Source: Radio New Zealand

This story has been updated to reflect that Compass Group is still on the list of providers chosen to provide lunches to high schools, intermediate schools, and comprehensive schools in 2026.

The principal of a school which served up a contaminated meal from the government’s free school lunches programmes says she’s hurt by David Seymour’s comments against her.

The School Lunch Collective told RNZ it was investigating a “food quality issue” after mouldy mince was served up to students at Haeata Community Campus on Monday.

The Collective represents Compass Group, which was contracted to provide government-funded lunches for the Christchurch school.

David Seymour, who is the Associate Education Minister, spoke to First Up about the lunches on Tuesday morning, and accused the school’s principal Peggy Burrows, of being a “media frequent flyer”.

“It will be investigated but I also note this particular principal is a frequent flyer in the media complaining about quite a range of government policies… I think people need that context.”

In response, Burrows said she refused to get involved in a public stoush but added: “I am an educationist, not a politician. I am here to advocate for this community”.

“I must admit I was a little bit hurt to be described in that matter from a person who holds a significant portfolio in education and is, at the moment, the deputy prime minister,” she said.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met Mr Seymour personally or had a conversation with him.”

Haeata Community Campus cafe staff member Elise Darbyshire (left) and principal Peggy Burrows (right). Photo: ADAM BURNS / RNZ

Burrows said children were wary of the lunches, with several students telling RNZ they had been put off trying the meals again.

Year six student Emily said Monday’s lunches looked “liquidy” and she saw something mysterious and green.

“It makes me feel disgusted and gross,” she said.

Another year six student Tamara said she did not feel like eating a school lunch.

“They just put me off after hearing some have a kind of food poisoning or stuff in them,” she said.

“You’d think if they are going give us free meals they would give you good quality meals that aren’t going to make you sick.”

Year 9 student Alani said she usually ate the lunches if she was hungry, but declared she would never eat them again no matter how starving she was.

Year 7 student Bridie was not been put off the lunches, but said it was clear that many of her classmates were giving them a miss when she took a meal of butter chicken on Tuesday.

“Other people were staring at me, they were like, ‘oh look at her she’s taking a lunch’. My friends were like, ‘Bridie don’t, don’t’, but I ate it and then other people started grabbing them,” she said.

Burrows said there had been no jump in absences and no reports of children needing to treatment for food poisoning.

New Zealand Food Safety officers visited the school on Tuesday, along with representatives from Compass Group, which was contracted to provide government-funded school lunches.

Burrows said ready-to-eat food was delivered daily around 10am by Compass and Compass took away all left-over food and packaging at the end of the day.

“We have absolutely no responsibility for what happened. We’re not shying away from the fact that it has happened but it sits fairly and squarely with Compass,” she said.

MPI involved

The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), confirmed it would carry out checks of lunches at the school on Tuesday.

Food safety said it was working with the Ministry of Education and the National Public Health Service to establish the facts.

It said there was no evidence of any wider food safety issue at this stage.

New Zealand Food Safety deputy director-general Vincent Arbuckle said an investigation had begun.

“We are working with the Ministry of Education and the National Public Health Service to establish the facts. There is no evidence at this stage of any wider food safety issue,” he said.

Child unwell

The mother of a girl who ate one of the mouldy lunches said she was “appalled” by the situation and her daughter was now unwell.

Rebecca Mckenzie, told Morning Report, her 12-year-old daughter Aurora, ate one of the meals on Monday and was now unwell.

“She is not looking good at the moment. She has a very queasy tummy and a temperature of 39, looking really quite sick, I’ll be ringing my doctor once it’s open.”

Mckenzie said her daughter had eaten just over half of the meal before throwing it out.

“She said her one didn’t look mouldy but it tasted very disgusting. She said it looked very undercooked which is quite normal with what they get served there.

“We rely on these meals and to have this is absolutely appalling, but unfortunately David Seymour wanted to cut the budget back and give us these not so nice meals.”

Earlier this year, the principal of the Christchurch school asked to get out of a contract with Compass Group following several weeks of problems and “disappointing” service, but this was denied by the government.

Compass was not included on a list of providers chosen by the government to provide primary school lunches in 2026, but associate education minister David Seymour told First Up that Compass would continue to provide lunches to high schools, intermediate schools, and comprehensive schools.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Police will be auditing internet usage of the most senior police officers in the country over the last 12 months, starting with the Police Commissioner, RNZ can reveal.

It comes as Commissioner Richard Chambers says he’s asked for a “closer look” at the Independent Police Conduct Authority’s (IPCA) scathing report released last month to see whether there’s anything from a “criminal liability perspective”.

Chambers sat down with RNZ on Tuesday to discuss his first-year in the job.

RNZ recently reported that 17 staff are under investigation in relation to “misuse and inappropriate content”. Three of the staff are facing criminal investigations.

It follows an audit of staff internet usage sparked by the resignation of former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming, who recently pleaded guilty to possessing objectionable publications, including child sexual exploitation and bestiality over a four-year period.

Asked about the number of staff under investigation, Chambers said it was “disappointing, and it falls well short of expectations”.

“We have a code of conduct for a reason. If any of that behaviour is found to be criminal, we’ll take action. But those audits came about because I decided that we needed to put in place systems and processes and audits to ensure that we identified any inappropriate behaviour.”

Chambers referenced one of the recommendations in the IPCA report, which was to “sustain the good progress” on implementing recommendations from the rapid review into police information security controls and implement a practice of auditing the systems’ use by those officers being considered for promotion to the ranks of, at least, superintendent and above as well as staff with security clearances.

Chambers said he was going “one step further”.

“As an executive leadership team recently, we decided that actually we’re going to step beyond the people that are applying for promotional opportunities, and we’re going to have a look anyway.

“So, one of the things that we have decided to do, and I’ve communicated this out, is that for Deputy Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner, District Commanders and Directors, we are going to have a look at internet access over the last 12 months, because that’s the right thing to do. We have to be confident that at the senior levels of the organisation, Superintendent and above that, there’s nothing to see here, nothing untoward.”

Chambers said police were prioritising the checks.

“So, I’ve said you can start with me, and then those that are in the process to apply for other leadership roles, which we’ve had recently, Assistant Commissioner and also District Commander roles advertise so applicants for those senior roles.

“We are running checks now and then I’m hopeful, probably after Christmas, we will get the capacity to run the rest through whether they are sworn superintendent or civilian equivalents, and above. We will run them all through as quickly as we can.”

The IPCA concluded that once a decision was made in October 2024 to launch a proper investigation into allegations of sexual offending by McSkimming ,senior officers, including former Commissioner Andrew Coster, “attempted to shape its approach so as to bring it to a rapid and premature conclusion”.

They did not find any “collusion”, rather a “consistent pattern of behaviour driven by a common mindset and perspective”.

This, the IPCA said, were concerns that it could end with “unjustified victimisation of the Deputy Commissioner”.

Asked whether there needed to be further investigations into the conduct of the senior staff members, Chambers said he had asked a Detective Superintendent to take a “close look” at the IPCA report and provide advice on whether or not there there was any matter “that needs to be looked at from a criminal liability perspective”.

“Anything that’s remotely appears to be criminal offending is serious, but it may or may not be the case, but I need to let some of my most senior investigators who are very, very good at what they do, let them do their job and provide advice to me, which I will then take on board,” he said.

