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The prime minister says he has the full support of his caucus, as National MPs gather in Wellington for the first time in nearly three weeks.

Parliament’s first sitting day since 2 April comes after a 1News-Verian poll showing the government would be out of power, and a New Zealand Herald report the prime minister had evaded National’s chief whip, who was trying to tell him that caucus support was flagging.

Christopher Luxon has denied he was avoiding Stuart Smith, and was unaware he had been trying to get in touch.

As they arrived at Wellington Airport ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Monday, ministers Mark Mitchell, Simeon Brown, Chris Penk, and Paul Goldsmith all defended Luxon.

Chris Bishop, Todd McClay, and Nicola Willis have also put their support behind Luxon in interviews in recent days, while Erica Stanford, stood next to Luxon at the post-Cabinet media conference, said she had not had any conversations with caucus colleagues about whether Luxon should stay on as prime minister.

On Monday morning, Luxon told Newstalk ZB there were “probably five people” that were “moaning and frustrated”, a number he later walked back on by Monday afternoon.

The number, Luxon insisted, was in response to media reports he had seen.

Responding to the polling numbers and his personal approval ratings, Luxon was “absolutely” confident he would still be prime minister after the caucus meeting.

Follow the latest with RNZ’s liveblog 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

The prime minister says he has the full support of his caucus, as National MPs gather in Wellington for the first time in nearly three weeks.

Parliament’s first sitting day since 2 April comes after a 1News-Verian poll showing the government would be out of power, and a New Zealand Herald report the prime minister had evaded National’s chief whip, who was trying to tell him that caucus support was flagging.

Christopher Luxon has denied he was avoiding Stuart Smith, and was unaware he had been trying to get in touch.

“He hasn’t reached out to me. There has been no engagement with Stuart Smith from my office or with him,” Luxon said.

The pair were together in North Canterbury last Tuesday and Luxon said it was not raised, and he had not spoken with Smith over the weekend either.

“If there’s any issues that he had, he would have raised them with me,” Luxon said.

“I talk to my backbenchers all the time. I was with a number of them over the course of the weekend at a number of events. I reassure you, I have the confidence of my caucus, period.”

As they arrived at Wellington Airport ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Monday, ministers Mark Mitchell, Simeon Brown, Chris Penk, and Paul Goldsmith all defended Luxon.

Chris Bishop, Todd McClay, and Nicola Willis have also put their support behind Luxon in interviews in recent days, while Erica Stanford, stood next to Luxon at the post-Cabinet media conference, said she had not had any conversations with caucus colleagues about whether Luxon should stay on as prime minister.

“I think he’s doing an exceptional…” she began to say, before Luxon cut her off to ask if anyone had any other questions.

On Monday morning, Luxon told Newstalk ZB there were “probably five people” that were “moaning and frustrated”, a number he later walked back on by Monday afternoon.

The number, Luxon insisted, was in response to media reports he had seen.

“My comment was just in reaction to your media reporting quoting a number of sources that you said you had.”

Responding to the polling numbers and his personal approval ratings, Luxon was “absolutely” confident he would still be prime minister after the caucus meeting.

“I appreciate I’m not going to be the person that everyone wants to go to a beer with, but they know that I’m actually leading a government that is a great custodian of this economy. And in difficult and tough times, that’s what’s needed now: strong economic management and stable coalition government, and that’s what we’re delivering.”

Asked whether the matter would be raised at the caucus meeting, Luxon said there would be “pretty good” conversations, given the media interest that had been “sparked” over the last few days.

He would not expand on what would be talked about in caucus, but said the party had a good culture, and it had been “rebuilt and unified” over the last two-and-a-half years.

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

The Prime Minister says comments from Shane Jones warning of a “butter chicken tsunami” coming to New Zealand after the signing of the free trade agreement with India are unhelpful – but stopped short of saying whether he thought they were racist.

New Zealand First does not support the India FTA, meaning National needs Labour’s support to pass it through the House.

In a video circulating online, the New Zealand First deputy leader said his party would “never accept” the FTA, and that “unfettered immigration” would drive down the value of wages, clog up roads, and overwhelm the health system.

“I don’t care how much criticism we get. I am just never going to agree with a butter chicken tsunami coming to New Zealand,” Jones said.

At his post Cabinet media conference on Monday, Christopher Luxon said he had not seen Jones’ comments, but thought they were a “gross misrepresentation” of what the FTA was about.

“I don’t know. I’m just saying the immigration story that they are scaremongering around is absolutely false. We have taken them through the data, we have taken them through the details of that deal. We’ll continue to do so, because we would love them to rethink their position,” Luxon said.

