Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman who was found with several injuries in a remote area of West Auckland was put through an ordeal, police say.

A man was facing charges of abducting for sex, impeding breathing and injuring with intent after the woman was found in Cornwallis on Sunday just after 7am.

She was taken to a nearby police station and then transferred to hospital.

“I want to acknowledge the woman who came to the victim’s aid, and others who have assisted us in progressing the investigation,” Acting Detective Inspector Megan Goldie said.

“This has been a sensitive and complex investigation, and our team has worked quickly to progress our enquiry and identify a person of interest.

“This has included analysis of CCTV footage between central Auckland and west Auckland.”

A 49-year-old man was arrested in Auckland’s Mt Eden on Wednesday.

“Police have successfully opposed this man’s bail, and we can reassure the wider public that he is not in the community,” Goldie said.

“The charges themselves speak to a distressing ordeal that the victim has been through, and we will continue to support her through the next part of the process.”

They weren’t ruling out further charges.

The man would next appear in court on April 29.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Nelson’s mayor says Air New Zealand’s cancellations of flights throughout the country will have a negative impact on the region’s tourism industry, which is only just recovering.

Air New Zealand is set to cancel around 1100 flights affecting thousands of passengers through until early May.

Air NZ chief executive Nikhil Ravishankar told Morning Report services would be cut “proportionally across the board”, meaning both domestic and international, but no routes would be cut altogether. Off-peak services would be the focus of the cuts, he said.

Air New Zealand was facing massive cost pressures, with the conflict in the Middle East increasing the price of jet fuel.

Nelson was one of the places that would be affected by flight cancellations, with mayor Nick Smith telling Morning Report, about 120 flights over six weeks had been cancelled on routes to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

“People aren’t in the mind to accept big increases in the fares, and so they’ve done a bit of fare raising as well as removing some of these services.”

Smith said he did appreciate Air NZ had moved flights in the middle of the day rather than early morning and evening which were “crucial” for Nelson.

The region did not have a tertiary hospital, he said, so many people depended on getting medical care in main centres like Wellington and Christchurch so air links were important.

He said the cancellations would have a negative impact on tourism for Nelson, and it was disappointing as the region had only just started to see tourism recover this Summer following the pandemic.

“The bigger worry for us is what’s going to happen at the end of six weeks, of course no one quite knows where the war in the Middle East is going to go.

“We need the support of our national airline so let’s hope by the time we get to May they can return those flights.”

He said he would ask the government to keep an open mind and if things continued perhaps there could be some help for the regions through domestic tourism promotion.

“The key thing for a region like Nelson is that we have those links to those main centres and also to keep Air NZ honest from a fares point of view that there is competition.

“Six weeks we can live with it, if it goes on longer than that we’ll be speaking with both Air NZ and the government.”

On Wednesday, Qantas and Jetstar also confirmed they were increasing airfares due to a doubling in the cost of aviation fuel.

Jetstar said fare increases will vary however flight schedules have not been affected by any fuel-related issues.

Last month, Air NZ announced a half-year loss of $40 million in the six months ended December, compared to last year’s profit of $106m.

The critical Hormuz Strait, a shipping route for up to 20 percent of the world’s oil, is essentially closed due to the conflict in the region.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

As Muslims in Christchurch prepare to mark seven years since 51 people were murdered while worshipping at two mosques in the city, there are fears hate is again on the rise.

Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant opened fire at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre on 15 March 2019 as the congregations marked Jumu’ah – the most significant prayer of the week.

He left 51 people dead or dying in little over 15 minutes.

The now 35-year-old pleaded guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one of terrorism in March 2020 and in August of that year was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

But he is now appealing his sentence and conviction, and there is a possibility of him giving verbal evidence to the coronial inquiry into the deaths of those he murdered.

Seven years on from what former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described as one of New Zealand’s darkest days, some in the community were still grieving wounds that felt fresh with little closure or solace.

Hamimah Ahmat’s husband Zekeriya Tuyan was mortally injured during the shooting at Al Noor Mosque and became the 51st shaheed, or martyr, almost seven weeks after the attack.

“Life seems to have moved forward around us,” she said.

“People seem to be forgetting March 15 and the lessons from it, while for many of us it often feels like time actually stopped on March 15, 2019.”

Rosemary Omar also lost her son Tariq during the massacre at Al Noor Mosque.

“I know it’s seven years but it does feel like yesterday and obviously some days are better than others,” she said.

“It was such a waste of such a good young man. He was just such a peaceful, kind, caring, compassionate young man that it seems very cruel that he should lose his life like that.”

Farid Ahmed’s wife Husna had left Al Noor Mosque to escort other women and children to safety.

The gunman shot her as she returned to find her husband, who uses a wheelchair.

“It was a dreadful day,” he said.

“For a moment I was thinking it was the end of the world for me. The world was becoming a very narrow for me. I was feeling that I was going to be sinking – swallowed by the earth.”

But the terrorist’s bullets did not just touch 91 people, they tore through the lives of thousands who felt the loss and pain of those killed or maimed.

The shuhada – or martyrs – left behind 34 spouses, 92 children and more than 100 siblings.