“It’s how close is some of that activity that we know through the investigations and the IPCA report, how close is some of that activity potential judicial processes that’s what we’ll look at and I’ll let my investigators do their job and then provide guidance to me.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Researchers say the practice of virginity testing is happening in New Zealand and it’s harming women.

The Helen Clark Foundation is calling for urgent law changes to better protect victims of sexual violence and reduce offending rates.

The think tank’s report, Addressing Sexual Violence in New Zealand, makes a number of recommendations, including adopting a clearer definition of consent in law, banning sexually explicit deepfake abuse, and eradicating virginity testing.

Researcher Sophia Harré said they did not know the extent of the practice in New Zealand but were concerned it is happening in some communities.

“There have been cases where medical professionals have been approached to conduct the proceedure and they’ve declined. We’ve heard talk that it might be happening by family members in community.”

She said virginity testing was when a woman or girl is subjected to a physical inspection of their hymen, while virginity policing involved checking for blood after sexual intercourse.

“These stem from myths around hymens that they will bleed or will be damaged when sexual contact occurs, these are incorrect.”

Harre said the practice was damaging, especially in cases involving sexual assault.

“It can have quite significant impacts on their position in society, it can impact their relationships, it can have consequences on their education and career opportunities later in life.”

Virginity testing is not illegal in New Zealand, and the UN has called on governments to ban the practice altogether and to carry out awareness campaigns.

The report recommends a number of steps in line with UN recommendations, including improved education for medical practitioners and legal professionals, research to inform community-led interventions, and legislation to ban virginity testing.

Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan has lodged a members’ bill which seeks to amend the Crimes Act to criminalise virginity testing.

The proposed the Crimes (Virginity Testing Practices) Amendment Bill “seeks to protect vulnerable women and girls by amending the Crimes Act 1961 to introduce new offences that criminalise virginity testing and the related practice of hymenoplasty”.

Harré said the foundation supported the Bill as long as there was education and consultation for communities that may be practising virginity testing.

“There’s a risk that if we go really hard on legislation and ban it without having proper consultation with these communities that it could be driven further underground.”

Auckland clinical nurse specialist in family violence, Kathy Lowe, was interviewed for the foundation’s report and has been educating both medical professionals and communities about virginity testing for 30 years.

“For me it’s not a women’s issue it’s human rights issue, it affects men and women. Imagine if we told men that they had virgin semen and the first time they lost it they weren’t a virgin any more and they had to go to a doctor to prove that they were still a virgin before they were allowed to be married,” she said.

“It doesn’t make sense and yet we’re still doing that to women.”

Lowe said it was not possible to tell by looking at a hymen whether somebody has had sex.

“The majority of people say the first time you have sex that bit of skin gets broken then you’re not a virgin anymore and that’s how we can tell whether somebody’s a virgin, by that piece of skin being broken,” she said.

“The hymen is not a skin, it’s not a membrane, it’s not a seal. It’s actually a collar of stretchy tissue just at the entrance of the vagina…when you’re born with a hymen, the hymen has a hole the middle of it, you are born with the hole.”

There is no data about the practice of virginity testing and Lowe said it was a taboo subject in many communities.

“I truly don’t know which cultures do this and don’t but I think every culture in New Zealand has a myth around virginity.”

She hears about the prevalence of it from nurses and doctors who are asked – and decline – to conduct such examinations.

Lowe said it was also unclear if the practice of hymenoplasty was still conducted. The last time she heard of a case was 2013.

“They get the edges of the [hymen’s] hole and they stitch it together so that when you do have sex you’re going to bleed for sure and it’s going to hurt like hell because it’s scar tissue. In their mind they think they’re making themselves a virgin again when in fact the hymen was never sealed to start with.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The consequences of chronic methamphetamine use are already visible in hospital wards, and it’s about to get worse, an emergency department doctor says.

Dr Paul Quigley told a symposium on reducing drug harm on Monday the country was facing an impending health crisis on par with smoking-related lung disease.

“We are seeing the chronic effects of drug use, that’s often in terms of mental health – so people developing ongoing forms of schizophrenia – [but] we are now seeing the hard effects of long-term methamphetamine use.

“We’re seeing people with cardiomyopathies, heart failure.” Dr Paul Quigley.

Quigley told RNZ methamphetamine was particularly “cardio-toxic”, affecting the heart in two key ways through accelerated ageing and exhaustion.

He said the ageing heart meant heart disease was showing up 10 to 15 years earlier than expected.

“So we’re seeing people in their mid-40s who are regular methamphetamine users having heart attacks as if they’d be in their 60s.”

He said meth also increased people’s heart rate and blood pressure, and sustained use literally “exhausts the heart” resulting in cardiomyopathy (a type of heart failure) and in extreme cases, heart transplants.

Quigley said those most at risk of heart disease weren’t “your weekend warriors”, but almost daily methamphetamine users who’d been using for more than a decade.

He said data showed acute meth use in New Zealand was on the rise and the major concern was the impending burden on the healthcare system and society – a cost already seen in countries where meth use was high.

“You should look at this like smoking. People smoked in the 40s and 50s … then later we had this terrible burden of lung disease from the effects of smoking. And it’s going to be the same.

“If we have increased meth use now, we should be looking at, ‘Well, what’s going to happen in 10 to 15 years time?’

“We’re going to have this much larger population of patients with these heart conditions … and it’s affecting parts of our society that are already struggling,” he said.

“We’ve just got through the smoking crisis – in terms of lung disease is decreasing – but it’s just going to be replaced by this new disease.”

The Reducing Drug Harm in Aotearoa Symposium – hosted by the Public Health and Forensic Science Institute – featured a range of experts from the frontline of festival drug checking and wastewater analysis, to the police’s drug intelligence office and international experts on early warning systems for new and harmful drugs.

National Drug Intelligence Bureau analyst Kylie Collins spoke to current and emerging drug trends in New Zealand, highlighting a spike in meth consumption in July 2024 that almost doubled methamphetamine use nationally – and has continued.

Collins said the vast majority of New Zealand’s supply came from overseas and the increased use had coincided with a drop in price for the drug.

She said alongside increasing seizures of the drug, meth-related hospitalisations had also been on the rise.

“However, many hospitalisations stem from chronic or very heavy use. So with the recent increases in meth consumption we expect to see even bigger increases in hospitalisations in years to come.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A man has been charged for allegedly swallowing a Fabergé locket worth more than $33,500 during a theft at a store in Auckland.

Police were called at 3.30pm last Friday to the store in the central city.

The 32-year-old man was accused of picking up a Fabergé James Bond Octopussy Egg pendant and swallowing it.

Court documents reveal the pendant was worth $33,585.

Do you know more? Email finn.blackwell@rnz.co.nz

An online listing for the locket said it had been crafted from 18ct yellow gold and set with 60 white diamonds and 15 blue sapphires.

A golden octopus inside the locket was set with two black diamonds for eyes.

Officers from the Auckland City Beat team were on the scene minutes later, and arrested the man, police confirmed.

He had been charged with theft, and was remanded in custody when he appeared in Auckland District Court last week, he was expected to reappear next Monday.

