Category: LiveNews

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Concerns for crew of former ferry at anchor in Tasman Bay

Source: Maritime Union of New Zealand

The Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ) is voicing its concern regarding the welfare of underpaid seafarers onboard the vessel Vega (formerly the Aratere), which is sitting at anchor in Tasman Bay for over 50 days.

MUNZ National Secretary Carl Findlay says the Union has received reports regarding the wellbeing of crew members onboard the vessel, which is understood to be awaiting transit to a ship breaking yard.

Contracts obtained by the Union confirm the vessel is currently registered to Jahaj Solutions (F.Z.E), based in U.A.E.

“This vessel was once the flagship of New Zealand’s ferry fleet. It is now sitting off our coast with a foreign crew who are cut off from shore, and on contracts that pay well below International Labour Organization (ILO) minimum standards,” Mr Findlay says.

Crew agreements viewed by the Union reveal that an Able Seaman on board is being paid a basic wage of just US$206 per month. This is significantly below the ILO minimum basic wage for an Able Seafarer, which rose to US$690 per month on 1 January 2026.

Even with overtime and allowances included, the total monthly pay for an Able Seaman is only US$550, still far below accepted international minimums.

“The crew have now been onboard with the ship at anchor for nearly two months with no sign of progress,” Mr Findlay says.

While the vessel’s agents and Master have claimed the crew are in good health and that provisions are being supplied, Mr Findlay says there needs to be independent verification.

MUNZ is calling on regulator Maritime NZ to conduct an immediate, independent welfare check on all crew members onboard the Vega to ensure they are safe, paid correctly, and have the option to be repatriated if they wish to leave the vessel.

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/02/12/concerns-for-crew-of-former-ferry-at-anchor-in-tasman-bay/

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Raw sewage still pouring into Wellington waters raises questions, and anger

Source: Radio New Zealand

A Breaker Bay local with a long history of fighting for clean water in Wellington explains why the sewage dump is so catastrophic, for health, history, and the environment.

Ray Ahipene-Mercer with his jar of 24-year-old water from Moa Point sewage treatment plant. Sharon Brettkelly

Ray Ahipene-Mercer keeps a jar of 24-year-old water in his refrigerator, labelled ‘Moa Point Final Effluent’.

“It looks like a glass of water, hasn’t got a single bug in it, no discolouration, nothing,” he says.

It is a memento of the new sewage plant which he battled over for years as the co-leader of the Wellington Clean Water Campaign.

But nearly 30 years after that successful campaign to stop the dumping of raw sewage in the sea, it is happening again.

Since last Wednesday, more than 600 million litres of untreated sewage have poured into the water off the south coast after a catastrophic failure of Moa Point, the city’s main treatment plant.

On a sparkling summer day Ahipene-Mercer looks out from his Breaker Bay home just around the corner from the plant and the bays are empty.

“I’m looking at the water about 50 metres away, it’s beautiful and yet underneath it there is this darkness. There is not a person walking the dog, having a walk, swimming, surfing, nothing,” he tells The Detail.

The former city councillor is angry, not just about the health risks to humans, but the damage to the environment and risks to the kororā, and to historic Māori sites.

“Toilet water is now brushing up against historic sites at Tarakina Bay. One of the reasons this campaign in the 80s was so successful, we married Māori concerns and Pākehā concerns together and that’s why we won that campaign,” Ahipene-Mercer says.

“I’m very angry, because of all this work we did. It’s not in vain however because Wellingtonians have responded magnificently.”

After a catastrophic failure last Wednesday at Moa Point, Wellington’s main treatment plant, more than 600 million litres of untreated sewage has poured into the water off the south coast. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

The plant failed early last Wednesday morning during a bout of heavy rain. With the threat of more bad weather this weekend, there are fears the situation could get worse.

‘It’s going to get smellier’

The Post journalist Tom Hunt has been writing about Wellington’s wastewater woes for years and is experiencing first-hand the effects of days of raw sewage flowing into the sea.

“It gets worse the longer it’s there and it’s apparently going to get smellier as well,” he tells The Detail.

“I live not far from the tip and it was a still night last night and I could pick up a faint smell,” he says. “They’ve got these tanker trucks that Wellington’s quite familiar with because in covid time there was another pipe failure and they’d take the wastewater to the tip and they were called ‘turd taxis’. They’re just back and forth ferrying all the stuff out of the olympic-sized swimming pool room and just clearing that out and taking it to the tip.”

Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty broke the news last Wednesday that a room in the plant was three metres deep in sewage, blowing the electrics and badly damaging or destroying equipment.

In the immediate aftermath raw sewage was flowing through a short outfall to five metres off the coast but it is now going through a longer 1.8 kilometre pipe.

“But it is still untreated sewage … and for the foreseeable future we will have effectively raw sewage being pumped off the south coast very near a marine sanctuary not far from a nesting area,” Hunt says.

It could be months before the sea on the south coast is safe for walking, swimming and collecting kaimoana.

It brings back memories for Hunt, who grew up around the south coast of the polluted waters in the 1980s.

“That was a different time when the south coast was not a desirable place to be.”

He says now they’re “back in that for a mystery reason, we still don’t know what caused it.”

Hunt explains the numerous reports of warnings and abatement notices issued to the operator, French-owned Veolia which is paid roughly $17 million a year by Wellington Water to run the plant.

He says it is too soon to say who is at fault and a full inquiry will impel people to give evidence.

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

LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/02/12/raw-sewage-still-pouring-into-wellington-waters-raises-questions-and-anger/

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Former Reserve Bank Governor supports review into Bank’s decisions during pandemic, but questions timing

Source: Radio New Zealand

Former Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

Former Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash is supportive of the government’s decision to review the Bank’s decisions during the Covid-19 pandemic, but concerns from the opposition over the review’s timing so close to the election are a “fair question”, he says.

On Wednesday, finance minister Nicola Willis announced she was launching an independent review into monetary policy decisions during the pandemic, including cuts to the Official Cash Rate, and the Large Scale Asset Purchase programme.

Willis is touting the exercise as a fact-finding, lessons-learned mission.

“This is simply about New Zealand learning the lessons of history. The Reserve Bank, during the response to Covid-19, did a huge amount of money printing,” she said.

“The result, in part due to those decisions, in part due to Labour’s decisions to spend and borrow a huge amount of money, was very high inflation, house prices going up 30 percent in a year, and more than $10 billion of losses after the printing of that money. So it is appropriate for the government to look at, did we get it all right, what could we do better in the future?”

Finance minister Nicola Willis. RNZ / Mark Papalii

Brash, also a former National leader, said the effects of monetary policy were “substantial” during the pandemic, and given the costs to the taxpayer an ex-post review “almost certainly” made sense.

“The Reserve Bank did two main things: they cut the Official Cash Rate to a very low level, 0.25 [percent], and would probably have cut it below that level had they felt the banks were able to handle that,” he said.

“In the end, they didn’t cut it below 0.25, but instead, of course, they bought many billions of dollars of government bonds at low interest rates in an attempt to stimulate the economy, but at a cost to the taxpayer, which was very substantial. So I think it’s worth having a having a good look at that.”

The current governor Anna Breman said she welcomed the review, but pointedly referenced a mandatory review undertaken by the Bank of the 2017-22 time period, which found the “large scale asset purchase programme was successful in correcting financial market dysfunction and reducing long-term interest rates”.

The review also found that “in hindsight, earlier, or stronger monetary tightening could have curbed the subsequent hike in inflation,” Breman said.

Reserve Bank Governor Anna Breman. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

Willis was not impressed by that previous review.

“The Reserve Bank went through a window-dressing exercise of doing their own review of what they’d done, and gave themselves essentially full marks at the time,” she said.

“In opposition, I was frank. I said they’ve marked their own homework, that’s not good enough. If I was the finance minister, I would commission an independent review, and today that’s what I’ve done.”

The opposition has questioned why, if Willis had wanted a review all along, she had waited until now to commission it – especially as it is set to be made public in September, just a few weeks before the election.

Labour leader – and former Covid-19 response minister – Chris Hipkins said it was “an exercise in cynical, political manipulation,” pointing to other occasions the government could have done a review, including when it expanded the terms of reference for the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry.

“The timing of it is very transparent. This is a very clear political exercise in the middle of an election campaign. It’s not designed to provide some impartial view of the Reserve Bank’s actions, bearing in mind that the Reserve Bank took all of these actions independently of the government of the day,” he said.

“I think the whole world has learned a lot of lessons around monetary policy in a global crisis like a global pandemic. New Zealand’s Reserve Bank, the actions they took weren’t out of line with the actions being taken by central banks around the world. And there have certainly been lessons, I think, the whole economic system have learned from that.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins. RNZ / Mark Papalii

Hipkins described the review as an “attack” on the Bank’s independence.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has also questioned the timing, noting she had called for a Select Committee inquiry into the economic response in 2022.

“The timing of this is so sus. Nicola Willis has been talking about these concerns since I was on the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee with her back in 2020. And it also obviously was an election issue throughout 2023. So if the minister’s intent, if the government’s intent, is pure, they would have got this out of the way with the broader Covid inquiry.”

Swarbrick said she had held former Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s “feet to the fire” on the effects of monetary policy on inequality, and did not believe Willis had any intention of addressing inequality with the new review.

“The Greens have actually been concerned since the outset of Covid-19 with unconventional monetary policy’s deployment. Because, as reflected in advice from RBNZ and Treasury at the time, that to do the Large Scale Asset Purchases and associated unconventional monetary policy without intervening or mitigating fiscal policy, we would see massive house price inflation and growing inequality,” she said.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. RNZ / REECE BAKER

“Of course, that’s exactly what happened.”

Willis has denied the review is timed for the election, and said she had not received advice on its timing.

“I don’t need to have that raised with me. It turns out that it’s quite top of mind that there’s an election in November. I don’t need officials to give me advice on it,” she said.

“The more political question you should all be asking is why are there politicians who are afraid of an independent review of the decisions of the independent Reserve Bank? Riddle me that.”

Brash noted that when he was Governor, the incoming Labour government in 1999 commissioned a “complete review” of the Bank’s framework.

That review, published in 2001 by Swedish economist Lars Svensson, recommended the formal establishment of a Monetary Policy Committee, something then-Finance Minister Sir Michael Cullen rejected.

The Committee was later established in 2019, following a further review of the Reserve Bank Act in 2017.

Svensson found the Bank had tightened its policy too late in 1992/93, and eased it too late in 1997/98.

He also recommended the Bank change how it reported and discussed alternative measures of inflation expectations for the medium and long term, but generally found its communication of monetary policy decisions to be “exemplary”.

Brash described that review as a “fair cop,” and a reasonable thing for a government to do.

He said it was a “fair question” of why Willis had waited until an election year to commission a review of her own.

“You can debate whether the timing should have been a few months earlier or a few months later, but that there should be a review seems to me to make good sense.”