“I appreciate they’ve got a pretty hard no against anything around free trade agreements. I just think that makes New Zealand poorer.”

Pushed on whether he thought Jones’ comments were racist, Luxon said it “doesn’t sound right,” and it was “alarmist” and “unhelpful” language.

“You can call it racist, you know, the colourful language from Shane Jones, we’re used to Shane Jones doing lots of oratorial flourishes as he is prone to do. But the bottom line for me is he’s wrong. There is not going to be an influx of immigration. This deal is well thought through.”

Luxon said he appreciated New Zealand First had its own position on the FTA, but that the position was “frankly wrong”.

“It creates huge opportunity for people that I would have thought New Zealand First would have cared about. Foresters, aquaculture, our farmers, our horticulturalists. This is a great deal.”

Standing next to Luxon, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said the comments were “not helpful.”

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

A new poll showing National sitting on just 30 percent, and the coalition unable to govern, has set the stage for a crucial week in Christopher Luxon’s primeministership.

This result is National’s worst in the1News-Verian poll since Luxon became leader in November 2021.

Labour is up five points on 37 percent, while National’s 30 is down four points since February.

For the other parties in the coalition, New Zealand First is steady on 10 percent, while Act has dropped two points to nine.

On the other side of the house the Greens and Te Pati Maori are on 11 and two, respectively.

It gives the centre-left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori the seats needed to govern with 66 compared to the coalition’s 58, if an election was held today.

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

A new poll showing National sitting on just 30 percent, and the coalition unable to govern, has set the stage for a crucial week in Christopher Luxon’s primeministership.

This result is National’s worst in the1News-Verian poll since Luxon became leader in November 2021.

Labour is up five points on 37 percent, while National’s 30 is down four points since February.

For the other parties in the coalition, New Zealand First is steady on 10 percent, while Act has dropped two points to nine.

On the other side of the house the Greens and Te Pati Maori are on 11 and two, respectively.

It gives the centre-left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori the seats needed to govern with 66 compared to the coalition’s 58, if an election was held today.

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

Scott O’Donnell would have been paid tens of thousands of dollars to be on KiwiRail’s board. But he missed large chunks of its meetings and quit after only eight months.

When Scott O’Donnell was appointed to KiwiRail’s board in July last year, a substantial conflict of interest plan was required.

Some of the 10 companies O’Donnell is involved with supply services to KiwiRail.

Board chair Suzanne Tindal expressed concern about O’Donnell’s numerous business interests before his appointment.

The three-year appointment, by Rail Minister Winston Peters, went ahead regardless. But O’Donnell’s conflicts would see him excluded from 15 agenda items over six board meetings. He was absent for a further 19 items for other reasons, such as travel, bringing the total number of agenda items he was not present for to 34.

In March, O’Donnell resigned to spend more time on a new business venture in Australia.

In a brief resignation note, he told Tindal he was sad to leave but would be happy to assist KiwiRail from outside the board – “just call”.

It marked the abrupt end of an appointment dogged by speculation about his ability to perform his board duties while managing so many conflicts of interest.

‘Frankly unmanageable’ conflicts of interest

Victoria University of Wellington senior research fellow Max Rashbrooke said O’Donnell’s appointment was the most egregious example of someone with significant conflicts of interest being appointed to a public board he was aware of.

“It seems very wasteful to go through all the administrative hassle of appointing someone and then the even more enormous hassle of trying to deal with their frankly unmanageable conflicts of interest, only for them to step down in very short order.”

Rashbrooke said considering how extensive O’Donnell’s conflicts were, it was debatable he was able to perform his duties in a manner the public would expect.

O’Donnell is one of the four directors of Dynes Transport Tapanui, which donated $20,000 to NZ First in July 2024.

At the time he was appointed to KiwiRail’s board, Peters said O’Donnell would be effective in his role and that the donation played no part in the appointment.

While KiwiRail confirmed the number of agenda items O’Donnell missed during his tenure, they could not immediately say how many he was present for. This would need to be addressed as an Official Information Act (OIA) request, it said, which can take up to 20 working days for a response.

It also could not immediately say what O’Donnell was paid. KiwiRail’s most recent annual report shows board members received between $57,000 and $62,000 for a full year’s tenure. However, Newsroom reported board member fees were set to increase to more than $86,000 for 2026.

RNZ’s request to KiwiRail for an interview with Tindal was declined.

Tindal has, however, previously expressed concern about the impact of O’Donnell’s conflicts.