Police told RNZ the pendant had not yet been recovered.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Tertiary Education Commission has taken the unusual step of giving multiple tertiary institutions permission to enrol extra students this year as they try to meet a boom in enrolments.

The commission’s chief executive, Tim Fowler, told Parliament’s Education and Workforce Select Committee institutions could enrol up to five percent more students than the government had agreed to fund them for.

“We have always set that as the outer boundary marker above which institutions cannot go without our permission, and it has been extremely rare for us to allow institutions to go above that in any year,” he said.

But Fowler said this year it allowed many more institutions to exceed the five percent limit and it would likely do the same next year.

He said an increase in the number of school-leavers had driven enrolments up across the entire tertiary sector, including polytechnics and private tertiary institutions.

But the number of people in workplace learning, such as apprenticeships, had dropped because many employers had less work and had chosen not to employ apprentices, Fowler said.

He said the number of people in work-based training dropped about 15 percent a year for three consecutive years.

Fowler said the government had provided sufficient funding for 99 percent of projected enrolments.

He said university enrolments rose four percent this year and only one of the eight institutions had enrolled fewer students than the commission had agreed to fund it for this year.

“What we’re mostly seeing is them over-delivering against their small budgeted deficits or small budgeted surpluses,” he said.

Fowler said university finances were constrained but only one was rated as “high risk” financially.

“We have two universities low-risk, we’ve got one high, one medium-high, and the rest medium,” he said.

Fowler said universities’ ability to deliver on capital spending was restricted and they were increasingly reliant on income from foreign students.

He said the institutions were generally managed and governed well.

Fowler said for years the commission had encouraged institutions to improve their students’ course and qualification completion rates and those figures were starting to improve.

He said the date for dissolving super-institute Te Pūkenga had been pushed out to the end of March 2027 because next year’s election could make it difficult to take the final steps necessary to wind it up at the end of 2026.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The hot start to summer is expected to take a turn, with thunderstorms, hail and even a chance of tornados for the North Island.

MetService said an active low pressure system is expected to move onto central and northern New Zealand during Wednesday and move to the east of the country on Thursday. The system is expected to bring heavy rain with thunderstorms and strong winds.

MetService Meteorologist Devlin Lynden said there is a moderate risk for thunderstorms in the North Island bringing heavy rain, small hail and even a chance of small tornadoes.

Lynden said the conditions were the “right set-up” for small tornados, with tornadoes more likely to form in coastal areas of the North Island.

A look ahead to Wednesday shows several Severe Weather Watches and Warnings in place as a large low pressure system crosses the North Island

Heavy Rain, Strong Winds, and thunderstorms with downpours and hail are all likely for the North Island pic.twitter.com/7WiaZhLl3M

— MetService NZ (@MetService) December 1, 2025

MetService has issued several weather warning and watches across the North Island.

Bay of Plenty has been issued an orange heavy rain warning for most of Wednesday, with up to 120mm of rain expected.

A heavy rain watch has been issued for Auckland, Waikato, central North Island, Taranaki, Wairarapa and Wellington for Wednesday.

A strong wind watch has been issued for Northland, Auckland, Wellington, Wairarapa, Taranaki, eastern areas of the Tararua District and Hawke’s Bay for Wednesday.

While the North Island may be in for the brunt of it, the South Island gets its share of rainy weather too.

The upper parts of the South Island may also see a period of heavier rain on Wednesday associated with the low to the north.

The low gradually moves off to the southeast on Wednesday night, and conditions will ease behind it, before starting to clear through Thursday morning, with many places seeing drier weather and some sunshine return.

However, strong to gale southwesterly winds will persist, particularly for Wellington, Wairarapa, Northland and Auckland; they will keep the temperatures capped towards the end of the week.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Victoria University will knock down the abandoned Gordon Wilson flats later this month.

The 1950s-era apartment complex has sat unlived in on Wellington’s hills just below Victoria University since 2012 after they stopped being used for social housing because they were deemed to be too unsafe to live in.

The government carved out a section of the law in June so the earthquake-prone abandoned heritage building could be demolished by its owner, Victoria University.

When the changes were revealed senior Cabinet minister Chris Bishop posted a photo to social media which included his face photoshopped onto a man swinging on a wrecking ball with the buildings in the background.

Victoria University has decided it will start demolition of the building and the nearby McLean Flats later this month.

Vice-Chancellor Nic Smith said the university had looked at all options to restore the sites available to them, but stated they were not financially viable.

“The structures suffer from extensive rot, asbestos, seismic issues, and other critical problems that make restoration too costly.”

Smith acknowledged the decision would disappoint some people, but noted the future of the land would provide student accommodation in the future.

“We look forward to working with our community on future plans which will provide the next generations with an outstanding student accommodation and learning experience right next to our Kelburn campus.”

The university’s chief operating officer Tina Wakefield said the work ensuring the safety of the community was the highest priority through the upcoming demolition work.

“There is significant work ahead to ensure that the demolition will be carried out with the utmost care, beginning with site preparation work in the coming weeks.”

“We recognise and understand that demolition work may be disruptive for our neighbours, and we are fully committed to keeping them informed and minimising that impact.”

In October the family of the man the Gordon Wilson flats were named after said they wanted the building to be redeveloped, rather than demolished.

Architecture Centre spokesperson Peter Parkes told RNZ the apartment complex still had value.

His group believed 80 percent of the building’s concrete structure could be retained.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Wellington City Council is installing motion-activated cameras in the Town Belt on Mt Victoria after a spate of vandalism which it says appeared to have targeted mountain bikers.

Over the past few days, the council said logs, stumps and other obstacles had been placed on several mountain bike trails in places where, if hit by a mountain bike rider, they could cause serious injury.

The council’s parks manager Bradley Schroder said timber had also been fastened to trees at a height with the apparent intention of injuring riders.

He said fencing and signage had also been removed mainly around the V, Rockdrop and Shuttlecock tracks. However, he cautioned riders that it should not be taken for granted that other trails have not been vandalised.

Schroder said the police had been notified and cameras would be installed adjacent to the bike trails with the aim of identifying the culprits.

“We are extremely concerned about what’s going on – we’re in touch with the mountain biking community and we’re warning riders to take extra care while using trails on Matairangi/Mt Victoria.”

He said the mountain bike trails on Mt Victoria were designed and heavily-signposted to minimise the risk of riders and other Town Belt users from coming into conflict.

“We know some people in the community don’t like that the Town Belt is a shared space for walkers, runners, riders and other track users but we won’t tolerate people doing things to put other people in harm’s way.”

Schroder urged the public to call the council on 04 499 4444 if they spotted any vandalism or suspected any person of performing vandalism.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The World Health Organization has released its first guidelines on the Ozempic-type drugs, conditionally recommending their use for long-term treatment of obesity.

To tackle what it said was a serious health challenge, its guidelines said Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy could be used by adults as part of a comprehensive approach. That included healthy diets, physical activity and support from health professionals.

Obesity was associated with 3.7 million deaths worldwide in 2024 and was major driver of diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, it said.

“Our new guidance recognises that obesity is a chronic disease that can be treated with comprehensive and lifelong care,” WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

The WHO also called for fair access to the drugs and said they should be made affordable for those who needed them.