Rosemary Omar said the legal process surrounding her son’s death had felt overwhelming at times.

“I think we’ll never move on,” she said.

“I think it’s more a case of learning to sit with Tariq’s death next to me. It’s also more a process as well of appreciating having Tariq for 24 years rather than everything being sort of focused on how he died. And it’s very difficult as the anniversaries approach to actually stay in that moment of gratitude because everything’s sort of thrown up in the air and all these appeals obviously don’t help.”

She believed the terrorist’s appeals were motivated by the intent of further traumatising survivors and victims’ families.

“It’s quite disturbing and he’s sort of mocking everybody by basically breathing,” Omar said.

She hoped the coronial inquiry into her son’s death might result in some positive change.

However, she was cynical about the process especially after the government ended its formal response to the Royal Commission into the attacks with many recommendations scrapped.

Politicians seemed to have used the community for photo opportunities when it suited them but had now moved on, Omar said.

“I don’t believe they have any concept of what families have been through,” she said.

“There appears to be no compassion.”

Federation of Islamic Associations spokesperson Abdur Razzaq said hate crime was on the rise.

“We are tracking, according to police statistics, about three hate incidents recorded per week,” he said.

“That’s a level that we haven’t seen anywhere in the past. Last year, they recorded once over 150.”

Three people had been arrested in recent months for planning or discussing harming the Muslim community, Razzaq said.

There was also an alarming level of Islamophobia online, he said.

Hamimah Ahmat said while most New Zealanders remained quietly supportive of the community, she agreed hate was growing and had experienced it herself.

“Just two years after March 15, I was taking a walk … and a car passed by me and the hooligans shouted ‘go back to your country’.”

It was alarming to have come so soon after the terror attack.

There were also still ongoing and concerning reports of Muslim women having their hijab pulled by strangers as well as an increase in anti-migrant rhetoric, including by some politicians, Ahmat said.

“I would say my experience generally – generally – has been has been great but it’s hard because it just takes one or two incidents to bring us back to that anxiety again,” she said.

She had been involved in a lot of work to foster and improve social cohesion following the shootings.

She believed the government should back a national unity week to coincide with the anniversary of 15 March.

“It’s about our national security,” Ahmat said.

“What are we doing in terms of making sure communities are resilient? How are we ensuring that we respond compassionately and with sensitivity to voices that try to divide us? How do we acknowledge that New Zealand is not predominantly white, that it is made-up of many different peoples, many different countries, with many different cultures?

“Assimilating is not the answer to it. It is about accepting that we are all different and we can all make New Zealand great by being different and being unique.”

Farid Ahmed had a similar mindset and hoped by living as an example to others he could foster love and kindness in the community.

Ahmed moved the world when he publicly forgave his wife’s killer only weeks after the shootings.

“I decided with my 15-year-old daughter that the quickest way of healing for us is to offer forgiveness so we will have the freedom in our hearts from anger, from retribution, from hatred, and we could use our clean heart to work for peace and harmony and love,” he said.

“It is not an easy journey but it is possible that we can carry the grief and at the same time we can choose to overcome it by contributing in love and compassion towards others.”

That philosophy allowed him to live a happy life despite the enormity of his loss.

“From time to time, because of the love, I cry for my wife. When I reflect on the good things that I had, time to time I cry. But every cry I had gives me double motivation to do something better because if she was here she would have wanted me to do this sort of good thing,” Ahmed said.

On Sunday he would mark 15 March at the public service in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens and by giving away 150 cakes to his community, each with a message of love and hope.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

With fuel prices nudging xxx add price in AM car dealers say it’s the final push for some people to buy electric vehicles.

War between the US, Israel and Iran has created significant disruptions to the price and supply of fuel and oil around the world, particularly due to the closure of the crucial supply route through the Strait of Hormuz.

News of petrol price instability has pushed would-be electric car purchasers into signing the deal.

Coventry Car Hybrid and Electric Car Dealers in Wellington said they sold three Nissan Leaf’s over the weekend, a simple electric vehicle.

In these cases, they said the cars sold themselves. They said people were coming in well researched and know what they wanted, some mentioning the rising fuel prices.

Down the road at Coventry Cars petrol branch, Jaden said buyers were generally heading towards hybrid and electric, but the trend could tick up when people realised just how much the cost of fuel was adding to their weekly expenses.

“In the coming weeks is really when it’s going to take effect in regards of how it’s operating. I think it’s just too soon to realise it just yet,” Jaden said.

“Because it’s only been a week and a half, two weeks. In a couple of weeks we will be able to see if that’s the way it’s heading”

The fuel prices have stopped people in their tracks for Cheye Moran at Hutt City Autoworld Lower Hutt. Those who were about to purchase a new car have pulled out.

“The cost of living is just so high at the moment, so a car is a pretty big commitment and because they are just unsure of where their fuel bills are going to end up, whether or not the cost of running the house is going to increase. And before that starts to level itself out, they are just saying it’s not imperative that they buy a car.”

Enquiries were also picking up for Joshua Schonberger from Electrify Bikes Wellington, where the average e-bike sits between $4-6k.