During Parliament’s ‘scrutiny week’ in December last year, where MPs publicly examine public agency performance, she said O’Donnell’s conflicts of interest affected the board’s capability and efficiency.

Tindal said “importantly” that directors needed to consider whether they could discharge their duties as required in accordance with the Companies Act.

She reminded the MPs present that she wasn’t responsible for selecting board members.

“Just for clarity, as you all know, I do not appoint directors.”

Documents released under the OIA to RNZ show Tindal went as far as checking publicly available information on the Companies Office register and hand-drawing what she described as an “interests diagram”.

The conflict of interest management plan set up for O’Donnell by the Treasury included seven mitigations.

ACT MP Simon Court, who raised questions about the impact of O’Donnell’s conflicts during scrutiny week, said Tindal’s response had shown O’Donnell’s appointment was unworkable.

“While I was surprised at her answer, I think, based on what Radio New Zealand has since uncovered, that it’s quite clear that the board was struggling.”

Due to the small talent pool of experienced people in New Zealand, conflicts can arise, Court said, but it was obvious the board had made every effort to work around them.

“In the end, it’s up to the minister proposing an appointment to be satisfied. I understand the minister was satisfied at the time, but, as things have worked out, it’s proven to be unworkable.”

A spokesperson for Peters said despite the high number of agenda items O’Donnell was absent for, he was effective in his role.

“We remind you that Mr O’Donnell would still be a KiwiRail director if he did not need to allocate more time to an Australian venture.”

Rashbrooke said an overhaul of the rules around appointments was needed with a focus on avoiding conflicts of interest by selecting different candidates rather than managing conflicts.

“Sometimes the talent pools will be shallow, that is absolutely true, but they’re not so shallow that they contain only one person.”

Scott O’Donnell was approached for comment.

The conflict of interest management plan included the 10 companies outlined below.

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

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has blamed leaks about his leadership on a “small handful of dissatisfied MPs” and says he will address the matter with his caucus at a meeting tomorrow.

In a round of interviews with morning media on Monday, Luxon insisted there was “no risk” of him standing down or being rolled from the top job.

“That’s not going to happen,” he told Morning Report. “I have the backing of my caucus.”

Asked whether he would put his MPs’ loyalty to the test and call a confidence vote, Luxon refused to say: “What we do in caucus is up to us, but we’ll have a good conversation.”

He said he did not know which MPs had been leaking to the media.

“In every political party, there’ll be a small handful of people who either are disappointed they weren’t made ministers, or are concerned about being in marginal seats.

“I want every one of my MPs back in Parliament, and to do that, the party needs to do better, and that’s what our focus is going to be between now and the election.”

Over on NewstalkZB, Luxon suggested the caucus discontent was confined to “probably five people that are, you know, moaning and frustrated”.

The comments came after a shocker 1News-Verian poll published on Sunday, showing National crashing to 30 percent – seven points behind Labour – and without a pathway to power.

Luxon questioned the findings on Morning Report, saying it was “quite different” from other polling which showed the coalition’s re-election.

“Frankly, I just don’t believe that New Zealanders want a Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori coalition.”

On his personal popularity, Luxon acknowledged “not everybody… wants to invite me over for a barbecue”, but he said New Zealanders understood the coalition – under his leadership – was the “best custodian of the economy” during tough times.

National ministers stress unity and discipline

Arriving at Wellington airport on Monday morning, National campaign chair Simeon Brown declined to speculate on how many of his colleagues were leaking to the media, but he said Luxon had his full support.

“We have a great leader,” he told reporters. “As a caucus, we must come together and work as a team, back our leader and deliver for New Zealanders.”

Brown dismissed the findings of “one poll”, saying National was focused on the 7 November election.

“As the leader has said, we all want to do better. We’re very focused on supporting him and making sure we’re focused on the issues that matter to New Zealanders.”

Senior National MP Mark Mitchell said the party would only hurt itself by changing leader by demonstrating a lack of discipline, focus and unity.

He “absolutely” ruled out putting himself forward to take over as prime minister and said he had no idea which MPs were speaking out of school.

“I’m not going to speculate on disgruntled back benches,” he said. “There is no witch-hunt going on.”

Mitchell went on: “Quite simply, there will be a talk, I’m sure, on Tuesday around the importance of unity and discipline.”

He insisted nobody had called him over the weekend about leadership.

“I haven’t had MPs ringing me saying that they’re frustrated or they’re upset, or they’re doing numbers, or there’s a coup, or there’s anything like that happening at all.”

His colleague Paul Goldsmith told reporters he was “absolutely not” one of the MPs moaning about the prime minister and had “no idea” who they were.

