Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Neurology patients are facing long wait times to see a specialist, with one woman getting a same day appointment as a tourist in France, then facing a four-month wait back home.

It comes as a new study from the University of Otago in Wellington shows neurologists would struggle to keep up with the increase in demand for the diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and stroke.

One Southland woman, who didn’t want to be identified, was told it would be four months before she could see a neurologist in New Zealand, after she began having seizures on holiday in France.

Over there, even as a tourist, she said she was able to see a neurologist that same day, after her husband noticed something was amiss.

“I had a funny incident that he noted, and he wondered if I’d had a stroke or something, so he ended up taking me to the hospital there,” she said.

“They did MRIs and CTs and things, and they thought it was a TIA – a Transient Ischemic Attack, so they put me on medication for that.”

A TIA was also known as a mini-stroke.

But back home, the episodes continued – she said she would zone out for a few minutes, and then be left very confused for the next half hour.

She made an appointment with her GP, who referred her to a neurologist privately through health inurance, but the earliest appointment was January 2026 – four months away.

“I was really surprised, because I’d seen a neurologist in France much quicker. We did have to pay, but I don’t think it was too much – I think it was like a thousand dollars or something. It wasn’t astronomical.”

Her seizures were getting worse – up from one a week, to one every two days – and her GP redirected her through the public system.

She finally saw a local neurologist in November, who diagnosed her with epilepsy.

“They got me on medication, and I haven’t had a seizure since,” she said.

The University of Otago study found New Zealand ranked well below other high-income countries when it came to numbers, with 83 neurologists, public and private, as of the report’s time of writing in 2024.

That was one per 74,000 people – just over half that of Australia – and far below the recommended best practice level found by one Australian workforce model of one per 28,000 people.

David Ross, who lives in Huntly, said he was surprised by those numbers, he was referred to a neurologist in late January, and the first thing he received was a letter apologising for the wait time, which was seven weeks.

“And the idea, of course, of going private is that you might go through a bit quicker, but it looks like it’s not going to be.”

Nearly $600 to see someone privately, and a seven week wait – David nearly picked up the phone and said, “forget it”.

But he didn’t want to lose his place on the waitlist – and luckily, he wasn’t waiting in pain.

“It’s okay, I just need to get an opinion on what they recommend for my condition. It looks like Parkinson’s because I shake a bit sometimes, but other times, I’m fine.”

But it wasn’t getting any better, and he and his family would like some answers.

“It doesn’t give you a lot of confidence in the overall system.”

Neurologist Dr David Gow, a regional chief medical officer at Te Whatu Ora, said the national health agency was committed to giving New Zealanders timely access to healthcare and strengthening the workforce.

“We know that, as part of this, we need to grow our healthcare workforce, and this is not exclusive to neurology.”

Health targets like shorter wait times applied to neurology, as for all specialities.

“We value research papers like this one as they can be considered alongside our own workforce planning,” he said.

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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/2026/02/20/neurology-patient-sees-specialist-faster-as-a-tourist-in-france-than-back-home/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Once-in-a-hundred-year storms are coming thick and fast, and the number of states of emergency declared across the country has skyrocketed.

New Zealand isn’t just bracing for emergencies – it’s declaring them at a pace never seen before.

In 2002, across the country, only four days of local states of emergency were declared. In the first two months of this year alone, there have been at least 70.

That stark comparison comes as councils around the country deal with the devastating impact of a powerful, lasting and deadly storm that first hit Ōtorohanga and Waipa districts hard and carried on down the country.

Today, The Detail looks at what it means to be under a local state of emergency, and what goes on behind the scenes at MetService when it issues a weather warning.

Lakes District councillor and Joint Centre for Disaster Research capability development manager Jon Mitchell, who has been involved with emergency management both here and overseas for 30 years, puts the spike in states of emergency down, in part, to climate change. But he also says it’s due to weather services getting better at forecasting, and a culture change which has encouraged authorities to declare early.

“If you wait until the events occur, you lose much of the benefit of being able to declare a state of emergency,” Mitchell tells The Detail.

“When [a declaration] is made at the local level, it automatically has a seven-day period, which can be extended – we have seen that happen with major events recently – and it does several things. It enables those appointed as regional or group controllers … to have special powers to intervene in the emergency.

“It also enables police officers to have those powers where there is a need to act even faster, perhaps, in particular if there isn’t communication and there may only be police with a degree of authority on the ground,” Mitchell says.