“We have had customers coming in and saying, ‘I bought this bike and it’s about the same price as a year’s worth of topping up my snapper card,’ so I think that’s a pretty good metric.”

Schonberger said it was still early days and expected people would increasingly consider moving to e-bikes.

But Kyle at Value Motors said purchasing a hybrid, or EV, wasn’t always the best financial move.

“It just depends on the driver what they are doing to be fair. Sometimes you’re only saving 2-3 litres per 100 kilometres. So when you sit down and work out where people are driving and what their style of driving is, it really comes down to whether they are going to save money or not. “

“We sell everything from Dodge Rams to Range Rovers, fuel in those types of vehicles doesn’t affect people really.”

He said for some people, cars were still about enjoying the ride, rather than the price of getting from A to B.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Nick Brown has a real thing about lowered kerbs.

Where the average person might see a nice, smooth vehicle entrance to a driveway, Brown – head of intelligence for Auckland Council’s Healthy Waters team – sees a flood risk.

“Every time you reduce the height of your vehicle crossing, you’re reducing the capacity of the [gutter] channel to take water, and potentially inviting more water to flow across your property than otherwise would.”

It is a cloudless day in west Auckland, but this part of the city was among the worst-hit during the Anniversary Day floods in 2023.

Climate change-induced extreme weather is now striking the country with alarming frequency, and many New Zealanders are in harm’s way.

Data published by Earth Sciences New Zealand last year shows there are already 750,000 people at risk from a major rainfall or river flooding event.

That number will rise steadily to more than 900,000 with 3°C of additional warming.

The government has promised legislation this term that will start to set out how whole communities can adapt to the effects of climate change, but has not yet announced how this will be funded.

In the meantime, RNZ has invited Brown and his colleague Nancy Baines on a house tour, to identify how people already living in flood-prone houses might limit the worst effects when the next weatherbomb hits.

Earth Science New Zealand urban aquatic scientist Annette Semadeni-Davies says it’s not possible for individual households to fundamentally change the risk to their homes.

“If you live on the flood plain, there is not much you can do when the river floods as an individual except try to minimise the impacts.”

And when it comes to extreme rainfall, public drains can’t take all of the stormwater, Nick Brown says. “They’re for day-to-day events.

“When you get really extreme rain it’s the ground surface that the water is meant to flow across on its way down to the streams and ultimately the coast.”

What it is possible to do in many cases, though, is encourage the water to move around, rather than through your house.

“People are quite tempted to try and stop the water coming onto their property,” Brown says.

“[But] it’s going to keep trying to find the lowest point in the terrain to flow down, and so you must allow the water onto your property where it’s entering, and it’s got to allow it to exit when it’s exiting.

“Your job, as a homeowner, is to try and help the water get from one side of your property to the other without causing you damage.”

Letting the water flow

Before Brown even gets in the gate, he’s looking uphill and downhill, imagining where the water might flow.

The lowered kerb he’s spotted has a mitigating feature: the start of the driveway rises to a slight, “quite beautiful” hump.

“It’s really fortunate it does rise up and most of the water stays on the road, because if we look at the layout here, it’s sloped steeply down towards the garages,” Brown says.

Brown and Baines squint up at the roof line next, pointing out the gutters and downpipes: gutters should be clear of leaves and downpipes need to be securely connected to gutters at the top and drains at the bottom, to stop water pooling or back-flowing into the roof cavity.

So far, so easy.

Next, Brown points out the external heat pump unit, which is sitting at ground level.

“That’s not ideal, because any water there is going to destroy the unit, and that’s the majority of the cost of an air conditioner or heat pump,” he says.

Raising it up onto a stable platform is a low-cost, relatively simple job for a tradesperson to complete.

Something that’s harder to reverse, but good to avoid, is landscaping that leaves the entrance to a house level with, or lower than the ground.

“You really want to be stepping up into your house,” Brown says.

“If you’re walking straight from the flat, from outside to inside, that’s a pathway for water to get into your house.”

Flood hazard maps published by many councils, including Auckland, can now help people spot overland flow paths, Brown says.

It’s also possible to just look for the high and low points, and avoid placing any obstacles in that path, he says.

“If you build, if you put a structure, any kind of landscaping that can obstruct the water, it can then either direct the water into your house or it can stop the water flowing past your house and it can build up.”

Raised garden beds, sheds, decks and even large pot plants can all be culprits.

“There’s some properties that are always going to flood, and others that might flood depending on your decisions.”

Brown points out a fence running across the bottom of the garden.

“If it was a solid fence it would impound water, and so water would build up behind it – and if it builds up high enough, then it can flood back through a home.”

That was something both of them witnessed after the January 2023 floods, Baines says.

“We had properties that flooded inside that wouldn’t have flooded if they hadn’t had a solid obstruction on the downstream side.

“Something else that we observed was those solid fences, the water building up so high behind them that the fence then catastrophically failed and collapsed, and caused a really big wave over the property below with all that extra energy, which was really damaging.”

It might not be necessary to replace an entire fence, Brown says.

“You can do something pretty easily – you just want an opening at the bottom of your fence. Some people find that difficult with dogs and trying to contain them, but something like having chicken wire along the bottom to keep your dogs in that lets the water through is a great start.”

