emergency information channels,” it said.

“In an emergency, our primary channel to get information out to the public is the media.”

NEMA worked closely with the media to ensure they provide verified, credible information to the public, it said.

“We encourage people to be vigilant, use trusted sources for their information, and find out if the source of information is credible before sharing it.

“We closely monitor what is being circulated during a response but we would encourage New Zealanders to call out suspicious images when they see them, or report them if there is a suitable way to do this.”

‘Check your sources’, AI expert says

Victoria University senior lecturer in AI, Dr Andrew Lensen, believed it was the first time AI images of a disaster in New Zealand had circulated online.

“But, and I always hate to say this, I’m not surprised,” he said.

“We’ve seen a lot of AI being used for all sorts of … image and video generation over the past year or so, most notably in things like politics, but I think disasters are unfortunately the sort of the next cab off the ranks.”

Lensen believed it would only get worse because it was so easy to create fake content.

“I think there’s also a question there, of course, as to why people do this. I think part of it is they get reactions, they … get clicks, they get engagement.

“But then there’s also of course some other people who have slightly more nefarious reasons as well.”

People who know Mount Maunganui or had seen the slip site would easily be able to tell some of the images were not real – but others, for example people who had never visited Aotearoa, may not.

Lensen said that had the opposite effect, too, with people from overseas seeing real images of the disaster online and believing them to be AI generated.

“My best advice is that we need to go back to those authoritative sources … what is NEMA reporting? What’s on the council’s Facebook page? What’s on the council’s website? What is Radio New Zealand or other public voices saying about this?” he said.

“You’ve got to check your sources, you can’t just rely on what someone you don’t know has posted, because it’s very hard to know whether or not it is real content.”

Netsafe, the online safety agency, had advice about how to spot AI-generated images and video, which includes looking for “strange details”, checking the source, and questioning who made it and why.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Mayor of Whangārei says the council will meet to discuss lifting the State of Emergency in the district.

Nearly twice the typical rainfall for the month of January fell on north eastern parts Northland over two hours last weekend.

Flooding and slips cut off communities and forced locals and stranded travellers to seek shelter in local marae and community centres.

Ken Couper said the council would hear advice from Fire and Emergency, police, Civil Defence and health care representatives.

“Part of [the] north east of our district has been really badly affected and for them it’s very, very real and we have to – and we will – look after them.

“For the rest of the district it’s been business as usual so maybe there’s an opportunity to shrink it down to the effected areas. We’ll have a look,” Couper said.

He said – on top of roading crews in the area – a team of about 25 people had come north from Auckland to assess buildings and the needs of the affected communities.

“We are making progress. Up till the end of Saturday there had been 34 assessments completed on houses. Five of them had been red stickered unfortunately – which means no access at all – 10 yellow with restricted access and 19 white ones – safe to enter but it would still pay the property owner to get them assessed,” Couper said.

Repairs to the Ngaiotonga Bridge – east of Kawakawa – had reconnected the towns of Ōakura, Punaruku to the rest of Northland, but a massive slip at Helena Bay hill was blocking access to Ōakura from the south and could take weeks to clear.

Couper said he was pleased that there was access – albeit restricted – about the district, but he said he was eager to see an outreach medical centre in Ōakura up and running to save people having to travel further in the difficult driving conditions.

Couper applauded the work of local marae in assisting locals and stranded travellers during and in the aftermath of the storm.

He said that this week the council would work towards restocking petrol and food for marae in the area – some of which were still hosting evacuated people.

“They’ve been outstanding. They look after the people, they’re open to everybody and they are well organised.

“After [cyclone] Gabrielle they went through an exercise of learning from that and they made sure they had provisions and the necessary things to cope and it stood them in good stead this time. They deserve a lot of credit,” Couper said.

Couper said the council was working closely with the Ngāti Wai iwi to make sure the marae were stocked with the supplies they needed.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A local council representative drove through the Mount Maunganui campground and directly past three slips about two hours before a deadly landslide, a camper who contacted emergency services at the time says.

The woman, who was woken by one of the victims, Lisa Maclennan, early that morning, has spoken to RNZ about efforts to raise emergency services earlier that morning, including her own call to police three hours before the landslide.

She has also provided the first images of the initial slips that caused the calls to emergency services.

The victims of the landslide have been named as Lisa Anne Maclennan, 50, Måns Loke Bernhardsson, 20, Jacqualine Suzanne Wheeler, 71, Susan Doreen Knowles, 71, Sharon Maccanico, 15, and Max Furse-Kee, 15.

