MIL-OSI Export

MetService meteorologist John Law told RNZ Checkpoint the first impacts of the system could be felt on Saturday morning with large swells for north-eastern areas.

“This is a multi-hazard area of low pressure that runs down. You can imagine that these strong winds rushing over the seas help to drive large swells across the open waters, and they run in from the northwest.

Swells up to 6, 8 metres
“And I think around those northern coasts, places like Northland and the Bay of Plenty, swell heights could be as much as six to eight metres.

“Now, adding to that, the wet weather coming down the rivers, the strong winds, the extra boost of that sea by the extra low pressure, those coastal eliminations, that risk does increase.”

Law also said it was “very unusual” to see the entire North Island under weather watches and warnings.

“Normally our watches and warnings, we try and keep them to as small an area as possible to kind of really focus in on those areas impacting.

“So the fact that the whole island has got these severe weather watches and warnings … it is an indication of the severity of the system coming through, not just in terms of the wet weather, but that wind, I think, is going to be one of the key features as we head through the weekend.

“As this system runs across us, we’ll find our winds changing direction… as they come in to start with we’re looking at northerly winds, but as the system sweeps down to the south, strong south or westerly winds behind it will also be another issue.

“So that change in direction, something else to keep in mind.”

Orange heavy rain warnings
Meanwhile, Auckland, Great Barrier Island, Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty west of Whakatane including Rotorua, and Gisborne/Tairawhiti north of Tolaga Bay are all under an orange heavy rain warning from the early hours of Sunday morning.

Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell says it will be a potentially significant and damaging storm, and Earth Sciences NZ predicted more than 200mm of rain could fall in some places across the upper North Island.

An orange strong wind warning is in place for Northland from 11pm Saturday until Sunday afternoon. Auckland, Waikato, Waitomo, Taupo, Taumarunui, Bay of Plenty and Rotorua, Gisborne/Tairawhiti, Hawke’s Bay, Taihape, Taranaki and Wanganui are all also under orange warnings which come into place overnight Saturday.

Aucklanders have been warned the Harbour Bridge might close due to strong winds.

FIFA matches advanced
FIFA World Cup qualifying matches due to be played in Hamilton on Sunday have been brought forward to Saturday to avoid the worst of it.

Officials said the decision was made to ensure the safety of participants and fans attending the games.

The Oceania semi-finals between the Football Ferns and Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG) and American Samoa were originally scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Hamilton.

They will now be played Saturday, with PNG playing American Samoa at midday and New Zealand playing Fiji at 4pm.

• RNZ is New Zealand’s statutory civil defence lifeline radio broadcaster. That means RNZ will provide vital information and updates as they come to hand on air and online during an emergency.
• Find the radio frequency for your area here and get prepared here.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/16/cyclone-vaianu-first-impacts-could-be-felt-saturday-amid-severe-nz-warnings/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Mamouri, Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

The Trump administration claims its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is working, with nine ships complying with orders to turn around.

One of those was a Chinese-owned tanker called the Rich Starry that turned around in the Gulf of Oman on Wednesday to head back through the strait.

Iran, meanwhile, maintains it still has control over the strait and it will determine which ships transit through the crucial waterway. It also said if its ports are threatened, “no port in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman will remain safe”.

No matter how the blockade plays out, Iran will be in a far better position in the long term when it comes to maintaining control over the strait – not the US.

Iran’s powerful new tool

For decades, Iran had threatened to use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage against its adversaries. It avoided doing so, however, until the current war against the United States and Israel, which it sees as existential.

Ironically, while the US and Israel aimed to weaken Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, the conflict has given Tehran a powerful new tool – control of the strait.

Tehran is now likely to make this control a core part of its long-term strategic thinking. In fact, Iran’s negotiators in the recent peace talks with the US had added Iranian sovereignty over the strait to their list of demands.

This leverage serves at least three key purposes.

First, it provides significant revenue potential from the tolls and transit fees it is already charging ships going through the strait.

By imposing minimal transit-related costs — estimated at around US$1 per barrel or up to US$2 million (A$2.8 million) per tanker — Iran could reportedly generate some US$600 million (A$836 million) per month from oil and another US$800 million (A$1.1 billion) per month from gas shipments.