When water is an uninvited guest

There may be no way to stop water coming inside a house, Baines says.

That’s where preparing well in advance can help limit the damage.

“[There are] really easy things that anybody can do – it doesn’t matter if you’re renting, doesn’t matter if you’re on a budget – and that is where you’re storing things.

“All of your like precious things, high up, not just your electronics and your expensive things, but your family photos – what is the stuff you’re going to really miss if it’s damaged?”

Another easy thing that anyone can do, if bad weather is forecast, is to move cars parked in low-lying garages or dips in the street uphill beforehand.

“For many of us and many renters, your car is your biggest asset – it’s what gets you to work, it’s what helps drop the kids, and losing that is huge.”

The Building Research Association (BRANZ), together with councils and universities, has been researching how people can limit flood damage inside their homes.

Senior materials scientist Katy Stokes says it often comes down to what materials people choose to use.

“Things like kitchens and bathrooms are notoriously expensive when you do a renovation, and the same happens if you’re flooded and those need to be replaced,” she says.

“So if you are looking at already renovating those rooms, actually replacing your lower cabinetry with things that are more water-resistant, like a solid wood instead of an MDF or a particle board-type product.”

Like Baines, she advocates lifting up what you can – appliances, cabinetry, and even electrical outlets.

Floor coverings are another thing to consider when it comes time to replace them.

Carpet can easily trap moisture – so in rooms that don’t need it, she suggests hard floor surfaces, with rugs for warmth instead.

Conversely, avoid hard surface outside, Stokes says.

Using grass, gravel, and other permeable surfaces for driveways and patios, instead of concrete, can help to control and absorb the flow of water.

Much bigger structural renovations could include upgraded drainage systems – but Stokes warns that protecting against a flood isn’t as simple as lifting the foundation of a house.

“One of the challenges that we have in New Zealand … is that we are highly seismic.

“One of the concerns is if you lift a house without considering the engineering aspects, you may run into problems.”

Escape from disaster – or face it head on?

There is a more drastic solution if your house is at high risk of flooding, Sandeeka Mannakkara says.

“Relocation … can be considered a resilience behaviour.”

Planned relocation for some communities is already on the cards, including in South Dunedin, but individual households who have the financial ability to do so might also choose to move out of harm’s way, she says.

However, that won’t be an option for every family or community.

“With climate change, more and more of our communities are becoming hazard-prone, so we are going to reach a point where we can’t relocate our way out of it,” Mannakkara says.

“Now is the era of being able to live with hazards and risk, so this is where resilience comes in – which is your ability to face something, to cope with it, to adapt quickly and recover and bounce back.”

Councils and central government should still be working on broader adaptation projects to protect people, she says.

“But the easiest, lowest-hanging fruit is actually getting people themselves – local communities, households – to build up these individual resilience measures.”

Mannakkara and her colleagues have been funded by BRANZ to collate local and international research about what helps to build climate and disaster resilience among communities, and what helps and hinders efforts to do that.

“There’s a lot of research that finds that … when a hazard event occurs, it’s that household-level resilience that helps tip that balance towards whether you’re badly affected or whether you can cope in that moment.”

Neighbours and communities who get to know each other are not only more resilient – they’re also more likely to want to stay, she says.

“The higher the sense of community feel that people have and the stronger the social networks, that increases the likelihood of people investing their time, effort and money to improve flood resilience.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

While the surging number of beneficiaries is plain to see, there is a struggling layer of people who feel out of sight: the “invisible unemployed”.

They have too much to qualify for a benefit, but not enough to make ends meet.

Paul, 58, who lives in Upper Hutt, worked in a library but was made redundant in November.

” almost immediately went to WINZ [Work and Income] to get registered and found that due to the level of my wife’s income and also our current assets, I was not eligible for any form of support.”

His wife earns $66,000.

The Ministry of Social Development website said a married, civil union or de facto couple without children did not qualify for Jobseeker Support if they jointly earned more than $1039 weekly (before tax).

They could not get the accommodation supplement, because they had more than the limit of $16,200 in the bank.

Paul was disappointed and frustrated.

“You … work, you pay your taxes and you do what everybody says you should, which is save money and be careful with it.

“And then when you are made redundant through no choice of your own and you’ve still got as many bills to pay, but your income is more than halved, you find out that until you’ve reduced your assets down to a very low level, you’re not eligible for any support at all.”

Paul said Work and Income said it could help, if they had less money in the bank.

But he said he and his wife had worked hard to save that money and did not want to “fritter it away”.

“Unexpected things happen and you sometimes need reserves if big bills come along,” he said.

Paul was also ineligible for the Community Services Card, which helps with the cost of health care and public transport.

Even that would be a huge help, he said.

The job hunt was proving difficult and in a tight labour market, Paul found himself unable to secure interviews for roles he was “highly qualified” for.

He was also studying part-time towards a Bachelor of Counselling, but because he was halfway through his second year, he was unable to switch to full-time – meaning he could not get Studylink support.

In the meantime, Paul said: “We’re stuck in this limbo land of having too much but not enough.”

Emma-Jean Kelly was a senior historian at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington until August last year, when she was made redundant.