Former Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash says it’s fair to question why Willis has waited until an election year to commission a review of her own. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly

Brash said he could “see some logic” in having it now, rather than earlier, as Willis would have wanted to wait until a new Governor came in.

He said he was not familiar with one of the reviewers, Athanasios Orphanides, but was familiar with David Archer from when he was the Reserve Bank’s assistant governor.

Brash said he was “pleased” at Archer’s involvement, and he had a “high regard” for him.

“Not only at the Reserve Bank of course, but he was also at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel for a number of years. So he’s had very wide international experience.”

Willis said the two reviewers were “objectively credible” and had significant experience.

“They are not political figures in any way. And I actually went to great pains to work through with the Treasury who, in a domestic context, would be able to do the review, who wasn’t conflicted by previous statements, and who would be able to give this credibility and weight, so I stand by the decision.”

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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/2026/02/12/former-reserve-bank-governor-supports-review-into-banks-decisions-during-pandemic-but-questions-timing/

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Government wants to bypass fast-track process for proposed liquefied natural gas terminal

Source: Radio New Zealand

A proposed liquefied natural gas terminal will bypass the fast-track process, documents show. RNZ

A proposed liquefied natural gas terminal will bypass even the fast-track process in order to be built in time for winter next year, documents show.

The government plans to rush through as many of the required approvals as possible ahead of the election, “to give the preferred supplier greater policy certainty that New Zealand is committed to developing the facility”, a Cabinet paper said.

A critic of the proposal says pushing the entire process through so quickly is unwarranted and the public and local communities should be properly consulted.

Energy Minister Simon Watts said this week that the government would proceed with plans to commission a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import facility in Taranaki, with whole-of-life costs spread across all electricity users through a levy.

Watts said it would result in overall savings to households, because it would help to lower electricity premiums during dry years when hydro lakes ran low.

The Cabinet paper, released after the announcement, noted that “timing is very tight” to get the facility up and running in time for winter 2027.

“An LNG terminal will require regulatory consents and approvals if it is to be operational ahead of winter 2027, and the existing Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 processes are unlikely to be sufficient,” Watts wrote.

“I propose developing an Enabling Liquefied Natural Gas Bill to provide the necessary consents, approvals, levy power and any modifications to existing legislation to enable the preferred LNG facility to be built and operational ahead of winter 2027.”

Energy Minister Simon Watts. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

That would protect against the risk of late project delivery, the paper said.

The paper also warned that a future government might not proceed with LNG, and recommended signing contracts by the middle of this year to lock the concept in.

Expediting consents through special legislation would also help, it said.

“Our objective is to provide as many of these approvals as possible before the election.”

There were still risks even with a rapid consent process.

“LNG import facilities are highly technical in nature,” the paper said.

“Further, New Zealand does not have an ideal location (large deep-water port close to the main gas pipeline) to locate an LNG import facility, meaning that the technical challenges of importing LNG here are more significant than in some other countries.”

The government should carry out further technical analysis before proceeding with a preferred proposal, and “be prepared not to proceed with an accelerated proposal should further analysis suggest that the proposal(s) is/are unworkable”.

That could include considering options that might not be up and running until late 2027 or early 2028.

However, any construction and delivery delays could mean “substantial industry exits”, the paper warned.

During the 2024 energy crisis, several industrial users paused operations while others closed completely.

2027 not ‘a magical winter’

Environmental Defense Society chair Gary Taylor said the LNG proposal and the timeframe “sounds like another rushed project, redolent of the [Interislander] ferry fiasco”.

Environmental Defense Society chair Gary Taylor. Supplied

“Good policy, particularly when it involves significant capital investment, should not be rushed like this,” he said.

“I don’t see why the winter of 2027 is a magical winter. If time is constrained, then let’s go for winter 2028 and do it properly.”

Claims of more industry exits if a dry year occured in the meantime were just that, he said.

“Those with vested interests do tend to wave shrouds to support their cause.”

Instead, additional time could be used for a more considered analysis of the proposal and its alternatives, along with more meaningful engagement during the political process.

“It would enable much better consideration than you’re going to get through a rushed select committee process if this proposed bill is put through the House under urgency,” Taylor said.

Multiple reports, including one commissioned by the government, have warned that imported LNG should only be considered as a last resort.

An annex to the Cabinet paper, comparing LNG to alternatives such as diesel peakers, concluded LNG could be brought online faster than any other option – though it gave a timeframe as late as 2029 to get a facility operational.

No substantive consideration was given to grid-scale battery storage systems, or rooftop solar.

Large-scale battery technology had not progessed enough to cover “long-duration cover needs”, while rooftop solar would not provide enough additional energy during winter, when supply was most likely to be a problem, the annex said.

Cabinet proposal mirrors independent report details

Much of the detail in the Cabinet paper mirrored the findings of an independent report commissioned from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) last year by the four gentailers – Contact, Genesis, Mercury and Meridian.

That report recommended LNG only as a fuel of last resort and recommended a $2 per megawatt hour (MWh) levy across all gas and electricity users to make it economically feasible.

The Cabinet paper referenced the BCG report several times, including its estimate of a $10/MWh saving on electricity prices.

A spokesperson for Watts’ office said the $10/MWh was “estimated by MBIE based on Concept Consulting modelling and MBIE’s analysis”, but said it was also consistent with the BCG estimate.

That $10 figure – together with the final proposed levy of between $2 and $4 – appeared to be the basis of the government’s claim that households would save an average $50 on their annual power bills.

A net $8/MWh saving – if it were passed on in its entirety – would translate to between $56 for an average household using 7MWh of electricity a year.

Watts’ spokesperson did not confirm whether that calculation was the same one the government had arrived at.

A natural gas rig in Taranaki. Supplied

The Cabinet paper underscored the importance of not creating an ongoing dependency on LNG, which it said would risk an overall increase in power bills.

“Put simply, LNG should function as an insurance product: available when required but used only infrequently. Perhaps counterintuitively, LNG provides the greatest benefit when it is available as back-up and rarely used.”

BCG partner and report author Richard Hobbs said having LNG as a stand-by option in that way broadly made sense, but BCG had made many other recommendations.

“In and of itself, it’s not a silver bullet. There are a lot of other things that need to be done.”

The government needed to keep up the pace of renewables development, and address domestic gas supply and demand.

That included focusing on extracting what remained in existing gas fields – not exploring for new fields that could take a decade or more to come online.

The major gap was “really around the demand side, where there is not a programme to support users to transition from gas to electricity or biomass”, Hobbs said.

His report had recommended a $200 million fund to assist that transition.

The government scrapped the Labour-led government’s Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry (GIDI) fund, which served a similar purpose.

The Cabinet paper noted the need to “continue efforts to strengthen domestic gas supply and ensure alternatives like biomass and electrification continue in parallel, to create optionality, not dependency [on LNG]”.

It noted the BCG recommendation to set up a transition fund but did not endorse or suggest such a policy.

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

LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/02/12/government-wants-to-bypass-fast-track-process-for-proposed-liquefied-natural-gas-terminal/

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‘Stop the supply’: NZ needs to stop seeing smoking as an individual problem, expert says

Source: Radio New Zealand

A tobacco control advocate says getting the country back on track towards its smokefree targets will require a policy shift away from focussing on individuals. 123RF

At the end of 2025 New Zealand missed its smokefree target and a tobacco control advocate says getting back on track will require a policy shift away from focussing on individuals towards whole system change.

The target was to reach smoking rates of below 5 percent for all population groups. According to the latest NZ Health Survey, 6.8 percent of the total population were daily smokers, but rates for Māori remained stubbornly higher at 15 percent.

The government released a revised Smokefree Action Plan at the end of 2024.

Associate professor at the University of Otago and co-director of Aspire Aotearoa Anaru Waa (Ngāti Hine) told RNZ that reaching a Smokefree Aotearoa might require a rethink of the goal, moving away from thinking of it as a problem of too many people using nicotine towards a problem of tobacco industry exploitation.

“I think the big thing is to achieve the goal, we’ve got to stop focusing on individuals. I mean, we need to support people to quit … it’s vital, but actually the focus should be on the industry and where they sell their products. And so the only way to get to an end game is to stop the supply.”

However, the goal of a smokefree Aotearoa was still achievable, he said.

University of Otago associate professor Anaru Waa (Ngāti Hine). Supplied / University of Otago

“When you can buy cigarettes or vapes at any corner store, at service stations and so forth, that’s the problem. So I think it’s entirely achievable, in fact we could achieve it within two years if we wanted to, if we had a government that was committed to it.

“In fact, I think we need to have a fairly close time frame, because I’m worried that the longer we take to achieve the goal, the more time we give the industry to adapt.”

Waa said any revamped smokefree plan would need to have tailored measures to support Māori, although he said tailored measures would not achieve the goal alone.

“In Aotearoa, it started in the 80s, our tobacco control programme largely focused on individuals and the assumption was that individuals need resources to do what we want them to do, either quit smoking or not start smoking. We know that those resources aren’t the same throughout society, so some people have more social support, are less exposed to retailers, we know that there’s more vape retailers in poorer communities … [if we] run with the assumption that if we focus on individuals, what we do is we get slow change and we get inequitable change.

“So the only way to make the change fair and equitable is to have big, wide-ranging measures that affect everybody in the same way. Therefore, getting rid of our smoked tobacco is a really good start, addressing other nicotine products to make sure they’re only there as therapies, if at all, and that’s the best way to do it.”

Associate Minister of Health Casey Costello said New Zealand had made great progress in reducing smoking rates – especially since 2018 when vapes became widely available. The gains had been particularly noticeable for young people and for Māori, she said.

“When the NZ Health Survey began in 2011/12, more than 37 percent of Māori were daily smokers. In the latest survey that figure was down to 15 percent. Since 2018, Māori smoking rates have halved and the latest stats show 118,000 Māori have quit smoking in the last five years.

“These reductions are really significant; no other country is making this sort of progress.

“But of course we still have a way to go – we want to stop people smoking to reduce the health impacts and there’s a particular focus on supporting Māori and Pacific populations where rates are higher. The official target we’re working towards is to reduce smoking rates below 5 percent for all population groups.”

Costello said the Smokefree Action Plan 2025 covered a range of actions across four key areas: reducing smoking uptake, increasing quit attempts, improving access to quit support, and supporting people to stay smokefree.

“To reach the 5 percent goal, health promotion campaigns, community mobilisation activities and stop smoking services need to be targeted and appropriate for the communities and population groups they are trying to reach.

“For example, Health New Zealand’s Breakfree to Smokefree social media campaign is targeted at Māori and Pacific smokers and government-funded Kaupapa Māori quit smoking programmes across the country support Māori to quit in a culturally appropriate way.”

Associate Minister of Health Casey Costello. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

But Waa called the plan a “rehash” of what had been done in previous decades.