Economists say at least 80% of the tolls would be paid by the Persian Gulf states – or as much as US$14 billion (A$20 billion) a year on oil alone.

Second, the strait functions as a security guarantee. By demonstrating its ability to disrupt a critical global energy artery, Iran has raised the cost of any future military action against it. This creates deterrence through economic risk rather than purely military means.

Third, it gives Iran geopolitical leverage, particularly with countries in the Global South. Control over the strait allows Iran to bargain with energy-dependent states, encouraging them to circumvent US sanctions on the regime and deepen economic engagement in exchange for concessions accessing the strait.

The US is now trying to neutralise Iran’s leverage over the strait. Yet, this “siege of a siege” faces clear structural limitations.

For one, Iran’s control over the strait is much easier to maintain than a US blockade in international waters. Even with allied support (which has yet to materialise), the US would struggle to restrict access to the strait for an extended period. Such an effort would be highly costly for the US military and would have significant consequences for the global economy.

In this sense, Hormuz risks becoming America’s Suez moment — a strategic chokepoint that reveals the limits of power rather than its reach.

How will China react?

But could China, which buys more than 80% of Iran’s oil, play a role in pressuring Iran to relax its control over the strait?

It has not done yet, and is unlikely to do. So far, China is blaming the US and rejecting its blockade.

In fact, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun used forceful language this week, calling the blockade “dangerous and irresponsible”.

Although one Chinese tanker has been turned around, others have transited through the new “tollbooth” system in recent days. This is an indication of China’s need and willingness to abide by Iran’s new rules – at least for the moment.

While China is exposed to the US blockade – about 40% of its oil imports come through the waterway – it has prepared for this moment.

It has diversified its oil imports to avoid being too reliant on any one supplier. And China is believed to have enough petroleum reserves to replace imports via the strait for up to seven months.

Still, it remains to be seen if China would support a toll system in the long term. Despite Beijing’s silence so far, some experts believe it would oppose this. China has repeatedly stressed the need to return to “normal passage” through the strait as soon as possible.

China’s expanding role in the region

China also stands to benefit from the political shifts that could come after the war.

The war has pushed the Gulf states toward a shared realisation that alignment with the US and partnership with Israel do not necessarily guarantee their security.

As a result, they may seek to diversify their relationships. This is reflected in the crown prince of Abu Dhabi’s visit to Beijing this week.

Trade between the Gulf states and China has grown significantly, with total exchanges reaching approximately US$257 billion (A$358 billion) in 2024, narrowly surpassing the Gulf’s combined trade with major Western economies.

China is also expanding its diplomatic footprint in the region, helping to mediate the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023 to normalise relations and playing an indirect role in the recent Pakistan talks between Iran and the US to end the war. It clearly sees a bigger role in the region in the future.

Looking ahead, Iran may seek to leverage this moment to pursue a more regionally based security framework with the Gulf states, potentially with China acting as a guarantor or facilitator. Such a development would mark a significant departure from the longstanding US role as the primary security provider in the region.

– ref. Iran has a powerful new tool in the Strait of Hormuz that it can leverage long after the war – https://theconversation.com/iran-has-a-powerful-new-tool-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-that-it-can-leverage-long-after-the-war-280442

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/16/iran-has-a-powerful-new-tool-in-the-strait-of-hormuz-that-it-can-leverage-long-after-the-war-280442/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

In a decision described by the judge as “a half-win” for each side, mining magnate Gina Rinehart has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties to the heirs of Peter Wright, the business partner of her father, Lang Hancock.

However, under the ruling, Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting, will retain ownership of the iron ore mining tenements in question, Hope Downs and East Angelas.

The Western Australia Supreme Court case hinged on agreements made in the 1980s to divide the assets, and was one of the longest-running cases in Australian history.

Rinehart has topped the Australian Financial Review’s Rich List for six years in a row with total wealth of A$38.1 billion in 2025. So the payout of royalties in the “hundreds of millions” will only make a small dent in that wealth.

Litigation lasting for years

This is neither the first nor the last piece of litigation involving Rinehart and various claimants to the wealth she inherited from her father and developed further to become the richest person in Australia, and one of the richest women in the world.