The woman, who did not want to be named, said she had been at the campground for about three weeks and was staying right next to Maclennan and her husband.

She said she was woken shortly before 5am on Thursday morning to Maclennan banging on her window.

“She’s like ‘Oh I’m so sorry I’m waking you up’, but the slip had pushed her campervan about a metre forward, so she said, ‘I’m just waking everyone up because I think everyone should move’.”

The woman moved her campervan straight away and Maclennan’s campervan was moved parallel to the shower block.

The woman said the group then went to the office, but there was no one there.

She said Maclennan had tried ringing the emergency number at the campground and could not get hold of anybody.

The woman said Maclennan told her she was going to try call Civil Defence. It was at that moment the woman called police.

Shortly before calling police, the woman took some photos and video of one of three slips, including one right at her campsite. An image, supplied to RNZ, was timestamped at 6.15am and the video, which shows the slips, was taken a minute later.

A call log provided by the woman confirms she called police at 6.18am. The outgoing call lasted eight minutes.

“I explained to them about the slips. I said, ‘look, I understand that you guys will be really busy, and this might not be anything, but this is what’s happened here’. 

“It was enough to push the ladies’ campervan forward, and there’s a homeless man in the toilet block, and he was actually going crazy and sort of banging on the walls and smashing things.

“And so I said, maybe you should send someone to have a look at that, just in case. You know, there’s a lot of kids here… and they said, yeah, it is a really busy night. It’s been a busy night. It’s a busy morning, we’ll try and get a unit there.”

The woman said no-one arrived until about 7.45am, when she said she saw what she described as a ute that was sign-written with Tauranga City Council. The ute stopped and the woman says she called out, “Look, I don’t know if you can see them from where you are, but there’s these slips up here, I think, you know, someone should look at them.”

The woman was unsure the man heard her. The woman said the ute then drove through the Pilot Bay side of the campground slowly past the slips that she had filmed directly in front of several campsites.

“I figured, well, everything will be fine. Someone from the council’s come, they’ve seen the slips, he’s driven past them, he’s driven through the water that was coming down from that corner that collapsed. So I had no worries after that.”

The woman then had a shower and left the campground to visit her parents.

It was not until about an hour after the fatal landslide that she returned. She said the emergency services at the scene were “amazing”.

It was about midday that she discovered that Maclennan was missing.

“The group of people that was … camping in the area, were all in tears. There was an older couple that we were sitting with in there, and he was heartbroken. It was just terrible and so incredibly unfair.

“I don’t think there was many people that were in the surf club for the day that weren’t, you know, in tears. It was pretty difficult.”

She said Maclennan, who worked at Morrinsville Intermediate School was “being a teacher”.

“She took control. She was making sure everyone was safe. She was, you know, literally rounding people and making sure they were all safe, and being the organiser.

“Lisa [Maclennan] and her husband were amazing. And if it hadn’t been for them there, I would imagine that there would have been many more people.”

Looking back, the woman said she believed there should have been staff at the campground at all times, given the weather warnings.

“I know nothing about running camping grounds, but it seems like a no-brainer to have had people in the campground during a red rain watch and a state of emergency. 

“Either they should have evacuated the campground, which is great in hindsight, but at the very least somebody, there should have been a number of people that worked for the campground or the council on the ground during a state of emergency, because the fact that there was no one there made us all think maybe it’s not that bad.”

She said the days since the landslide had been “awful”.

“It’s dreadful, not sleeping. It’s terrible,” she said.

“I think it’s feeling extraordinarily lucky to not have been hurt and grateful that Lisa woke us up and then just incredibly sad for the families whose people didn’t get out.”

RNZ approached the Tauranga City Council and police for comment on Monday evening on the woman’s account.

“Once the recovery efforts are completed, we have secured the site and have geotechnical assessments that the landslide area is stable, there will be a process undertaken to examine the events that took place before and during this tragic event,” the council’s controller Tom McEntyre said.

“It would not be appropriate to make any comment now that could affect that process or pre-empt the outcome.”

In response to earlier questions from RNZ, Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler confirmed FENZ received a 111 call at 5.48am on Thursday, 22 January, from a person reporting a slip near the Mount Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park.

“Our call takers made contact with the Tauranga City Council, the landowners of the camping ground, and notified them of this information at 5.51am.

“The landslip that was referenced in the 111 call received at 5.48am did not impact life or property and therefore Fire and Emergency did not respond firefighters to attend, instead we notified Tauranga City Council as the landowner responsible.”

Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Tauranga City Council chief executive Marty Grenfell said there was no record of a 111 call being referred to the council.