“[The plan] was about, you know, focusing on young people to stop picking up smoking, some measures around disposable vapes which was important, and supporting people to quit smoking. But we know these measures, like I said, have a small incremental change over time, but they’re inequitable.

“So it was a rehash of what we already know, while important, wasn’t going to achieve the goal at all. And in fact, I’d also argue that they probably had less resource to do what they had previously. So it was a bit of a window dressing.”

Costello said because most who were still smoking were older, long-term smokers, it was important to provide access to less harmful products that could help people quit smoking and to encourage people to get help as stopping smoking was not easy.

“People are around four times more likely to quit smoking by using a stop smoking service, than by trying on their own.”

In the lead up to the election in November, Waa said he would be looking closely at each party’s policies around tobacco, although he noted the repeal of the Smokefree Act was not in National’s manifesto heading into the last election in 2023.

“Let’s be clear, the repeal of the Act means that a lot of people are going to continue to smoke. And we know that a lot of those people who continue to smoke are going to die or have, you know, really large harm. So there’s a huge harm on society, which this government has caused.”

Waa said he would also like to see efforts to curb tobacco industry influence and lobbying.

Labour’s health spokesperson Ayesha Verall has proposed a member’s bill “to protect New Zealanders’ health from the influence of big tobacco and shed light on their links to decision-makers”.

“We definitely need stronger measures because as we close the door on tobacco, it’s not as if the industry isn’t thinking about what they’ll do next. What they’ll do next is get more people addicted to vapes,” Waa said.

Waa said whatever the approach to reaching a Smokefree Aotearoa, it could not be a piecemeal one – it is a system and needed to be addressed as a whole system.

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

LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/02/12/stop-the-supply-nz-needs-to-stop-seeing-smoking-as-an-individual-problem-expert-says/

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Wellington Water quiet on Moa Point plans, cites upcoming inquiry

Source: Radio New Zealand

Wellington Water staff are now able to enter the failed Moa Point treatment plant. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

Wellington Water staff are now able to enter the failed Moa Point treatment plant but they cannot provide details of the work being done or who is involved.

Nearly 80 percent of the equipment inside the plant was damaged when it was flooded by a backflow of raw sewage last week.

At the peak of the equipment failure, 3300 litres of untreated wastewater went into the sea every second.

Since then a stretch of the Capital’s south coast had been off limits for swimming and gathering sea food.

Wellington Water expected it could be months before the plant was returned to full operations.

It said cleaning work was continuing, with fresh water flushed through the biological treatment areas of the plant to reduce levels of hydrogen sulphide, which made the interior of the plant hazardous to enter.

On Wednesday the water entity said it had “begun a closely managed entry” to the plant.

But it could not confirm specifics regarding who was now able to access the site, the conditions inside, what was being done to ensure the people’s safety or what was being revealed now that access had been acheived.

Earlier this week, Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dogherty said, initially, a room at the bottom of plant, the size of an Olympic Swimming Pool, was 3 metres deep in wastewater.

RNZ’s requests for information regarding the access to the site were put to Wellington Water at the beginning of the week in response to interviews with Dogherty where he said Monday would be the first day staff could safely go into the building to assess the damage.

On Wednesday, a statement from Dogherty said Wellington Water would be stepping back from making public statements about “aspects of the Moa Point incident and response” following an announcement from Wellington Mayor Andrew Little that the government would look to establish an independent inquiry into the plant’s failure as soon as possible.

“Now the inquiry has been signalled, it is important we allow that process to run its course. This means that we are unable to provide any further public statements regarding aspects of the Moa Point incident and response that may be included in the inquiry,” Dogherty said.

At the begining of the week, Little said Wellington City Council and central government would work together to ensure an inquiry was independent and had the right powers to make sure a similar problem never happened again.

Little said a ministerial inquiry would meet his preferred criteria of having independence, the right expertise and the power to access information.

“A ministerial inquiry has all that. It is more formalistic and does take a longer period of time to get the appointments up, get the terms of reference sorted out and then get it going. For me it is about having those criteria met but doing something that is as quick as possible. Those are the things that we are talking through,” Little said.

A spokesperson for Wellington Water said it hoped to provide more details of the work being done in the plant on Thursday.

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LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/02/12/wellington-water-quiet-on-moa-point-plans-cites-upcoming-inquiry/

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Schools accused of giving illegal scholarships to foreign students

Source: Radio New Zealand

Photosport

One of two schools that illegally gave scholarships to foreign students who played in their top sports teams says it only happened because a sponsorship deal fell through.

The other has not responded to RNZ’s questions.

School sport leaders say they do not believe the cases are symptomatic of a wider problem, but an auditor told RNZ he doubts many of his peers know to keep a lookout for scholarships to foreign students when they review schools’ finances.

The Office of the Auditor General brought the https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/541873/schools-spending-money-on-gyms-family-travel-for-principals-auditors-say breaches to light in reports published in February and December last year, covering audits of school annual reports for 2023 and 2024.

“We highlighted that two schools breached legislation by meeting the costs of an international student through a scholarship. Legislation requires schools to charge fees for international students that at least cover the estimated costs of providing tuition and capital facilities,” the most recent report said.

The Office of the Auditor-General told RNZ the schools were Westlake Boys’ High School and Howick College and RNZ understands in both cases the students represented the Auckland schools in top-level sport.

The Howick College annual report for 2023 showed the breach related to two foreign students.

“Without modifying our opinion, we draw the reader’s attention to a breach of legislation. The School enrolled and met the costs of two international students, including homestay and other school fees in the year ended 31 December 2023 through scholarships,” the auditors wrote.

“This is a breach of section 521(1) of the Education and Training Act 2020 which requires state schools to charge fees for international students that are not less than the estimated costs of providing tuition to a student in the relevant subject, course, or programme, including the provision of capital facilities, plus any other fees prescribed for international students.”

The Westlake annual report for 2024 had a similar comment but for one international student.

RNZ understands a third party alerted the firm that audited both schools’ accounts that it was illegal for state schools to subsidise the education of foreign students.

The firm did not respond to an RNZ request for comment.

Former Deloitte auditor Priyesh Ramesh told RNZ he doubted many auditors knew scholarships for foreign students were forbidden and it was unlikely they would check whether a scholarship in a school’s accounts was for a domestic or foreign student.

However, principals told RNZ the rules prohibiting schools from waiving or otherwise covering foreign students’ tuition costs were clear and the cases did not represent part of a wider problem.

The Education Ministry’s handbook of financial information for schools said scholarships must be open to every student at a school unless the giver of the scholarship has created a special trust.

Its website said international students not on a ministry-approved exchange programme must be charged fees that cover the cost of tuition and access to facilities.

Westlake headmaster Paul Fordham said the situation preceded his tenure as principal but it appeared the school helped a student after a sponsorship arrangement fell through.

“It certainly wasn’t a scholarship situation,” he said.

“It was a situation where a sponsorship had fallen through and the school essentially stepped in to meet the costs.”

Fordham said the school worked with auditors and the ministry to understand the breach and resolve it.

He said in the second year, 2024, the school found sponsorship that would cover what it believed were the student’s tuition and capital costs.

“We’ve tried to meet the rules but it’s a tricky situation when you’re dealing with a person.”

He would not confirm details about the student or the sport they played.

Fordham said he had not previously heard of third parties providing scholarships or sponsorships for foreign school students.

“It does seem unusual and I don’t know if it’s a generally-used practice. It’s certainly a one-off from what I could establish at Westlake,” he said.

Asked if schools were aware that they could not waive international students’ fees, Fordham said common sense suggested they should not do that.

“Money that’s given to schools for operational needs and facilities etcetera certainly isn’t given for the purposes of subsidising international students’ costs,” he said

Fordham said Westlake had 200 foreign students and some represented the school in sport.

He did not believe foreign students’ participation in school sport was creating problems.

School Sport New Zealand chief executive Mike Summerell said schools could have no more than two international students in any teams competing in School Sport championship events.

He said in the past some schools recruited top foreign athletes for short periods to bolster their teams and the rules were designed to prevent that from happening.

Summerell said School Sport redeveloped its eligibility rules extensively in 2025 and would review them, including those covering the inclusion on non-domestic students, this term.

Summerell said it was difficult to track how many foreign students were playing in top teams.

“There’s not necessarily an outcry by schools to say that international students are filling up these spaces, but I would hazard a guess that there are certainly international students taking opportunities at these championship events for a lot of schools and that’s not necessarily a problem.

“Whether that leads to success for those schools is really not something I have the data to comment on.”

Summerell said he did not know how well schools understood the ministry’s rules prohibiting the use of school funds to cover foreign students’ fees.

He said School Sport rules forbade offering sport scholarships.

“If there was evidence that schools were providing scholarships… that weren’t publicly-available, and by that I mean that’s on their website that there’s a scholarship for X and it’s contestable, then there’s provision under the School Sport New Zealand eligibility rules and our integrity framework to look at that and investigate whether that’s fair,” he said.

However, Summerell said it was extremely difficult to prove if a school had provided scholarships that broke the rules.

College Sport Auckland chair Tim O’Connor said many schools had foreign students in their sports teams and Education Ministry rules about their fees were clear, as were the School Sport New Zealand rules on participation.

O’Connor agreed that though schools were prohibited from waiving or subsidising foreign students’ fees, there was nothing to stop third parties providing scholarships or sponsorships and that should be monitored in case it became a problem.

He said sport was an extra-curricular activity and the primary purpose of schooling, including for international students, was to provide an education.

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New ‘cheeky and playful’ take on Swan Lake

Source: Radio New Zealand

Swan Lake was ripe for reinterpretation, says the leader of Australia’s premier circus company.

Circa’s latest production Duck Pond blends the classic ballet and Ugly Duckling stories into a high-energy, acrobatic visual feast.

“Somewhere in the back of my fetid imagination, it got melded into the story of The Ugly Duckling, both tales of birds and emerging into identity,” Yaron Lifschitz told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

Circa is bringing its version of the classic ballet Swan Lake to the Auckland Arts Festival next month.

Pia Johnson

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Health experts call on Pharmac to fund female-specific testosterone

Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman applies post-menopause hormone gel. COLLANGES / BSIP via AFP

An endocrinologist says more than half the women she sees on testosterone for low libido are taking too high a dose, and she and her colleagues are calling on Pharmac to finally fund a female-specific product.

Pharmac is set to consider funding AndroFeme 1 on Thursday, which unfunded costs anywhere between $150 and $250 for a three-month supply, depending on the pharmacy.

To avoid that cost, many women are prescribed a funded alternative, called Testogel, which is formulated for men.

Testosterone is usually thought of as a male hormone, but it is also found in women. It is prescribed to treat low libido, also know as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), in women who are postmenopausal.

Women’s health advocate and director of Cala Clinic, Jenna Scullin, explained: “Similar to males, women’s testosterone levels decline gradually over their lifetime.