In the 1990s, Rinehart engaged in protracted litigation with her father’s third wife, Rose Porteous. The case ended in a settlement, which left Rinehart in control of most of Hancock’s assets.

And for the past 20 years or more, she has been fighting her own children in a series of court cases that are still continuing.

None of these cases are likely to dent Rinehart’s position at the top of the AFR Rich list. And nearly all the parties involved (except Porteous) are already billionaires.

Wealth at the top is growing fast

Such disputes over massive inheritances are exactly what would be expected in the “patrimonial” society described by economist Thomas Piketty in his book Capital, a big hit a decade ago. This refers to a society where wealth and social position are dominated by inherited capital, not earned income.

And at less stratospheric levels of wealth, the disputes will resonate with young people whose only hope of home ownership seems to rest on assistance from the “Bank of Mum and Dad”.

There is little doubt that the concentration of wealth at the top end of the wealth distribution in Australia has increased massively over the past 20 years.

The combined wealth of the 200 individuals on the 2025 AFR Rich List was calculated as $667 billion. That’s 100 times more than the total of $6.4 billion from the first BRW Rich list in 1984.

By contrast, Australia’s economy (gross domestic product, not adjusted for inflation) has grown only 15 times. Even allowing for some possible understatement in the 1984 data, it’s clear the wealth of the top 200 has grown much faster than than national income.

But how much of this is due to inheritance?

Examination of the AFR Rich List reveals a mixed picture. The two spots after Rinehart are occupied by real estate developer Harry Triguboff and Anthony Pratt, chairman of the packaging empire Visy Corporation.

Triguboff, now aged 93, will be succeeded by his children and grandchildren when he passes away. Anthony Pratt is the grandson of Leon Pratt, who established the business in the 1940s.

So far, this looks like a list dominated by inherited (or about to be bequeathed) wealth. But those in the rest of the top 10 list, most notably the founders of technology companies Atlassian and Canva, made their own money.

Beyond the top 10 richest, the rest of the list is similarly mixed. Around half of the top 200 made their own money. But second, third, fourth and even fifth-generation wealth is well represented.

Some other famous family names such as Myer and Baillieu no longer even make this top 200 list. Yet the collective wealth of these long-established families remains immense.

There is little evidence to support the proverb “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations”, meaning that one generation makes money from humble beginnings, the next lives in comfort of the accumulated fortune and the third dissipates it, returning to poverty.

In short, you don’t have to be born rich to make big money in Australia, but it certainly helps.

Is it time for a wealth tax?

Since the share of wealth held by the richest Australians has grown so much in recent decades, the fact that as much as half of this wealth is inherited should be a matter of concern to all of us.

The question of whether and how to tax wealth cannot be avoided forever.

One option is a return to inheritance taxes. The abolition of these taxes in the 1970s contributed substantially to the growth of wealth inequality. Literature seems to take this point as self-evident.

Another option would be an annual tax on wealth, reflecting the fact that returns to large concentrations of wealth have greatly exceeded growth in income and wages. This idea has been pushed by the Greens in a plan to tax the richest 1%, but seems unlikely to be taken up by the Albanese government or the Coalition any time soon.

Read more: Some economists have called for a radical ‘global wealth tax’ on billionaires. How would that work?

– ref. The court ruling in Gina Rinehart’s mining dispute reveals a lot about the nation’s inherited wealth – https://theconversation.com/the-court-ruling-in-gina-rineharts-mining-dispute-reveals-a-lot-about-the-nations-inherited-wealth-280721

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/16/the-court-ruling-in-gina-rineharts-mining-dispute-reveals-a-lot-about-the-nations-inherited-wealth-280721/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, La Trobe University

The way Australians are assessed for home-based aged-care funding is being investigated by the Commonwealth ombudsman.

Critics say assessment for funding under the Support at Home program is flawed, leaving some older people unable to access the right level of care they need to safely live at home.

Complaints about the process are increasing significantly. Even an expert who helped design the system is unhappy.

Here’s why the Commonwealth should reconsider its approach.

What’s the key issue?

The new Support at Home program was introduced in 2025. One of its aims is to support more Australians to remain at home rather than moving into residential aged care.