Peter Shepherd, professor of molecular medicine and pathology at University of Auckland, said obesity affected between 20 percent and 30 percent of the New Zealand population and was major driver of health problems.

He told Morning Report the therapies weren’t without problems, but “nothing else has really worked”.

“Levels of obesity globally have continued to rise despite the best efforts of diet and exercise and behavioural programmes to do otherwise over the years.

“And now we for the first time are seeing a reduction in levels of obesity, in the US of all places, reductions in people eating at fast food, restaurants, etcetera. So these drugs really do work.”

At a cost of $6000 a year in New Zealand, Shepherd said the drugs were out of reach for many people, but the price was likely to fall.

“These drugs are coming off patent as many biosimilars in the pipeline in China already, for example. So in the next few years, we’re going to see these prices come down even more.”

Australia’s medicines regulator has issued a safety warning over the potential risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviours when taking Ozempic-style drugs.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration said people using the medicines should tell their health professional if they experienced new or worsening depression but stressed there was enough evidence to conclude the drugs caused those changes.

Shepherd said there was limited evidence of risk of suicidal thoughts among those taking the drugs.

There were gastric side effects and “more worryingly” people seemed to be losing not just fat but muscle mass.

“Particularly for older people, loss of muscle is not a good idea. So these probably will need to be supplanted by different types of weight loss drugs going forward that don’t have these side effects”.

The drugs were originally designed for type 2 diabetes treatment but became known as a weight loss solution.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A cross-sector group concerned about the impact of forestry in Tai Rāwhiti is urging the government to stump up $359 million.

The transition advisory group, known as TAG, was established in response to a ministerial inquiry, which labelled the problem an “environmental disaster”, and is tasked with transitioning 100,000 hectares of land back into permanent bush to stabilise its most vulnerable slopes.

Members include forestry owners, Māori landowners, farmers and experts from Gisborne District Council and Ministry for Primary Industries.

• Over 20 percent of Tai Rāwhiti is covered in pine trees, many were planted after Cyclone Bola in 1988 to help with erosion control as the region has the most slip-prone land in New Zealand.
• The region’s steep hill country loses 55 million tonnes of topsoil every year and post-storm clean-ups (Cyclone Gabrielle and subsequent events) have exceeded $110 million in debris and sediment removal alone.
• It’s estimated that without intervention, cumulative storm-related damages over the next 30 years could exceed $1 billion.
• It was so bad in 2023 after Cyclone Gabrielle and Hale that a ministerial inquiry into land use was launched, it found lives were put at risk, and said the time to fix this “environmental disaster” is running out. It recommended planting the worst areas back into native bush.
• In response, a TAG was set up and has identified up to 100,000 hectares of forestry and pastoral land that needs to be taken out of production and planted in permanent bush.

The cost of transitioning this land was initially estimated to need $200m of government funding, however the figure has grown to nearly double that.

“We’re looking at $359m of Crown co-investment over the next 10 years and this is backed by our own regional, private, and also philanthropic funding that is already flowing into the region,” Gisborne District Council chief executive Nedine Thatcher Swann said.

“What our business case shows, though, is that for every $1 spent, we actually save $4 on the recovery. This programme is about avoiding more than $1 billion in future storm damage and recovery costs.

“It is about ensuring that we’re putting investment into preventative work rather than being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, literally picking up large woody debris when the next event happens.

“It’s not an if, it’s a when,” she said.

The business case sets out a 30-year plan to stabilise around 100,000 hectares of erosion-prone land. It includes a $20.5m early-start package to begin work in the most at risk-areas and proposes a $359m Crown investment over ten years, as well as regional and private contributions estimated at more than $240m.

The group has sent the proposal to the prime minister and minister for Primary Industries.

“We have had conversations with them, and we understand that we’re in an incredibly tight economic times,” Thatcher Swann said.

However, she said the plan will save money in the long run.

The group is urging the government to seriously consider the implications of what will happen if Tai Rāwhiti’s current land use doesn’t change.

“Our region agrees that we do need to transition some of the most vulnerable land to permanent cover and we’re ready to go. The plan’s in place, our partnerships are strong, the momentum is real and we just need the Crown to come and back us.”

A spokesperson for Forestry Minister Todd McClay said that the case study has been received and will be evaluated as part of ongoing work in relation to sustainable land use.

“Unfortunately the group’s expectation of taxpayer support seems unrealistic, however no decisions have been made at this stage,” they said.

Government no ‘white knight’ for landowners

Dan Jex-Blake farms in the Waingake Valley about 50 kilometres away from Gisborne and is part of the TAG. He’s experienced the impacts of forestry slash on his land and is keen to see the problems with land use addressed.

“We need to change the way our land is used in this region because the material damage caused to those downstream, certainly from forestry, is huge,” he said.

But he’s realistic when it comes to government funding.

“As a landowner I’m not thinking the government is going to be a white knight and come along and pay for everything,” he said.

However, the farmer told RNZ what will help is commercial opportunities to incentivise the changes.

“That could put up an economically rationale and logical case for landowners to go ‘that piece of land is not sustainable for long term farming or trees and there are options to get other income from it’.

“If we don’t do something it’s an indictment on us as a generation … the goal is aspirational but we need to get on and get going with it,” he said.

Farm consultant and chief executive of Tairawhiti Whenua Charitable Trust, Hilton Collier, is also in the TAG.

“There’s certainly a lot of ambition and a lot of hope for better outcomes.

“It’s been a challenging journey and there’ve been some very difficult discussions at times given the tensions between farming and forestry,” he said.

Collier said ultimately everyone agrees a better relationship with Tai Rāwhiti’s land is needed to reduce and mitigate excessive sedimentation and woody debris entering waterways.

But he warns that land use transition will take time, and people must be patient.

“We won’t get an instant fix and everyone needs to understand we are not going to have a solution tomorrow. It’s probably going to take 20 to 50 years, or longer, before we have the issue addressed properly.”

‘We have concerns’: Eastland Wood Council

Eastland Wood Council chairperson Julian Kohn, who also a TAG member, said Gisborne forest owners recognise that land-use transition is needed, particularly around vulnerable land that’s been identified.

“But we have concerns. The business case understates the potential risks to our region’s economy and we believe landowners need to be considered more – this transition includes land owned by iwi as well as mum and dad investors around our country.

“We also think poplars, willows, redwoods and other timber should be included in the replanting along with natives for the permanent vegetation,” he said.

Outside of the land use change, Kohn said there is still a place for sustainable forestry in Tai Rāwhiti.

“The forestry industry wants to be part of the answer to keeping soil on the hills, protecting waterways, and supporting our region’s economy.

“This region recently had a sawmill reopen which created 110 jobs. Our port, heavily reliant on forestry, is also undergoing a multi‑million‑dollar upgrade for its Twin Berth Project,” Kohn said.

He’s confident there is capacity in the region to support the forestry industry, and said Eastland Wood Council wants to be part of the future of Tai Rāwhiti.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A shop owner is in hospital after being stabbed during a robbery in the Christchurch suburb of Opawa.

Police were called to the dairy on Opawa Road at about about 5.40am on Tuesday.

By the time police got there, the alleged offenders had fled.

RNZ understands the store owner was punched in the face and stabbed on the hands during the attack.

An RNZ reporter at the scene said blood was spattered on the inside of the shop.

