AM Edition: Top 10 Politics Articles on LiveNews.co.nz for April 20, 2026 – Full Text

Source: Radio New Zealand

Parliament’s grounds in Wellington are a knoll of relative peace in a dense governmental zone that includes cathedrals, courts, the National Archives and National Library, university schools and numerous government office blocks.

Imaging how it once was is not easy.

Elizabeth Cox is the author of Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street , which uses an astoundingly detailed 1890s map of Wellington to anchor details of life in the Victorian city. It is a beautiful and fascinating insight into the early and often ugly days of Wellington.

The House chatted with Cox about what the Parliamentary neighbourhood was like in the 1890s. You can hear the conversation at the link above, and read a little about that and earlier times below.

To set the scene, let’s first go back in time just a few decades further.

Pre-colonial Wellington

Before Europeans flooded in, Pipitea (where Parliament is now) was close to the sea, looking down on mudflats and streams that wended down from Tinakori Hill. The area was a centre of Māori habitation and food production.

Parliament’s own little hill had ponds and two creeks running down to a small beach, just a stone’s throw away.

The stream’s Māori names are not appealing. Waipiro stream (meaning putrid, stinking water) ran right through where Parliament House now stands.

Tutaenui stream (great amounts of excrement) ran down what is now Bowen Street (alongside the Beehive). Make of that what you will.

The hill rises up along Molesworth Street. It was known as Kaiota (unripe, food of dubious quality).

The pallisaded Pipitea Pā was a block or so east of Parliament, alongside the Pipitea stream. The pā had been established in the 1820s by Ngāti Mutunga, but by 1840, was occupied by Te Ātiawa, who had been pushed south out of Taranaki by the expansion of Waikato tribes.

A 2021 cultural impact assessment for a new Tenths Trust office development on Molesworth Street noted “the pā extended over much of the flat known as Haukawakawa [later Thorndon Flat] with extensive gardens spreading to what is now Parliament grounds and up to what is now the Wellington Botanic Garden. Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Mutunga also had kāinga/villages at Tiakiwai [now off 191 Thorndon Quay] and Raurima, near the corner of Hobson Street and Fitzherbert Terrace”.

There were also kāinga at Kumutoto stream, which is now Woodward Street off Lambton Quay.

When the somewhat unscrupulous rake Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s Wellington Company sold off parcels of Wellington it didn’t really own, he took some prime acres for himself – including on the beach at the far northern end of Lambton Quay, and between Hobson Street and the beach at Thorndon Quay (about where the Australian High Commission is now).

The small hill the Beehive sits on was set aside by the Wellington Company for government. This was the centre of things, where they put the provincial government, and later the governors’ house.

Nowadays, the area is the seat of Parliament and government.

Mr Ward’s map

Fifty years after 1840, almost everything about Wellington had changed radically. The coastline had been pushed back a few blocks through reclamation, the beaches were gone, streams were culverted, the forested hills were bald, and peppered with sheep and cattle, and both Europeans and buildings were thick on the ground.

The city had already spread through Newtown, and was stretching rapidly into Berhampore and Kilbirnie.

Cox met me at Parliament to wander the area and imagine what Parliament’s neighbourhood was like by the 1890s. There was a lot to take in.

We know a lot about Victorian Wellington because of an outrageously detailed map drawn by Thomas Ward.

“Thomas Ward was a surveyor and an engineer,” says Cox. “He approached the city council to say, ‘How about I make a map for you?’, because he was disgusted by the quality of all the maps that were around Wellington at the time.

“Originally, he was just going to draw the town acres and the subdivisions and the roads, but about four months later, he approached the council again and said, ‘I’ve had this fabulous idea, how about I draw all the buildings as well?’, so he drew every single building in Wellington.

“Every outbuilding, every outdoor toilet, every shed, every commercial building, every house and then he went further. He also told us what the walls of every building were made of, what the roof was, and then how many rooms every house had and how many floors there were, but it’s even more valuable, because for the next 10 years, he was updating the map.”

