AM Edition: Top 10 Politics Articles on LiveNews.co.nz for April 4, 2026 – Full Text

Source: Radio New Zealand

A consumer watchdog says diners encountering surcharges over Easter should make sure businesses are not blaming a non-existent public holiday.

Many hospitality businesses add surcharges on public holidays to cover the higher wage costs.

But Consumer NZ says only Good Friday and Easter Monday are statutory holidays, so any business adding a surcharge on Sunday cannot use that as an excuse.

Chief executive Jon Duffy told RNZ businesses simply needed to be honest about the reason for the additional charge.

“They can apply a surcharge if they want to, and customers – if they decide they don’t like that surcharge – can decide that they will take their custom elsewhere.

“The rules, as they exist under the Fair Trading Act, simply say that businesses can’t mislead you about the reason for that surcharge.”

Businesses could spread their holiday wage costs across the year instead of surcharging, Duffy said.

“It’s a practice that’s crept in and become more commonplace over the years. We see it in other areas, we see massively inconsistent surcharging when it comes to payments and EFTPOS terminals all over the country.”

Businesses also need to clearly disclose the surcharge in advance, not hidden behind the counter or on a note put back in the employee toilets.

People could complain to the Commerce Commission or report businesses misrepresenting surcharges to Consumer NZ, Duffy said.

He added that he was hoping the government would follow through with its proposal to ban paywave surcharges.

The government introduced legislation last year to ban in-store card surcharges, but the bill currently languishes on Parliament’s Order Paper, four months after the Finance and Expenditure Committee published its report.

ACT has now made it clear it would not support a blanket ban, as retailers would have to push up their prices to absorb the charges, but Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Scott Simpson insisted nothing had changed with the legislation, and he was pausing to do more work on the policy.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Ultra-marathon open-water swimmer Jono Ridler has completed his record-breaking odyssey down the east coast of the North Island, calling New Zealanders to unite against bottom trawling, and been met by crowds of supporters.

Ridler began the almost 1400 kilometre slog in North Cape 90 days ago, on 5 January, and finished on Saturday afternoon at Whairepo Lagoon, on the Wellington waterfront.

The swim sets a new world record for the longest unassisted staged swim – wearing only togs, goggles and a swim cap, but no wetsuit.

Ridler partnered with marine conservation group LiveOcean, launching a petition against bottom trawling fishing, which has now been signed by more than 66,000 people.

• Minister defends bottom trawling, despite poll showing most NZers want it banned

His swim included swarms of jellyfish, battling sunburn and more than 120 rest stops between his swimming shifts and community stopovers, where he stopped to rest and raise awareness.

Ridler enters Whairepo Lagoon in Wellington, with crowds lining the way. RNZ/ Anya Fielding

Met by cheers from supporters at the waterfront as he strode up onto land, Ridler then prepared to walk to Parliament, to emphasise the calls for change directed at the government.

Finishing the journey was “an amazing day”, he told RNZ: “Just seeing everybody out on the boardwalk, all of the boats out today, the welcome coming into the lagoon here.

“It’s an incredible end to what has been an incredible adventure, and I’m still kind of pinching myself a little bit with some of the moments that I’ve been able to experience today.”

Jono Ridler (file photo) Jono Ridler / Instagram

The swim had been “really, really hard at times”, he said, and he was glad it was done, but it had been a special time as well.

“I think it takes a big ambition,” Ridler said of the project: “It takes some really good people to get behind you and support you”.

New Zealand stood out for allowing bottom trawling, Ridler said.

“[It’s] a destructive and indiscriminate method of fishing. We are currently the only country that is bottom trawling in the high seas of the South Pacific, which isn’t a good title to hold.

The campaign calls on the government to make changes, and “a quick transition away from bottom trawling, with the first priority being an end to bottom trawling on seamounts and other vital marine ecosystems”.

Ridler taking his first steps out of the water, to cheers from supporters. RNZ/ Anya Fielding

“We also bottom trawl on seamounts out in the deep sea. These are very fragile ecosystems and they take centuries to be able to recover. So people should care about it if they care about ocean health generally,” he said.

“And we’ve got 65,000 voices that agree with that and that have come behind us and signed our petition… We want to grow that as much as possible and change the way in which we take wild fish from the ocean. “

Bottom trawling was “a very entrenched practice in New Zealand fishing, but shutting it down was doable, Ridler said.

“And I think on the other side of that, we’ll have a healthier ocean for it.”

Live Ocean founder Blair Tuke earlier told RNZ the feat, and Ridler’s dedication pushing himself to the limit, had resonated with New Zealanders, and the support for the project and the petition had been amazing.