Police are still looking for the people responsible.

A worker nearby said the dairy has been targeted by thieves before, but nothing as horrific as this morning’s attack.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Wellington City Council is installing motion-activated cameras in the Town Belt on Mt Victoria after a spate of vandalism which it says appeared to have targeted mountain bikers.

Over the past few days, the council said logs, stumps and other obstacles had been placed on several mountain bike trails in places where, if hit by a mountain bike rider, they could cause serious injury.

The council’s parks manager Bradley Schroder said timber had also been fastened to trees at a height with the apparent intention of injuring riders.

He said fencing and signage had also been removed mainly around the V, Rockdrop and Shuttlecock tracks. However, he cautioned riders that it should not be taken for granted that other trails have not been vandalised.

Schroder said the police had been notified and cameras would be installed adjacent to the bike trails with the aim of identifying the culprits.

“We are extremely concerned about what’s going on – we’re in touch with the mountain biking community and we’re warning riders to take extra care while using trails on Matairangi/Mt Victoria.”

He said the mountain bike trails on Mt Victoria were designed and heavily-signposted to minimise the risk of riders and other Town Belt users from coming into conflict.

“We know some people in the community don’t like that the Town Belt is a shared space for walkers, runners, riders and other track users but we won’t tolerate people doing things to put other people in harm’s way.”

Schroder urged the public to call the council on 04 499 4444 if they spotted any vandalism or suspected any person of performing vandalism.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

More people are listening to Radio New Zealand, with the broadcaster saying it has hit a target for live listeners a year ahead of schedule.

GFK survey figures released on Tuesday show 500,300 in a typical week for RNZ National aged 10 or older, up from 475,800 in the last survey.

“We’ve achieved our November 2026 goal a year early with these latest results, and we now want to build on that success in 2026,” RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said.

RNZ’s flagship programme Morning Report has 13,000 more listeners, a rise of 4 percent.

“Further changes to programming and the introduction of new presenters and correspondents in 2026 will help confirm RNZ National as the home of trusted news and content for New Zealanders,” Thompson said.

Auckland has by far the biggest lift in live radio listeners, up 16,700 from 116,000 last survey to 132,700 in the latest figures.

There was growth in all major programmes.

Morning Report had 13,600 more listeners across the country, Nine to Noon 20,200 more, Checkpoint another 18,100 and Saturday Morning 4,400.

RNZ National and RNZ Concert have a combined weekly audience of 584,300 listeners.

The two have a 12.7 percent combined share, up from 11.3 percent.

However, RNZ Concert had 154,100 listeners which was down from 170,400 in the last survey.

RNZ said when all its platforms are combined, it is now reaching 83 percent of New Zealanders a month aged 18 or over.

Separately, it has also had back-to-back record digital growth in digital viewers.

A total of 1,698,000 New Zealanders aged 15+ visited rnz.co.nz in October, the highest ever monthly audience for RNZ’s website following another record month in September.

The survey, known as Survey 3, was conducted between 10 August and 1 November.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Regional councillors who’ve just been sworn in have been shown the writing on the wall by the government, which is plotting a swift end to their terms

It’s been billed as the biggest shakeup in local government since amalgamation in 1989.

But at the end of the day, “all the government’s really announced is work to start a brain storming session,” says Stuff political reporter Glenn McConnell.

Simpler, more cost-effective local government is the stated aim from the ministers involved; local government minister Simon Watts and the man in charge of resource management reform, Chris Bishop.

The media release from the Beehive didn’t mention the word ‘amalgamation’ once, but that’s effectively what it will end up being.

“It is a huge announcement,” McConnell tells The Detail, “because it’s effectively a key part of New Zealand’s democracy … regional councils, local government being completely overhauled, reformed, so that … probably the next time a local government election comes up, you won’t be voting for who is on your regional council.”

He says it’s probably fair to say this is effective amalgamation but “the government hasn’t come out and said ‘we want to amalgamate all these councils; we want to merge regional and district councils across the country’.”

There are 11 regional councils in New Zealand – Auckland, Marlborough and the Chatham and subantarctic islands don’t have them.

McConnell says Chris Bishop raised a pretty good point when he asked if people actually know who they’re voting for on a regional council – who can name the councillors?

He adds that local government voting percentages are so low that you could ask if the democratic process is even working that well, with less than half the population participating.

On the other hand, the chair of Environment Canterbury, Deon Swiggs, has told him that locals are well engaged in his area and do know what’s happening.

“So maybe that’s a good example of this new system that everyone is going to need to think about. We could have, depending on engagement in the areas, and the concerns raised, different voting systems.”

McConnell says local government in New Zealand is a complex system and simplifying it will be a complicated job. He also points out that the country’s busy mayors didn’t sign up for this.

The first step is to replace regional councillors with the mayors who cover those regions, on what will be called Combined Territories Boards, and they have two years to work out what the decision-making structures will look like in the future.

One irony here is that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon campaigned on giving more power to locals to make decisions, in a bite-back to Labour’s Three Waters changes.

McConnell says in a way, this move is not dissimilar.

“This is the same rationale as having Three Waters, that you could combine resources across different cities and regions to make it more effective and cheaper to operate local government services. That is the same rationale that Chris Bishop is using for pushing for this reform of regional councils.”

Bishop has been very interested in this area and has been open with his desire to reform it.

National has backing from both its coalition parties, but interestingly for different philosophical reasons.

“The politics of this is quite fascinating,” says McConnell.

New Zealand First’s Shane Jones has effectively made getting rid of regional councils a party policy – “particularly he’s unhappy about the Otago Regional Council, which he said is a ‘Kremlin-like institution’ in the South Island, all because he doesn’t like the decisions they’re making.”

Act, on the other hand, sees it as a way to get rid of co-governance.

“In Canterbury, ECan has seats for Ngāi Tahu – Ngāi Tahu representation is guaranteed on the ECan board – now this change, getting rid of the board that runs ECan and just replacing it with mayors, means that Ngāi Tahu representation is gone.

“So Act is celebrating from the perspective of getting rid of co-governance. Three completely different reasons for this policy.

“But this is going to take years to change this … I think this discussion will be going on for quite some time.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A corporate healthcare provider has hit back on Labour’s claims that it doesn’t prioritise community needs.

On Sunday, the party announced a policy that would offer doctors and nurse practitioners low-interest loans to set up new practices or buy into existing ones, if elected next year.

The loans would only be available for owner-operated general practices, with corporate-owned clinics excluded.

Labour’s health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall told Morning Report on Monday that although many corporate-owned practices provided good care, there were instances where priority was not given to community needs.

She used an example in Lower Hutt where the practice gave up on doing face-to-face consultations because they had taken all the funding that comes with enrolling a large patient population and then not hired the doctors to support that.

Tend Health founder and co-chief executive Cecilia Robinson said Verrall’s comment were “pretty odd”.

“I think it’s a pretty odd assertion, it’s not reflective of the data, you know, continuity of care is actually design assured, it’s not an ownership issue, and it really relies on having enough clinicians, modern systems and a model built around long-term relationships with patients.

“So it’s a strange assertion and I think what’s important to discuss is continuity of care which is incredibly important but true continuity of care also depends on the quality of the data, the broader care team supporting our GPs and consistent prescribing practices. That’s really what we need to ensure a safe, seamless patient experience.”

