Category: DJF

Source: Radio New Zealand

Experts say a series of tremors around Kerikeri this week are a reminder that nowhere in New Zealand – even the country’s most seismically stable region – is immune from earthquakes.

Five quakes were recorded between 1 and 4 March, all centred below Kerikeri Inlet at a depth of about 5km.

The biggest, with a magnitude of 2.1, struck at 5.05pm on Tuesday.

Residents at Opito Bay, on the northern side of Kerikeri Inlet, described their homes shaking, hearing a “loud thud” or a booming sound like thunder, and their dogs “going crazy”.

Another said it felt like a car had crashed into the side of the house.

The quakes were also felt at Rangitane and Doves Bay, and at Wharau Bay on the opposite side of the inlet.

While small by New Zealand standards, any quakes in Northland get attention due to their rarity.

Seismic duty officer Sam Taylor-Offord said 10 earthquakes, including this week’s Kerikeri cluster, had been recorded in Northland since Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly GNS Science) expanded its monitoring network in 2022.

He said the Kerikeri quakes were not recorded automatically by GeoNet, the country’s geological hazard monitoring system, and so did not show up immediately online.

That was because the earthquakes were small and occurred at the margins of the monitoring network, which was tailored to large quakes in seismically active areas, such as around the volcanoes of the central North Island.

The shakes were, however, recorded by Northland’s local seismometer network.

Using that data, staff at the 24/7 National Geohazard Monitoring Centre were able to pinpoint the locations and manually add the five Kerikeri earthquakes to the record.

“These events correspond to reported times of shaking around Opito Bay and Doves Bay over the last couple of days. We’re now looking to see if there are more earthquakes in the sequence,” he said.

There was no known fault under Kerikeri Inlet so the cause could be best understood as the Earth’s crust breaking under accumulated stress.

Taylor-Offord said he was grateful to Northlanders who had reported the quakes at www.geonet.org.nz.

Such feedback helped Earth Sciences NZ update its records more accurately, especially around the margins of its monitoring network.

Taylor-Offord said earthquakes were rare in Northland because the region was far from the active plate boundary, where the Pacific plate was being forced under the Australian plate.

At its closest point to Northland, the boundary, known as the Hikurangi Subduction Zone, ran parallel to the east coast off Hawke’s Bay and Te Tai Rāwhiti, before continuing northeast along the Kermadec Trench.

That distance meant there was relatively little stress in the Earth’s crust under Northland.

The last big earthquake in Northland, in December 1963, was a magnitude 4.8 shake east of Kaitāia.

Northland’s average of about three earthquakes a year compared to thousands recorded every year along the East Coast (Hikurangi Subduction Zone) and Southern Alps (Alpine Fault) plate boundary regions.

Taylor-Offord said the Kerikeri Inlet shakes were a good reminder to expect earthquakes anywhere in New Zealand.

Anyone who experienced a large earthquake should remember the advice to “drop, cover and hold”.

Anyone who lived near the coast, as was the case for many Northlanders, should also be alert to the possibility of tsunamis.

“If the shaking is long or strong, get gone,” he said.

Northland’s monitoring network had 12 seismometers, with equipment at Whangaruru, Kawakawa and Omahuta closest to the Kerikeri earthquakes.

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/05/nowhere-immune-from-earthquakes-not-even-northland/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Alcohol Healthwatch’s Executive Director has said he was “horrified” after thousands of Steinlager beer bottles were mislabelled as alcohol free.

Andrew Galloway said he would like to see a strong regulatory response after the incident.

Food Safety New Zealand Deputy Director General Vincent Arbuckle told Checkpoint the implications are serious.

“[Lion are] very acutely aware of the fact that people choose for very real reasons to not drink and this is a very serious mistake.

More than 2500 boxes of 24 beers, more than 60,000 individual beers in total, are now being urgently recalled by Lion NZ after they were wrongly labelled alcohol free when they are not.

The Steinlager Ultra Low Carb Beer is actually 4.2 percent alcohol, but has been mislabelled.

Some of those boxes have gone to hospitality venues and will have been broken up.

Food Safety New Zealand said it is potentially very serious, with many consumers choosing to avoid alcohol for religious, cultural and medical reasons.

Arbuckle said there will be a thorough investigation, but the priority is the getting the beer back.

“They (Lion) know that and they have apologised publicly and we’ll be working with them to make sure we understand why this has happened and to be sure that it never happens again”

Lion said it was made aware of the mistake after a customer complained.