That map, and its additions and annotations are a treasure trove for historians and anyone vaguely curious about the past.

Victorian Pipitea and Parliament

Inside Parliament’s own boundaries, only one building from the period remains – the Parliamentary Library, opened in 1899 and built in part with bricks made by prisoners at the Mount Cook Jail (on the current site of Wellington High School).

The building’s plan was downsized halfway through construction in an effort to save money. As a result, architect Thomas Turnbull demanded his name be removed from the foundation stone.

There are two statues in Parliament grounds. Both are of premiers who died in office – John Ballance and Richard Seddon.

Seddon was a racist, sexist, populist and popular politician, who lived just up Molesworth Street, after spurning Premier House. His influence on Parliament and its neighbourhood was strong.

The library building was built after Seddon demolished part of the former provincial chamber without first asking permission from the MPs. Within eight years, the wooden buildings on either side had also burned down, leaving just the library.

The current marble edifice known as Parliament House was constructed during World War I and it too was downsized during construction, when money ran short.

In the 1890s, Sydney Street ran right across Parliament’s lawn and through the space that is now Parliament House. It began at Thorndon Quay and joined up with what is now upper Bowen Street, towards Tinakori Road.

It was later cut in half and renamed.

The southern side of Sydney Street, where the Beehive now is, was not part of Parliament. Government House, where the governor lived with his family and staff was “an incredibly public place to live”, says Cox.

“The wives and kids and staff would wander around in the garden, and kind of be on public display.”

The Governors were all minor English nobility sent to administer the colonies. They weren’t always keen to be here.

Lord Onslow arrived in the middle of one of Wellington’s regular typhoid epidemics (spread via poor sewerage). After his eldest son and an aide-de-camp fell ill, the family made themselves largely absent and their snub made them unpopular.

New Zealand didn’t have a locally born governor general until Arthur Porritt in 1967. (The title changed from governor to governor general in 1917).

Governors general now live in relative seclusion in Mount Cook, near the Basin Reserve, on grounds that Ward’s map marked as reserved for an “asylum”. Make of that what you will as well.

The Pipitea neighbourhood

To the north of Parliament is Hill Street, which now has two competing cathedrals, cheek by jowl. The Anglicans arrived later, but Catholics were already there in 1890 (although their first cathedral burned down in 1898).

Alongside the cathedral was a convent, a presbytery, a residence for priests and a fee-paying academic girls school. The Sisters of Mercy also ran the large St Joseph’s Orphanage and Industrial School.

The word ‘school’ is a misnomer.

“It was not a very pleasant place at all, I should think,” says Cox. “It was sort of like an orphanage, but you didn’t necessarily have to have your parents [die] to end up there.

“Sometimes, if your mother just wasn’t coping or if your father left the family, and… your mother couldn’t afford to look after you, they would take your children off you and put you in one of these industrial schools. Even from seven-years-old, they were learning how to work, they were learning how to knit and sew to become good wives and good domestic servants.

“It was a lot of focus on training them up to be domestic servants.”

Behind Parliament is Museum Street, named because, at the time, it was the location for the national Colonial Museum. It was set up by James Hector in 1965, as a reference museum of New Zealand’s natural history, geology and mineral resources.

Hector was then director of the Colonial Survey. He was also chief scientist, head meteorologist and looked after the botanical garden, ran the precursor to the Royal Society and was the university chancellor as well.

Cox reports that, as it was a reference museum, there are descriptions of it as “being an incredibly boring place to visit” and that was in spite of there being “massive whale skeletons hanging up and stuff like that”.

To the east of Parliament is Molesworth Street, which runs down a gentle slope to what was once the beach at Lambton Quay. It has a few shops and apartments today, but is busy with government buildings.

In the 1890s, it was “lined with small shops, commercial buildings and businesses, including herbalists, drapers, bootmakers, coal dealers, fishmongers, a horse bazaar, butchers, a dairy selling milk, cabinet makers and a number of Chinese fruit sellers. Many shop owners lived above their shops”.

