Category Archives: New Zealand

New Zealand authorities apologise for encouraging parents to ‘tax’ Halloween sweets

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Inland Revenue Department faced criticism online after tweeting a tax on ‘treat hauls’ could teach kids responsibility

New Zealand’s tax department has apologised for encouraging parents to hit their children’s Halloween candy stash with a “lolly tax” of up to 33%.

The Inland Revenue Department [IRD] came under fire on Sunday after tweeting from its official account that “parenting trends like a lolly tax teach kids responsibility by taking some of their lollies and taxing their trick or treat haul.”

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New Zealand influencers detained in Iran ‘extremely relieved’ to be home

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NZ government facing accusations that its response to Iran protests has been muted in order to secure release of pair

Two New Zealand influencers who were detained for nearly four months in Iran have said they are “extremely relieved” to be out of the country and back with family.

Christopher “Topher” Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray were on a trip they called Expedition Earth; driving a Jeep through 70 countries to “promote environmental issues” and documenting their travels on Instagram. They disappeared in early July, shortly after they were questioned by authorities upon entering Iran. The pair are understood to have been kept in the country by security forces.

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New Zealand couple detained in Iran for months leave the country

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Influencers Christopher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray had disappeared after entering Iran in July and had been prevented from leaving

Two New Zealand social media influencers who were detained in Iran for almost four months have been released and have now left the country.

Social media influencers Christopher “Topher” Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray were undertaking a trip called Expedition Earth in which they aimed to travel across 90 countries in a Jeep. The two recorded their travels with near-daily vlogs and Instagram posts, and documented their border crossing into Iran from Turkey in early July.

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New Zealand Uber drivers win landmark case declaring them employees

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Uber said it would appeal against the decision, which judge said ‘may well’ affect other drivers’ status and entitle them to workers’ rights and protections

A group of New Zealand Uber drivers have won a landmark case against the global ridesharing company, forcing it to treat them as employees, not contractors, and entitling them to a suite of worker rights and protections.

New Zealand’s employment court ruled on Tuesday that the drivers were employees, not independent contractors. While the ruling applies specifically to the case of four drivers, the court noted that it may have wider implications for drivers across the country.

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Big opportunity, little interest: New Zealand struggles to fill dream job protecting wildlife

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The Department of Conservation is looking for a biodiversity supervisor on the wild, remote coast of the South Island, a Unesco world heritage site

A NZ$90,000 salary, a helicopter commute, and a Unesco world heritage site as your playground. It sounds like a dream job. But despite the considerable perks, New Zealand’s Department of Conservation has been struggling to attract candidates to be their new biodiversity supervisor in Haast on the wild, remote coast of the South Island. Now, the search is going global.

The job is based in Te Wāhipounamu – an area encompassing 26,000 square kilometres of mountain ranges, isolated beaches and native forests, classed as a Unesco World Heritage Area in 1990. Its mountain ranges formed the backdrop for the White Mountains/Ered Nimrais in Peter Jackson’s adaption of the Lord of the Rings.

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Conviction overturned for man who sent death threats to Jacinda Ardern

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Michael Cruickshank argued he was so drunk he could not remember sending the threats to New Zealand’s prime minister

A man sent to prison for sending death threats to New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has had his conviction overturned.

Michael Cruickshank was sentenced to 12 months in prison in March, for a series of emails in which he made violent threats against Ardern. He argued that he was so drunk he could not remember sending the threats, had no intention of seeing them through, and didn’t intend the recipients to take them seriously. On Wednesday, the court of appeal judged that there had been a miscarriage of justice in the case.

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New Zealand MP says Rocket Lab launches could betray country’s anti-nuclear stance

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The commercial space company rejects criticism of satellite launches for the US military

A New Zealand commercial space company, Rocket Lab, has faced new opposition to its activities on behalf of foreign militaries, with one New Zealand Green MP saying its actions could fly in the face of the country’s anti-nuclear stance.

The American-New Zealand company, founded by Peter Beck in 2006, provides rockets to deliver payloads into orbit from its launch site on the Māhia Peninsula, in New Zealand’s north. A third of Rocket Lab’s activities have been on behalf of defence and national security agencies. These include launching US and Australian spy satellites, the controversial “Gunsmoke J” satellite, and most recently Nasa’s capstone spacecraft.

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New Zealand pulls funding for school Shakespeare festival, citing ‘canon of imperialism’

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Secondary school competition ‘did not demonstrate the relevance to the contemporary art context of Aotearoa’

New Zealand’s arts council has pulled funding for a Shakespeare festival that has been running in secondary schools for roughly three decades, after questioning its relevance to the country and because it focuses on “a canon of imperialism”.

Every year, the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand runs the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare festival – a secondary school competition where students perform excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays.

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Former New Zealand PM John Key says he would have voted for Trump and Bolsonaro

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Influential National party figure said he had never voted ‘anything other than right’, but that some on the right were ‘getting pretty crazy’

Former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Key has suggested he would have voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 US election, and far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s 2022 elections, had he been eligible to do so.

Key, who served three terms as prime minister from 2008 to 2016, revealed his preferences in a quick-fire round of 20 questions that featured at the end of a new online series called Both Sides Now, hosted by members of the Labour and National youth wings.

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Second mass stranding means 500 pilot whales likely to die on remote New Zealand islands

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About 250 whales beached on remote Chatham Islands just days after another stranding involving similar number of mammals

Hundreds of pilot whales have stranded on New Zealand’s remote Chatham Islands just days after a nearby beaching resulted in 250 mammals dying or being euthanised.

