Category Archives: New Zealand

Pregnant New Zealand journalist stranded by quarantine rules says she turned to Taliban

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Charlotte Bellis says group offered her safe haven while quarantine backlog prevented return home

A pregnant New Zealand journalist says she has had to turn to the Taliban for help after being prevented from returning to her home country due to quarantine rules.

In a column published in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday, Charlotte Bellis said it was “brutally ironic” that she had once questioned the Taliban about their treatment of women and she was now asking the same questions of her own government.

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‘A national tragedy’: Māori drowning rate causes alarm in New Zealand

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Māori have a strong ancestral relationship to the ocean involving hunting and fishing for seafood, but that can come at a cost

Aquatic safety instructor Clayton Wikaira is leaning against a small inflatable boat, his hair wet from the sea, speaking to a group of six university students who have just learned how to safely dive for kaimoana (seafood). The students’ attention is waning in the hot midday sun – they are tired from an early morning start, a hike around the rocks of Auckland’s Whangaparaoa peninsula, and hours spent diving in the open ocean for kina (sea urchin). Some look at their phones, others chomp on pizza. But as he starts telling a story, their ears prick up.

“I thought I could swim to Australia when I was young. I thought I was fit, strong,” he starts.

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Jacinda Ardern’s poll rating at lowest since becoming New Zealand’s PM

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The Labour leader’s approval has dropped to 35% as the country wrestles with the Omicron Covid variant and rising inflation

Support for Jacinda Ardern has dropped to its lowest level since she became New Zealand’s prime minister in 2017, as the country reckons with higher living costs and a Covid-19 outbreak.

While Ardern remains New Zealand’s preferred prime minister by a significant margin, her support had dropped four points in the latest 1 News Kantor poll, to 35%. The result is her lowest since just before the 2017 election, when Ardern began her tenure. Her counterparts on the right are still tailing by a significant margin, but new National leader Christopher Luxon had made substantial gains, up 13 points to 17%.

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The new normal: New Zealand braces for shift from Covid zero to Covid acceptance

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The nation accepts a big psychological change, one expert says, as people prepare for more cases than they have ever seen before

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In New Zealand’s biggest city, the streets were calm. At an Auckland supermarket, shelves of toilet paper, wine, chocolate and flour – metrics of a population hunkering down for a marathon of self-soothing and banana bread – had been quietly restocked from any panic-buying flurries.

In an uptown cafe, a barista said things had been a little quieter since the announcement. Then again, she shrugged: “It might just be a Tuesday.” At Unity Books, a bookstore at the heart of the city, people were quietly browsing. “There’s always an element of eerie calm before the storm,” said bookseller Briary Lawry.

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‘Such is life’: Jacinda Ardern cancels wedding amid Omicron wave – video

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The Omicron outbreak in New Zealand has forced Jacinda Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford to cancel their wedding, which was due to take place in the coming weeks at Gisborne on the North Island’s eastern coast. The prime minister said on Sunday the country would be placed on the highest level of restrictions to try to slow the spread of the variant

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Red alert: PM cancels wedding as New Zealand prepares for thousands of Omicron cases a day

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Prime minister Jacinda Ardern says Omicron is now circulating in the community but ‘we’ll do everything that we can to slow the spread’

Omicron has breached New Zealand’s borders and started spreading in the community, Jacinda Ardern has said, meaning the entire country will be placed on the highest level of restrictions.

The outbreak has also forced the prime minister to cancel her wedding to Clarke Gayford, which was due to take place in the coming weeks at Gisborne on the North Island’s eastern coast.

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Deal with Jacinda Ardern’s Labour party is proving toxic for New Zealand’s Greens | Morgan Godfery

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The inter-party agreement has left the Greens defending rising emissions – a stance that goes against all their principles

Metiria Turei, the former Green party co-leader, left parliament more than four years ago, resigning from the co-leadership and the party list after right wing lobby groups, with an able assist in the form of the parliamentary press gallery, led a ruthless campaign against the former lawyer for admitting that she once had to commit benefit fraud to feed her young family.

The admission came in a landmark speech condemning New Zealand’s miserly welfare system. Struggling families were paid far too little to survive, something policymakers had known for decades, with examples ranging from Turei’s own to anonymous sole parents who were coming forward to describe how they spent $380 of the $480 in assistance from the State on rent alone. Turei and the Greens were promising to lift the rate of sole parent support, remove sanctions, and make other necessary and progressive reforms to the welfare system in order for people to meet their basic needs.

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‘Quiet fabulosity’: remote New Zealand church gets pink makeover to celebrate queer community

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Sam Duckor-Jones has transformed an unused church into what he hopes will be a place for rural queerness to thrive

On the wild and remote west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, an old dame is getting a hot-pink makeover, with all the synthetic flowers, coloured beads and glitter she can take. Her name is Gloria, and she is an 83-year-old church, on her way to becoming a public sculpture and “queer beacon” for the local community.

“I didn’t grow up in the church, I grew up in a Jewish household, but mostly I grew up making things, and in recent years I’ve become more and more excited about queer celebration,” says poet and artist Sam Duckor-Jones.

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As Omicron rages around the world, Ardern deploys an old tactic – delay

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Jacinda Ardern says Omicron is ‘knocking at our door’ as the prime minister faces criticism over gaps in preparations for a Covid wave

In her first press conference of the year, held outside in the central North Island sun, prime minister Jacinda Ardern was almost drowned out by a wave of cicada calls.

The clamour is synonymous with New Zealand summertime, a reminder that the country had managed to snatch a long, hot, largely unrestricted holiday season from the mouth of a late-2021 Delta outbreak.