“By the time a woman is at a menopausal age, it has often halved.”

Men who needed a boost of the hormone had the choice of four funded products, whereas women had no funded options.

Pharmac has twice declined to fund AndroFeme 1, first in 2024, saying the eligibility criteria (“postmenopausal women with HSDD”) was not appropriate and posed significant barriers to equitable access for women – particularly for women who, for cultural reasons, did not wish to undergo aspects of an HSDD diagnosis.

It also considered there was an “uncertain health benefit” in using AndroFeme 1 over the unapproved, or off-label use of Testogel, saying that if equivalent doses were administered, there should not be a significant difference in their effect.

At that stage, the discussion document showed there were 2300 people dispensed Testogel between February and November, and approximately 46 percent of those identified as female.

In 2025, the decision was reassessed, and the result was “no formal recommendation” which meant the previous decision stood – but this time Pharmac noted there was a need to fund a product with an appropriate dose for women, to minimise potential harm.

Endochrinologist Dr Anna Fenton from Oxford Women’s Health explained there was no research on how testosterone was metabolised by the female body.

Endochrinologist Dr Anna Fenton from Oxford Women’s Health. Supplied / Oxford Women’s Health

“Women are being prescribed this without the appropriate baseline testing without, often, follow-up blood testing to make sure the level is appropriate.”

And it could be difficult for women to work out the correct dose of Testogel when it came out of the pump bottle, she said.

“It’s very hard to titrate the dose of a blob of gel, which is what you get from the pump dispenser, into something that is a quarter or a fifth of that dose, which is possibly what’s appropriate for women.”

Fenton said more than half of the women she treated who had been prescribed Testogel were showing testosterone levels that were too high.

“I had a woman the other day who had 12 times the upper end of the female range, so it was well into the male range.”

Side effects included greasy skin, acne or extra body hair growth, but at the extreme end, it could lead to changes in voice or enlargement of the genitals – and those effects were permanent, Fenton said.

New Zealand had “the bare minimum” available when it came to hormone replacements, which included things like oestrogen patches, trailing behind the likes of Australia, the UK, US, and Canada.

She, along with fellow endocrinologists Dr Megan Ogilvie, Dr Sylvia Rosevear, Dr Susannah O’Sullivan and Dr Sasha Nair, have made a joint submission to Pharmac ahead of its meeting, endorsed by the Australasian Menopause Society, urging it to prioritise “evidence-based, female-specific therapies” and fund AndroFeme 1.

“We urge Pharmac to refrain from normalising the use of male-formulated testosterone products in women.”

The company behind Testogel, Pharmaco, has made no claims of its safety for women.

It supplied RNZ with a statement, saying: “Testogel is a prescription medicine specifically formulated and approved to be used by men with low testosterone levels. The relevant data sheets and Consumer Medicine Information clearly state that the medicine should not be used by women.”

Pharmac director for advice and assessment David Hughes confirmed AndroFeme’s application was on the agenda for the Pharmacology and Therapeutics Advisory Committee (PTAC) meeting on Thursday.

“PTAC gives Pharmac clinical advice to help us make decisions about how to use our funding,” he said in a statement. “The committee reviews the evidence behind funding applications and looks at how strong and reliable that evidence is.”

He said a recently-received a submission would be discussed at the meeting.

Pharmac would aim to publish the provisional recommendation online within 30 days of the meeting, although that could be subject to change.

Female testosterone deficiency ‘more than just a low libido’ – health advocate

Scullin said one in three women between the ages of 40 and 64 experienced the effects of reduced sexual desire.

“It’s more than just a low libido, we see that it affects women’s mental health, it affects their social functioning, their relationships, their confidence and their overall wellbeing.

“There’s this view sometimes that a woman’s sexual function is not essential,” she said. “But when a man comes forward with needing assistance, there’s one of four funded options accessible to him.”

She said while some GPs and specialists were comfortable prescribing Testogel to women despite the lack of safety data, a number were not, “so it’s not just that we’re asking for a female-formulated option, but in many cases we’re actually asking for an option for women”.

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Waste company wants retailers to take back fire-causing used lithium batteries

Source: Radio New Zealand

Waste Management NZ thinks a recent landfill blaze could have been caused by a lithium battery. Waste Management

A major waste company is calling on more retailers to take back used batteries as it investigates whether one is to blame for a landfill blaze that lasted several hours.

Several fire crews responded to the fire at the Tirohia Landfill and Energy Park near Paeroa at about 11.30am on Wednesday.

WM (Waste Management) New Zealand thinks it could have been a lithium battery.

“We have a big compactor that operates on the site that crushes down the waste that obviously went over something that caused a fire to break out in the waste pile,” managing direct Evan Maehl said.

“The waste pale is not large, we only have a small footprint open each day but the fire then took hold because there was a lot of flammable materials that it could jump onto,” he said.

The company has had people on watch overnight in case there were any hot spots that reignited.

“It probably burned for about four or four-and-a-half hours, it was not out of control at any stage but there was obviously smoke and it was visible,” he said.

“It was one of those things that we are unfortunately well drilled in.”

The company said it may have been a gas canister, but that similar fires had been caused by lithium batteries.

Maehl said there had been 20 confirmed battery fires across WM New Zealand’s sites over the last 12 months.

“Ten at our landfills, six on trucks which is quite scary and four in our transfer stations,” he said.

Maehl said a recent example was on an Auckland motorway last month on a truck the company runs for Auckland Council.

“We had to eject its load on the southwestern motorway because the driver spotted flames and smoke, so that was in a recycling truck heading to a recycling facility so it could have been a much worse result had it got to the recycling centre and it was dropped off there,” Maehl said.

The message, he said, was to keep the batteries out of household rubbish and recycling.

It was here that retailers had “skin in the game”, he said.

“It’d be great if they could jump on board and take them back so they could be segregated in their own special waste stream so they can be looked after.

“I’ve seen, like at Bunnings, they’ve got a take-back bin right outside the front door when I was there on the weekend,” he said.

Maehl acknowledged simply throwing the batteries away was convenient for people.

“But there could be downstream consequences too, like a recycling truck – and they’re [worth] half a million dollars each, or much worse would be a transfer station or recycling station,” he said.

“We’ve had two in the last year, we’ve had two recycling centres that burnt which is a big impact on the infrastructure of a city or a town.”

What’s the problem with lithium batteries?

Maehl said the issue was when the outer shell of a battery cracked and they were exposed to the air.

“You could Google it or Youtube it and you can see how quickly they react with oxygen,” he said.

“They ignite really quickly to a very high flash point.”

The problem was then compounded if they were surrounded by the likes of cardboard, paper or plastic.

“If there’s material around them then that will carry on the fire,” Maehl said.

His company had put flame and heat detection equipment in its trucks so loads could be ejected quickly if a fire erupted.

“It’s the same in all of our transfer stations and recycling facilities, we’ve now got flame detection cameras and heat detection cameras,” he said.

“Because sometimes they smoulder away under a pile of cardboard, you can’t see it.”

“This wasn’t really a thing if you go back 15 years ago when I started in the industry, but it is now.”

Last year Auckland Council urged for the batteries to be disposed of properly after a devastating fire at the Abilities Group recycling plant on the North Shore.

The plant burnt to the ground and destroyed essential equipment.

The organisation employed and supported more than 100 disabled people.

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How much of NZ’s tax is your region paying?

Source: Radio New Zealand

Auckland pays just under 38 percent of the country’s personal tax, and has just over 33 percent of the population. RNZ

How much of the country’s total personal tax bill is your region picking up?

If you are in Auckland or Wellington, the answer may be more than you might think.

Inland Revenue data covering personal taxable income and income tax attributable to individuals shows that Auckland pays just under 38 percent of the country’s personal tax, and has just over 33 percent of the population. This is based on information for the 2023 financial year – the data for the 2025 year is not yet available.

Wellington pays 12.7 percent and has 10.5 percent of the population.

Waikato, in contrast, has 8.8 percent of the population but pays only 8.3 percent of the tax bill. Northland has 3.5 percent of the population and 2.8 percent of the tax bill.

Whanganui/Manawatu has 4.8 percent of the population and only 4 percent of the bill.

On a per-individual basis, Wellington has the highest personal tax bill at $12,300. Auckland is just behind at $11,500 and Canterbury is in third place with $9900. Otago is fourth at $9700.

Gisborne has the lowest at $7700.

Much of the variation can be explained by different areas’ income.

Auckland and Wellington are the areas of the country with the highest incomes, followed by Canterbury and Waikato.

Infometrics chief executive Brad Olsen said Auckland and Wellington had more people in the higher tax brackets who paid more tax.

“We know, for example, that Wellington City, rather than region, has the highest personal incomes in the country. Infometrics estimates show that Wellington region average annual personal earnings were around $90,600 and about $88,600 for the Auckland region. Those were the only two regions above the national average.

“If you look at the likes of the West Coast, which has got a fairly small proportion, and smaller than its total population. Even though the West Coast actually has some reasonable average earnings, that much smaller population is showing through there in terms of where they sit.”

He said Bay of Plenty, Manawatu, Northland and Hawke’s Bay all stood out for the gap between their population proportion and the proportion of tax paid.

“The likes of Northland especially, you know, you’ve often got a high level of benefit dependency there, and potentially also more people that at the very margins might not participate quite as much with government… probably operating a little bit further away from the strict expectations of the IRD.

“Not necessarily trying to circumvent the law, just that you find some rural provincial economies that often more cash based, or operate sort of more in a community setting.”

Simplicity economist Shamubeel Eaqub said it was interesting to consider the tax paid compared to where the government spent its money.

“Last time I looked at it which was years ago, places like Auckland paid more into central government coffers than they took out in public services… large, dense places that are rich will redistribute. That’s what the redistribution mechanism is for… poverty is quite often disproportionate. We tend to have a lot more deprivation in rural New Zealand.”

Olsen said it was a hard question to contemplate.

“Transport funding, for example. That can sort of fluctuate quite a lot year on year … when the Waikato Expressway or Transmission Gully were getting built, those regions probably got quite a lot relative to otherwise, but they’re maybe not getting nearly as much now.”

He said areas where larger numbers of people were on NZ Super could also be receiving more government funding than others.

“There are a few hotspots across the country where there’s a higher average age proportionately – Thames Coromandel, the likes of Kapiti District and similar, so those areas will have more as well. And then it’s also going to be areas that have a greater government workforce concentration. The likes of Auckland and Wellington do generally have a fairly large workforce concentration, particularly Wellington, of course.

“A reasonable amount of the Wellington city economy is driven by the pay and work of the government workforce.”

How does your region compare?