Behind the shops on the eastern side was a dense neighbourhood of tiny dwellings, described at the time as a “rookery” and, as the Evening Post described it then, “a hotbed of vice, a place where people of the most depraved character flaunted themselves in broad daylight”.

That densely packed slum was sandwiched between Parliament and the then-Anglican Cathedral (now Old St. Paul’s on Musgrave). On the Anglican side was Thorndon Flat, where the wealthy lived along Musgrave and Hobson streets.

“There were lots of very unkind jokes about how convenient it was that for all these prostitutes that they were living between the Anglican Cathedral and Parliament, how handy it was,” says Cox.

The community of tiny lanes and smaller houses was more than a slum. It included the poor, working single women and ethnic communities.

“There was a really interesting mix of people living in those blocks,” says Cox. She notes one example.

“At the time, they were often called in the newspaper ‘Syrians’, but they were actually Lebanese Christians. There’s a quite wellknown Lebanese Christian community that lived in Dunedin [at that time], but I found a whole group of them living here in this poverty stricken area.

“[Another] group of people that were living there were lots and lots of prostitutes, there were lots of brothels. Ward, as well as drawing the massive great big parliament buildings, he would come along and actually draw every single tiny little house.

“He would draw a two-roomed house – not two bedrooms, but two rooms in total – and its outdoor toilet and everything, so you could see how incredibly packed those blocks were.”

Those lanes no longer exist. The poor were chased away and their homes demolished, with no plan for where they might go instead.

“The city, particularly under pressure from Seddon… started to do this thing called ‘street widening’, which was sort of a euphemism for pulling all the buildings down. They built Aitken Street and a whole bunch of the other streets around here in order to justify pulling down those slums.”

Reading Elizabeth Cox’s engrossing Mr Ward’s Map: Victorian Wellington Street by Street and pouring over its detailed maps, you might notice mirrors for modern news, some eerily specific and others just typically human.

Government buildings demolished by populist leaders without permission, developers naming things after themselves and their families, landmarks named for questionable people, fly-tippers, crazy fads, bad housing, poor planning, suburban development across the most productive land, and a failing city sewerage system and resultant disease… and they say history never repeats.

All the tragedy, comedy, glory and absurdity of a city. A marvellous read.

You can find out more about Elizabeth Cox’s book here and here.

You can compare Thomas Ward’s 1890s map to present day Wellington at the Council’s Historic Map Viewer.

You can read about Parliament’s own history here.

*RNZ’s The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament’s Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ.

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

Source: New Zealand Government

Legal verification of the New Zealand-India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) has been completed with both countries agreeing its signing on 27 April in New Delhi in front of a large contingent of Indian and New Zealand businesses, Trade and Investment Minister Todd McClay says.

“This once-in-a-generation agreement gives our exporters unprecedented access to 1.4 billion people and an economy set to become the third-largest in the world,” Mr McClay says.

“With so much global unrest, a trade agreement with India has never been more important for New Zealand’s prosperity.

“Signing the FTA allows New Zealand to initiate a formal parliamentary treaty examination and means the public can scrutinise the agreement in full.

“Signature also ensures we remain on track to benefit from a Most Favoured Nation clause for wine and services exports. The European Union has secured better access for wine and services which will automatically be extended to our exporters if our agreement enters into force first. This will be worth tens of millions of dollars in extra exports for the New Zealand economy,” Mr McClay says.

The historic agreement was concluded in December and eliminates or reduces tariffs on 95 per cent of New Zealand’s exports – among the highest of any Indian FTA. Almost 57 per cent of our exports will be duty-free from day one including lamb, wool, coal, leather, most forestry and industrial products. This will increase to 82 per cent when fully implemented including infant formula, a kiwifruit quota almost four times our current exports and seafood. The remaining 13 per cent including kiwifruit, apples, mānuka honey, wine and some dairy is subject to sharp tariff cuts.

Mr McClay confirmed the Government will follow the established parliamentary treaty examination process for the India FTA, allowing all parties to continue considering their support as the public also scrutinises the agreement.