When an older person wants to join the program, they are assessed in an interview with a structured digital assessment known as the “Integrated Assessment Tool”. This tool assesses the support they need – physical, cognitive and psychosocial. It also assesses the urgency and the level of assistance required.

An algorithm then analyses the answers and determines Support at Home funding levels.

To be useful, assessments need to predict the actual service levels required for high-quality outcomes for older people with different levels of need.

In developing assessment tools, the gold standard is to first conduct a large number of assessments to see what kind of care older people need, and at what level. The next stage is to determine if the services actually provided produce high-quality outcomes for people with different levels of need.

But there is no publicly available evidence this has been done.

Instead, a second-best option was adopted. Experts gave a score to estimate what level of support someone would need based on answers to assessments.

But there is room for expert disagreement even when they use well developed tools.

The Integrated Assessment Tool includes 11 separate validated tools, each with an inherent error rate. These error rates compound when they are combined.

Worse, given there are no studies of the extent to which integrated assessments predict actual services and outcomes, it is difficult to say how good the algorithm is. Lack of transparency means it’s a black box, which is why the ombudsman’s inquiry is welcome.

This is particularly true because funding determined by the algorithm may be systematically lower than funding determined by experts. This means elderly people may have their cognitive, safety and complex care needs underestimated.

How about human oversight?

Despite the limitations and against expert advice, the Commonwealth has explicitly removed the power to manually override the algorithm’s allocation of support levels. The idea is for the algorithm to provide consistent results for thousands of older people.

However, this approach has a number of serious potential consequences.

The Support at Home Program has eight levels of support ranging from A$10,731 a year for level 1 (the most basic support) to $78,106 a year for level 8 (the highest level of support).

If the algorithm allocates one level of support higher or lower than what a person actually needs, this can mean a difference of between $5,300 and $20,000 a year depending on the level.

Appeals are increasing

If an older person or their family wants to question the funding allocation, they can appeal. But they often don’t know the specific reasoning behind the scoring that led to their allocation. And the appeals process can be cumbersome and stressful.

Some 800 older people have requested a review of their assessment since the introduction of the new system.

The Older Persons Advocacy Network says requests for information and advocacy have gone up by 50% in the three months in the same period.

One of the system’s designers, Lynda Henderson, said she felt “fury” that the tool she helped design has been turned into a prescriptive algorithm.

What needs to happen next?

The Robodebt Royal Commission warned government agencies that automated systems must ensure transparency, fairness and human oversight.

But this has not happened when assessing individuals’ circumstances for home-based aged-care funding.

The best approach is to use the algorithm as a guide for making individual decisions about older people’s support needs and to allow assessors to override the algorithm when the circumstances warrant it.

Systems-level data should then be used to refine the algorithm and provide guidance to assessors as the system matures.

– ref. Australia’s aged care algorithm is under fire. At last, someone’s listening – https://theconversation.com/australias-aged-care-algorithm-is-under-fire-at-last-someones-listening-280712

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/16/australias-aged-care-algorithm-is-under-fire-at-last-someones-listening-280712/

RNZ Pacific

Ten people have died in a landslide in Gazelle district in Papua New Guinea’s East New Britain Province following continuous heavy rain, according to local news media reports.

The disaster occurred after the Toriu River burst its banks after intense rainfall and severe weather conditions experienced across the region over the past few days due to Cylcone Maila.

Local media is reporting that the incident happened on Sunday in the Gazelle Baining Local Level Government area.

The Post-Courier reports the victims included a five-month-pregnant woman and three toddlers.

Provincial Administrator Levi Mano said the landslide was a result of adverse weather conditions brought by the cyclone.

Gazelle MP Jelta Wong confirmed the deaths.

Wong said recovery teams faced challenges reaching the disaster area because of its remoteness, but the recovery was eventually successful.

According to the Post-Courier, East New Britain Governor Michael Marum visited the site by helicopter to inspect the damage and coordinate relief supplies.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/16/deadly-landslide-claims-10-lives-in-pngs-east-new-britain-reports-local-media/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Murat Ungor, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Otago

New Zealand and Australia like to think of themselves as food powerhouses.