“So that’s the ability to require people to evacuate, to enter buildings, to remove vehicles that might be damaged and blocking streets, to clear roads, to close roads, to acquire resources through requisition, a whole range of things.

“But it also provides protection, too, to those involved in the response … sometimes to manage risks, you have to be prepared to take risks, so it enables people to have more confidence, who are responding, to do things they might need to do that they normally wouldn’t be able to do, outside of an emergency situation.”

He says legally, the bar for declaring a state of emergency is “quite low” – it can simply be “any incident that has occurred or may occur that threatens the safety of individuals or property”.

However, with the increasing number of emergencies being declared, does Mitchell worry that emergency fatigue will set in, causing the declarations to lose their urgency and public compliance to drop off?

“There has been quite a bit of research into this. And the impact of not declaring and leaving communities entirely to their own devices, or organisations to not act together in a coordinated way, communities tire of that much more quickly than they do of having an organised response supporting them.

“What we can’t do is hesitate, and hope that things are going to get better.”

He says people should have a plan to escape a dangerous situation as soon as possible. And have a pack ready, with water, food, a torch, and a radio, to listen to alerts and warnings.

“We need the public to be ready,” he says. “Being ready to move is essential, and having a plan about where you are going to go is critical too.”

Eyes on the weather everywhere

While the wild weather has been bombarding many towns and cities outside, inside MetService’s Wellington headquarters forecasters have been inundated with all kinds of data that feeds into their predictions. Information sent in by the 200-odd weather stations from Cape Reinga to the Sub-Antarctic Islands can change by the minute, says meteorologist John Law.

“We’ve got computers, monitors everywhere with maps, webcam views of various bits and bobs around the country and these giant screens which are our situational awareness screens with the latest radar, the latest satellite images and some of the observations as well,” says Law.

“So [it’s] trying to keep us up to date with what’s happening now so we get a nice, firm idea of what’s going to happen in the future.”

When there’s severe weather the pressure steps up from journalists, airports, shipping companies and government agencies for latest information.

But unlike the external mayhem of the last week, Law says inside the national weather hub in Wellington it’s just the opposite. The office is “very quiet and very hardworking”.

Teams of weather specialists are working on aviation, marine and website information, and the lead forecaster is running the show like an orchestra conductor. Three times a day the group gathers for a ‘nod in’.

“This dates back to when the chief forecaster used to stand up and tell everyone what the forecast was going to be and the rest of the meteorologists would sit round and nod in agreement,” says Law.

The name has stuck, but he says the meetings are now more collaborative, with expert forecasters and other meteorologists having a say .

Some of the world’s biggest, most sophisticated computers enable meteorologists to see what’s going on as early as six weeks out but at that stage there are many uncertainties.

“That’s often one of the biggest challenges, is when we look at the forecast, particularly for three, four, five, six weeks away is there can be a lot of uncertainty. And as we’ve seen with just this big system of low pressure, where that exact path goes can have a real big impact on which areas see the most rainfall or which areas see the strongest winds.

“We want to make sure that when we issue severe weather warnings or alerts, we have high certainty they’ll come through. We want to make sure that we’re not crying wolf, as it were.”

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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/2026/02/20/a-state-of-emergency-again-and-again-and-again/

Source: Radio New Zealand

More than three-quarters of tenants at Wellington’s biggest social housing agency will not be able to access the cheap rent it was set up to provide.

Te Toi Mahana, a Wellington City Council organisation, took over the council’s housing portfolio in 2023, managing more than 1600 properties.

It was formed so tenants could access the government’s Income Related Rent Subsidy (IRRS) which capped rent at a quarter of their income – because by law, council housing tenants were not eligible.

Over time, as existing council housing tenants leave, new tenants get the subsidy.

However, the government allocated community housing providers a certain number of IRRS “places”.

Te Toi Mahana only had 380, a cap that was agreed between the council and housing ministry in 2022.

It expected those would be filled by June, which means only 23 percent of its households would get the subsidy.

Te Toi Mahana would continue to take on new tenants, but they wouldn’t be eligible for the subsidy, partnerships and community manager Seb Bishop said.

“Once our current IRRS places are filled, there is an open question as to the exact type, tenure and funding for future developments and tenancies.”

Wellington mayor Andrew Little said he intended to advocate for Te Toi Mahana being allocated more IRRS places.

“My understanding is MHUD [the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development] sort of wanted Te Toi Mahana to prove itself, to attract new tenants and conduct itself as a CHP [community housing provider].