Wellington

$12,300 per individual

10.5 percent of the population and 12.7 percent of tax paid

Total of more than $6.2 billion in tax paid

Auckland

$11,500 per individual

33.4 percent of the population and 37.7 percent of tax paid

Total of nearly $18.5 billion in tax paid

Canterbury

$9900 per individual

12.9 percent of the population and 12.6 percent of tax paid

Otago

$9700 per individual

4.1 percent of the population and 4 percent of tax paid

Waikato

$9500 per individual

8.8 percent of population and 8.3 percent of tax paid

Taranaki

$9300 per individual

2.5 percent of population and 2.3 percent of tax paid

Nelson

$9100 per individual

1.2 percent of population and 1.1 percent of tax paid

Bay of Plenty

$9100

6.87 percent of population and 6 percent of tax paid

Southland

$8900 per individual

2.1 percent of population and 1.8 percent of tax paid

Marlborough

$8900 per individual

1 percent of population and 0.8 percent of tax paid

Tasman

$8700 per individual

1 percent of population and 0.8 percent of tax paid

Hawke’s Bay

$8400 per individual

3.7 percent of population and 3.1 percent of tax paid

Manawatū-Whanganui

$8400 per individual

4.8 percent of population and 4 percent of tax paid

Northland

$8100 per individual

3.5 percent of population and 2.8 percent of tax paid

West Coast

$7800 per individual

0.6 percent of population and 0.5 percent of tax paid

Gisborne

$7700 percent of individual

1 percent of population and 0.8 percent of tax paid

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Homeowners still paying the price for choice to buy in 2021

Source: Radio New Zealand

RNZ

The shadow of 2021’s house price boom still hangs over sellers trying to shift their houses, even years later.

New data from Cotality shows that 12 percent of people selling residential properties in the last quarter of last year did so for less than the amount they paid for them.

In Auckland, that stretched to 17.4 percent. Wellington was just over 15 percent.

Those who lost money had held their homes for a median 3.9 years, taking their purchase price back to the 2021 peak.

“It was a tricky time to have been a buyer and any unforeseen change in circumstances over the following period may have meant needing to sell at a reduced price,” Cotality chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said.

People who made money had held their properties for a median 10.1 years, the longest ever recorded in the data, which goes back to the 1990s.

Those who lost money lost a median $55,000 compared to a median $298,000 for those who made a gain. Auckland sellers lost a median $78,944 and gained a median $367,250.

Davidson said the data probably showed that people were holding on longer before selling to try to allow gains to accumulate.

“Or in other cases it may just reflect the fact that in a relatively quiet market a lot of sellers simply have to wait longer for a deal to be achieved.

“Indeed, some property owners may also just be choosing to hold for a bit longer if they’re uncertain about their job prospects or don’t want to pay transactions costs such as an estate agent’s commission or conveyancing fees as regularly. In addition, lending restraints such as the loan to value ratio rules may have kept more people where they are for longer.”

He said there had been periods in the past where places had been held longer and still made a loss. In 2016, the median hold period for places making a loss was eight years.

Investors have historically been more likely to sell fort a loss than owner-occupiers but this quarter’s data showed little difference.

Investors were making a median loss of $58,950 and a median profit of $308,000 compared to $56,500 for owner-occupiers who lost money and $285,350 for those who made a gain.

Hamilton investors made more losses than owner-occupiers – at 20.6 percent of sales compared to 13.2 percent for owner occupiers.

But in Wellington the trend was reversed, with 17 percent of owner-occupiers making a loss and only 11 percent of investors.

Davidson said the data showed the general flatness of the market.

“A bit more balance out there now. Deals are being done, so buyers and sellers are meeting in the middle and maybe vendors aren’t necessarily getting the price they might have liked two years ago, but they have adjusted expectations and they’re happy with it now.

“The market’s clearing, deals are being done and okay, there’s a bit more pain out there for sellers than there has been in the past. But there are signs of a stabilisation, and we actually saw the median resale gain go up a bit in the fourth quarter, too.”

He said even if people were not able to sell for the sort of price they might have at the market peak, if they had owned their houses for 10 years or more, they were likely to get more than they paid.

“The gains are smaller than what they were, but still pretty significant. Even at 88 percent, that’s still most people making a resale gain when they sell.”

He said it was likely that those who bought in the 2021 peak would struggle to sell for a few years yet.

“We’re still down 18 percent from the peak nationally, some areas more than that … that’s taken four years.

“Let’s say growth from here on is even ambitiously maybe sort of 5 percent on average over the next three, four, five years, it’s going to take at least four years to get back to that previous peak. So, this sort of tough period to buy and sell relatively quickly could be around for two or three years yet.”

He said most people would not have bought with the intention of selling soon.

Davidson said he expected house price growth to resume later in the year as the economy improved and mortgage rates remained relatively low. “Property resellers may fare better in that environment but it’s unlikely to be a boom.”

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Inquest into death of Nicholas Kahotea, soldier who fell from helicopter during training

Source: Radio New Zealand

Lance Corporal Nicholas Kahotea, of the 1st NZSAS Regiment, who died in a training accident in South Auckland on 8 May. Defence Force / Supplied

An inquest into the death of a special forces trooper during a training exercise in south Auckland hopes to find out what went wrong.

Lance Corporal Nicholas Kahotea fell to his death in May of 2019 while training to dismount from a Blackhawk helicopter onto the edge of a building.

Kahotea was leading his SAS regiment through what should have been a routine training exercise.

The men were excited to perform their first bump landing, a helicopter manoeuvre meant to get soldiers onto the roof of a building as quickly as possible.

It was part of a joint exercise with the United States military, using its top-of-the-line Blackhawk helicopters to train for counter-terrorism operations.

One of Kahotea’s fellow soldiers, whose identity is suppressed and can only be referred to as call sign 63, said the team was enthusiastic.

“I’m not sure whose decision it was but we were told the next [exercise]’s going to be a bump landing. And we were pretty excited about it,” he said.

“When we got told we were going to do a bump landing at nighttime it didn’t matter to us, we do training at night all the time. We were excited to get another skill under our belt.”

A bump landing involves setting just one wheel on the edge of a building and hovering steady while the troops step off.

Call sign 63 was first off the helicopter.

“I could see the dispatcher giving me the signal to go … I looked down and confirmed it was safe for me to drop,” he continued.

“I simply managed to step onto the roof, no worries.

“As the first man off the helicopter my job is to ensure the area at the front is clear and protect the people still on the helicopter. The threat to me and my team is out to my front. In this training exercise my main threat was the stairs off the roof, so that’s where I was looking.”

Two more soldiers dropped from the helicopter, and the exercise continued as call sign 63 moved to the stairs.

“When I got to the stairs I felt a tap on my shoulder, this indicated to me we were ready to proceed,” he said.

“I can’t recall if the next thing I heard was over the radio or if it was one of the guys behind me. It was saying man down, man down. No duff. One of your men is down on the other side of the building. No duff means it’s a serious situation.”

CCTV footage of the exercise shows the helicopter sway, as the gap between it and the roof inches wider.

That gap was the distance between life and death.

Kahotea fell several metres, sustaining catastrophic injuries. He later died in hospital.

This week, almost seven years later, a coronial inquest will recount the tragic event in detail and make recommendations to avoid similar accidents in the future.

Kahotea’s partner, Dr Sophie Walker, criticised the Defence Force’s approach to the exercise.

“A bump insertion is not a static or benign manoeuvre,” she said.

“This is a dynamic and inherently unstable balance. From a physics perspective, the Black Hawk’s mass means very small changes in altitude create very large force transfers that promote tail movement.”

She hoped the inquest would lead to answers and accountability.

“Our hope is that the findings of this inquest will ensure no other family will encounter the consequences of systemic risk assessment failure,” she said through tears.

“Loss is not something that just happened in May of 2019 … It is something that I wake up to every day. It is having to accept over and over that this is my life.”

Defence Force lawyer Sally McKechnie admitted it did not fully appreciate the risks of the manoeuvre at the time.

She said the NZDF had thoroughly investigated its processes since Kahotea’s death and had made improvements.

The inquest will continue through to Friday.

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Golf: Hope that Asia-Pacific tournament will inspire girls to take on the world

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand golfer Eunseo Choi at the 2025 Augusta National Women’s Amateur. DAVID CANNON / AFP

Golf New Zealand believes this week’s Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific championship has the opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for the game here.

Eighty-four players from 25 countries will take part in the tournament at Royal Wellington with a career-changing opportunity for the winner.

Current world number one Jeeno Thitikul of Thailand won the inaugural tournament in 2018 with the champion receiving invitations to play a number of key tournaments around the world, including three majors.

New Zealand has 10 players taking part, while many others, not quite at that level, will be on course to see the best amateur players in the region.

The growth of boys golf in New Zealand is on a high and while the interest in the girls game is also on the increase, Golf New Zealand would like to see more.

There are more than 2000 under-19 female players registered in New Zealand, an increase of 450 in the past year.

Golf New Zealand’s talent development manager, Liz McKinnon, said hosting the Asia-Pacific women’s tournament here for the first time provided a great opportunity to showcase the women’s game and to help young players in New Zealand.

“There is the obvious impact for our players that are participating, but also for our girls that aren’t at that level yet about the awareness of the event being here. The exposure and the opportunity to watch the event and see the best players from the Asia-Pacific region.”

Wellington golfer Elise Barber. Supplied / WAAP

Many eyes will be on 13-year-old Wellington player Elise Barber who got a late call-up to the event.

She joins a strong New Zealand contingent that includes top-ranked Kiwi Eunseo Choi, who finished 13th at the 2025 championship, and Vivian Lu, who will make her sixth WAAP appearance.

Elise is a Royal Wellington member and WAAP (Women’s Amateur Asia-Pacific) Academy graduate and will be the youngest player in the field.

The Queen Margaret College year 9 student, who plays off a +2.3 handicap, had a strong 2025 season including winning her age division at the Australian Junior Championships. She also helped Wellington secure third at the New Zealand Women’s Interprovincial Tournament.

Glenda Swan, who managed Wellington’s interprovincial team and has watched Elise’s development, believes she could be the next big star.

“She has a really well rounded game for her age and what separates her from others her age is her consistency and composure … she is now thinking her way around the course.”

Swan has also been involved in organising the 353 volunteers needed to help the tournament run smoothly.

While the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) has control of the running of the tournament and the financing of of the players, Royal Wellington club members and the volunteers are those on the ground helping the players and the hoped-for 10,000 spectators enjoy their experience.

Swan said volunteers (aged from 11 to 87) had come from all over the country to help from traffic management to kitchen helpers, scorers and caddies.

Royal Wellington hosted the men’s equivalent tournament in 2017.

New Zealand has 10 players taking part – Eunseo Choi, Vivian Lu, Emma Zheng, Darae Chung, Caitlin Maurice, Juwon Kim, Chloe So, Cherry Lee, Teresa Wang and Elise Barber.

Jeneath Wong of Malaysia will defend her title, while there is a strong contingent from Singapore, China and Australia.