Signing will activate the standard parliamentary process, allowing Parliament and the public to scrutinise the agreement through the Select Committee. The FTA text and National lnterest Analysis will be tabled in Parliament the day after signing and referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee (FADTC).

Once FADTC has completed its examination, enabling legislation will be introduced and will follow the usual legislative process. This approach is consistent with that taken for the TPP, CPTPP, and agreements with the United Kingdom, European Union, and United Arab Emirates.

“The business community, the primary sector, the services sector and many New Zealanders have expressed their strong support for this important trade agreement,” Mr McClay says.

“The benefits of the New Zealand-India FTA will be available to all Kiwis for many generations to come.”

Note to editor:

Key outcomes for New Zealand include:   
•    Tariff elimination or reduction on 95 per cent of our exports.
•    Duty-free access on almost 57 per cent of New Zealand’s exports from day one, increasing to 82 per cent when fully implemented, with the remaining 13 per cent being subject to sharp tariff cuts.
•    Immediate tariff elimination on sheep meat, wool, coal and over 95 per cent of forestry and wood exports.
•    Duty-free access on most seafood exports, including mussels and salmon, over seven years. 
•    Duty-free access on most iron, steel and scrap aluminium, over 10 years or less. 
•    Duty-free access for most industrial products, over five to 10 years 
•    50 per cent tariff cut for large quota of apples – nearly double recent average exports.
•    Duty-free access for kiwifruit within a quota almost four times our recent average exports, and tariff halved for exports outside of quota. 
•    Duty-free access for cherries, avocados, persimmons and blueberries, over 10 years. 
•    Tariffs on wine reduced from 150 per cent to either 25 or 50 per cent (depending on the value of the wine) over 10 years plus a Most Favoured Nation (MFN) commitment. 
•    Tariffs on mānuka honey cut from 66 per cent to 16.5 per cent over five years. 
•    MFN status and liberalisation across services exports. 
•    Duty-free access for dairy and other food ingredients for re-export from day one. 
•    Duty-free access for bulk infant formula and other high-value dairy preparations over seven years.
•    50 percent tariff cut for high value milk albumins within a NZ-specific quota equal to current export volumes.       
 

MIL OSI

Source: Green Party

The Green Party is condemning the Government’s weakening of Te Tiriti o Waitangi provisions across multiple pieces of legislation. 

“Pushing through these sweeping changes in secret shows this Government is a dishonourable Treaty partner,” says Green Party MP Tamatha Paul. 

Documents seen by Paul outline Cabinet’s decision to amend Treaty provisions across 23 pieces of legislation.  

Under the changes, the standard of Treaty obligation would be reduced to no higher than “take into account”.  

Treaty references in other laws would be repealed entirely. The decisions were made in February but never publicly announced. 

“The Government’s changes diminish the mana of Te Tiriti by making it a mere consideration as opposed to something that must be honoured.” 

“It also conflates Te Tiriti o Waitangi with the Treaty of Waitangi, but these two documents are worlds apart in their meaning.” 

“The fact that the Government tried to do this without telling anyone speaks volumes. They know this is wrong.” 

“Provisions that currently require decision-makers to ‘give effect to’ or ‘honour’ the principles of Te Tiriti will be gutted.” 

“No one was consulted in this process. Māori, iwi, hapū, even the general public, have been left out. 

“It’s abhorrent that this Government consistently makes sweeping decisions about Te Tiriti without engaging its Treaty partners.” 

“The Waitangi Tribunal found the Crown’s process would breach Te Tiriti and said the review should be refocused with full engagement and inclusion of Māori in decision-making. The Government ignored both warnings.” 

“The Green Party will continue, as we always have, to uphold Te Tiriti and the promises that were made over 180 years ago,” says Paul. 

MIL OSI

Source: Radio New Zealand

Analysis: A new poll showing National sitting on just 30 percent, and the coalition unable to govern, has set the stage for a crucial week in Christopher Luxon’s prime ministership.

This result is National’s worst in the 1News-Verian poll since Luxon became leader in November 2021.