Robinson said Tend was focused on creating access for patients and moving clinicians depending on where demand is highest and patients accessing care in a location that is convenient to them.

“Our patients have a higher satisfaction once we’ve integrated a practice into Tend’s network than what they did pre an integration under a previous ownership structure and why is that? It’s because patients can now access their care that they need in a timely way in a price that is right for them.”

Robinson said there had been a “significant” shift in patient satisfaction, with its data showing it rise from 60 percent to 95 percent.

It was also experiencing a broader enrolment cohort – with an increased number of Māori and Pasifika enrolments.

Robinson said its Bay of Plenty practices had gone from 12 percent enrolment of Māori patients to surpassing 22 percent.

“This is real impact in real communities where patients are making decisions around the healthcare that is best for them.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A person has been seriously injured and a manhunt is under way after a Christchurch robbery.

Police were called to the scene at a business on Opawa Road about 5.40am on Tuesday.

By the time they got there, the alleged offenders had fled.

Police said they were working to find those responsible.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Relying on trees to offset New Zealand’s emissions years into the future is putting “a significant number of eggs in one basket”, the Climate Change Commission chair has warned politicians.

New trees would need to be “in the ground” within a couple of years and could still be destroyed by forest fire or extreme weather events – wiping out their carbon savings.

Appearing before Parliament’s environment select committee on Monday, commission chief executive Jo Hendy was questioned about the “significant risks” the commission identified earlier this year when it came to meeting the country’s emissions budgets.

Emissions budgets are set by the government, taking into account advice from the commission.

They establish the total net emissions the country can produce over a five-year period and still keep its domestic and international climate goals on track.

In its annual emissions monitoring report released earlier this year, the commission said there were risks to meeting the second budget (2026-30) and third budget (2031-35).

One of those risks was relying on forest removals of carbon dioxide to meet nearly half of the 2031-35 emissions budget.

In response to questioning from Green Party climate change spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick, Hendy said there were two main implications of that approach.

“The first implication is you need those forests in the ground quickly for that carbon to then start sequestering,” she said.

“The other is risks around things like fires and storms – you know, another Cyclone Gabrielle taking a big hit out of that forestry. Then you’ll be faced with a difficult situation where you might not be able to meet the budget.”

Researchers have started to warn that many of the natural carbon sinks that society relies on to soak up emissions are now sometimes releasing more carbon than they absorb.

Swarbrick asked Hendy if she could explain the commission’s remarks that “the reliance on forests for a large proportion of emissions reduction is likely to increase the long-term cost of meeting the 2050 target and increase impacts on future generations”.

That was because using forestry to offset emissions created less of an incentive for businesses and communities to limit the amount of greenhouse gases produced in the first place, Hendy said.

“As a result, we don’t get as much decarbonisation in the economy.

“When you don’t get as much decarbonisation in the economy – what we’re talking about is electrification of industry, for example – you are missing out on those economic benefits of reduced costs.”

The commission has long recommended that New Zealand “decarbonise where possible”.

“Relying heavily on forestry might help Aotearoa meet its 2050 emissions reduction targets but it would make maintaining net zero long-lived emissions beyond that date more difficult,” it told the previous government in 2021.

“It would delay people taking actions that reduce gross emissions, lead to higher cumulative emissions and push the burden of addressing gross emissions on to future generations.”

Tougher methane target was feasible, affordable, achievable

The committee also asked Hendy about the government’s decision to revise New Zealand’s 2050 methane emissions target.

In October, the government said it would scrap previous plans to introduce agricultural emissions pricing by 2030, and would pass legislation to lower the 2050 methane target from a 24-47 percent reduction from 2017 levels, to a 14-24 percent reduction, in line with a ‘no additional warming’ policy.

National MP Grant McCallum, a Northland beef and dairy farmer, asked what the impact would be on the rural sector if the current target was retained, if there was no technology available to help farmers reduce their methane emissions.

“One of the key considerations when we do our scenario work for emissions budgets is impact on rural communities,” Hendy said.

“We found that it was a feasible and affordable and technically achievable, in our previous emissions budget advice at the end of last year.”

The upper end of the range could be achieved with new technologies, while the 24 percent low end of the range was based on technology that was already available, and changes to farming practices.

There was a “good pipeline” of methane-inhibiting technology, she said.

“The key point will be making sure that it can be deployed on farms.

“Not necessarily every tool will work on every farm. It’s really about making sure that farmers are enabled to work with the tools that work for them.”

McCallum asked Hendy and commission chair Dame Patsy Reddy twice about whether New Zealand should remain a signatory to the Paris Agreement.

“Does the commission have a view or has it given any consideration to the cause of some people who think we should pull out of the Paris Accord [sic]?”

Part of the commission’s mandate was based on the agreement, Dame Patsy said.

“It’s not our place to have a view.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has repeatedly said the government was committed to the Paris Agreement and New Zealand’s emissions targets, despite a push from coalition partner ACT to leave the pact.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The battlelines have been drawn in Biosecurity New Zealand’s war against the yellow-legged hornet, but there’s some suggestion they should be widened before a population takes hold.

Currently, trapping has been extended out to a five kilometre radius around the concentration of the hornet detections in Auckland’s Glenfield and Birkdale, using a combination of carbohydrate and protein traps.

To date, there have been 29 confirmed queen hornets found (based on specimens), according to Biosecurity New Zealand.

The agency said 19 of the 29 confirmed queen hornets were found with either developed nests or evidence of nesting. 

Additionally, seven worker hornets were found in nests.

Northland conservationist Brad Windust said authorities need to look at casting the net wider to 30km ahead of summer.

He said the coming months were pivotal for the goal of eradication and the prevention of the hornets spreading to other regions.

“We need to give out thousands of traps to people in a 30km radius with clear instructions and bait.

“It will only take two queens to fly outside the current 5km radius monitoring area they have at the moment and we would have lost it because each queen after she makes her nest drops hundreds of queens in the autumn and they can disperse up to 28km.

“We also want them to give out Vespa catch traps to all the beekeepers and orchardists in the North Island as a monitoring tool, because there’s a real chance that some of these hornets got moved while they were hibernating in the winter last year.”

Biosecurity New Zealand north commissioner Mike Inglis said the fact they were finding more hornets showed surveillance efforts were working.

He said they’d adjust their hornet response activities, including extending the trapping radius, where required based on their technical advisory group (TAG) advice alongside the input of our own experts.

“The 5km tapping radius was decided on based on advice from the TAG. It is a multi-prong scientific approach to trapping, as guided by our international experts with actual on-the-ground experience managing the pest. However, our public awareness push extends throughout the country.

“We have a national advertising campaign in the market urging the public to report suspected sightings. We are asking residents to check their properties for any hornets or nests and providing information where to look, including how to make and monitor your own trap.

“We are also working closely with the bee industry, including enhanced hive surveillance and we have produced a series of key documents for beekeepers around trapping, surveillance and reporting. All of that information is also available on our website.”

Inglis said on-the-ground surveillance was an important tool for detecting hornets and had been expanded since the beginning of the response.