The company then found out there was an error in its production run, meaning beer containing 4.2 percent of alcohol was incorrectly labelled.

Arbuckle said they were now working to spread the message as far as possible.

“They’re working with all the retailers that the product’s been sold through. It’s also gone to hospitality, so they’ll be working with hospitality outlets where the product may have gone.”

“[Lion] released a public release yesterday, as did we, and they’re doing their level best to get the message out.”

With some of the beer sold to hospitality outlets, Arbuckle said there is a strong possibility of it being hard to identify.

“You would see a row in a chiller, that’s the non-alcoholic and here’s the alcoholic beers. And it’d be very difficult to sort that out. So outlets will need to be very cautious about trying to make sure they isolate.”

“They’ll have records of when they received a product and they’ll have some records of the batch they received. There’ll be ways in which they can check this out, but it is serious.”

Alcohol Healthwatch Executive Director Andrew Galloway told Checkpoint the organisation had a number of concerns, with medical being the most stark.

“People who are pregnant might be choosing to drink zero percent products and the risk of drinking while pregnant is the potential of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, a lifelong disability.”

“There might be previously heavy drinkers or dependent drinkers. And buying this product that says it’s zero, that isn’t, could be a trigger into a relapse, which could ultimately cost lives.”

“I think there is responsibility, shared responsibility, one from the producer and manufacturer, but also the regulatory regime in which this is allowed to happen.”

“I don’t think there is any checks and balances on the products that are out there for sale… I think monitoring would be good to see… some more tools when something like this happens that you can follow up with a regulatory response and perhaps send a very strong message out there to other manufacturers that this will not be tolerated.”

He said it was important that the recall response was swift and far-reaching to avoid further harm.

“We are talking about New Zealand’s most harmful drug… in the situation we are at at the moment there’s over 2500 cases out there.”

Galloway said the development of zero alcohol options meant it was often hard for the consumer to tell the difference in taste and appearance.

He said it was likely someone drinking the alcoholic version with a non-alcoholic label would not be able to tell the difference and end up in a dangerous situation like drink driving.

“These products do mimic the parent brand… so someone could quite easily in good faith be thinking they’re doing the right thing and land themselves in trouble.”

Vincent Arbuckle said anyone who thought they might have the incorrectly labelled product should return it.

“Check the best before date. If you’ve got any doubt at all, return that product from where you purchased it from. Advice is to be very cautious with those with that product, if there’s any doubt at all, don’t drink it, return it to your retailer.”

The recall is for Steinlager Ultra Low Carb beer 24 pack of 330ml bottles.

On the outer carton the best before date is 21/10/26, the best before is the same on the bottle.

Steinlager Alcohol Free is only sold in green bottles, not clear bottles, so if a beer in a clear bottle is labelled alcohol free it is incorrectly labelled.

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/05/alcohol-healthwatch-horrified-after-steinlager-beer-mislabelled/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Warning: Contains content about sexual offending against children.

A Dunedin man has been jailed for distributing photos and videos showing the sexual exploitation of young children.

Hamish Mitchell-Wood was sentenced to two years and nine months’ jail when he appeared in the Christchurch District Court on Thursday after earlier pleading guilty to possessing and distributing an objectionable publication.

The 30-year-old’s offending occurred over six weeks in March and April last year.

Mitchell-Wood was arrested in May when police seized his phone and devices.

Police learned he was operating multiple accounts on a digital platform on his computer and was in possession of more than 300 objectionable pictures and videos.

Eleven of the 12 publications shared involved children under the age of 13.

The court heard about half of the material in Mitchell-Wood’s possession involved young children of a similar age.

Judge David Robinson said Mitchell-Wood was complicit in child sex abuse, like all consumers of such material.

“This material both depicts and promotes child sexual abuse. The production of this material requires that real children be abused in the most violent ways,” Robinson said.

“That likely follows a period of exploitation and grooming of vulnerable and dependent children.”

Mitchell-Wood also had access to a “mega-link” where further objectionable material was stored on a separate server.

“These children are often damaged in irrevocable ways. The fact that their abuse has been recorded and disseminated amplifies those traumas,” Robinson said.

Most of the material Mitchell-Wood possessed was deleted but later recovered.

The court heard Mitchell-Wood had accessed the material during a stressful period when he had resorted to gambling and substance abuse.

“Today needs to be about holding you accountable for the harm that you have done to the community and the victims of your offending,” Robinson said.

Mitchell-Wood’s was also added to the child sex offender register.