Her husband’s salary, about $80,000, meant she did not qualify for a benefit.

“Despite earning ‘too much’ we still have a mortgage, rates, we have financially supported my 89-year-old dad for many years, helped out other family during their difficult times, cost of living is crazy … our small savings will be exhausted soon,” she said.

“I wonder how many more invisible unemployed there are like me?”

When Kelly was working, she ate and drank at Wellington’s cafes and restaurants, went to plays and gigs, supported local journalism through subscriptions, bought New Zealand books at Unity Books and shopped for gifts, supplies, clothes and accessories in town.

“I can do none of those things anymore, impacting on other people’s income too.”

Budgeting service struggling to help

Financial mentor Heather Lange who managed Family Finances Services Trust in Upper Hutt knew the “invisible unemployed” well.

Lange said the number of homeowners seeking her organisation’s budgeting advice spiked from four in the year to March 2023, to 39 the following year, and 40 last year.

The same pattern was true of people approaching the trust after losing their job: 18 in 2023, 49 in 2024, and 65 last year.

Often, for people like Paul or Kelly, there was not much the service could do aside from help comb through spending and identify any non-essentials to cut back on.

“It certainly doesn’t feel very great working with a family who are thinking, surely there must be some help and having to say, ‘no, you earn too much to get any help’,” said Lange.

Lange said more people were doing a KiwiSaver hardship withdrawal to cover the gap – but that was only enough money for three months.

While she would “always argue” for benefit thresholds to increase, Lange said housing costs were the biggest problem.

Some of her clients’ mortgage or rent payments were so high that a single income could not cover them, let alone any other costs.

“We’ve just normalised spending a huge portion of your income on housing, and so even taking a couple who earn a really good income, you shouldn’t really be paying more than about a third of that good income in housing costs,” she said.

“If it wasn’t that everybody was having to spend so much on their housing, the crunch wouldn’t feel quite so awful.”

The Minister for Social Development Louise Upston has been approached for comment.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Health NZ knew cutting data and digital staff would increase risks to patient care and hospital resilience, and require one-off investment to mitigate, according to a newly released internal document.

The report, titled End user impact of digital change – consequences – was written in April 2025 and details the likely impact of a restructure which would cut hundreds of IT positions. It was released to the PSA union under the Official Information Act.

It said many of the risks could be mitigated by investment and keeping key staff in service desk, support and training roles – but long-term risk remained.

“The long-term forecast for these risks (i.e, with fewer people and less knowledge; and with an ageing IT ecosystem) is that the risk rating will almost certainly elevate as technical debt becomes unsustainable and the modernisation/transformation required to meet the future needs of the sector is delayed,” the report said.

Those risks would need to be mitigated further down the track, through further investment.

Health NZ said because of the report, it had built targeted mitigations into its plans for change.

The changes came as part of a push from the government to increase efficiency and cut wasteful spending across the public sector, with departments ordered to make savings of between 6.5 and 7.5 percent.

In April last year, Health NZ confirmed sweeping cuts to a third of IT roles.

That would take data and digital roles from 2000 to 1460.

There are currently 200 vacant positions.

Health NZ said before the change process began in May last year the total number people employed was 1412.

But, that did not take into account the roughly 600 roles that were already vacant and not being filled.

In the past two months, there were a number of major IT outages – a six-hour outage in the lower North Island in mid January, a 12-hour outage at Auckland and Northland hospitals in late January, and another for those same hospitals in late February.

According to the report, the proposed changes would leave the system vulnerable.

It already had low baseline resilience due to a lack of business continuity plans, and “minimal” “hot failover” mechanisms – that is, systems which automatically took over when a system failed, without the input of a person, the report said.

“It is important to note issues and risks attributed to Digital Services are already present in our environment due to legacy technologies, fragmentation and increasing pressure from external threats, such as cyber,” it said.

Despite the intent of the change being to save money, the report said one-off investment would be required to mitigate the risks cutting staff would create. The report did not say how much that might cost.

Regional and isolated sites, such as Rotorua, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Whanganui, Masterton, Nelson, Greymouth and Timaru, would be left more vulnerable than others, due to losing staff who performed multiple jobs.

Service desk calls had already progressively increased over the past six months before the report’s writing “due to staff attrition and the pause on hiring”.

“This trend is expected to tick upwards post restructure with an estimated average wait time of approx. 2 minutes per caller. Call abandonment times (i.e., staff hanging up), are also anticipated to increase from a current rate of 15 percent to 19 percent post-restructure, under the current proposal.”

Due to the reduction in staff resolving incidents and service requests, total call numbers were expected to increase under the proposal, exacerbated by an increase in callers checking on the status of their requests.

The report said a number of Hauora Māori organisations, community services and NGO sites would be left unsupported, as they currently received outreach and support from Health NZ Digital Services, but did not have formal agreements in place – for example, Te Puia Springs in Tāi Rāwhiti.

“Post-change Digital Services will not have ability to flex services to meet the needs of these types of stakeholders,” it said.

PSA says more outages and data breaches will follow

PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the document was a crystal-clear warning that reducing people would lead to increased clinical risk – and that was ignored in the restructure.

Health NZ and the minister ignored internal warnings about how the impacts of the downsizing, she said.

“In recent months we have seen the consequences of this rushed, ill considered drive to meet the government’s arbitrary funding cuts at a time when public health was already facing a funding crisis,” she said.

“Make no mistake, the risks to cuts in data and digital were well understood by Health New Zealand and should never have occurred.”

Health NZ says it is managing the risks

In response to questions from RNZ, Health NZ’s acting chief information technology officer Darren Douglass confirmed the report had identified that any reduction of that scale would carry risks if not actively managed.

“That is why targeted mitigations were built into the final proposal, including prioritising critical clinical systems, retaining additional operational support roles, strengthening regional digital leadership, and adding funded transition roles to support frontline services,” he said.

Health NZ was still transitioning to the new ways of working and was still making changes to risk management, he said.

The organisation had many different systems working in different parts of the country so did sometimes experience “technical issues”.

“Fortunately, the majority of incidents are resolved quickly. We also have well-established contingencies in place to manage issues when they arise, to ensure patients continue to get the care they need.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

It doesn’t matter where we get our oil from – in a globally connected world, New Zealand is at the mercy of wildly fluctuating prices as long as the Iran conflict continues

Where is the price of petrol heading?

Who knows.

“The market is so volatile, and so uncertain. I’ve never seen changes at the speed that is occurring currently,” says the AA’s fuel expert Terry Collins.

Brent crude is going up and down with every development in the Iran war, every utterance from the US president, and every move by oil-producing nations to either increase supply – or hoard it for themselves.

At the start of this week pundits were predicting we’d be paying $3 a litre for 91 at the pump, and that hit on Thursday afternoon.

Today on The Detail we speak to two people keeping an eagle eye on developments about what the drivers of oil prices are, how it gets into the country, and how secure our supply is.

Collins says in this environment, it’s near impossible to predict where the prices will land.

“Unpredictability means that oil companies have to price in risk as a premium. They actually don’t know what they’re going to be paying for their fuel in the coming weeks, because on one day it could be – as in the case between Friday and Monday – a $30 difference for a barrel of oil, which is about 30 cents retail at the pump.

“What we do know is we’ve got plenty of fuel in the country, and we’ve got plenty of fuel on the way.”

The key issue is that around 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively closed because of the war in the Middle East.

We don’t directly buy the crude oil that goes through the Strait – we get a refined product from Asian countries including Singapore and South Korea. But the oil those countries buy to refine passes through the Strait. And when other nations find their supplies constricted through war, they will be bidding for petrol in the same market as we are.

“And there’s other things that are making the market jump around,” he says.

“One minute the Americans are talking about releasing some of their strategic fuel reserves – okay that will only be for America but it will reduce demand globally.

“They’re talking about lifting sanctions with Russia, which would allow more Russian oil to come back on.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) yesterday announced it would release 400 million barrels of oil, the largest such move in its history, to try to rein in crude prices – New Zealand, as a member of the IEA, will contribute just under 1.6 million barrels, according to Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones.

“So every time an announcement’s made, the market seems to jump around, and until these things are settled that’s a very uncertain time.”

Collins still thinks petrol will be more expensive next week than this week, but says there’s no need to panic buy.

He also points out that it’s not petrol, but rather diesel, that drives our economy, especially at harvest time when all the rural farm machinery is in action … but diesel is in use for everything from bitumen to plastics manufacturing, and also of course for truck deliveries, including to our supermarkets.

And to all those people lamenting the loss of the Marsden Point oil refinery, Collins doesn’t believe keeping it in action would have made a difference – he explains why in the podcast.

The chief executive of Waitomo Group, Simon Pareham, advises drivers to shop around when it comes to petrol prices, and there are a couple of apps on which you can do that.

But he also says this isn’t a supply crisis.

“What we’re seeing … is that geo-political risk is being priced in,” he says.

Pareham says there’s no need for government action on prices yet, but if the crisis goes on for long it could always slice excise taxes and replace that funding with the extra GST income.

“The government’s asked the Commerce Commission to keep a watchful eye on the situation so we welcome that,” he says.

“High fuel prices are not good for anyone, and especially [as] we’re on the cusp of this economic recovery in New Zealand.”

Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Five years after Who’s Eating NZ, this series revisits where our food goes but this time through the lens of Kiwi breakfast, lunch and dinner staples. We track how much of what we produce is eaten here, and who has a seat at our global table during meal times. Today, it’s dinner time.

American fast food consumers, elderly health-conscious Japanese, and middle-class Chinese families all have one thing in common: a taste for New Zealand beef.

Foreign consumers, as a group, buy about 89 percent of the beef from Kiwi farms. It’s good business – in the past five years export earnings have increased 36 percent from $3.6 billion in 2020 to $5b in 2025.

China’s burgeoning middle class saw it grow to become the number one buyer – in 2019 it bought 46 percent of New Zealand’s beef exports. That has eased to 18 percent in 2025 and a new 55 percent tariff suggests that’s unlikely to bounce back. The tariff only applies to exports beyond a quota amount, however, and New Zealand has supplied less than that amount in recent years.

Tariffs are also part of the picture in the US, another big buyer of our beef.

The US imposed a 10 percent tariff on New Zealand beef in April 2025, which it raised to 15 percent in August. In November it dropped the tariff to 1 percent. Despite the chaos, the US still accounted for 43 percent of export earnings from beef last year.

Outgoing Meat Industry Association chief executive Sirma Karapeeva said domestically US beef production was at a 70-year low as consumption was climbing.

“This has resulted in North America overtaking China as our largest beef market. New Zealand is a complementary trading partner, being an important source of lean beef that is mixed with US domestic grain-fed beef to produce burger patties.”

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said cattle numbers in the US are low and there are biosecurity concerns related to the screwworm parasite, which has limited cattle coming in from Mexico.

“They’re having to look overseas. New Zealand’s got beef and the Americans are willing to pay some top dollar for it.”

Demand from overseas can push prices up at home, said Olsen. Farmers want top dollar for their produce and will sell to whoever is paying the most.

“Our prices have to trend domestically in line, to a degree, with international prices.”

It’s not a case of being fair.

“It’s economically rational. You find me a business that would say, ‘Well you know what, I’m going to leave a whole lot of money on the table by only selling domestically and ignore the international money’.”

The demand for dairy, which saw butter prices rise in 2025, is levelling off, but Olsen believes international demand will continue to grow for protein, such as beef.

A trend in healthcare for aging populations is a greater focus on protein, with countries like Japan suggesting older people eat more protein rich food. He thinks suppliers will struggle to keep pace with this demand.

The price of sirloin steak increased 27 percent last year, and mince by 17 percent, he said.

“New Zealanders will continue to face high protein costs.”

If you imagine New Zealand’s lamb meat as a plate of 10 meatballs, Kiwis would get to eat half of a meatball. If the meatballs were mutton, the amount left for Kiwis is even smaller, just 2 percent remains here and 98 percent is exported.

So who is gobbling all the meatballs off our plate? For many years, the United Kingdom was the biggest buyer. But since 2013, China has been top, increasing its spending from $119 million in 2010 to a high of $2b in 2021, when it was eating half of the lamb meatballs on our metaphorical plate. This has since dropped to approximately $1b – two-and-half of those meaty morsels. The US is now second, buying the equivalent of one-and-a-half of our 10 meatballs, ahead of the UK.

Just as they sit unassumingly on the plate of many Kiwi dinner go-tos, the hardy onion is a quiet achiever of New Zealand’s primary produce export earners. Their long shelf life, coupled with an opposite season to the northern hemisphere makes them a valued item on the other side of the world.

In 2025 we sent around 80 percent of our onions offshore, leaving just 20 percent to be eaten in Aotearoa. This amounted to 167,000 tonnes of onions exported, earning $143m.

Unlike other exports, where one country will often account for almost a third of all earnings, buyers for onions are more evenly spread. Indonesia and Malaysia are big onion buyers, along with Germany and the Netherlands, however in 2025 Taiwan took top spot.

If Kiwi onions are a sleeper hit with foreign diners, wine is the rockstar. For every 10 glasses we could fill, nine of them are sipped offshore.

The US, UK and Australia are the biggest buyers, though China’s spending on New Zealand wine has slowly increased.

Exports are down slightly from a high of $2.24b in 2022 to $2.17b in 2025.

NZWine’s latest annual report labels exports “sluggish”, citing a slow global economy and weak wine markets exacerbated by tariffs in the US and taxes in the UK.

The report identifies emerging markets, such as China and South Korea, as areas with the strongest growth.

Where the data came from

Beef: Beef + Lamb New Zealand from September 2019 to September 2020 and StatsNZ trade data for items with a harmonised system code between 201100000 to 202331999.

Sheep: Beef + Lamb New Zealand from September 2019 to September 2020 and StatsNZ trade data for items with a harmonised system code between 204100000 to 204431000.

Onions: Onions New Zealand Inc and StatsNZ trade data items with a harmonised system description containing “Vegetables, alliaceous; onions”.

Wine: NZ Wine and StatsNZ trade data items with a harmonised system description containing “Wine”.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

KiwiRail hopes to have a stricken Interislander ferry back in service by the end of the weekend.

The Kaiārahi has been out of service since an intermittent technical fault recurred on Tuesday night when the vessel was berthed in Picton.

On Thursday, afternoon sailings on the Connemara ferry owned by rival company Bluebridge, were also cancelled but resumed in the early hours of Friday.

Interislander said engineers had identified the cause and a replacement component from overseas was due to arrive on Friday.

It said operating with one vessel was challenging, particularly during a busy period, but the company has managed it before.

KiwiRail spokesperson Taru Sawhney said eight additional sailings of the Kaitaki would be put on, on Sunday and Monday, when the vessel was due for a scheduled layby.

Foot passengers on the cancelled sailings of the Kaiārahi had been accommodated on Kaitaki sailings, mostly on the same day.

Sawhney said around 1300 private vehicles were affected by the Kaiārahi outage and those customers were being offered a full refund, the opportunity to rebook at no additional cost and compensation for reasonable costs incurred as a direct result of the outage.

While Kaiārahi was out of service, Interislander was prioritising urgent freight that could not travel across the Cook Strait any other way.

“We have offered passengers booked on Kaitaki an incentive to rebook at a later date, to create more space for that freight. Some passengers have taken this offer up.

“We are actively monitoring capacity and working with all of our customers to move as many passengers and as much freight as we can as quickly as possible.

“Once again, we assure everyone we are doing all we can to minimise the disruption as much as possible and thank all our customers and passengers for their patience.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Heritage advocates are warning shifting Dunedin to a higher seismic zone will damage the city’s economy and put its iconic heritage buildings at risk.

Under the proposed new earthquake prone buildings bill, Coastal Otago – including Dunedin – will shift from a low to a medium seismic risk area.

But on Thursday, the Transport and Infrastructure Select Committee was warned of the harm this could do to a city known for its historical architecture.

The bill’s aim was to target buildings that posed the greatest risk to life in medium to high risk zones, including concrete buildings three storeys or higher, and those constructed with unreinforced masonry.

Southern Heritage Trust trustee Jo Galer told the committee that Dunedin’s ornate heritage buildings were a big drawcard for travellers.

But she said the city’s iconic buildings were already in the firing line – a pre-1900 church and a 1820s landmark home near the Octagon were recent casualties.

The promise of common sense changes to the seismic rules was welcome, but she said they had been left bitterly disappointed.

“The legislation risks unintentionally accelerating the loss of the very buildings that give Dunedin its character,” she said.

“Instead of making it easier to repurpose and restore buildings, developers and people in the business of knocking down buildings for carparks will have a field day.”

Building in Auckland, along with Northland and the Chatham Islands, would be removed from the system entirely as they were deemed as lower seismic risk areas.

If Dunedin remained at a low seismic risk, Galer said it could be a lifeline for heritage buildings – if there were cost effective solutions offered.

Instead, she told committee chairperson Andy Foster that the new rules would make things worse.

“It’s tough enough and the costs are already sky high and they’re going to get even worse and I can not see how building owners can maintain their buildings in that environment, in that legislative environment. It’s just wrong for Dunedin.”

The bill said the shift from low to medium zone reflected the greater understanding of seismic hazard in that area.

That meant about 150 earthquake-prone buildings would remain in the system and more could be identified.

But councillor Russell Lund told the committee that figure was actually much higher and it was one of several flaws in the reports used as the foundation for the bill that made him question why Dunedin’s risk level was being increased.

“Dunedin has 323 earthquake prone buildings. There is a total of 6500 buildings that are going to be classified and there is still 3700 yet to be classified

He was one of six councillors calling for Dunedin and coastal Otago to remain a low-risk seismic zone, saying a change would pose a real economic risk to businesses and property owners.

The shift to a higher risk zone would take a toll on Dunedin, he said.

“Dunedin council has confirmed it’s unknown how many three level unreinforced masonry buildings there are in Dunedin. But they have confirmed that two levels plus a basement will be considered a three-level building and this is a critical point,” Lund said.

“Because under the new legislation, a three level unreinforced masonry building must have a full retrofit. There’s no partial or just facade securing, it’s full.”

Tourism contributed roughly $379 million to the city’s GDP last year and the city relied on its heritage look and feel to attract visitors, he said.

Dunedin already had many under-utilised heritage buildings due to the cost of remediation and this bill was expected to add even further cost and complexity, Lund said.

“As a heritage building owner and building contractor, I understand this intimately. It’s expensive and risky to do strengthening. Old buildings are frustrating. They’re not plumb, level or square. There’s often rot and decay uncovered during the work.

“They consume vast amounts of labour hours and supervision time. I have the scars and the job cost to prove it.”

They also advocated for Ōamaru and its wealth of heritage buildings to be exempted, saying the lower risk town would face significant costs because it was above the proposed small town population threshold of 10,000.

Structural engineer and heritage building developer Stephen Macknight said Dunedin has New Zealand’s best collection of heritage buildings.

“It’s a point of difference compared to other places. We didn’t have in the 80s all our heritage knocked down like many of the cities around the country, and also we had the gold rush at a time when they were building really significant heritage structures,” he said.

Dunedin was lucky to not have more demolition under the current rules as the main streets in some smaller towns had been decimated when earthquake prone buildings were left empty as it was too costly to strengthen them and it viewed as easier to bowl them over instead, he said.

He was left with questions over the proposed rules, and said what the city needed was more certainty.

“Developers who are trying to juggle money and borrow money, and banks and insurance companies, with all this doubt out there it makes it a lot harder to do,” he said.

“Everyone needs a bit of certainty so all these changes or the talk about medium (seismic zone) and so on is just creating a little bit more fear in people and making the easier option to build new rather than work on redeveloping.”

It was not necessarily a bad thing for buildings to be empty for a period, he said.

“It saved a lot of buildings in Dunedin. A lot of Ōamaru just wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for this kind of pause and wait so if we rush into anything under legislation, we lose things which in the future might be seen as really valuable and able to be saved.”

It was important to make sure the new rules were not used to take the easy option of demolition rather than protecting heritage, Macknight said.

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