“If you’re a caucus of 49, there will always be one or two discontented people, but we’re absolutely rock solid behind the prime minister.”

Asked about the five or so MPs allegedly leaking, newly appointed Cabinet minister Chris Penk said the perfect number would be zero.

“Anything more than that shows that people aren’t focused on what they should be doing, which is, you know, working hard for New Zealand.”

Penk said all National MPs needed to do better in talking about the important issues “as opposed to ourselves”.

“I hope we’ll have a discussion about caucus discipline [on Tuesday], because clearly at least one colleague and maybe a few need to be reminded of that.”

ACT leader and deputy prime minister David Seymour told reporters he was not worried about National’s polling.

“There’s been four polls this week, and one of them is bad, and three of them are good. So I guess we’ll just keep working, huh?“

Asked whether the coalition could collapse if Luxon was ousted as prime minister, Seymour said that was just “mindless media speculation”.

“It’s not on the table right now.”

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

A new poll showing National sitting on just 30 percent, and the coalition unable to govern, has set the stage for a crucial week in Christopher Luxon’s primeministership.

This result is National’s worst in the 1News-Verian poll since Luxon became leader in November 2021.

Labour is up five points on 37 percent, while National’s 30 is down four points since February.

For the other parties in the coalition, New Zealand First is steady on 10 percent, while Act has dropped two points to nine.

On the other side of the house the Greens and Te Pati Maori are both unchanged on seven and two, respectively.

It gives the centre-left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori the seats needed to govern with 66 compared to the coalition’s 58, if an election was held today.

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

The Green Party is calling for a national plan to electrify homes, transport and industry with natural energy, as a response to the fuel crisis.

Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have delivered their ‘State of the Planet’ speeches in Wellington.

The annual address is the Greens version of the sweeping ‘State of the Nation’ speeches delivered by leaders of other political parties.

First to speak, Davidson said the Middle East war was a human catastrophe and New Zealand’s dependence on unpredictable global fossil fuel markets needed to end.

“What is happening in the Middle East is, first and foremost, a human catastrophe,” she said. “Civilians are being killed and injured, livelihoods are being destroyed, international law is being broken.

“The warnings about fossil fuel dependence, about food sovereignty, about what happens when a small country ties its fate to extractive, corporate and ultimately unstable global systems… those were not abstract concerns. They are what families across this country are living through right now.”

She said households were feeling the brunt of the fuel crisis’s economic impacts.

“The cost of food, of energy, of rent keeps climbing, while wages stay flat. Communities that were already struggling are being hit hardest by rising price, by wars they did not start, by a global fossil-fuel economy that treats ordinary people as an afterthought.

“These crises do not sit apart from each other. This is not a theory, it is people struggling to cover the weekly shop.”

Swarbrick spoke about the party’s call for a National Electrification Plan to build energy security.

“We must electrify everything we can,” she said. “We need homegrown, sustainable resilience in our energy system, powering everything we do.

“We don’t need to depend on expensive fossil fuels hauled from the other side of the planet. We have everything we need here, at home.

“No-one is hoarding, attacking, or starting wars over sun, wind, water and geothermal energy. They don’t come through the Strait of Hormuz.

“We can immediately harness the power of our sun to power our homes, schools, farms and marae.”

She said such an electrification plan would cut household power bills and build energy security.

“There is no trade-off between fixing the cost of living, addressing the fossil-fuel crisis and climate crisis. They are the same problem, all driven by the same rules that prioritise profit over people and planet,” Swarbrick said.

“We can lower the cost of living by rolling out rooftop solar and batteries for all homeowners, renters, marae, schools, farms.”

The Green Party is also calling for the government to boost funding for public transport networks it had previously declined.

“It would have cost $150 million to expand the networks, just three quarters of just one of the subsidies the Luxon government is instead dishing out to support fossil-fuel dependence.”

As for leaders’ input on the global stage, Davidson said the Green Party believed New Zealand should take independent, principled stances.

“We believe in building an international rules-based order that protects the environment, upholds human rights and supports enduring peace-building work,” she said.

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

Parliament’s grounds in Wellington are a knoll of relative peace in a dense governmental zone that includes cathedrals, courts, the National Archives and National Library, university schools and numerous government office blocks.

Imaging how it once was is not easy.

Elizabeth Cox is the author of Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street , which uses an astoundingly detailed 1890s map of Wellington to anchor details of life in the Victorian city. It is a beautiful and fascinating insight into the early and often ugly days of Wellington.

The House chatted with Cox about what the Parliamentary neighbourhood was like in the 1890s. You can hear the conversation at the link above, and read a little about that and earlier times below.