Sexual Violence

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/05/hamish-mitchell-wood-jailed-for-distributing-photos-videos-showing-sexual-exploitation-of-children/

Source: Radio New Zealand

One of the thousands of North Island health workers who were not paid overnight has been dipping into her son’s bank account while she has just $2 in hers.

Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora (HNZ) is scrambling to pay about 5500 staff in Waikato after a payment glitch.

Waikato Hospital health worker Helen, who did not what her surname used, told RNZ she felt embarrassed having to ask for money.

“I’ve had to borrow money just so I could park my car and make sure I could get my car out of the car park this afternoon after work,” she said.

“I’ve had to call the banks to make sure that they’re aware that money will not be available for my loans, I’ve had to let my landlord know that I won’t be able to pay my rent today due to not having enough money in the account.

“At this stage, if money doesn’t go through overnight, I’m not 100 percent sure that I can come to work tomorrow because my petrol light is also on.”

HNZ has put the problem down to an error in the rostering system that is used to calculate payments.

“This issue has now been resolved, and all impacted staff will be paid by the end of today,” Robyn Shearer from its people and culture team said.

“We are confident we have addressed the underlying reasons, and we have reduced the likelihood of this reoccurring.”

Staff were informed about the problem in a memo, Helen said.

“They have told us that the hours have been sent to the bank at about midday today, and they’re hoping that the money will come in overnight,” she said.

“But there’s no guarantee that the amount will be correct.”

Colleagues were in similar situations, Helen said.

“Most of them have been on the phone to the banks and changing mortgage payments and hoping that we don’t get stung with fees and dishonour payments or defaults on loans and things like that,” she said.

“It’s horrifically stressful at the moment.”

She said the pay glitch was frustrating, but she loved her job.

“And if I can be here tomorrow, I will be.”

The Public Service Association (PSA) called on HNZ to do an urgent review and said the error was a widespread failure.

The pay glitch struck about half of health workers in Waikato, it said.

“Workers turned up and did their jobs, caring for patients, keeping hospitals running, and they deserved to be paid on time,” PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said.

“A payroll failure of this scale is not a minor inconvenience, it causes real hardship.”

Apologies from HNZ were not enough and IT failures had become a recurring feature of the public health system, Fitzsimons said.

Health Minister Simeon Brown acknowledged staff who worked through the night to fix the problem.

“I know this situation will be frustrating for those affected, and getting it resolved so staff are paid as soon as possible is the priority,” he said.

His office said he was waiting for Health New Zealand’s review into how the error happened.

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/05/about-5500-waikato-health-new-zealand-staff-not-paid-overnight-due-to-glitch/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Wellington Water says replacement equipment to repair the failed Moa Point wastewater plant is yet to be ordered.

Early last month a blockage in the plant’s outfall pipe led to a backflow of sewage into the plant, shutting it down and forcing the closure of beaches along the city’s South Coast as up to 70 million litres of untreated sewage was sent into the sea each day.

In the immediate aftermath of the fault a room at the bottom of plant, the size of an Olympic Swimming Pool, was 3m deep in wastewater.

At the time Wellington Water Chief Executive Pat Doughty said up to 80 percent of the equipment in the plant had been damaged.

A month out from the shutdown Wellington Water’s Chief Operating Officer, Charles Barker said additional equipment to repair damage parts of the plant had not yet been ordered.

“We understand that people want answers. Which is why we are working through a thorough and robust process to understand the full extent of the damage. We’ve had specialists from Beca [engineering consultants] go through the plant and they will provide us with an assessment soon. Once we have that, this will inform our approach to repairing the plant,” Barker said.

Barker said before details of the plant’s repair could be made public the water services provider would have to consult on their plans with insurers and the WCC.

“No additional equipment has been ordered as of yet. This process will take time (likely a few months) but it is important that we take the time and do this well,” Barker said.

In a prior statement Wellington Water said the clean-up of the site was completed last week and the plant was being readied for “recovery work”.

This week the water service provider noted that the plant had remained open since the failure to improve ventilation and protect staff onsite.

“Moa Point plant was designed to be essentially airtight, in part to manage odour. We are currently working to reinstate some ventilation systems that will allow us to close off the plant, however this will mean that untreated air will be vented out of the building via the odour discharge stack (similar to a large chimney). Venting this untreated air out of the stack will help it disperse more quickly. This has a low risk of odour, but will be carefully monitored,” the spokesperson said.

Mayor Andrew Little had been approached for comment.

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/03/05/moa-point-wastewater-plant-replacement-equipment-not-yet-ordered-wellington-water-says/