Royal Wellington Golf club house. Marty Melville / PHOTOSPORT

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

LiveNews: https://livenews.co.nz/2026/02/12/golf-hope-that-asia-pacific-tournament-will-inspire-girls-to-take-on-the-world/

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A CEO ousted, a board divided: What went wrong at New Zealand Cricket?

Source: Radio New Zealand

Scott Weenink. Photosport / RNZ composite

The insiders dubbed it ‘Project Underground’.

In February last year, a group of senior cricket figures, private investors and sports marketing experts gathered around the boardroom table within the bunker-like office of the New Zealand Cricket Players’ Association (CPA) underneath Eden Park’s eastern stand.

The group was there to discuss whether a privatised Twenty20 franchise league might have legs in New Zealand.

At the time, the name was more of an in-joke – a self-aware nod to both the location and the speculative nature of the conversation. A blue-sky discussion held beneath the stands.

But in light of what was to follow over the back half of the year as NZ Cricket descended into open conflict and institutional paralysis, Project Underground would come to sound less tongue-in-cheek and more conspiratorial.

The bid by a consortium of high profile cricket figures, pulled together by CPA boss Heath Mills, to launch a T20 competition became a flashpoint in a much wider struggle for control of the sport’s future, culminating in the resignation of NZ Cricket chief executive Scott Weenink days before Christmas.

Last Friday marked the end of Weenink’s reign with the national body, bringing to a close a tenure defined by ongoing tensions with key stakeholders including the players, the six major associations, and eventually, his own board.

In a statement accompanying the announcement of his resignation, Weenink cited fundamental differences with the game’s stakeholders as a driver.

“After careful consideration, it has become clear that I hold a different view from several Member Associations, and the [CPA], on the future priorities for NZC, including the long-term direction of the game and the best role for T20 cricket in New Zealand,” Weenink said.

“I do not wish to create ongoing instability by continuing without the support of some key stakeholders.”

Weenink declined to be interviewed by RNZ about his time with the national body, maintaining his silence throughout the dispute.

It has been a common theme of the saga.

Few of the central players are willing to talk openly on the record about the tensions. Instead, much of the disagreement has played out in the media through leaked documents and correspondence.

Beneath the personality clashes and brinkmanship lies a more consequential argument – one that long predates NZ20 and will outlast Weenink’s departure. At its core was a dispute over how New Zealand cricket should be organised, funded and governed in a rapidly changing global game.

The central question facing the sport remains the same – whether the existing domestic structure can meet those pressures, or whether a privatised T20 league represents a necessary evolution.

The existing Super Smash T20 competition is widely seen as more of a development league than a commercial product photosport

The pitch

For years, the conventional wisdom was that New Zealand was simply too small a market to sustain a privately backed T20 franchise competition.

That assumption has been steadily eroded as T20 leagues have sprung up around the cricketing world. Since the Indian Premier League (IPL) launched in 2008, franchise cricket has taken hold in England, Australia, the West Indies, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and South Africa, with newer ventures emerging in the UAE and the United States.

As the franchise game boomed, anxiety crept in back home. New Zealand’s top players and coaches plying their trade in overseas leagues began to worry the country was isolating itself from the rest of the world. Supporters of NZ20 point to a curious anomaly: New Zealand is the only test-playing nation without a franchise T20 league.

“We’ve become an island in international cricket,” says one advocate.

When the consortium began sketching out plans for a competition, they did not chase the scale of the IPL or Australia’s Big Bash League. Instead, they found inspiration in a more unlikely success story – the Caribbean Premier League (CPL).

The CPL was built across a scatter of small, cricket-mad islands with limited commercial clout. By doubling down on local colour, a party-style presentation and sprinkling in global stars, the league turned a high-risk idea into one of the most recognisable and resilient properties in world cricket.

Official documents frame the NZ20 in similar terms: a “boutique, city-based cricket festival”, designed to fuse sport with tourism and trade, and to deepen strategic ties between India and New Zealand.

RNZ understands the consortium has briefed several senior government figures about the competition and plans for Indian investment.

Under the proposal, franchises would not align directly with the six major associations. Instead, teams would be based in the main population centres and seasonal tourism hubs, including Mount Maunganui and Queenstown.

However, the major associations – Auckland, Northern Districts, Central Districts, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago – still stand to benefit financially, which has helped secure their support for the concept. It is understood the proceeds from the sale of franchise licences would be directed into a capital fund to be distributed among the associations.

Supporters of the model argue that private ownership would allow the league to operate with a clearer commercial focus than the Super Smash, which has come to be seen as more of a development league. They contend that separating those functions would allow the proposed league to prioritise broadcast appeal, sponsorship and fan engagement.

Don Mackinnon, chair of the NZ20 establishment committee, declined to be interviewed by RNZ while discussions with the national body remain delicate. In previous media appearances, however, he has outlined what he sees as the advantages of keeping the league at arm’s length from New Zealand Cricket and the major associations.

Don Mackinnon Elias Rodriguez

“It’s driven out of private investment and so you get the ability to be very innovative,” Mackinnon told ESPN in November. “You have greater capital to invest in the fan experience – at the ground, on television and online. And if we get this right, we believe we’ll attract the very best New Zealand players back into our domestic competitions.”

By September, the consortium believed it had secured sufficient international and domestic investor interest, including a group of six “high net-worth Kiwis”, to formally present the proposal to the NZC board. Among those rumoured to have expressed interest are Xero founder Rod Drury, and Zuru co-founder Anna Mowbray and her husband, former All Black Ali Williams.

For all the ambition and investor interest, NZC still holds the keys.

To get the league off the ground, the consortium needs the national body to sanction the league and commit to providing a protected four-week window in January free from international commitments.

The proposed scheduling has led to concerns from some within NZC about how a privately run league would fit alongside existing commercial and broadcast agreements, which are built around NZC’s control of the domestic and international calendar.

In hindsight, however, one person briefed on the board presentation believes the main sticking point came during discussions about potential investors. They believe the suggestion that former players such as Stephen Fleming, Daniel Vettori and Brendon McCullum could leverage their overseas connections, particularly in India, to attract investors and possibly take ownership stakes themselves, shifted the mood in the room.

“There was a definite change after that,” the source said. “Suddenly, [that was interpreted as], ‘oh, they’re all on the take’.”

This would become a focal point for public critics of the proposal.

Much of the resistance that followed was shaped by a broader unease about private ownership – specifically, who would stand to benefit, and what control the game in New Zealand might lose in the process.

NZ Cricket’s governance broke down at the highest level. Kerry Marshall/www.photosport.nz

The letter-writing campaign

The proposal’s arrival at NZC marked the point at which a philosophical debate became a governance crisis.

The organisation was already grappling with its own future by the time the NZ20 consortium approached the NZC board. In parallel with discussions around a private league, NZC had begun examining options to rejuvenate its domestic T20 competition through an external review dubbed ‘Project Bigger Smash’.

The review, led by Deloitte, examined four separate pathways to revitalise T20 cricket, including private ownership and the option of entering a New Zealand team into Australia’s Big Bash League. The latter was widely understood to be Weenink’s preferred path.

In the months that followed, the board effectively attempted to pursue two tracks. It continued work on the Deloitte review, while appointing two directors – Bill Birnie and Anna Campbell – to the NZ20 establishment committee to further develop the consortium’s proposal.

That dual approach, however, soon began to fray.

Competing narratives took hold both inside and outside the organisation. Critics of the proposal portrayed NZ20 as a “rebel” league engineered through a hostile takeover by the players’ association.

Supporters countered that elements within NZC were posturing as open-minded regulators while quietly entrenching opposition behind the scenes.

Internal correspondence illustrates how quickly trust in the boardroom deteriorated.

In an email to fellow directors in October, then-NZC president Lesley Murdoch warned recent decisions had promoted “distrust and disunity”.

“A decision determined by a casting vote suggests to me that more thought should be given to that decision and perhaps be revisited to ensure all the relevant information has been revealed, discussed and understood,” Murdoch wrote, while not directly referencing the specific vote.

She also questioned whether members of the board were acting in self-interest, cautioning that the sport “deserves a board that operates as one team, not a collection of individuals with competing agendas”.

At the same time the Murdoch letter was leaked, another piece of correspondence surfaced in the media – one that hinted at a widening rift between Weenink and his board.

NZ Cricket chairperson Diana Puketapu-Lyndon wrote to the head of the International Cricket Council (ICC), Jay Shah, to reject claims of a rebel league or player coup.

“We are deeply concerned about the origin of any messaging that has the potential to undermine the reputation of cricket and cricket governance in New Zealand,” the letter, which was also signed by the chairs of each of the major associations, stated.

According to one source, the letter reflected concerns from some officials that Weenink was perceived to be actively undermining efforts to establish a private league – a perception that placed him increasingly at odds with the major associations and the Players’ Association.

Weenink’s supporters believed he was simply urging the sport’s leaders to take time to do their due diligence on a decision with long-term consequences for the game.

Pressure from the major associations soon became explicit in correspondence. On 16 October, the chairs and chief executives of the six organisations wrote to the NZC board, stating their relationship with the chief executive had become “irretrievable” and that they had lost “respect, trust and confidence” in Weenink.

The same source said concerns about Weenink’s leadership style and approach had been raised directly with Puketapu-Lyndon earlier in the year, and again by follow-up letter in July – well before the NZ20 concept was formally presented to NZC.

As the dispute escalated, Weenink’s position became increasingly untenable, leading to reports the chief executive was “fighting for survival”. The response was more letter writing.

In early December a group of four NZC life members wrote to the board and directors of the national body, the major associations, the Players’ Association and the NZ20 establishment committee to express their “dismay” at what they described as a campaign to remove the chief executive.

“We urge all those involved to stop ‘playing the man’ and, instead, focus solely on ‘playing the ball’,” the letter said.

By that point, however, the relationship between Weenink and sections of the board had fractured. Weenink was increasingly sidelined from key meetings and decisions, and in December he abruptly went on leave ahead of mediation over his future.

His resignation followed days before Christmas, leaving NZC seeking a new leader amid unresolved questions about the future of the domestic game.

Ajaz Patel of New Zealand celebrates with his team Andrew Cornaga / www.photosport.nz / Photosport Ltd 2025

Projecting unity

While the immediate crisis has been defused, New Zealand Cricket is now seeking to steady itself and project a more unified front as it weighs decisions that will shape the game’s future.

Publicly, the message is one of alignment and patience. The NZ20 consortium, which was initially reluctant to engage with the Deloitte-led review, is now participating in the process as the board awaits the full findings before determining the long-term direction of domestic Twenty20 cricket.

In a statement, NZ20 establishment committee chair Don Mackinnon said the group was working closely with NZC “as the next stage of the concept is considered”.

“We have also engaged fully with representatives from Deloitte, who have been appointed to independently assess all options for the future of domestic T20 cricket in New Zealand,” Mackinnon said. “We support this process, and will continue to do so.”