To set the scene, let’s first go back in time just a few decades further.

Pre-colonial Wellington

Before Europeans flooded in, Pipitea (where Parliament is now) was close to the sea, looking down on mudflats and streams that wended down from Tinakori Hill. The area was a centre of Māori habitation and food production.

Parliament’s own little hill had ponds and two creeks running down to a small beach, just a stone’s throw away.

The stream’s Māori names are not appealing. Waipiro stream (meaning putrid, stinking water) ran right through where Parliament House now stands.

Tutaenui stream (great amounts of excrement) ran down what is now Bowen Street (alongside the Beehive). Make of that what you will.

The hill rises up along Molesworth Street. It was known as Kaiota (unripe, food of dubious quality).

The pallisaded Pipitea Pā was a block or so east of Parliament, alongside the Pipitea stream. The pā had been established in the 1820s by Ngāti Mutunga, but by 1840, was occupied by Te Ātiawa, who had been pushed south out of Taranaki by the expansion of Waikato tribes.

A 2021 cultural impact assessment for a new Tenths Trust office development on Molesworth Street noted “the pā extended over much of the flat known as Haukawakawa [later Thorndon Flat] with extensive gardens spreading to what is now Parliament grounds and up to what is now the Wellington Botanic Garden. Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga also had kāinga/villages at Tiakiwai [now off 191 Thorndon Quay] and Raurima, near the corner of Hobson Street and Fitzherbert Terrace”.

There were also kāinga at Kumutoto stream, which is now Woodward Street off Lambton Quay.

When the somewhat unscrupulous rake Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s Wellington Company sold off parcels of Wellington it didn’t really own, he took some prime acres for himself – including on the beach at the far northern end of Lambton Quay, and between Hobson Street and the beach at Thorndon Quay (about where the Australian High Commission is now).

The small hill the Beehive sits on was set aside by the Wellington Company for government. This was the centre of things, where they put the provincial government, and later the governors’ house.

Nowadays, the area is the seat of Parliament and government.

Mr Ward’s map

Fifty years after 1840, almost everything about Wellington had changed radically. The coastline had been pushed back a few blocks through reclamation, the beaches were gone, streams were culverted, the forested hills were bald, and peppered with sheep and cattle, and both Europeans and buildings were thick on the ground.

The city had already spread through Newtown, and was stretching rapidly into Berhampore and Kilbirnie.

Cox met me at Parliament to wander the area and imagine what Parliament’s neighbourhood was like by the 1890s. There was a lot to take in.

We know a lot about Victorian Wellington because of an outrageously detailed map drawn by Thomas Ward.

“Thomas Ward was a surveyor and an engineer,” says Cox. “He approached the city council to say, ‘How about I make a map for you?’, because he was disgusted by the quality of all the maps that were around Wellington at the time.

“Originally, he was just going to draw the town acres and the subdivisions and the roads, but about four months later, he approached the council again and said, ‘I’ve had this fabulous idea, how about I draw all the buildings as well?’, so he drew every single building in Wellington.

“Every outbuilding, every outdoor toilet, every shed, every commercial building, every house and then he went further. He also told us what the walls of every building were made of, what the roof was, and then how many rooms every house had and how many floors there were, but it’s even more valuable, because for the next 10 years, he was updating the map.”

That map, and its additions and annotations are a treasure trove for historians and anyone vaguely curious about the past.

Victorian Pipitea and Parliament

Inside Parliament’s own boundaries, only one building from the period remains – the Parliamentary Library, opened in 1899 and built in part with bricks made by prisoners at the Mount Cook Jail (on the current site of Wellington High School).

The building’s plan was downsized halfway through construction in an effort to save money. As a result, architect Thomas Turnbull demanded his name be removed from the foundation stone.

There are two statues in Parliament grounds. Both are of premiers who died in office – John Ballance and Richard Seddon.

Seddon was a racist, sexist, populist and popular politician, who lived just up Molesworth Street, after spurning Premier House. His influence on Parliament and its neighbourhood was strong.

The library building was built after Seddon demolished part of the former provincial chamber without first asking permission from the MPs. Within eight years, the wooden buildings on either side had also burned down, leaving just the library.

The current marble edifice known as Parliament House was constructed during World War I and it too was downsized during construction, when money ran short.

In the 1890s, Sydney Street ran right across Parliament’s lawn and through the space that is now Parliament House. It began at Thorndon Quay and joined up with what is now upper Bowen Street, towards Tinakori Road.

It was later cut in half and renamed.