However, a council statement released only hours later backtracked on this version of events.

“After further enquiries, we can confirm that the Tauranga City Council’s main Contact Centre received a call from Fire and Emergency New Zealand at around 5.50am on Thursday, 22 January.”

The council said the chief executive’s earlier comments referred specifically to information logged in the council’s Emergency Operations Centre, which did not receive a call.

At about 9.30am a slip came down at the Beachside Holiday Park at Mount Maunganui, smashing into campervans, tents, vehicles and an ablution block near the Mount Hot Pools.

WorkSafe’s head of inspectorate Rob Pope told RNZ’s Midday Report Tauranga City Council was one of the entities it needed to speak with and understand its part in the event.

When asked if it would be extraordinary for an investigation not to be launched given six people were presumed dead, Pope agreed but said they needed to understand the scope and context first before committing resources to a formal investigation.

A WorkSafe spokesperson told RNZ it was in the “very early stages” of assessing what its role may look like once the search and recovery phase was complete.

“We are currently bringing together a team of inspectors and will be working closely with New Zealand Police to determine next steps.

“We will be looking into the organisations that had a duty of care for everyone at the holiday park, and whether or not they were meeting their health and safety responsibilities.”

Currently, the focus needed to remain on the recovery efforts, the spokesperson said.

“When the time is right, our inspectors will begin engaging with witnesses and technical experts and gathering evidence from a range of sources including the organisations involved in the operation of the holiday park and the scene.

“In the meantime, our local inspectors have also extended an offer of support to Emergency Management Bay of Plenty and other agencies to ensure that workers involved in the response are kept safe and healthy.”

Pope told RNZ WorkSafe was working closely with police to coordinate their responses after the “incredibly tragic event”.

He did not have a timeframe for when a decision on a formal investigation would be made but said the inspectors would be working at pace and focused on providing the right level of confidence for the families who wanted answers.

“We will be committed to addressing this issue as quickly as we can.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report he supported Tauranga City Council’s decision to conduct a full, independent review into the landslide.

“There’s lots of concerns that people have about why they weren’t evacuated sooner. I think they are very legitimate, very good questions that need answers.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Just a day after performing a crude act in a social worker’s office, Everest Oketopa repeatedly groped a paramedic in the back of an ambulance.

He was so insistent that the healthcare professional had to move to the front of the vehicle to avoid him.

Recently, the Waikato man appeared in the Hamilton District Court for sentencing on charges of assaulting a probation officer, after punching him in the face, doing an indecent act, and indecent assault.

Judge Kim Saunders had to decide whether to hand down a prison term, which would likely see him freed on a time-served basis, or give intensive supervision to help with his rehabilitation.

The first incident, in October last year, involved Oketopa punching a probation officer in the face, without warning, while he spoke with him and his family.

The next day, he was in his social worker’s office speaking to her when he suddenly stood up and began playing with the drawstring of his pants.

He then performed an indecent act and was quickly asked to leave.

Later that same day, he called an ambulance to get a mental health assessment in hospital.

While on the journey, he touched the paramedic “a number of occasions” on her leg.

After telling him to stop and pushing his hand away, the victim ended up moving to the front passenger seat.

‘No one wants to see that’

Judge Saunders noted Oketopa had attended a restorative justice conference with all of the victims, “that seems to have been positive for all”.

He told them he was now committed to re-engaging in treatment programmes, focusing on his mental health, taking his medication, and respecting emergency and professional workers.

He also assured them that he would identify himself if he needed their help again so that the victim didn’t have to deal with him.

Oketopa was already serving a sentence of intensive supervision for charges of assault, shoplifting, threatening behaviour, and possession of an offensive weapon at the time of the recent offending.

“There’s no doubt that your offending, which began as it has in 2025, is a direct result of your deteriorating mental health.

“You have drug-induced psychosis and alcohol and poly-substance abuse disorder.

“You have a significant history of using alcohol and drugs, particularly cannabis and methamphetamine, since your early childhood.”

Judge Saunders said it was clear to her that there was a nexus between Oketopa’s drug use and his offending.

He also appeared remorseful.

She regarded his offending as spontaneous, but “determined conduct”.

“All indecent assaults are serious because you are touching someone who does not want to be touched.

“All she was doing was trying to make you as safe and comfortable as possible.”

As for his indecent act, “no one wants to see that”, she told him.

She convicted Oketopa, issued him a first strike warning on the indecent assault charge as it was a qualifying offence, and sentenced him to 18 months’ intensive supervision.

This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald.

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