But right now, a war in the Middle East and China’s fertiliser export restrictions are exposing a dangerous blind spot: their farms depend on imported fertiliser, and they have no plan for when it stops arriving.

As much as fertiliser might seem like a background detail in farming, it isn’t. Fertilisers supply the nutrients – mainly nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – that help crops grow faster and animals feed better.

New Zealand is one of the world’s largest exporters of dairy, beef and veal. Australia exports around 70% of what it grows. Without fertiliser, those exports shrink. Without exports, the entire economy will feel the impacts.

For these neighbouring nations and other major agricultural players, the big problem is that fertiliser production is concentrated in just a handful of countries.

More than 80% of countries import at least 75% of the fertiliser they use. That means a disruption anywhere in the supply chain – whether from a war, a trade ban, a blocked shipping lane – affects everyone.

The world’s fertiliser highway is under threat

For shipping imports, the most serious chokepoint right now is the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. It carries about a quarter of all seaborne oil, along with large quantities of natural gas and fertiliser.

The ongoing US-Israel conflict with Iran has put this passage under serious threat. When cut off, by Iran or a US counter-blockade, supplies risk being halted for weeks or months.

Unfortunately for those countries needing fertiliser, the Gulf region dominates the market. Between 2023 and 2025, Gulf countries, led by Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, supplied 36% of all global exports of urea, the most widely used nitrogen fertiliser in New Zealand and worldwide.

And because urea is made from natural gas, when gas prices rise – as they have since the war escalated – it becomes more expensive, too. Consumers ultimately pay the price at the supermarket checkout.

On top of this, China, another of the largest producers in the market, has restricted its fertiliser exports. This also sends global prices up and availability down.

Unsurprisingly, the world’s top economic bodies are growing increasingly alarmed at the situation.

Earlier this month, the heads of the International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank met to coordinate their response. Their joint statement is direct: the war “has led to higher oil, gas and fertiliser prices, triggering concerns about food security”.

The IMF’s freshly-issued “Global Prospects and Policies” report warns that food security “could be threatened, with disruptions to fertiliser markets ahead of the planting season leading to substantial food price inflation”.

In essence, farmers need fertiliser most just before they plant their crops. If it does not arrive on time, or arrives at a much higher price, harvests will be smaller, resulting in higher supermarket prices.

We have a potential crisis – but what about a plan?

Chief executive of Eat New Zealand Angela Clifford has been asking for years what the country’s food security plan actually is. She recently warned that New Zealand tends to “lurch from crises to crises without doing the work in between times to make us more resilient for the next time”.

Australia’s peak grain body, GrainGrowers, has meanwhile called on its government to set up a fertiliser taskforce, create strategic reserves and diversify suppliers.

Certainly, there are things that could be done differently to provide more stability.

Biofertilisers, which use living micro-organisms in the soil to help plants access nutrients naturally, offer one alternative to the status quo. They are less dependent on global supply chains and gentler on the environment. AgroBioTechNZ argues they represent a genuine path forward.

There is also a long-term opportunity in producing urea locally from green hydrogen.

The government-industry Kapuni Project – a first-of-its-kind effort to combine wind energy, renewable electricity and green hydrogen production – is one case in point. Due to begin operating in 2027, it will augment natural gas feedstock at the urea plant to produce “greener” nitrogen fertilisers and lower emissions.

The fertiliser challenge now facing New Zealand’s all-important agricultural sector isn’t new. Fertiliser prices spiked after the COVID-19 pandemic and again after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

New Zealand’s geography and exposure to extreme weather events add yet another layer of risk to an already fragile food supply chain. Experts have called for a national food strategy. But nothing has happened.

The war in the Middle East and major exporters’ trade restrictions are the latest warning in a long line. The question, once more, is whether New Zealand acts this time or simply waits for the next costly crisis.

– ref. The Middle East crisis has exposed NZ to a global fertiliser shock. Where is its plan? – https://theconversation.com/the-middle-east-crisis-has-exposed-nz-to-a-global-fertiliser-shock-where-is-its-plan-280262

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/16/the-middle-east-crisis-has-exposed-nz-to-a-global-fertiliser-shock-where-is-its-plan-280262/