The southern side of Sydney Street, where the Beehive now is, was not part of Parliament. Government House, where the governor lived with his family and staff was “an incredibly public place to live”, says Cox.

“The wives and kids and staff would wander around in the garden, and kind of be on public display.”

The Governors were all minor English nobility sent to administer the colonies. They weren’t always keen to be here.

Lord Onslow arrived in the middle of one of Wellington’s regular typhoid epidemics (spread via poor sewerage). After his eldest son and an aide-de-camp fell ill, the family made themselves largely absent and their snub made them unpopular.

New Zealand didn’t have a locally born governor general until Arthur Porritt in 1967. (The title changed from governor to governor general in 1917).

Governors general now live in relative seclusion in Mount Cook, near the Basin Reserve, on grounds that Ward’s map marked as reserved for an “asylum”. Make of that what you will as well.

The Pipitea neighbourhood

To the north of Parliament is Hill Street, which now has two competing cathedrals, cheek by jowl. The Anglicans arrived later, but Catholics were already there in 1890 (although their first cathedral burned down in 1898).

Alongside the cathedral was a convent, a presbytery, a residence for priests and a fee-paying academic girls school. The Sisters of Mercy also ran the large St Joseph’s Orphanage and Industrial School.

The word ‘school’ is a misnomer.

“It was not a very pleasant place at all, I should think,” says Cox. “It was sort of like an orphanage, but you didn’t necessarily have to have your parents [die] to end up there.

“Sometimes, if your mother just wasn’t coping or if your father left the family, and… your mother couldn’t afford to look after you, they would take your children off you and put you in one of these industrial schools. Even from seven-years-old, they were learning how to work, they were learning how to knit and sew to become good wives and good domestic servants.

“It was a lot of focus on training them up to be domestic servants.”

Behind Parliament is Museum Street, named because, at the time, it was the location for the national Colonial Museum. It was set up by James Hector in 1965, as a reference museum of New Zealand’s natural history, geology and mineral resources.

Hector was then director of the Colonial Survey. He was also chief scientist, head meteorologist and looked after the botanical garden, ran the precursor to the Royal Society and was the university chancellor as well.

Cox reports that, as it was a reference museum, there are descriptions of it as “being an incredibly boring place to visit” and that was in spite of there being “massive whale skeletons hanging up and stuff like that”.

To the east of Parliament is Molesworth Street, which runs down a gentle slope to what was once the beach at Lambton Quay. It has a few shops and apartments today, but is busy with government buildings.

In the 1890s, it was “lined with small shops, commercial buildings and businesses, including herbalists, drapers, bootmakers, coal dealers, fishmongers, a horse bazaar, butchers, a dairy selling milk, cabinet makers and a number of Chinese fruit sellers. Many shop owners lived above their shops”.

Behind the shops on the eastern side was a dense neighbourhood of tiny dwellings, described at the time as a “rookery” and, as the Evening Post described it then, “a hotbed of vice, a place where people of the most depraved character flaunted themselves in broad daylight”.

That densely packed slum was sandwiched between Parliament and the then-Anglican Cathedral (now Old St. Paul’s on Musgrave). On the Anglican side was Thorndon Flat, where the wealthy lived along Musgrave and Hobson streets.

“There were lots of very unkind jokes about how convenient it was that for all these prostitutes that they were living between the Anglican Cathedral and Parliament, how handy it was,” says Cox.

The community of tiny lanes and smaller houses was more than a slum. It included the poor, working single women and ethnic communities.

“There was a really interesting mix of people living in those blocks,” says Cox. She notes one example.

“At the time, they were often called in the newspaper ‘Syrians’, but they were actually Lebanese Christians. There’s a quite wellknown Lebanese Christian community that lived in Dunedin [at that time], but I found a whole group of them living here in this poverty stricken area.

“[Another] group of people that were living there were lots and lots of prostitutes, there were lots of brothels. Ward, as well as drawing the massive great big parliament buildings, he would come along and actually draw every single tiny little house.

“He would draw a two-roomed house – not two bedrooms, but two rooms in total – and its outdoor toilet and everything, so you could see how incredibly packed those blocks were.”

Those lanes no longer exist. The poor were chased away and their homes demolished, with no plan for where they might go instead.

“The city, particularly under pressure from Seddon… started to do this thing called ‘street widening’, which was sort of a euphemism for pulling all the buildings down. They built Aitken Street and a whole bunch of the other streets around here in order to justify pulling down those slums.”

Reading Elizabeth Cox’s engrossing Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street and pouring over its detailed maps, you might notice mirrors for modern news, some eerily specific and others just typically human.