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New Zealand closes borders to new arrivals over ‘unprecedented’ Omicron risk

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Citizens blocked from returning home after minister Chris Hipkins halts release of space in quarantine rooms, saying facilities are under ‘extreme pressure’

New Zealand has temporarily cut off the only pathway home for overseas citizens and visa holders, citing the risk of the Omicron variant.

Officials announced on Tuesday evening that new spaces in the country’s managed isolation and quarantine system (MIQ) would not be released.

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Tonga volcano: first pictures after eruption show islands blanketed in ash, as two deaths confirmed

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Pictures from a New Zealand defence force surveillance flight and UN satellite images show land and trees coated in ash

Some of the first images have emerged from Tonga’s volcano and tsunami-hit islands, after a New Zealand defence force surveillance flight returned from the cut-off country, as two deaths from the disaster have been confirmed in Tonga.

Aerial photography of Nomuka, a small island in the southern part of the Haʻapai group, shows land and trees coated with ash and other damage inflicted by the huge undersea volcanic eruption and tsunami that hit the Pacific nation on Saturday.

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Covid live: unvaccinated over-60s face monthly fine in Greece; UK reports another 84,429 cases and 85 deaths

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Un-jabbed older people in Greece face penalties starting at a €50; UK cases continue downward trend

Germany is reporting a daily rise of 34,145 confirmed coronavirus cases and 30 deaths, according to recently released figures from the Robert Koch Institute.

The numbers bring the cumulative total of infections to 8,000,122 and 115,649 coronavirus-related deaths.

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Tonga volcano: a visual guide to the eruption and its aftermath

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The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption – from explosion and tsunami alerts to a drifting veil of ash

Surveillance flights have been sent from Australia and New Zealand to assess damage after Tonga was isolated from the rest of the world following a volcanic eruption. Here’s how events have played out over the past few days.

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How the Tonga volcano has been felt around the world – video

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A large underwater volcano in Tonga has sent huge swells around the world affecting countries bordering the Pacific Ocean. The tsunami waves caused damage to boats as far away as New Zealand and large swells were seen in California and Japan but did not appear to cause any widespread damage. Two people have drowned off a beach in northern Peru, local authorities say, after unusually high waves were recorded in several coastal areas

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Pacific tsunami damage unclear as volcano ash blankets Tonga

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Conditions hinder communications and surveillance of towns believed to have been inundated by waves

A thick blanket of ash from a huge undersea volcanic eruption has covered the Pacific Island nation of Tonga, contaminating water supplies, cutting off communications and preventing surveillance flights assessing the extent of damage from tsunami waves that are believed to have inundated entire towns.

Videos shared on social media after Saturday night’s eruption showed people running for higher ground as the metre-high floods hit coastal areas and made their way inland while the sky darkened with ash. A sonic boom could be heard as far away as Alaska.

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Tsunami-hit Tonga faces communication challenges, says Jacinda Ardern – video

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The prime minister of New Zealand told a news conference on Sunday that contact had not been established with coastal areas beyond the capital, Nuku’alofa, after a tsunami hit Tonga following an underwater volcanic eruption. 

Ardern said the main undersea communications cable was affected, probably due to loss of power. She added that power was being restored in some areas on the islands and local mobile phones were slowly starting to work. The New Zealand high commission in Nuku’alofa said the tsunami had damaged boats, shops and other infrastructure.

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Blasting through a cliff face, the beauty of Tarawera Falls are testimony to a partner’s grief | Morgan Godfery

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In Māori legend Mount Tarawera blew her top after discovering that her lover, Mount Pūtauaki, had left her

  • Guardian writers and readers describe their favourite place in New Zealand’s wilderness and why it’s special to them

One of the cruelties of New Zealand tourism is that international visitors arrive expecting to find a vast, unpeopled land – the sharp peaks, rolling grasslands and roaring rivers of Middle-earth.

But when visitors land at Auckland airport they do so on a concrete strip at the edge of a muddy tidal harbour. The airport terminal itself is under perpetual reconstruction, the roads leading to and from it are clogged at most times of the day, and as soon as you escape the city using the main highway the view is more or less the same for the next two hours: dairy farm after dairy farm, unnaturally lush and green as farm owners fertilise and irrigate the land to all hell.

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2021 was New Zealand’s hottest year on record

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Experts say we can expect more of the same, with 2021 beating all records since 1909

Last year was New Zealand’s hottest year on record, according to the country’s National Institute of Water and Aeronautic Research (NIWA), and seven of the past nine years are among New Zealand’s warmest ever. The country’s steadily rising temperature brings increased risk of major floods, bushfires and storms.

According to NIWA, New Zealand’s average temperature in 2021 was 13.56 degrees Celsius. It’s the highest average NIWA has recorded since it began its seven-station annual temperature series in 1909, and breaks the previous record set in 2016 by 0.11 degrees.

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In today’s New Zealand, it’s not about being just Māori or Pākehā – everyone must belong | Philip McKibbin

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While some of us are both, many of us are neither. The urge to separate us out is used to marginalise people around the world

It took me a long time to embrace my Māori identity.

On my mother’s side, I whakapapa (relate, through ancestry) to Kāi Tahu, the largest iwi (tribe) of Te Waipounamu (the South Island of New Zealand), but I grew up believing I was only Pākehā (NZ European). I spent most of my childhood living with my Pākehā father. Even though my Māori ancestry was mentioned occasionally, I resisted the suggestion that I was Māori. I didn’t grow up on a marae (Māori village), or speak te reo – and I didn’t look like the Māori kids I knew.

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