“We have increased the number of traps by more than five times from the early numbers, to more than 600 and we are adding additional traps as more hornets are found. We are also doing property-by-property searches within 200 metres of confirmed finds. We’ve done more than 2200 property checks for hornets and nests and that number grows every day,” he said.

Inglis said genetic testing indicated the hornets were closely related, suggesting a small, contained population.

Victoria University entomologist Phil Lester said Biosecurity New Zealand were acting appropriately with their action around trapping and searching areas for ground nests.

“I think the ground teams that are working from MPI are doing a really good job. So clearly they’re finding this, they’re putting a lot of effort into it.

“They’ve increased the amount of people that are on the task and are doing well, but I think we probably need to have more people out there, more boots on the ground to be able to look for these hornets and get them while we can.”

Lester said authorities will need to change tact ahead of the summer months.

“Having traps out, having people looking for nests and workers is awesome.

“In addition, at that stage let’s do the hunting for nests up the top of trees and that sort of thing where they’ll be at that time. So the tipping point really comes at, well, we’ve got to spend, hopefully get them all this summer.”

Lester said it was difficult to know just how far the pests may have travelled since arriving in Auckland.

He said the 5km radius advice at the moment is based on international advice that Biosecurity have had.

“There’s lots of work overseas that is looking at how quickly does an invasion front move, so that work is where the 30km to 80km to 100km comes from and that’s where you’ve got a whole bunch of nests that are sending out new queens every autumn that are going some distance.

“We’re not in that situation. So we’re in a situation where we’ve probably got one nest that sent out some queens last autumn.

“So how far have they moved? That’s the big sort of question that is kind of unknown.”

He said even if authorities were unable to complete eradication this summer, it’s not too late.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Lawyers representing a charity calling for more protection for the hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin, have criticised advice on set net fishing given to the fisheries minister.

In October the Environmental Law Initiative (ELI) filed High Court proceedings against the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries Shane Jones over the set net ban, which it said failed to protect hoiho from the risk of extinction.

Jones announced in mid-September the set net fishery around the Otago Peninsula would close for three months, with public consultation on long-term bycatch measures to protect hoiho carried out during the closure period.

The three-month emergency closure extended the existing four nautical mile set net ban, which was in place to protect dolphins, out to eight nautical miles.

However, the extension only applied to waters surrounding the Otago Peninsula, leaving other key hoiho habitats unprotected, ELI argued.

Those habitats included North Otago and Stewart Island.

Monday’s judicial review at the High Court in Wellington came in the wake of a hoiho being caught near Stewart Island over the weekend.

David Bullock, representing the charity, said the nub of his case was that the minister was not told about limitations with the studies given to him by officials when considering the September ban.

Bullock made the argument officials could have told Jones that whilst they had focused on the Otago Peninsula, he may wish to consider a wider area due to a lack of data and given it was known the hoiho had been caught in other areas.

Justice David Boldt noted the government workers had to give their advice in a condensed time period and the minister made the decision when he did in September because it was the hoiho’s breeding season.

The crown was represented by Nicholai Anderson, who told the court that the ban was put in place in a hurry and was a temporary measure while a long-term solution was sorted out.

He said the modelling the minister did recieve was highly sophisticated and was limited only because it related to adult penguins and not juvenile birds.

The hearing continues.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

In Auckland, businesses near the new Ikea store are steeling themselves for a stampeed to the homeware giant’s opening on Thursday.

Traffic experts have run their numbers and expect crowds of up to 20,000 a day, with a 40-minute crawl on the nearby motorway and another 40 to find a car park.

Ikea’s three-storey blue box consumes a whole block at Mt Wellington, with 544 carparks, close to 37 bike racks and 28 motorbike bays – for those not taking home the flat packs.

Just a few doors down, Cloud 777 Cafe manager Vicky John is expecting local roads to be a jam.

“I know it’s going to be hectic around this little area, it’s already crazy as it is. With Ikea opening it’s just going to create more traffic jams.”

She starts work at 5am and is worried traffic will be bad when she finishes mid-afternoon.

They’re already serving customers who work at Ikea, who describe the 34,000 square metre store as gigantic.

“It’s next level off the charts. A lot of the staff that are working in there are my customers, so the builders, the electricians are coming in and they’re already telling me it’s next level.”

A strip of retailers across the road from the new-comer are preparing to guard their customer carparks – Ikea’s carpark opens at 8.30am on Thursday, the store opens at 11am.

An extra carpark will be available to manage overflows in Ikea’s parking lot to accommodate another 400 vehicles nearby, on Carbine Road.

Ikea said it’s not possible to camp in their carpark and anyone attempting an overnighter will be moved on.

Computer Lounge sales director Alex van der Linde said he’ll be leaving home at least an hour earlier than usual to try to beat traffic.

“We’re all prepared to be coming in early and just accounting for the additional traffic, I anticipate that the majority of Carbine Road is going to be on gridlock for most of the day.”

He said they hope to get a boost in business from Ikea customers.

“We expect that we’ll have a lot more eyes on our business as people are driving past, even though they’re obviously going to Ikea. We’re doing what we can to expose ourselves a little bit more to the street, working on signage, that sort of thing.”

Next door, Rock Shop branch manager Michael Greenwood said he’ll still drive to work.

“I’ll be allowing myself quite a bit of extra time to get to work, especially in the first week of it opening when there will be a lot of people wanting to go have a look, everybody at the same time.

“In terms of how it will effect our business, we don’t really know. It may impact us for a period of time but it will also, in the longer term, benefit us.”

Auckland Transport’s operations centre will be a hive of activity when Ikea opens and manager Claire Howard said anyone heading to Ikea’s opening should expect delays.

“Around that Mt Wellington area it is already a very busy area. We’ve been planning for a large amount of congestion and traffic delays around that Mt Wellington Highway, and around Ikea especially where people are coming into the car parking and coming out.”

The motorway interchange at Mt Wellington will be a pinch point.

“Worst case scenario we’re looking at potentially 40 minutes to get off the motorway… and people could spend up to an hour trying to get parking.”

She said they’ve learned from Costco’s opening – and expect Saturdays to be busiest.

Even though she’s a few doors down, John said she won’t be going near Ikea this week.

“It’s just going to be too crazy and being a Thursday, one of our busiest days, and with that opening next door to me there’s just no way we’re going to go.”

Auckland Transport is encouraging people to bus or train to Ikea to avoid traffic delays.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Charter School Agency has revealed there are 427 students enrolled in the eight charter schools.

The number of enrolments has been kept under wraps after the agency told the privately-run, state-funded schools not to reveal their numbers while they were still setting up.

But at the agency’s annual review before Parliament’s Education and Workforce Select Committee, outgoing chief executive, Jane Lee, said in September there were 427 students across eight schools.

“We have schools that have a range of in-between 30 right through to over 100 students and what we see, because we do collect attendance and enrolment data, what we can see is a trajectory of increased rolls,” she said.

Lee said most of the schools would reach the number of students agreed in their contracts.

“At the end of this year most of those schools, if not all, will be at their establishment rolls.”

Lee appeared before the committee on her final day of work as the agency’s establishment CEO.

She said information about students’ achievement and attendance would be published in May next year.

“We have collected interim data and what we can see from that interim data is that most students have made sufficient rates of progress and in some cases accelerated rates of progress,” Lee said.