Government buildings demolished by populist leaders without permission, developers naming things after themselves and their families, landmarks named for questionable people, fly-tippers, crazy fads, bad housing, poor planning, suburban development across the most productive land, and a failing city sewerage system and resultant disease… and they say history never repeats.

All the tragedy, comedy, glory and absurdity of a city. A marvellous read.

You can find out more about Elizabeth Cox’s book here and here.

You can compare Thomas Ward’s 1890s map to present day Wellington at the Council’s Historic Map Viewer.

You can read about Parliament’s own history here.

*RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.

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

Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick are expected to deliver their ‘State of the Planet’ speeches in Wellington.

The annual address is the Greens’ version of the sweeping ‘State of the Nation’ speeches delivered by the leaders of other political parties.

This year’s speech has been billed as “a chance to take stock of where we are, where we are heading, and what needs to change”.

You can watch Davidson and Swarbrick’s speeches from about 2pm in the player above.

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

A user-pays bus service for Manawatū children no longer eligible for government-funded services to schools in Palmerston North will stop at the end of the coming school term, starting Monday.

The company that runs the service, Uzabus, has cited low usage and rising costs.

Some children in country areas of Manawatū were, from the start of the year, ruled ineligible for buses funded by the Ministry of Education into the city for schooling after officials reviewed routes for compliance with its policies.

Some teens in Tangimoana and Rongotea, the ministry found, should have attended secondary school in Foxton, as that was their closest college. They’d only be eligible for a ministry-funded bus if they went to class there.

But, families were reluctant to change their children’s schools, so the community organised a user-pays bus service, which initially cost $525 a term.

Weekly passes were also available.

Early in the school year RNZ spoke to families who had taken loans or raised savings to afford the new service, but use of the service gradually dropped off, parent Nikita Walker said.

She helped get it up and running and is disappointed it will stop.

“There’s nothing else for us after that, I don’t think, unless a miracle happens,” she said.

“That was our little glimmer of hope. I don’t really know what we’re going to do.”

Walker’s daughter Jasmine attends Palmerston North Girls’ High School and didn’t want to change for her final two years.

Walker said 50 to 70 families initially used the user-pays service, but that number had halved as costs started to bite.

The service was also more expensive – a pass for term 2 was $604, an $80 rise, she said.

A Uzabus statement said the service was a trial to see if it could become a sustainable route.

“However, due to lower-than-expected usage, the service has not reached a level that allows it to continue operating viably.

“In addition, rising operating costs, particularly fuel, have further impacted the sustainability of the route,” the company said.

The bus company understood the news might be disappointing and apologised for inconvenience caused, saying it was grateful to the families who supported the trial.

The ministry has since halted reviews of bus routes, but has said changes already introduced will stay.

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

A global security expert said China’s complaint, over what it calls the New Zealand Airforce’s repeated “harassment” near its airspace, could be sign of Beijing’s other concerns with New Zealand foreign policy settings – including its attitude towards the war in the Middle East.

Spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Guo Jiakun said that a P-8A anti-submarine patrol aircraft of the New Zealand Air Force recently conducted repeated close-in reconnaissance and harassment in the airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.

Guo claimed that New Zealand’s actions had disrupted the order of civil aviation in the relevant airspace.

A spokesperson for the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) said New Zealand’s P-8A maritime patrol aircraft has been undertaking activities that monitor North Korean sanctions evasions at sea in North Asia under UN Security Council resolutions, which it has contributed to since 2018.

The University of Otago’s Professor Robert Patman said what appears to be an over-reaction from China to a routine flight could be a sign of something else “irritating the Chinese leadership”.

He pointed to underlying tensions following the joint statement by New Zealand and Australia’s defence ministers in March, which called behaviour by China in the South China sea as unsafe and unprofessional.

Professor Patman said the criticism of China, alongside the absence of any criticism about the US breaking international law in its attacks on Iran, would not have sat well with Beijing.

He said while in the past, Beijing would see New Zealand as more balanced in its foreign policy compared with Australia – whose relationship with the US is “too close” for China’s comfort – that perception of New Zealand may be changing.

Professor Patman said the very stern rebuke from China didn’t come out of nowhere.

“The response this time may have been much more intense because they may have believed that previously when China, when New Zealand was perceived to be pursuing a more independent foreign policy, they were less concerned,

“But they may be of the view that New Zealand is increasingly tightening its cooperation with the likes of Australia and perhaps the Trump administration, and that would make China much more uncomfortable than previously,” he said.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the Embassy of China in New Zealand said in a statement that the activities of the New Zealand military aircraft had posed “a threat to China’s sovereignty and security”.