“We have to stand in the queue, or at least argue for the allocation of new spots, and that’s what Te Toi Mahana is required to do.”

When new places became available in Wellington, Te Toi Mahana would make a case for them, he said.

MHUD said it was in regular contact with Te Toi Mahana about their provision of places.

But since July 2024, the ministry had not been accepting any new social housing tenancies for existing housing stock, unless by exception.

“This is to encourage delivery of newly built social housing places, rather than existing houses, to increase housing supply,” it said.

“Any additional social housing places that are allocated to Wellington will be provided by community housing providers (CHPs) in accordance with the Government’s Housing Investment Plan.”

Under the plan, at the end of February community housing providers across the country will be able to apply for a ‘flexible fund’ which will pay for up to 770 new homes (via funding IRRS places).

Wellington has been allocated 40 to 50 homes, which can be either new builds, or leasing or buying existing stock from the market.

Meanwhile, Te Toi Mahana was planning two new developments in Tawa and Crofton Downs which would deliver 59 affordable homes – a mixture of two bedroom townhouses and one bedroom apartments.

It expected to begin building them in “early 2026”.

Councillor calls for wider access to rent subsidy

Wellington City councillor Diane Calvert, who’s also on Te Toi Mahana board of trustees, urged the government to change the regulation which makes council housing tenants ineligible for the IRRS.

“If they meet the income criteria, it should be no difference whether you’re in a council social housing or a Kāinga Ora social housing or any other community housing provider,” she said.

“If you meet the income criteria, you should have access. It’s as simple as that.”

Successive governments were at fault, she said.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop would not commit to any changes.

He previously told RNZ social housing funding was limited, and best targeted at adding to the overall stock of subsidised housing.

Previous governments said extending the subsidy to council housing tenants would be too expensive.

It’s effectively created a two-tier rent system for Te Toi Mahana tenants, with tenant A paying significantly more than tenant B in an identical flat next door.

The landlord agreed it was inequitable.

The IRRS was introduced in 2000.

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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/2026/02/20/many-tenants-of-social-housing-agency-te-toi-mahana-unable-to-access-rent-subsidy/

Source: Radio New Zealand

Auckland councillors are split on what to make of the government’s sudden change of heart on intensification.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced on Thursday the number of homes Auckland Council must plan for would be reduced from 2 million to 1.6m, but only if it submitted a plan that was approved by the central government.

The need for approval from Wellington outraged Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.

“We’re not doing this in order to go to the government and to the Cabinet and ask for their approval,” he said after the announcement.

“I mean, the Cabinet mostly don’t even live in Auckland, so that’s not going to happen.”

North Shore ward councillor and chairperson of the Policy, Planning and Development Committee, Richard Hills, agreed with Brown that the need to seek approval from the government was “very strange”.

“That was a bit of a surprise, we knew the number was being dropped but we were surprised this week that there would be some sort of intermediate phase where we would have to take the potential changes to Cabinet to sign off before they give us the legislation,” he told RNZ.

“The mayor’s been very clear that Auckland should not be going back to Cabinet, we are responsible to the people of Auckland, not Cabinet, so I’m not sure exactly how we’ll negotiate that out.

“It is a strange precedent, it’s normally left up to the different parts of the country to work out their own plans … I’m not exactly sure what the expectation is, I mean, what happens if the Cabinet don’t exactly agree with the direction of change? Will we have to go back and forward?”

The council also had little time to come up with the new plan, as Hills explained it had not been given an extension to its mid-2027 deadline.

“The end date for the plan being complete is still the same, so there’s going to be no extension on the other end, so whatever we do has to be quick, and it has to be quite focused on reducing some of the density in the outer areas of Auckland,” he said.

Another councillor, Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa’s Christine Fletcher, felt the government’s request was fair.

“I’m comfortable with the guardrails that the government are putting in place,” she said.

“We should have to justify where we’re looking to downzone, we should have to justify where we’re wanting the intensification, and so I’m quite comfortable with the process going forward.”

Anne Moore, an east Auckland resident neighbouring a controversial three-storey development in Farm Cove, was pleased to hear the target for intensification had been lowered.

She said recent intensification in the suburbs had damaged National’s reputation, and wondered if Thursday’s U-turn was a reaction to that sentiment.

“I talk to people every day out here, residents are saying they’re worried ACT and Winston [Peters] are going to get their votes. It’s really been a big issue out here in east Auckland particularly, and they’ve been voicing how they feel,” she said.