The team planned to continue gathering signatures on the petition, and to present it to the government at the end of April.

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Source: New Zealand Government

The Government will enter into an agreement to support an additional 90 million litres of storage for diesel at Marsden Point in Northland to boost New Zealand’s fuel resilience as the Middle East conflict continues to impact global fuel supplies, Regional Development and Associate Energy Minister Shane Jones says.

Senior Ministers yesterday signed off on up to $21.6 million from the Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF) to Channel Infrastructure NZ Ltd.

“This financial arrangement will allow Channel Infrastructure, which owns and operates the former refinery site at Marsden Point, to increase its diesel storage by recommissioning storage tanks with a combined 90 million-litre capacity,” Mr Jones says.

“Channel Infrastructure has assured the Government it can do this within two months. This is an ambitious but do-able project which will help ensure New Zealand is well-placed to weather the fuel supply issues New Zealand faces.

“While we are acutely aware of the importance of petrol and jet fuel, it is diesel that is the lifeblood of our economy. We know we have a secure supply until the end of May. If the opportunities arise for New Zealand to secure diesel supplies over and above what we are expecting, we need to be able to store it.

“Storage of fuel supplies on a large scale is an issue, given much of what we had has been sitting idle at Marsden Point for a number of years,” Mr Jones says.

Work is expected to begin on the refurbishment of the tanks, which can hold about eight days’ supply, within days. The Government will be keeping a very close eye on progress to ensure it is ready to take diesel as quickly as possible.

The RIF financial support has been secured through funds tagged for projects that have been approved in principle but not likely to go ahead.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Health New Zealand (HNZ) is struggling to build new hospital projects, partly because staffing cuts have slowed down procurement activities, according to a newly-released report.

HNZ is headed into another Budget with long-standing infrastructure delivery challenges caused partly by job cuts, according to the Treasury report released under the Official Information Act.

The report showed that when the finance and infrastructure ministers met Health Minister Simeon Brown in December for a “please explain” meeting, “health capital underspends” were a focus.

“Health NZ is significantly underspending its capital expenditure compared to forecasted intentions,” was a key message.

A second was that “individual projects are also frequently running over time and over budget”.

The Infrastructure and Investment Ministers Group has been pushing chief executives and ministers of capital-intensive agencies with “the highest levels of Crown capital underspend” like HNZ to make their forecasts much more accurate.

Health NZ had a $315m discrepancy – including $190m on buildings and plant – between forecast and actual capital spending for the first quarter of 2025-26.

The Treasury papers tracking this are only released publicly months after they were given to ministers.

RNZ requested additional documents from Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and was provided one from December 2025, written just ahead of Brown’s meeting with Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Bishop.

That three-page report said that fixing the underspend and under-delivery of hospitals faced big hurdles.

“Health NZ has long-standing infrastructure delivery challenges stemming from two key factors: Health NZ’s organisational capability and market capacity,” Treasury told Bishop and Willis.

The construction sector has 2.1 percent fewer jobs now, compared to a year ago.

“These challenges are further exacerbated by difficulties in recruiting and retaining experienced project directors for major projects, reductions in staff numbers which have slowed procurement activities [and a third factor that was blanked out],” Treasury said.

“Efforts to address these challenges are ongoing (via improving project sequencing and bundling, and staff capacity building) but progress is slow.”

It did not help that health’s project teams tended to be optimistic in forecasting capital expenditure and “often do not accurately update forecasts to reflect experience and trends in expenditure”.

Despite myriad costly efforts to improve this since HNZ was set up in 2022 – in part to fix the fragmented hospital building-and-management regime under 20 health boards – the weaknesses have persisted between governments.

HNZ was promising in 2023 to “make health infrastructure delivery quicker and more efficient by standardising Te Whatu Ora infrastructure planning, design, decision making and construction”.

That year Health NZ set up a new national infrastructure team, but the whole agency has since undergone financial upheaval and a reset, and had now embarked on decentralisation which Brown this month said was the government’s most significant structural move on health.

In April 2025, the government put out a multi-billion-dollar, 10-year plan for rebuilding hospitals and promised building would become more efficient, partly by doing things in phases. At the time health projects with ministerial approval worth $7.44 billion were underway.

One of the first projects to go the bite-size route has been Nelson Hospital, which HNZ recently said was on track but that Treasury last year said faced an 18-month delay on its inpatient block.

At the time the government launched the 10-year plan, HNZ papers show it foresaw significant risk it would not invest in the right place or “meet government expectations around providing a prioritised pipeline of capital investments”.

Early this year, a study to assess the agency as the rapid decentralisation ordered by Brown got underway found it had workforce gaps in its infrastructure and investment group particularly in the northern and central North Island regions.

The January 2026 internal report said the delays in delivering projects had a favourable short-term effect on HNZ’s cash balance.

But it added that “delays are likely to lead to increased project costs such as increased labour, equipment and material costs in the long term”.

Related extra depreciation costs had taken $85m off the bottom line in 2025-26 – when HNZ aims to report a $200m deficit – and that would jump by another $160m next financial year, even as it tried to get to break-even.

One of the causes of the delays was lack of capacity – Treasury in December had said: “Common issues across infrastructure investments include challenges with HNZ capability, sector capacity and internal prioritisation”, – but a second one carried a ring of hope: That more effort was being put in to get better decisions round investments, the January report said.

In December, ahead of the ‘please explain’ meeting for Willis and Bishop, Treasury listed some questions “you may wish to ask Minister Brown…” but Bishop’s office blanked them out.

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Source: Eastern Institute of Technology

23 seconds ago

The Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) has welcomed Cabinet’s approval of $10 million from the Government’s contingency fund to support the rebuild and improvement of its Hawke’s Bay Campus in Taradale following Cyclone Gabrielle.

Cabinet’s decision, announced yesterday, follows the devastation caused by Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023, which resulted in catastrophic flooding across the campus.

About 90 per cent of ground-floor buildings were inundated with floodwater and contaminated silt, damaging more than 500 teaching and support spaces and forcing widespread disruption to learning and operations.

Many buildings were unusable for months, with teaching delivered across temporary sites throughout Napier and Hastings while repairs progressed.

EIT has since worked to restore campus functionality, using limited insurance proceeds to carry out essential remediation and keep programmes running. While significant progress has been made, insurance funding has not been sufficient to fully meet long-term rebuild needs.

EIT Council Chair David Pearson said the Government’s decision was a turning point.

“This funding is a genuine game-changer for EIT. We have rebuilt as much as we could with the resources available, but there have been clear gaps that insurance simply will not be able to cover.

“This investment gives us certainty as we complete the next stage of our rebuild and plan for the future. I am delighted and deeply appreciative of the Government’s support.”

EIT acknowledged the support of Minister for Tertiary Education and Skills Hon Penny Simmonds, along with local MPs, regional leaders, iwi partners and the wider community, who supported the institute through its recovery and return to independence following the disestablishment of Te Pūkenga.

Chief Executive Lucy Laitinen said the funding comes at a pivotal time as EIT moves forward as an independent institution.

“EIT is well and truly back in business. Our student enrolments are strong, our staff are energised by our independence, and we are reconnecting with local industry and our wider communities to ensure we are meeting their needs. This funding will help fill critical gaps in our rebuild and ensure our Taradale campus can continue to serve Hawke’s Bay for generations to come.”

She said the recovery reflects the commitment and resilience of staff, students and supporters across the region.

“We are incredibly grateful for the support we have received through thick and thin from government, our local MPs, regional and civic leaders, iwi, industry partners and the community. We never stopped delivering for our learners, and this investment allows us to focus on rebuilding a campus that is resilient, fit for purpose, and aligned with Hawke’s Bay’s future skills needs.”

The funding will enable EIT to accelerate rebuilding work, improve campus infrastructure, and strengthen its long-term sustainability as Hawke’s Bay’s regional institute of technology.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

By AFP teams in Tehran, Jerusalem, Washington, Beirut, Dubai and Sanaa

Iran deployed troops and offered a bounty as it launched a hunt for a US pilot whose jet Iranian media said had been downed by the Islamic republic’s air defence systems Friday (all times local).

US Central Command (CENTCOM), responsible for military operations in the Middle East, did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on the first such report in the war engulfing the region.

The war started more than a month ago with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, triggering retaliation that spread the conflict throughout the Middle East, convulsing the global economy and impacting millions of people worldwide.

“Military forces have launched a search operation to find the American fighter pilot who was hit earlier today,” Iran’s Fars news agency said.

“Dear and honourable people of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, if you capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police and military forces, you will receive a valuable reward and bonus,” said an Iranian television reporter on the official local channel.

The report of the downed jet came as fresh strikes hit Israel, Iran and Gulf countries. Large blasts rocked northern Tehran Friday afternoon, an AFP journalist said. It was not immediately clear what was hit.

Earlier, Israel’s military reported a new missile salvo from Iran, activating its air defences.

Strikes by all sides have increasingly targeted economic and industrial sites, raising fears of wider disruption to global energy supplies and deepening the conflict’s impact beyond the battlefield.

The Iranian fire came as Trump said the US military “hasn’t even started destroying what’s left in Iran. Bridges next, then Electric Power Plants!” on his Truth Social platform, after the United States struck Iran’s tallest bridge.

About 70 percent of Iran’s steel production capacity, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday, after Iran’s two largest steel plants earlier this week said they were forced out of action by several waves of US and Israeli air attacks.

Ex-FM urges peace deal

Writing in the US journal Foreign Affairs, Iran’s former top diplomat said that Tehran should make a deal with the United States to end the war by offering to curb its nuclear programme and reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief.

Tehran could “declare victory and make a deal that both ends this conflict and prevents the next one,” wrote Mohammad Javad Zarif, foreign minister from 2013 to 2021.

Iran has virtually blocked the Strait of Hormuz since the war began, where in peace time one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas passes through. As a result, fuel prices have skyrocketed worldwide.

Of the few ships that have managed to cross, most have had links to Iran, with sixty percent of commodity-bearing ships crossing the strait either coming from Iran or heading there, an AFP analysis of maritime data showed.

In the first known transit by a major European shipping group since 1 March, the Maltese-flagged Kribi, belonging to the French maritime transport group CMA CGM, crossed the strait to exit the Gulf on Thursday, according Marine Traffic data analysed by AFP.

Iranian military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaghari warned that in response to Trump’s threats to attack infrastructure, Iran would increase its own attacks on energy sites in the region.

A drone attack on a refinery owned by Kuwait’s national oil company on Friday sparked fires at several of its units, state media said.

Later, an Iranian attack damaged a power and desalination complex, Kuwait’s water and electricity ministry said.

In Abu Dhabi, a gas complex shut after a fire broke out, following an attack that resulted in “falling debris” upon interception, the government media office said.

Trump wants bigger defence budget

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said Friday it had struck more than 3500 targets across Lebanon in the month since fighting with Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.

It added that it would attack two bridges in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region “in order to prevent the transfer of reinforcements and military equipment”.

Lebanon’s health ministry said on Thursday that 1345 people had been killed and 4040 wounded since the start of the war, including 1129 men, 91 women and 125 children.

The ministry said the toll also included 53 healthcare workers.

Hezbollah has so far not announced its losses.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon said a blast hit one of its positions and wounded three peacekeepers, the third such incident in a week.

A UNIFIL spokesperson said the origin of the explosion was unknown.

The war’s economic impact is rippling far beyond the Middle East, as energy and oil costs surge.

Analysts said Trump’s recent address to the nation failed to provide clarity on an exit strategy from the war.

Meanwhile, the White House on Friday sent a spending proposal to lawmakers calling for a massive hike to the US defence budget.

It remains to be seen what Congress will ultimately approve, but US media reported the $1.5 billion budget request — a 42 percent hike — would be the largest year-on-year increase in Pentagon spending since World War II.

As energy costs skyrocket worldwide, Egypt has ordered shops, restaurants and shopping malls to close from 9:00 pm on weekdays.

Dozens participated in a protest in the Pakistani city of Lahore, calling on the government to reverse fuel price hikes.

“The government, overnight, has dropped a ‘petrol bomb’ on its people,” Naveed Ahmed, a 39-year-old protestor, told AFP.

– AFP

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

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Source: New Zealand Government

Children and families are better protected and supported under the multi-agency model for responding to family violence incidents. 

Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence Karen Chhour has welcomed a recent independent evaluation into responses to family violence incidents, which has shown the importance of support services working together to respond quickly after a family violence incident. 

It also highlighted reduced barriers to safety and staying alongside whānau longer enough to support lasting change as clear benefits to survivors from this approach. 

The model has been rolled out by government agencies, communities and iwi-led family violence sites in Auckland City, Rotorua, Tairāwhiti and Hawkes Bay. 

Minister Chhour says, “As a nation we have a tragic history of comparatively high levels of family violence. It is a great shame and one we cannot keep trying to address the same ways while expecting new results.

Fortunately, we are blessed with a lot of caring and empathic people in country. People in government and community support services who have dedicated their lives to helping and who are willing to try something new. 

A barrier I hear about from the community often is that these services are not connected, which can lead to gaps in the help they are provided and them needing to repeat and relive the most traumatic moments of their lives. 

The report shows that under this model people felt safer, feeling believed and supported, growing confidence and emotional regulation over time, and improved day-to-day stability that helps support healing.

Family violence affects children most of all, that is why children are such a key focus of this response. The report has highlighted greater routine and calm at home, better connection to health and therapeutic supports (where available), and stronger caregiver capability as tangible benefits of the multi-agency response model. 

The next step is increasing the communities covered and promoting government agencies to be more proactive in their measures to reduce barriers and improve support to families as they navigate these systems.

It is great that so many leaders in these communities and agencies have agreed to work together, but we need to make this a commitment that outlives their times in these roles so families can be safer for decades to come,” says Min Chhour.

The independent review was undertaken by Ihi Research and Wellbeing Economics NZ. 

You can find a copy of the Multi-Agency Responses: Outcomes Evaluation report here: Outcomes evaluation of multi-agency responses | The Centre for Family Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention 

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Former Manukau City mayor Sir Barry Curtis – one of the country’s longest serving mayors – has died at the age of 87.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says Sir Barry leaves “an enormous legacy”.

He led Manukau City from 1983 to 2007 at a time when the city was expanding rapidly.

In a post on the Auckland Council website, Brown said he knew Curtis well.

“He was a hugely influential figure in local politics and a pioneer as Mayor of Manukau City Council for 24 years. He was the country’s longest serving mayor at the time,” Brown said.

“He was known for his booming trademark voice and was a genuine champion of the communities he served over a 40-year career in local government.”

The council post said Curtis was a dedicated public servant who devoted nearly 40 years of his life to serving the people of Manukau and Auckland.

Councillor Alf Filipaia said Curtis was a dear friend and colleague.

“Sir Barry championed an approach dubbed the ‘Manukau Way,’ which balanced economic progress with community welfare and fostered inclusive partnerships, particularly with iwi through early engagement on issues like the Manukau Harbour claim and Treaty of Waitangi responsibilities,” he said.

“From my perspective, part of his legacy will be about uniting diverse communities and ensuring that Manukau plays a significant contribution to Auckland’s economic, social, and cultural advancement.”

Curtis was backed by the right-leaning Residents and Ratepayers Association in his mayoral tenure, but was known for working well with the dominant Labour group on the council.

When he retired he said was proud of his working-class background, Auckland Council said.

“I came from a poor family and my father was a waterside worker. That is why I know how it feels to be born on the wrong side of the tracks. I never forget that,” he said.

Curtis consistently identified health, housing, education and lack of jobs as Manukau’s main problems, and called on the government to take a more interventionist approach.

He was knighted in 1992 for his services to local government and community.

Manukau City was one of four cities in the Auckland region before they merged with the Auckland Regional Council and three district councils to become what was known as the super city in 2011.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The government has corrected a figure after being called out for overstating improvements in school attendance.

A member of the public complained to RNZ that two National Party advertisements claimed 150,000 more children attended school regularly in term four last year than at the same time in 2022.

They said Education Ministry roll figures indicated that was an over-statement.

When RNZ examined the figures it found the change between 2022 and 2025 was about 135,000 students – 15,000 short of the number claimed by the government.

But there were also a lot more children at school in the final term of 2025 than in the same term in 2022, and even if the rate of regular attendance had remained unchanged the number of regular attenders would have increased by about 65,000 students.

That meant only about 70,000 students could be attributed to improvements in attendance.

The National Party told RNZ it sourced its figures from an announcement by Associate Education Minister David Seymour in January.

That announcement said the number of regular attenders improved by “about 150,000” children between term four 2022 and term four 2025.

RNZ asked the National Party if it would correct the ad and received a response from Seymour’s office saying the figure “was based on an error” and had been corrected.

There was keen interest in attendance figures.

Regular attendance, measured as children attending more than 90 percent of the time, reached all-time lows in 2022 with schools blaming the effect of covid lockdowns in previous years and on a particularly bad run of winter illnesses.

The government had overhauled the attendance system and set a goal of 80 percent of pupils being regular attenders by 2030.

For the record, here’s our working:

In term four of 2022 there were 329,499 regular attenders and in term four 2025 there were 464,498, an increase of 134,999.

But there were more students overall in 2025 than in 2022 – just 676,384 in the final term of 2022 and 810,652 in the same term of 2025.

If the rate of regular attendance in term four last year was the same as in 2022 (48.7 percent), there would have been 394,788 regular attenders, an increase of 65,288 due solely to the overall increase in the number of students.

That meant only 69,710 of the increase in the number of regular attenders could be attributed to the rate of regular attendance improving to 57.3 percent.

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