Earlier, Lee indicated there was nothing to stop a repeat of the situation faced recently by Kelston Boys High.

The school was the target of an attempted conversion to charter status by an outside group, the Bangerz Education and Wellbeing Trust.

Lee said applications for conversion had to demonstrate to the Charter School Authorisation Board that they had community support.

“During that application process, Kelston could demonstrate that they had support from parts of their community, which the authorisation board took into account,” she said.

“The next part of that process… was to undertake their own consultation process and that is one of the stop measures to ensure there is full community backing. If there isn’t full community backing it is very unlikely that the authorisation board would approve the applicant to come to contracting.”

Lee faced questions about the agency’s error in signing a contract for a charter school with a trust that did not exist.

“When the authorisation board approved the sponsor for contracting there was an error through the contracting process where the trust changed its name so it was an administrative error,” she said.

“Therefore we contracted with an entity that did not exist because they had changed their name part-way through.”

Lee said the agency had since introduced “further robust processes” to ensure the contracting sponsor was the sponsor all the way through the contract process.

Agency staff told the committee the schools’ sponsors received $10.9 million in 2024/25 including $6.3m in one-off establishment funding, and $4.6m in operational funding.

It said much of the operational funding was based on the schools’ “establishment roll”, which was the number of students they expected to have after five school terms of operation.

The agency said charter schools were given just a year to set themselves up, whereas some state schools were funded for establishment for three years.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Health NZ has accused nurses of failing to honour their commitment to provide so-called “life preserving services” during a partial strike.

However, the New Zealand Nurses Organisation is blaming Health NZ for rejecting a plan for dedicated on-call staff to cover gaps during their two weeks of “working to rule”.

For the last two weeks, 37,500 thousand nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants employed by Health NZ have been refusing to do extra hours or to be redeployed to other areas.

Whangārei Hospital nurse Rachel Thorn, a union delegate, said before the strike, nurses offered to have a pool of on-call staff available in each region to deliver life-preserving services if required.

That included urgent diagnostic procedures, crisis interventions or treatments.

Instead Health NZ opted for an “emergency plan”, which meant that if all other options had been exhausted, managers had to call a union rep, who would then ask members to volunteer.

“So it was a very sketchy, and I would say pretty dangerous, plan which obviously didn’t work as well as they hoped in some areas, and to be honest, that’s their responsibility.”

It was hard to say why Health NZ had decided not to take up the union offer, Thorn said.

“I can only conclude it was to do with budget, because they would have had to pay people to be on-call. But it wasn’t much, we’re talking $8 a hour.

“They believe – or at least they choose say – that there are enough nurses in the system and we know there aren’t.

“There are so many gaps being plugged by nurses doing ‘goodwill shifts’ to support colleagues and keep patients safe.”

Health NZ manager Robyn Shearer said the agency respected union members’ right to take lawful strike action, “but any refusal to undertake life preserving services creates serious patient-safety risks”.

“We did not support union’s request of having a dedicated pool of members for life preserving services as there is no way to predict staff skills needed for life-preserving services, and the nature of the partial strike action meant that all staff would be on site and available to deliver care.”

“A dedicated pool would also reduce the number of staff available to care for patients and require the cancellation of all elective surgery and outpatient appointments for each shift for a two-week period.”

Because Health NZ and the union were unable to reach agreement, they took the “unprecedented” move of asking the chief medical officers to adjudicate the arrangements for life-preserving services in each district.

Health NZ had also raised concerns with the union about “an unusually high number of staff taking sick leave in some districts”, Shearer said.

Thorn claimed management’s entire plan for the strike relied on the goodwill of nurses – “or business as usual”.

“I would say the sick call increase is nurses feeling exhausted and burned out, and the emergency plan didn’t work out how Health NZ wanted it to. But that’s because they refused to negotiate with us about a safe plan.”

It was “a bit rich” of Health NZ to complain about nurses refusing to plug the holes in its roster during the strike, she said.

“Funnily enough, that’s what the strike was about: to highlight the gaps and not fill them so that Health NZ could actually see where those gaps are. And it’s certainly highlighted the chronic short-staffing.”

In Northland, those gaps were particularly evident in the rural hospitals, the orthopaedic ward, the emergency department, surgery and post-operative care, as well as the neonatal ward, she said.

Health NZ “abusing” nurses’ goodwill – union

Nurses organisation industrial adviser David Wait said the adjudication laid out how Health NZ could request life-preserving services – but it did not trump the right to strike.

“And they knew beforehand that they couldn’t compel members to do that. So they were really abusing the goodwill of nurses by putting in life-preserving services request that undermined the right to strike.”

Wait said Health NZ management had also tried to require nurses calling in sick for one day to produce a medical certificate, which the union overturned.

Meanwhile, the contract dispute drags on, with no more dates for talks set currently.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The consequences of chronic methamphetamine use are already visible in hospital wards, and it’s about to get worse, an emergency department doctor says.

Dr Paul Quigley told a symposium on reducing drug harm on Monday the country was facing an impending health crisis on par with smoking-related lung disease.

“We are seeing the chronic effects of drug use, that’s often in terms of mental health – so people developing ongoing forms of schizophrenia – [but] we are now seeing the hard effects of long-term methamphetamine use.

“We’re seeing people with cardiomyopathies, heart failure.” Dr Paul Quigley.

Quigley told RNZ methamphetamine was particularly “cardio-toxic”, affecting the heart in two key ways through accelerated ageing and exhaustion.

He said the ageing heart meant heart disease was showing up 10 to 15 years earlier than expected.

“So we’re seeing people in their mid-40s who are regular methamphetamine users having heart attacks as if they’d be in their 60s.”

He said meth also increased people’s heart rate and blood pressure, and sustained use literally “exhausts the heart” resulting in cardiomyopathy (a type of heart failure) and in extreme cases, heart transplants.

Quigley said those most at risk of heart disease weren’t “your weekend warriors”, but almost daily methamphetamine users who’d been using for more than a decade.

He said data showed acute meth use in New Zealand was on the rise and the major concern was the impending burden on the healthcare system and society – a cost already seen in countries where meth use was high.

“You should look at this like smoking. People smoked in the 40s and 50s … then later we had this terrible burden of lung disease from the effects of smoking. And it’s going to be the same.

“If we have increased meth use now, we should be looking at, ‘Well, what’s going to happen in 10 to 15 years time?’

“We’re going to have this much larger population of patients with these heart conditions … and it’s affecting parts of our society that are already struggling.”

The Reducing Drug Harm in Aotearoa Symposium – hosted by the Public Health and Forensic Science Institute – featured a range of experts from the frontline of festival drug checking and wastewater analysis, to the police’s drug intelligence office and international experts on early warning systems for new and harmful drugs.

National Drug Intelligence Bureau analyst Kylie Collins spoke to current and emerging drug trends in New Zealand, highlighting a spike in meth consumption in July 2024 that almost doubled methamphetamine use nationally – and has continued.

Collins said the vast majority of New Zealand’s supply came from overseas and the increased use had coincided with a drop in price for the drug.

She said alongside increasing seizures of the drug, meth-related hospitalisations had also been on the rise.

“However, many hospitalisations stem from chronic or very heavy use. So with the recent increases in meth consumption we expect to see even bigger increases in hospitalisations in years to come.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand