Category: AM-NC

Source: Radio New Zealand

Protesting could be banned from some parts of Christchurch, if one city councillor gets his way.

The council will vote on Wednesday on a request staff investigate councillor Aaron Keown’s proposal to create protest-free zones at what he calls “sensitive sites”, including the Bridge of Remembrance, the Earthquake Memorial and places of worship and cemeteries

One of the city’s best-known protesters John Minto is alarmed, along with Amnesty International, which said the right to protest was fundamental.

Keown said the proposed notice of motion stemmed from complaints he had received about protests at the Bridge of Remembrance, singling out Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) chair John Minto.

The group has held more than 125 marches departing from the bridge, since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began in 2023.

“As a city leader, it’s embarrassing having these people at the Bridge of Remembrance, which is a war memorial site, arguing over wars all around the world that don’t necessarily affect New Zealand, and a lot of the ones in the Middle East don’t necessarily affect New Zealand,” Keown said.

The heritage-listed bridge over the Avon River was built in 1923 to commemorate Canterbury soldiers who fought in World War I.

PSNA chair John Minto said the site was eminently appropriate to host the protests, given it included the commemoration of New Zealanders who fought and died to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

“There are 23 New Zealand soldiers who are buried in the Gaza War Cemetery, they died fighting to liberate Palestine from the Turks. This is the most appropriate place for us to hold protests calling for the liberation of Palestine today.”

Minto said despite his long history in activism, he had never seen anything like the consistency and longevity of the pro-Palestinian movement.

“I’ve never experienced a protest movement like this where people have been consistently coming out week after week right around the country. I’m proud of New Zealanders for doing that. We’ve done it in the past and we’ll continue to do it.”

Keown said he supported free speech, but not anytime or anywhere.

“I think there’s a time and place for protests, and I don’t think it’s down there [at the Bridge of Remembrance].

“A number of businesses have talked about the disruption from the great unwashed, turning up week after week to… they just change the flag usually, and it’s another protest.

“The climate change people, the Palestine people, they’re all the same usually.”

The bylaw would also apply to other protests, such as the School Strike for Climate Change or last year’s hikoi, he said

Keown said he was not aware of specific protests in cemeteries, but planned to include them.

Minto said he had attended a cemetery protest before.

“It was a protest at the Symonds Street Cemetery in Auckland where somebody had spray painted swastikas over the Jewish graves. So I was there along with a whole pile of other people to show solidarity with the Jewish community of New Zealand against an anti-Semitic attack. So protests can can happen anywhere and it’s appropriate for them to happen wherever – there should be no restrictions.”

Mandating approved protest zones was contrary to New Zealander’s sense of democracy, Minto said.

Keown said he had not kept track of how many complaints he had received.

A Christchurch City Council spokesperson said it had received 12 complaints relating to protest activity at the Bridge of Remembrance over the past year, which included concerns about Destiny Church activity during the Pride Parade.

It had also received one complaint about a protest in New Brighton, another was received by noise control about a protest at the Commodore Airport Hotel, and four others about protests with no specific location.

No complaints were identified relating specifically to cemeteries, places of worship, or the Earthquake Memorial, the spokesperson said.

In the report accompanying the notice of motion, council staff warned “protest-free sites” could be considered an unlawful restriction on peoples’ rights, and said it would advise whether the concept could be in contravention of the Bill of Rights.

Amnesty International director of advocacy and movement building Lisa Woods said the right to protest was fundamental, and was a right that could help protect other rights.

“It’s a really important part of our society that’s used to expose injustice, demand accountability, push for change.

“Between elections there are quite limited opportunities for a meaningful say, protest is a key way we communicate to decision-makers and others in the community about what’s important and needed.”

The default position for decision makers should be to avoid restrictions and focus on facilitating protest, she said.

Limitations could be imposed, but they needed to be very specific, justified and limited – people not liking the look of a protest, or a protest disrupting business was not sufficient, Woods said.

“Protest is by its nature disruptive – that’s the point. It might cause some disruption to society’s daily functioning but only serious disruption can justify restrictions. Because it’s not a good look would not meet the test to enable a justified restriction.”

New Zealand had a proud tradition of protest, Woods said.

“We stand on the shoulders of people who have, through protest, fought for important human rights and change that we all enjoy today.

“And that continues – we want to, as a society, continue getting better, and protest is a fundamental way of that being achieved, and of achieving change in the future.”

“In our political system, there aren’t always opportunities for meaningful engagement on a regular basis in-between elections, but protest is one of the key spaces where community claims its power and tells decision makers what is important.”

Keown said police told him months ago that they needed powers like the proposed move-on orders, which he believed would help disperse protesters.

Councillor Keown welcomed the newly announced move-on powers, which he believed would “absolutely help” disperse protesters, something Woods said was of grave concern to Amnesty International.

Woods said the move-on orders were “chilling policy”.

“We are worried that it’s going to impact people protesting and how in practice such a law could be used to limit people’s rights across a range of scenarios.”

Minto said civil liberties and protest groups were concerned about misuse of the proposed powers.

“We’ll be watching very carefully how this legislation develops because there are numerous examples of legislation that’s been passed for one particular purpose but then used for another, and we’ve seen that used against the protest movement, for example trespass orders, used against the protesters quite inappropriately by the police.

“Any restriction on the right to protest peacefully in a public place, we have to resist absolutely.”

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/christchurch-could-have-protest-free-zones-at-sensitive-sites/

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Seven weeks of weeding work at Lake Horowhenua has finished
• More than 400 tonnes of invasive weeds collected
• No easy fix for lake that for decades had sewage pumped into it.

Raw sewage was pumped into Punahau Lake Horowhenua for decades, earning it the dubious reputation as one of New Zealand’s most polluted waterways.

A years-long cleanup project is now working to restore it back to health, although it is not possible to yet put a timeframe on when the lake, west of Levin, will be safe to swim in again.

A special harvester has operated there for the past five summers, chopping out invasive weeds to give native species the chance to flourish, and replenish the oxygen-deprived water.

Mowing the lake

It was a crisp but calm day when RNZ visited Lake Horowhenua and headed out on the water on the paddle steamer-like $300,000 harvester – one of two in New Zealand.

Skipper Julian Everth explained how it worked.

“You have one horizontal set of teeth, which cuts horizontally, and then two vertical ones. And as you’re going along the weed gets cut out in a chunk.

“That comes out on a conveyer belt and then lands on another conveyer belt by your feet. Once it’s full there you can shift the conveyer belt backwards more and load more on to the boat.”

Over the past seven weeks Everth and another skipper have operated the harvester for 12 hours a day – mowing the 390-hectare lake bed in a grid pattern. Tuesday was their last day this summer.

They will collect more than 400 tonnes of weed, and the odd creature too.

“We gets lots of little perch and carp. They’re both invasive species, so we’re not too worried about them.

“Occasionally we will get eels that will swim up on to the harvester. When that happens we stop the cutting process, pull backwards a little bit and allow them to swim off.”

While the lake was safe for aquatic life, it was not recommended for humans due to the bacteria it contained.

The harvested weed was scooped into a truck and taken to Feilding for composting, rather than rotting in the lake.

“Essentially, it uses up lots of nutrients in the lake to grow. Eventually it will die and collapse,” Everth said.

“You end up with a blanket of dead weed on the bottom of the lake. When that happens it rots and makes an anoxic environment. A lot of the fish and eels can’t survive in that.”

Lake still getting poisoned – guardian

Tangata tiaki Deanna Hanita-Paki said the lake was for a long time a receptacle for effluent runoff, pesticides and worse.

“Back in the 1950s and 60s the council started putting raw sewage straight into the lake. That stayed like that until about 1985.

“They’ve had years of polluting – raw sewage straight into the lake.”

Lake trustees fought court battles to halt this, but their win took years and the effects of the pollution were devastating, Hanita-Paki said.

But the iwi Muaūpoko and the Horizons Regional Council were now putting much effort into nursing the lake back to life.

“It’s a lot better. With the harvester being there we can see the water’s getting better – the quality of that water was getting better and so was the weed changing, and our creatures were coming back.

“Our fish were coming back – same with the eels.”

But it was not perfect, as stormwater was still routed there.

“We’ve found that on those weather events the lake starts to smell and it smells different.

“I go out every month. We do water testing with Horizons. It started changing about October, November last year. The smell inside the lake was really bad.”

She said as far as she was concerned, the lake was still being poisoned due to toxins in the stormwater.

Weeding part of the plan

Horizons Regional Council fresh water and projects manager Logan Brown said lakes were complex.

“There is no silver bullet for restoration of Lake Horowhenua. There are lots of little projects that go together and they piece together.

“For all lakes across the country when we’re doing restoration you have to do both in-lake interventions and catchment interventions.”

A wetland project would also begin shortly, while the weed harvester was about to get a deep clean and then go into storage ahead of next summer.

“I like to compare it to a lawnmower. Effectively, we’re mowing the weed of the bottom of the lake,” Brown said.

“We’re not trying to get rid of all the weed. Like cutting your lawn, you leave the lawn there for stability.

“We want the aquatic plants to stay on the lake bed. That helps with stability. We get really high winds here and it just stops that stirring up on the lake bed.”

The lake is only as deep as 1.8 metres now due to silt build-up down the years.

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/hundreds-of-tonnes-of-weeds-removed-in-lake-horowhenua-clean-up/

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Christchurch City Council is yet to clarify how sewage will be treated before being pumped into the ocean under a new plan designed to mitigate the putrid stench coming from Bromley’s damaged sewage treatment plant.

Mayor Phil Mauger confirmed yesterday the council was investigating pumping tens of millions of litres of partially treated and chlorinated sewage into the ocean each day in an effort to combat the smell of the damaged plant.

The council was last week hit with an abatement notice after Canterbury Regional Council received more than 4500 complaints about the odour in the past month.

The plant was damaged by fire in 2021 and eastern suburbs have since been plagued by the foul odour. But other parts of the city have also been hit as it has got markedly worse this year.

RNZ had requested interviews with Mauger, city council staff and councillors representing affected areas, but none had responded.

Christchurch City Council was yet to answer questions on how the sewage would be treated before being pumped to the ocean and how long such a measure would be in effect.

Community leaders and Canterbury Regional Council have been caught on the hop by Mauger’s announcement yesterday.

Local community board deputy chair Jackie Simons only heard of the proposal yesterday.

“This isn’t unusual,” she said.

“It’s not good enough. I should have known that this was in the winds weeks ago.

“I have people asking me questions about this before I have the information and as the elected representative that’s not a good thing. But at the same time, I do respect my council colleagues and council staff and what they are trying to do. I know that they are pulling out everything they can to try and resolve the situation.

“It’s uncomfortable for everyone and the fact that I don’t get information ahead of time – it’s frustrating.”

Simons said she was cautiously optimistic about the plan, but she had concerns.

“There’s a lot of gaps. There’s a lot of information that hasn’t come through because it’ll be very detailed and very complex,” Simons said.

“I’ve said I’m cautiously optimistic. I have concerns about it being discharged into our ocean because our ocean is literally not for that purpose. So I’m concerned about any harmful repercussions from discharging it to the ocean and I’m well aware that it has the potential to create problems along our coastline for people and for marine life.

“At the same time I’m also dealing with a situation that has gone on for many years in the suburb of Bromley where our people are traumatised by ongoing odour.

“There’s also younger people, and adults of course, who are having some fairly severe health impacts and it’s a very fine line to actually balance out doing something for the people without destroying our marine life. So cautiously optimistic is the word because I want our people to be better and to be able to get on and start living their lives.

“It’s not an ideal solution by any means. But at this state in time what else do we have? I can’t see that we have any other solution.”

Canterbury Regional Council director operations Brett Aldridge said he had many unanswered questions about the plan.

“We had some very high level discussions around what the mayor proposed but only in a conceptual sense and so we were pretty surprised yesterday with the city coming out saying they were in consultation with us,” he said.

“In saying that we do have a planned meeting and we will sit down and work through the proposal in a lot more detail. But at this stage we really don’t have much more detail than what the mayor announced yesterday.”

Among the regional council’s unanswered questions was what partially treating the sewage meant.

Aldridge said they were very interested in finding out what that process would look like.

However he was certain it would not result in Christchurch facing a similar situation to Wellington, where about 70 million litres of wastewater was pumped into the ocean off the capital daily after its Moa Point wastewater treatment plant failed.

“That would be a categoric no – I don’t think so at all,” Aldridge said.

“We are not in the same emergency situation that Wellington is and we really would work through what’s being proposed and what are the mitigations that are going to be required to get it out there in a state that the effects are going to be well managed and mitigated.”

Canterbury Regional Council would meet with Christchurch City Council on Wednesday to discuss the proposal.

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/questions-remain-over-christchurch-sewage-discharge-plan/

Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman whose young daughter had part of her face bitten off by an aggressive dog can not understand why the animal has not been euthanised, a month after the attack.

The dog belongs to a family member who came to stay at their Waikato home.

They were aware it had previously bitten an adult and had been impounded.

At that time, animal control seized the dog and it had since been required to meet a set of regulations, including wearing a muzzle.

However, the family was unaware it had also previously attacked a child.

Georjeana Tupawa’s daughter was five when she was attacked, after the dog’s owner took her into the garage where the dog was living.

It was not wearing a muzzle at the time.

The dog was seized by animal control after the attack, but the owner will not give permission for it to be destroyed.

Tupawa told Checkpoint the attack has left her daughter traumatised.

“My daughter was bitten in the face and it wasn’t just a puncture wound. The dog actually ripped her upper cheek completely off. So she is now scarred from about halfway up her lip beside her nose, straight up under her eye.”

Tupawa’s daughter was in hospital for several days after going through emergency microsurgery.

While her face is heavily scarred, the surgery was much more successful than it could have been.

But it is trauma that Tupawa’s daughter was now dealing with.

“She was having nightmares. I obviously stayed up at the hospital with her. It was really hard. I didn’t sleep because I was watching her. She was waking up multiple times. Kept asking, why did this happen?’.”

More than a month on from the attack, the dog is still alive in the pound.

“I think it’s inhumane, I think that it would be a real risk to allow this dog out, I think that everyone deserves a second chance and the dog was given that.”

Tupawa said if the restrictions put on the dog after the first two attacks were followed, she believed the attack on her daughter could have been avoided.

“It’s not the dog’s fault that the restrictions that were put in place were not followed and that this ultimately happened. I feel that it was a ticking time bomb. And I think that it just shouldn’t have happened.”

The dog’s owner has refused permission for it to be destroyed, which means the case now needs to be presented in front of a judge.

“They’ve told us that this could take weeks, months, potentially even years.”

“That says to me that this animal is being kept and I guess kind of like on death row in a way, or that the dog is going to be released and we’re going to wait for it to be fatal.”

Given the evidence it had of the attack, Tupawa said the council should have the power to destroy the dog.

“I think that the photos that we have, you know, post-op, pre-op, before they managed to do what they did. I think that those photos without any backstory should be an open and close case.”

Tupawa said there needed to be changes to the current dog laws.

“Why should this dog have to wait for it to go in front of a judge? This is an open-and-shut case.

“You look at the photo, you look at my daughter now, you look at the scar that is on her face – it’s not on her foot, it’s not on her arm, it’s on her face. How do you deal with that? How do you move on from that?”

The Waipā District Council told Checkpoint it has issued a notice to the dog owner saying they intended to hold the dog until the conclusion of a prosecution against them.

The council is seeking the destruction of the dog and will keep communication lines open with the child’s family as the process progresses.

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/dog-not-euthanised-after-biting-off-part-of-young-girls-face/

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Department of Conservation (DOC) has floated a whale back out to sea after it stranded on Auckland’s St Heliers Beach.

The Shepherd’s beaked whale was spotted at Ladies Bay this morning.

DOC operations manager Bec Rush said the whale had a health check and was then refloated as the tide was rising about 3.30pm

“However, it is possible the whale will re-strand overnight, and we will be monitoring for if this happens.”

Shepherd’s beaked whale strandings are semi-regular in New Zealand, said Rush, and they are occasionally seen live at sea, with reports from offshore Taranaki, Gisborne, Kaikoura, Otago, and Fiordland.

Project Jonah spokesperson Louisa Hawkes said Shepherd’s beaked whales lived in the deep sea, and only came up to shore if something was wrong.

Stranded, injured or dead whales should be reported to the DOC emergency hotline 0800 DOC HOT (0800 362 468).

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/deep-sea-whale-re-floated-after-stranding-on-central-auckland-beach/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Government officials and major fuel retailer Z Energy are moving to ease any concerns about the country’s fuel reserves.

The US and Israel-led air campaign in Iran has seen the country fire missiles and drones at its Middle East neighbours and threaten to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 million barrels – a fifth of the world’s traded oil – moves each day.

Iranian strikes have also prompted Qatar – one of the world’s largest gas exporters – to halt production at key facilities, sending European natural gas prices surging by 50 percent in a single night.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and fuel company Z Energy, said New Zealand had sufficient fuel reserves to withstand any disruption to global supplies.

MBIE said as a member of the International Energy Agency (IEA), New Zealand must hold at least 90 days of oil stocks.

The total was met through a combination of onshore stockholdings held by fuel importers and “oil tickets” – agreements with the governments of the United States, United Kingdom and Japan that allowed oil held overseas to count towards New Zealand’s IEA commitment.

MBIE said the Minimum Stockholding Obligation (MSO) – which came into force on 1 January 2025 – also required fuel importers to hold 21 days of diesel, 24 days of jet fuel and 28 days of petrol within New Zealand, including shipments already in transit within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

“Our data shows that fuel importers routinely hold more than what’s required – and while these figures are commercially sensitive, we can say that we have healthy stock levels and that importers have further ships planned and on their way to New Zealand,” an MBIE spokesperson said.

Diesel holdings would have to rise to 28 days by 2028.

Together, the MSO and overseas “ticket” contracts gave New Zealand more than 90 days of effective cover, meeting its full IEA obligations.

Importers were required to report stock levels regularly to MBIE to ensure sufficient reserves are available at short notice.

Z Energy said it was closely monitoring the rapidly evolving situation in the Middle East, but there was no impact on its ability to source fuel.

“Customers can continue to fill up as normal at any Z station across the country,” a spokesperson said.

The company said it would continue to monitor developments and provide updates as needed.

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/nz-has-healthy-stock-levels-of-fuel-mbie/

Source: Radio New Zealand

A whale has stranded on St Heliers Beach in Auckland.

Project Jonah, alongside the Department of Conservation, responded after a Shepherd’s beaked whale was spotted late this morning.

Spokesperson Louisa Hawkes said Shepherd’s beaked whales lived in the deep sea, and only came up to shore if something was wrong.

Massey University’s Cetacean Ecology Research Group had done an initial assessment of the whale, but needed to assess it further.

Hawkes said volunteers had put the whale on an inflatable set of pontoons in order to take it back out to deep water, rather than waiting for the tide to come in.

Stranded, injured or dead whales should be reported to the DOC emergency hotline 0800 DOC HOT (0800 362 468).

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

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/03/deep-sea-whale-strands-on-central-auckland-beach/