“They don’t want [intensification], or they want it done in a measured way and they want it done so we’re aware of what’s going on in our suburbs. [Ministers] don’t live where these things are happening and yet they won’t listen to the people that live there.”

Moore hoped the lower target would push the council to take a more considered approach.

“That was always the hope, that if they reduced the number that would mean the focus would be on central city and transport hub development, rather than turning every suburb into a three-storied townhouse situation,” she said.

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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/2026/02/20/very-strange-auckland-councillors-mixed-reaction-to-governments-housing-backdown/

Source: Radio New Zealand

The unprecedented flooding at Whāngaimoana Beach has laid-waste Mellisa Tipene’s veggie garden.

The small settlement on Wairarapa’s south coast became a lake when a trickle of a creek burst its banks on Monday, infiltrating low-lying homes and leaving behind a layer of smelly sludge.

Having lived there for 11 years, Tipene said the place was great, when it was not flooded, but right now she just wanted to “sell up and leave”.

Torrential rain earlier this week caused havoc across Wairarapa, knocking out power and cutting off access to rural and coastal settlements, with hundreds isolated on the south coast after floodwaters took out two bridges.

The bridge over the Turanaganui River on Lake Ferry Road reopened on Wednesday night and access was restored at the ‘Banana Bridge’ over the Hurupi Stream on Cape Palliser Road on Thursday afternoon, with restrictions.

Although residents in Whāngaimoana were no longer trapped, many were still there when RNZ visited on Thursday – getting stuck into the clean-up.

After being unable to work for days, both Tipene and her partner Jason Statham were forced to take another day off to sort the mess.

“We haven’t stopped since we flooded. When it nearly came inside we moved all the furniture higher, and then realised it was subsiding and brought the furniture back.

“We’ve been in here [the garage] for two days. We’re like, furniture removals.”

Statham said they just needed to finish the job.

“The last thing we want to do after a day’s work is deal with this. So, we just thought bugger it, we get today, get it sorted and then we can start normal tomorrow.”

He said the water came up quickly, one minute they were “good as gold” the next it was like looking out on a lake.

The septic tank overflowed into the floodwaters, destroying Tipene’s labour of love – the garden.

“We’re just going through cleaning up, pulling it all out because obviously you can’t eat it. We had kumaras, potatoes, kamokamo, pumpkin, carrots – all of it – tomatoes, and now it’s all gone.”

The water stopped just shy of entering the home, but neighbour Adam Mazzola was not so lucky.

The creek which was still low on Sunday night rose quickly the next morning, and before he knew it water was entering the 100-year-old, low-lying bach.

“From 7-8am … it just thumped through and it probably raised up 4-500mm.

“I think they had about 450mm [of rain] in the Aorangis … so everything kinda came from [the] east.”

He said the house was “written off” and he and his 13-year-old son were currently staying at a farmhouse in Pirinoa.

A Givealittle page to raise funds for Mazzola said his home had been hit by a “catastrophic flood” leaving it unliveable.

“Sadly living in a coastal area means insurance … won’t come to the party which sucks.”

It said Mazzola was “an incredibly generous person” who was always there for others, and now needed help.

Mazzola told RNZ living at the coast came with the risk of flood and oddly, the last major one hit on the same day 22 years ago – 16 February, 2004.

Terry Shubkin, another resident of Whāngaimoana Beach Road, said she bought her place a year before the 2004 floods.

“We were told they were a once-in-a-50-year storm, it seems to be much more frequent now.”

Shubkin thought about half of the properties on the lower section of the road had been flooded and inundation depended on whether the home was raised, or not.

“The ones that got flooded, it’s been pretty bad. So we’ve ranged from a couple inches to – I’ve heard stories of at least a foot of water going through the house.

“At least one house I’ve been into you can see … the mud that’s leftover, because it’s really disgusting muddy slime that goes up about a foot of the furniture.”

Shubkin said the response from agencies during and after the storm had been amazing.

“We’ve had Civil Defence out here since Monday doing door-knocking when it was really bad. We’ve had EMO (Emergency Management Office) on the phone with us a couple of times a day.

“We’ve had Search and Rescue come bring us cookies, we’ve had food drops, medicine drops. Red Cross came out here earlier today, so we’ve been well supported.”

The community, like many others around Aotearoa in the wake of severe weather, had also rallied.

“That’s the silver-lining. You realise what a good community we have out here,” she said.

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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/2026/02/19/wairarapa-residents-assess-damage-after-this-weeks-storm/