Labour is up five points on 37 percent, while National’s 30 is down four points since February.

For the other parties in the coalition, New Zealand First is steady on 10 percent, while Act has dropped two points to seven.

On the other side of the house the Greens and Te Pati Maori are both unchanged on eleven and two, respectively.

It gives the centre-left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori the seats needed to govern with 66 compared to the coalition’s 58, if an election was held today.

Luxon’s personal favourability has taken a decent hit in this poll too, down four points to 16 percent, while Labour’s Chris Hipkins is down one to 19 percent.

The results follow several polls in recent weeks showing National on about 29 percent – the party’s official result in Sunday night’s poll was 29.7, but rounded up to 30.

The prime minister told TVNZ on the back of those results he hadn’t considered resigning.

This latest poll headache comes after a torrid Friday for the prime minister where he was again forced to defend his leadership.

Poor polling, including record- low personal favourability, has been dogging Luxon for months.

A NZ Herald story on Friday morning reported senior whip Stuart Smith tried and failed to get hold of Luxon before Easter to warn him there were rumblings about his leadership from within caucus.

The article reported multiple anonymous sources saying Luxon had evaded Smith, despite the pair both being at Parliament during a sitting week.

RNZ has confirmed with a senior Beehive source that meeting was attempted by Smith, but both Luxon and his office have denied it.

Luxon insisted at a media conference on Friday that he had had the “numbers” and the “full support” of his caucus. He also maintained the coalition could still govern on public polling – not the case however after Sunday’s poll, nor was it the case in RNZ-Reid Research’s poll last month where the result was a hung parliament.

The 1News-Verian poll was in the field until Wednesday, so didn’t capture Friday’s problems for the prime minister.

It has been two weeks since the caucus met at Parliament due to the school holiday recess, and that support will be tested when they gather in Wellington on Tuesday morning.

Luxon will also have to explain, if asked, why he publicly denied the Smith reports.

In recent weeks it’s not only National MPs who have been leaking their unhappiness with the direction of travel the party is heading in, but staff have also been unhappy about how they’re being treated.

Some staff feel they were a victim of a point-scoring reshuffle by Luxon that has seen a number off them “evented”, which means they have lost their jobs and could potentially apply for a new one, but not necessarily in the office they have been working in.

Other staff have been frustrated with Luxon’s unwillingness to listen, take advice, or make change.

Both MPs and staff have expressed the prime minister is getting worse, not better, at public appearances and media interviews, which doesn’t bode well heading into a tightly-contested election campaign.

In amongst that, there has been speculation MPs are keen for change, and Chris Bishop has spent weeks denying he is lining himself up as leader.

He spent the weekend batting away suggestions he was planning to roll Luxon.

At a media conference on Saturday in his Hutt South electorate, in response to questions about his relationship with the prime minister, Bishop confirmed he has confidence in Christopher Luxon but declined to discuss private conversations.

“The Prime Minister and I talk all the time… but I’m not going to get into what I’ve said to him or what he’s said to me recently.”

“Look, I’m just head down, bum up on my portfolios and also working hard locally as well,” he told reporters.

On Sunday in a TVNZ Q+A interview, Bishop denied he was plotting to take the leadership from Luxon.

He said comments that have made their way into the media about flagging support for Luxon and unhappiness in the caucus were “unhelpful”.

Bishop denied any knowledge of Smith’s attempts to warn Luxon about his caucus support, and told Q+A people shouldn’t be “talking out of school” because it’s not the “right way to do things”.

“That is unhelpful and untidy and indicates that the National Party is focused on ourselves rather than focused on the country.”

Bishop said those people in caucus who had spoken to the NZ Herald, who broke the story about Smith on Friday, were clearly “unhappy and untidy”.

“I am prepared to accept that. That is sort of a statement of fact, I am not going to deny the reality.”

The transport and housing minister said he wasn’t aware of anyone in the caucus who thought Luxon shouldn’t be leader, and said he didn’t believe the prime minister was dragging down the party’s performance.