Foreign Affairs minister Winston Peters’ office has been approached for comment.

A statement from his office said it had nothing to add to NZDF’s response on the matter.

The defence minister Chris Penk’s office also said it had no further comment beyond NZDF’s statement.

International relations expert: China-Japan tensions complicates things

Professor David Capie, the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, said China’s reaction is unsurprising, as it has expressed unhappiness about these flights in the past.

“But these are flights that take place over international waters and in international airspace and are perfectly lawful,” he said.

However he added that the language used by Beijing this time is stronger – using a word like “harassment”.

Professor Capie said reports by China’s state media has pointed to the fact that the flights are taking off from Japan’s Kadema airbase, and that Japan had welcomed New Zealand’s continuing role in enforcing UN sanctions on North Korea.

He said he wonders if the tense China-Japan relations at the moment is a complicating factor in China’s response to New Zealand.

“Japan-China relations right now are really tense, probably the worst they’ve been in decades.

“I think that that the Japan context is sort of giving this a kind of an extra sharpness… I mean they’ve always disliked these flights, but I think right now there’s the Japan dimension has given it an extra sort of sharpness,” he said.

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

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has admitted that the costs of running the government’s fast-track process are ”well in excess” of what it expected.

The agency was granted a $10 million Crown loan for the set-up costs associated with running the process.

The loan term was for five years and the EPA had said it would need 50 applications a year until 2029 for it to pay the loan back.

A Select Committee review of the EPA reveals that, between December 2024 and December 2025, 49 applications were lodged.

The report said that ongoing operational costs were recovered by charging applicants a levy and application fee.

”The intention is for the regime to be cost-neutral, so that operational costs are entirely recovered from applicants. Applicants cover actual and reasonable costs incurred by government agencies, local authorities, panel conveners, and expert panels.”

The EPA told Select Committee members that that operational costs were “well in excess of what we first modelled”.

“‘The EPA said that, initially, costs incurred by agencies, local authorities, and expert panels for each application were projected to be around $250,000, whereas now it estimates some applications to incur costs of more than $500,000.”

Some Select Commitee members had heard that some councils felt unable to pass the application fee on to applicants.

“Consequently, councils have absorbed some of the costs. The EPA commented that it has seen councils taking time to adapt to the fast-track regime, and that they are often still approaching applications as if they were under the Resource Management Act 1991,” the report said.

“The EPA told us it has had “reasonably tense” conversations with some councils encouraging them to pass costs on.”

The EPA was approached for comment.

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

China says it has lodged a serious complaint over the New Zealand Air Force’s alleged repeated harassment near its airspace, which the Defence Force denies.

Spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Guo Jiakun said that a P-8A anti-submarine patrol aircraft of the New Zealand Air Force recently conducted repeated close-in reconnaissance and harassment in the airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.

“The action undermined China’s security interests, increased risks of misunderstanding and miscalculation, and gravely disrupted the order of civil aviation in relevant airspace,” said Guo Jiakun.

“China has responded in a resolute manner and lodged serious protests with New Zealand.”

Guo Jiakun said China urged New Zealand to abide by international law and basic norms governing international relations, respect China’s sovereignty and security concerns and maintain the safety and order of civil aviation.

China’s Ministry of National Defence spokesperson, Zhang Xiaogang, said such malicious acts by New Zealand harmed China’s sovereignty and security, gravely disrupted the order of civil aviation in relevant airspace, and may easily trigger maritime and aerial incidents.

“We urge the New Zealand side to impose stricter discipline and supervision over its frontline forces, immediately stop irresponsible acts that harass and jeopardise civil aviation safety.”

A spokesperson for the New Zealand Defence Force said New Zealand’s P-8A maritime patrol aircraft has been undertaking activities that monitor North Korean sanctions evasions at sea in North Asia under UN Security Council resolutions.

The spokesperson said New Zealand has contributed to UN sanctions monitoring since 2018.

“These activities are not directed at China but rather aim to monitor evasions of United Nations sanctions on North Korea, which do occur in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.”

The spokesperson said the New Zealand Defence Force crew operated professionally and in accordance with international law and civil aviation procedures for the region.

“NZDF has reviewed the routes flown and all available information. We have no data which indicates they disrupted civil aviation.”

The Defence Force said New Zealand takes an open and transparent approach to these operations.

“As part of this, there has been dialogue between New Zealand and Chinese officials, and we have made it clear that this is a longstanding deployment enforcing UN-mandated sanctions on North Korea.”

The spokesperson said NZDF won’t be commenting further on the specifics of those discussions, or on the details of the operations.

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