Asked when the review might be completed, NZC referred RNZ to a statement issued in December, saying it was committed to running an “independent and objective process” but was limited in what it could say publicly due to “sensitivities and confidentiality requirements”.

Privately, however, tensions remain close to the surface. A number of figures across the game, including senior staff at the national body, remain loyal to Weenink and are said to be deeply unhappy with the manner of his departure.

There is unease that the mistrust sown during last year’s dispute has not been resolved, but merely contained.

Those concerns have been heightened by the need to repair relationships beyond New Zealand’s borders.

NZC chair Diana Puketapu-Lyndon travelled to India and Dubai last month alongside director Roger Twose and newly installed president Mark Greatbatch, a trip described by one source as a “diplomatic mission” to reassure international stakeholders and potential investors unsettled by the public stoush.

NZC has played down the travel, with public affairs manager Richard Boock describing the visits as “a regular part of NZC’s stakeholder management approach”.

Mackinnon, meanwhile, insists investor interest in NZ20 remains strong and says the consortium continues to be approached by prospective backers.

But one source involved in the proposal says there is growing anxiety around the length of time it is taking to land on a decision. There is currently no broadcast deal in place for New Zealand’s domestic competitions beyond this season, with the new agreement with Sky excluding domestic cricket.

While domestic cricket will likely still be streamed on NZC’s platforms, there are concerns that a sub-standard broadcast product could devalue the competition in the eyes of potential investors and weaken New Zealand Cricket’s negotiating position at a critical moment.

Several figures involved say that urgency sits awkwardly alongside a process that is designed to inform the decision, not make it.

The Deloitte review is expected to stop short of recommending a single preferred model, instead providing a cost-benefit analysis of the available options.

Ultimately, the decision will rest with the board – the same body whose divisions brought the organisation to a standstill just months earlier.

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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/2026/02/12/a-ceo-ousted-a-board-divided-what-went-wrong-at-new-zealand-cricket/

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St Bede’s College investigates knowledge of allegations of sexual offending by priest

Source: Radio New Zealand

Fr Rowan Donoghue outside the Christchurch District Court last month. Nathan McKinnon / RNZ

St Bede’s College is carrying out an investigation following revelations it was told of allegations of sexual offending by a priest nearly 20 years before he was convicted of abuse at the school.

The rector says he would be “appalled” if there was inaction and any failure to respond appropriately.

RNZ earlier revealed Rowan Donoghue had admitted six charges including indecent assault on a boy aged 12-16, indecent assault on a boy 16 and over and sexual violation by unlawful sexual connection. He is awaiting sentencing.

The offending related to four boys who were boarding at St Bede’s College in Christchurch between 1996 and 2000.

Since then, RNZ has revealed that Donoghue admitted sexual abuse to leaders of his religious order, the Society of Mary, in 2007. However, he was unable to identify the anonymous complainant and instead of notifying police, the order sent him to Australia for a six month-programme that provided “professional risk assessment and therapy” for people accused of sexual abuse.

Do you know more? Email sam.sherwood@rnz.co.nz

In a statement to RNZ, St Bede’s College rector Jon McDowall said it was brought to his attention by police in recent weeks that the college had previously been notified of concerns relating to Donoghue.

“On learning this, I immediately took steps to establish clearly what was known by the school, when it was known, and how it was handled. I was not in this role at the time, and records from that period are limited. This work is ongoing; I am committed to gaining as much clarity as possible and doing so with care and integrity.

“I will say again, if there was inaction, and any failure to respond appropriately, then I am appalled. My thoughts remain with the victims and survivors who continue to live with the impact of this harm.”

In response to questions from RNZ earlier this week, McDowall confirmed the school had been notified nearly 20 years ago of allegations involving Donoghue.

“As Rector, I have been made aware in recent weeks of further historical information indicating that, in the mid-2000s, College leadership was advised that an anonymous complaint of a sexual nature relating to Fr Donoghue had been made to the Society of Mary, and that he was subsequently withdrawn from ministry.

“Fr Donoghue had not worked at the College since 2000. The information conveyed to the College at that time was informal and verbal, there is no written record held by the College, and the matter was understood to be managed by the Society of Mary.”

McDowall said the details of the case were “deeply distressing”.

“My thoughts are with the victims and survivors who continue to live with the impact of that harm. Abuse has no place at St Bede’s – past, present, or future – and I continue to invite anyone who is impacted by this matter, or who has concerns, to contact me directly.”

He said that after being formally notified by police of allegations relating to Donoghue, the College took “immediate steps” to locate any relevant information it might still hold and had worked openly with police throughout.

A Society of Mary spokesperson has also confirmed that while Donoghue could not identify the complainant in 2007, he was “certain” they were from St Bede’s College.

“No year was specified, but he was at St Bede’s from 1993-2000, The Society of Mary leader at the time advised schools with which Donoghue had been associated that he had been withdrawn from ministry.”

The spokesperson said two schools were told of the allegations.

“Our records show that the schools were told that Donoghue was withdrawn from ministry immediately. To the best of our knowledge, and cognisant of the policy and practice of the SM leadership at the time, we are confident the reason would have been made very clear.”

The spokesperson said the Society was not aware of the allegations to which Fr Dongohue pleaded guilty until police laid charges.

“At the time of the initial complaint the Society made strenuous efforts over many months to encourage the complainant to contact the Police.

“As reported by RNZ previously, our first thoughts have always been with Donoghue’s victims and their families. We deeply regret the hurt and harm caused. We extend our sincere apologies to them, and will seek to provide appropriate support when they decide the time is right.”

The anonymous complaint

A Society of Mary spokesperson earlier told RNZ a complaint alleging offending by Donoghue was received by the priest via an anonymous Hotmail account in October 2007.

“He advised Society of Mary administration and in a conversation with leaders of the Society of Mary, Donoghue admitted that he was guilty of abuse but could not identify the complainant.

“He was removed from his ministry as a priest immediately. This permanent removal from ministry and subsequent ongoing monitoring has continued to the present day.”

The spokesperson said the society reached out to the anonymous emailer “encouraging him to identify himself” and make a complaint to the police so the matter might be properly investigated, and so that he might receive appropriate support.

“Donoghue was sent for a six-month programme to Encompass, an institute in Australia that provided professional risk assessment and therapy for those accused of sexual abuse.”

Detective Senior Sergeant Karen Simmons earlier told RNZ police were unable to comment on processes of other organisations and their decision making and whether they decide to call the police but that police encouraged people to do so if they have information they believe could be relevant to any investigation or suspected offending.

In response to earlier questions from RNZ, a Teaching Council spokesperson said in general, the council did not comment on complaints or mandatory reports to the council.

“However, given the level of public interest, we can confirm that we have been working closely with New Zealand Police since early 2025 in support of their investigation into offending by Mr Donoghue.

“The legal requirement for mandatory reporting to the New Zealand Teachers Council (now the Teaching Council) relating to the dismissal, resignation under investigation, serious misconduct, competence concerns, or specified convictions of teachers was first inserted into the Education Act 1989 by the Education Standards Act 2001 to protect the safety of children and young people in our education system.”

Now the criminal process had concluded, the council’s professional disciplinary process would resume.

“This process will include consideration of whether obligations have been met to report conduct or competence concerns to the council that were known at the time, and appropriate action depending on the findings.”

Asked who the disciplinary process would look at, the spokesperson said the council would “into the actions of everyone involved”.

“We are committed to ensuring the safety of children and young people and the quality of teaching in our education system, and we encourage anyone who has concerns about the conduct or competence of a formally registered teacher to reach out to us.”

Where to get help:

  • Need to Talk? Free call or text 1737 any time to speak to a trained counsellor, for any reason
  • Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or text HELP to 4357
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  • Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 or text 4202
  • Samaritans: 0800 726 666
  • Youthline: 0800 376 633 or text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz
  • What’s Up: 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 9428 787. This is free counselling for 5 to 19-year-olds
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  • OUTLine: 0800 688 5463
  • Aoake te Rā bereaved by suicide service: or call 0800 000 053

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

Sexual Violence

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LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/02/12/st-bedes-college-investigates-knowledge-of-allegations-of-sexual-offending-by-priest/

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Raw sewage still pouring into Welly waters raises questions, and anger

Source: Radio New Zealand

A Breaker Bay local with a long history of fighting for clean water in Wellington explains why the sewage dump is so catastrophic, for health, history, and the environment.

Ray Ahipene-Mercer with his jar of 24-year-old water from Moa Point sewage treatment plant. Sharon Brettkelly

Ray Ahipene-Mercer keeps a jar of 24-year-old water in his refrigerator, labelled ‘Moa Point Final Effluent’.

“It looks like a glass of water, hasn’t got a single bug in it, no discolouration, nothing,” he says.

It is a memento of the new sewage plant which he battled over for years as the co-leader of the Wellington Clean Water Campaign.

But nearly 30 years after that successful campaign to stop the dumping of raw sewage in the sea, it is happening again.

Since last Wednesday, more than 600 million litres of untreated sewage have poured into the water off the south coast after a catastrophic failure of Moa Point, the city’s main treatment plant.

On a sparkling summer day Ahipene-Mercer looks out from his Breaker Bay home just around the corner from the plant and the bays are empty.

“I’m looking at the water about 50 metres away, it’s beautiful and yet underneath it there is this darkness. There is not a person walking the dog, having a walk, swimming, surfing, nothing,” he tells The Detail.

The former city councillor is angry, not just about the health risks to humans, but the damage to the environment and risks to the kororā, and to historic Māori sites.

“Toilet water is now brushing up against historic sites at Tarakina Bay. One of the reasons this campaign in the 80s was so successful, we married Māori concerns and Pākehā concerns together and that’s why we won that campaign,” Ahipene-Mercer says.

“I’m very angry, because of all this work we did. It’s not in vain however because Wellingtonians have responded magnificently.”

After a catastrophic failure last Wednesday at Moa Point, Wellington’s main treatment plant, more than 600 million litres of untreated sewage has poured into the water off the south coast. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

The plant failed early last Wednesday morning during a bout of heavy rain. With the threat of more bad weather this weekend, there are fears the situation could get worse.

‘It’s going to get smellier’

The Post journalist Tom Hunt has been writing about Wellington’s wastewater woes for years and is experiencing first-hand the effects of days of raw sewage flowing into the sea.

“It gets worse the longer it’s there and it’s apparently going to get smellier as well,” he tells The Detail.

“I live not far from the tip and it was a still night last night and I could pick up a faint smell,” he says. “They’ve got these tanker trucks that Wellington’s quite familiar with because in covid time there was another pipe failure and they’d take the wastewater to the tip and they were called ‘turd taxis’. They’re just back and forth ferrying all the stuff out of the olympic-sized swimming pool room and just clearing that out and taking it to the tip.”