About 250 whales came ashore at Pitt Island/Rangiauria in the second stranding, taking the total number of whales stranded on the Chatham Islands to around 500, the general manager of Project Jonah, Daren Grover, said on Monday. The project runs a stranding hotline and mobilises marine rescues.

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‘A shift in political thinking’: many of New Zealand’s cities lurch right in local elections

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Experts say the progressive vote is disillusioned with incremental changes brought in by Ardern Labour government

Late in the campaign period of Auckland’s mayoral election came a spate of strange, oddly specific, billboard vandalism. As the race in New Zealand’s most populous city wound to its conclusion, boardings for Efeso Collins, an independent progressive candidate and mayoral frontrunner, were plasteredwith red “Labour” party logos.

Compared with the moustaches and monobrows that typically bedeck election billboards, it seemed an innocuous choice for vandals. But Collins’ campaign said it was an act of politicised sabotage. “None of our allies or volunteers have been doing it,” a spokesperson told The Spinoff. “We believe it’s an attack tactic.”

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New Zealand court quashes child sexual abuse conviction in landmark ruling

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Case of Peter Ellis marks first time a court in the country has overturned a conviction posthumously

New Zealand’s supreme court has quashed the convictions of Peter Ellis, a Christchurch creche worker convicted of child sexual abuse in 1993 in a highly controversial case that included allegations of large-scale ritual abuse.

On Friday, the court found a “substantial miscarriage of justice” had occurred. It is the first time in New Zealand’s history that a conviction has been quashed posthumously – Ellis died from cancer in late 2019.

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New Zealand drowning in mānuka honey after a boom in beekeeping

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As demand for honey slows after the pandemic, stockpiles far exceed the amount usually sold in a year

New Zealand is drowning in honey after a boom in beekeeping collided with slowing international demand to create towering stockpiles.

Over the past five years, global desire for mānuka honey and demand for home-based honey remedies during the pandemic helped push up prices, creating a kind of honey gold rush on New Zealand farms.

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Liberal party emails supporters claiming Labor wants to give noncitizens voting rights

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Some noncitizens can already vote in Australia, a parliamentary committee is considering extending that to permanent residents from New Zealand

Liberal party headquarters have seized on a routine review of Australia’s most recent federal election to claim Labor wants to give noncitizens voting rights.

An email sent to Liberal party supporters has urged people to write a submission to the electoral matters parliamentary committee, claiming Labor wants to extend voting to New Zealand citizens living in Australia.

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Australia-New Zealand refugee deal: UN blames mental health toll after just 36 people take up offer

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UN refugee agency says many refugees have been traumatised by years in Australian detention camps, hampering uptake of the offer

In nearly six months, just 36 people have taken up New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees held in Australian detention camps such as Nauru, with UN’s refugee agency saying the brutality of Australia’s immigration regime is partly to blame.

In March 2022, Australia’s government accepted a longstanding offer from New Zealand to resettle up to 450 refugees from Australia’s regional processing centres over the next three years, at a rate of up to 150 per year. But after nearly six months, uptake has been slow – stymied by the dire mental health of prospective applicants.

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Thumbs down to ‘middle finger’ health campaign in New Zealand

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Hepatitis C awareness ads that feature smiling actors raising their middle fingers are deemed too offensive to be aired

A New Zealand health campaign designed to help curb hepatitis C has hit a stumbling block after one of its advertisements showing people raising the middle finger was deemed too offensive to air.

The associate health minister, Ayesha Verrall, launched the “Stick it to Hep C” campaign in July, to raise awareness over the virus, which kills roughly 200 New Zealanders a year.

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New Zealand bans live animal exports from April 2023

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Animal welfare law passes two years after sinking of Gulf Livestock 1 in a typhoon killed crew and 6,000 cattle

New Zealand will ban live animal exports from next April, two years after storms sank a livestock ship, killing 41 crew members and 6,000 cattle.

The death of two New Zealanders among the crew of the Gulf Livestock 1, which sank in a September 2020 typhoon, helped galvanise the movement to ban exports of live sheep and cattle.

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‘It’s a murder scene’: feral pigs torment residents in New Zealand capital

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Farm just minutes from centre of Wellington estimates it has lost about 60 kid goats in past few months

Marauding feral pigs have blighted a central suburb in New Zealand’s capital, killing kid goats at an urban farm, intimidating dogs and turning up in residents’ gardens.

The owners of a goat milk farm in the hills of the suburb of Brooklyn, 10 minutes from the centre of Wellington, has lost about 60 kid goats to pigs in the past few months. Often, all that is left of them are gnawed bone fragments and parts of the hooves or head.

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‘They belong to Waramungu’: New Zealand museum agrees to return items to Indigenous Australians

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Warumungu people in Northern Territory negotiate return of four objects collected by anthropologist Baldwin Spencer in the early 1900s

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Four objects from the Warumungu people will be returned from a New Zealand museum to country in the Northern Territory.

Two hooked boomerangs (wartilykirri), an adze (palya/kupija) and an axe (ngurrulumuru) were collected by well-known anthropologist Baldwin Spencer and telegraph operator James Field.

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Antarctic researchers gain insights from on high as they count seals from space

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Scientists used satellite images and more than 300,000 volunteers to count Weddell seals, a key Southern Ocean indicator species

Researchers believe they have accurately estimated Antarctica’s Weddell seal population for the first time – using images from space and the eyes of hundreds of thousands of citizen scientists.

Weddell seals are a key indicator species in the Southern Ocean, for both sea ice fluctuations and shifts in the food web. They can live up to 30 years in the harsh conditions of the coastal sea ice of Antarctica, but until recently, counting them has been risky and cost-prohibitive.

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