Wellington Water chief executive Pat Dougherty broke the news last Wednesday that a room in the plant was three metres deep in sewage, blowing the electrics and badly damaging or destroying equipment.

In the immediate aftermath raw sewage was flowing through a short outfall to five metres off the coast but it is now going through a longer 1.8 kilometre pipe.

“But it is still untreated sewage … and for the foreseeable future we will have effectively raw sewage being pumped off the south coast very near a marine sanctuary not far from a nesting area,” Hunt says.

It could be months before the sea on the south coast is safe for walking, swimming and collecting kaimoana.

It brings back memories for Hunt, who grew up around the south coast of the polluted waters in the 1980s.

“That was a different time when the south coast was not a desirable place to be.”

He says now they’re “back in that for a mystery reason, we still don’t know what caused it.”

Hunt explains the numerous reports of warnings and abatement notices issued to the operator, French-owned Veolia which is paid roughly $17 million a year by Wellington Water to run the plant.

He says it is too soon to say who is at fault and a full inquiry will impel people to give evidence.

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

LiveNews: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/02/12/raw-sewage-still-pouring-into-welly-waters-raises-questions-and-anger/

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Super Rugby Pacific preview: The Crusaders

Source: Radio New Zealand

Super Rugby Pacific is back after a real return to form last year, with the competition kicking off in Dunedin on 13 February. As usual, each team has gone through an eventful off season, so today we’re checking in on the defending champion Crusaders.

Read: Highlanders preview

Read: Moana Pasifika preview

Read: Blues preview

Read: Hurricanes preview

Read: Chiefs preview

Overview

Rob Penney with the Super Rugby trophy. John Davidson / www.photosport.nz

What a return to form last year, but was anyone really that surprised? After a horror 2024 that saw them miss the playoffs and coach Rob Penney narrowly avoid getting sacked, they came firing back to beat the Chiefs in the final. It wasn’t without hiccups, including a big loss at home to Moana Pasifika, but it didn’t matter in the end as we were once again treated to the sight of a jubilant Crusaders side lifting yet another trophy.

The Good

One NZ Stadium under construction. © Photosport Ltd 2025 www.photosport.nz

Not only do they go in as champs, but there’s also a new stadium to look forward to as well. The Crusaders will effectively double the amount of home support they get from Anzac weekend onwards, meanwhile Penney comes back as NZ Rugby coach of the year and with a pretty settled squad.

The Bad

Scott Barrett of the Crusaders. Andrew Cornaga/www.photosport.nz

Not much to nitpick over really, other than Scott Barrett sitting the season out due to a contract-mandated rest sabbatical. Even then, that will likely end up being a positive, the last Crusaders player to do that was Codie Taylor and he came back in career-best form.

Big boots to fill

Noah Hotham of the Crusaders kicks during the Super Rugby Pacific Final. John Davidson / www.photosport.nz

Noah Hotham had an injury-ravaged 2025, so will be keen to try and maintain his starting position over Kyle Preston. Both men are gunning for All Black spots later in the year, with Hotham having a big opportunity in Super Rugby Pacific to showcase his running game early, then switch to a defensive kicking strategy when the Crusaders inevitably make the playoffs.

What makes Crusaders fans different

Crusaders fans. © Photosport Ltd 2024 www.photosport.nz

They’re the only ones in the comp to have a new home ground, for a start. The opening of One NZ Stadium will make a massive difference to not only the fanbase, but entire city of Christchurch, putting the Crusaders on an even higher pedestal than they already occupy in local eyes. And boy, won’t they let us know about it if it ever gets brought up in conversation.

Big games

The biggest one will be on 24 February, when the Crusaders meet the Waratahs for the grand opening of their new home. After that, it’s a pretty tough run into the playoffs, with two games against the Hurricanes, as well as one each against the Blues and Chiefs.

Crusaders 2026 squad

Props: Finlay Brewis, Fletcher Newell, George Bower, Kershawl Sykes-Martin, Seb Calder, Tamaiti Williams

Hookers: Codie Taylor, George Bell, Manumaua Letiu

Locks: Antonio Shalfoon, Jamie Hannah, Liam Jack, Scott Barrett, Tahlor Cahill

Loose forwards: Dominic Gardiner, Christian Lio-Willie, Corey Kellow, Cullen Grace, Ethan Blackadder, Xavier Saifoloi

Halfbacks: Kyle Preston, Louie Chapman, Noah Hotham

First fives: James White, Rivez Reihana, Taha Kemara

Midfield: Aki Tuivailala, Braydon Ennor, Dallas McLeod, David Havili, Leicester Fainga’anuku, Toby Bell

Outside backs: Chay Fihaki, Johnny McNicoll, Macca Springer, Maloni Kunawave, Sevu Reece, Will Jordan

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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/2026/02/12/super-rugby-pacific-preview-the-crusaders/

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Government tweaks law so contractors can’t challenge employment status retrospectively

Source: Radio New Zealand

Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

The government is tweaking its legislation removing the right for contractors to challenge their employment status to make clear that it will not be applied retrospectively.

The Employment Relations Amendment Bill was being considered at Committee Stage on Wednesday night, where members could raise issues about various parts of the proposed legislation.

Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke van Velden said it was a “minor technical amendment” to make “absolutely clear” the law was not retrospective and “doesn’t override any court decisions”.

It came just a few months after the Supreme Court threw out Uber’s appeal against treating drivers as employees in November 2025.

But van Velden said the change had nothing to do with the Supreme Court decisions.

She said her officials had made a “minor oversight” over the transitional arrangements between the current law and the new law, and wanted “to make it very clear what the law will be going forward”.

The change would ultimately make a distinction as to which law – the old and the new – would apply when, allowing for split decisions in future cases.

The Minister said if someone took up a claim in the future to be considered an employee in previous work, she did not want a situation where they “may be found an employee under the old law into the future”.

“So we’re saying yes, they would be found an employee under the old law up until the point where the new law applies, where they would be a contractor,” based on whether they met the proposed gateway test.

They would not suddenly become a contractor after the law passed, she said, “that is not actually clear until someone has actually had that challenge through a court based system”.

Any decisions made about employment status before the new law starts would not be affected by the new transitional rules, and any cases filed before the new law starts would use the existing test to consider whether someone was an employee or a contractor.

For cases that were filed after the new law came into force, the existing test would be applied to the time before the law was pased, and the new gateway test could be used for the time after the law was passed.

This could result in a split decision, where a worker may be found an employee before the law changed, and a “specified contractor” after the law changed.

Labour opposed the proposed amendment because it locked in people who were potentially employees to a contractor status based on an arbitrary date, the party said.

Labour MP Camilla Belich spoke during Committee Stage and called for a significant debate on the amendment, given it had not been through select committee.

Labour MP Camilla Belich. ©VNP / Phil Smith

She said the last-minute amendment “further erodes worker’s rights by locking out potential claims by employees, who will be barred from taking claims against their employer once this Bill takes effect”.

“This effectively prevents contractors from fighting to be formally recognised as an employee after the Act has passed. This is hugely unfair to the many workers who may have a legitimate claim and silences their voices.”

The Greens believed the government continued taking sides with massive corporations like Uber, despite the amendment, which the party did not support.

“Uber drivers across the country should be able to benefit from the struggles of the drivers who won in court, and this amendment as we understand it will only extend the fruits of this victory to a small group of people,” said Green MP Ricardo Menendez March.

The upcoming law change came hot on the heels of the Supreme Court throwing out Uber’s appeal against treating drivers as employees.

It followed a case by four Uber drivers who took the ride-sharing company to the Employment Court in 2022 over their employment status.

They argued that drivers should be considered employees rather than contractors and be entitled to benefits such as leave entitlements, holiday pay and a minimum wage.

The Employment Court ruled in favour of the drivers, which Uber appealed unsuccessfully at the Court of Appeal in 2024.

Uber then appealed that decision at the Supreme Court, where five justices unanimously voted in November 2025 to throw out the appeal yet again.

Deputy secretary for Workers First Union, who represented the drivers, Anita Rosentreter, called the legislation the “Uber law” and the “Uber amendment” and the more the Minister denied that, the more clear it became the whole Bill was about “protecting the right of foreign companies to exploit New Zealand workers and deny them the rights the Supreme Court confirmed they’re entitled”.

She said the amendment confirmed that Uber drivers and other gig workers who filed with the Courts could still access wage arrears and backpay from the time they were misclassifed as contractors prior to the potential law change but that it locked them out of future employment rights if the Bill passed.

“This whole Bill is an unprecedented attack on workers’ rights and should not pass in any form.

“It’s an international anomaly, an embarrassment for New Zealand, and it must be reversed by the next government.”

ACT campaigned on amending the Employment Relations Act, so those who signed up to be independent contractors could not then challenge that status in court.

The coalition agreement between National and ACT stated they would, “maintain the status quo that contractors who have explicitly signed up for a contracting arrangement can’t challenge their employment status in the Employment Court”.

Van Velden has said she was creating certainty for businesses and workers with the law change.

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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/2026/02/12/government-tweaks-law-so-contractors-cant-challenge-employment-status-retrospectively/

Posted on

Is owning a small business really worth it?

Source: Radio New Zealand

A new survey has found half of small business owners have thought about throwing in the towel. Supplied

There is a certain sort of freedom which comes with being your own boss.

But a lack of work-life balance alongside carrying the finances can get heavy quickly – especially when times are tough.

In new research released by Xero, small business owners confessed that sometimes it did get a bit much, with close to half of survey respondents admitting they had thought about throwing in the towel.

It seemed 2025 had been an uphill battle, with three quarters of the business owners surveyed saying this financial year had been more stressful than previous years, blaming rising costs and unpredictable demand.

“Running a small business is hard work and business owners often have to make significant sacrifices – missing a child’s swimming sports or working all hours and not getting enough sleep,” said Bridget Snelling, Xero New Zealand country manager.

“This is what we call an emotional tax – the hidden personal costs small business owners have to pay every year,” said Snelling.

The difficulties of being in business come to a head at the end of the financial year, with almost half of small business owners saying it was the most stressful time of year.

Chasing paperwork and worrying about making mistakes were listed as concerns, while a surprise tax bill (or refund, but more often it was a bill) had at some point kept 54 percent of business owners up at night.

“We know the end of the financial year can sometimes sneak up on business owners who are so invested in the day-to-day doing of the work,” said Snelling.

And they may not be sleeping either. The survey found that stress costed business owners five hours of productive work every week, which worked out to 30 working days lost per year.

Despite the challenges of small business ownership, only 10 percent sought advice from an accountant or advisor when they were stressed.

“Stress isn’t just a feeling – it slows decision‑making, reduces creativity, and leads to avoidable mistakes,” said Snelling.

“It impacts the skills owners rely on to succeed.

“With the right tools and support, business owners can reclaim time, reduce their emotional tax, and feel more confident heading into EOFY.”

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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/2026/02/12/is-owning-a-small-business-really-worth-it/