A fresh poll result showing National would lose 12 MPs if that result was replicated on election day might give those at risk of losing their job plenty to think about ahead of Tuesday’s gathering.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Analysis: A new poll showing National sitting on just 30 percent, and the coalition unable to govern, has set the stage for a crucial week in Christopher Luxon’s prime ministership.

This result is National’s worst in the 1News-Verian poll since Luxon became leader in November 2021.

Labour is up five points on 37 percent, while National’s 30 is down four points since February.

For the other parties in the coalition, New Zealand First is steady on 10 percent, while Act has dropped two points to seven.

On the other side of the house the Greens and Te Pati Maori are both unchanged on eleven and two, respectively.

It gives the centre-left bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori the seats needed to govern with 66 compared to the coalition’s 58, if an election was held today.

Luxon’s personal favourability has taken a decent hit in this poll too, down four points to 16 percent, while Labour’s Chris Hipkins is down one to 19 percent.

The results follow several polls in recent weeks showing National on about 29 percent – the party’s official result in Sunday night’s poll was 29.7, but rounded up to 30.

The prime minister told TVNZ on the back of those results he hadn’t considered resigning.

This latest poll headache comes after a torrid Friday for the prime minister where he was again forced to defend his leadership.

Poor polling, including record- low personal favourability, has been dogging Luxon for months.

A NZ Herald story on Friday morning reported senior whip Stuart Smith tried and failed to get hold of Luxon before Easter to warn him there were rumblings about his leadership from within caucus.

The article reported multiple anonymous sources saying Luxon had evaded Smith, despite the pair both being at Parliament during a sitting week.

RNZ has confirmed with a senior Beehive source that meeting was attempted by Smith, but both Luxon and his office have denied it.

Luxon insisted at a media conference on Friday that he had had the “numbers” and the “full support” of his caucus. He also maintained the coalition could still govern on public polling – not the case however after Sunday’s poll, nor was it the case in RNZ-Reid Research’s poll last month where the result was a hung parliament.

The 1News-Verian poll was in the field until Wednesday, so didn’t capture Friday’s problems for the prime minister.

It has been two weeks since the caucus met at Parliament due to the school holiday recess, and that support will be tested when they gather in Wellington on Tuesday morning.

Luxon will also have to explain, if asked, why he publicly denied the Smith reports.

In recent weeks it’s not only National MPs who have been leaking their unhappiness with the direction of travel the party is heading in, but staff have also been unhappy about how they’re being treated.

Some staff feel they were a victim of a point-scoring reshuffle by Luxon that has seen a number off them “evented”, which means they have lost their jobs and could potentially apply for a new one, but not necessarily in the office they have been working in.

Other staff have been frustrated with Luxon’s unwillingness to listen, take advice, or make change.

Both MPs and staff have expressed the prime minister is getting worse, not better, at public appearances and media interviews, which doesn’t bode well heading into a tightly-contested election campaign.

In amongst that, there has been speculation MPs are keen for change, and Chris Bishop has spent weeks denying he is lining himself up as leader.

He spent the weekend batting away suggestions he was planning to roll Luxon.

At a media conference on Saturday in his Hutt South electorate, in response to questions about his relationship with the prime minister, Bishop confirmed he has confidence in Christopher Luxon but declined to discuss private conversations.

“The Prime Minister and I talk all the time… but I’m not going to get into what I’ve said to him or what he’s said to me recently.”

“Look, I’m just head down, bum up on my portfolios and also working hard locally as well,” he told reporters.

On Sunday in a TVNZ Q+A interview, Bishop denied he was plotting to take the leadership from Luxon.

He said comments that have made their way into the media about flagging support for Luxon and unhappiness in the caucus were “unhelpful”.

Bishop denied any knowledge of Smith’s attempts to warn Luxon about his caucus support, and told Q+A people shouldn’t be “talking out of school” because it’s not the “right way to do things”.

“That is unhelpful and untidy and indicates that the National Party is focused on ourselves rather than focused on the country.”

Bishop said those people in caucus who had spoken to the NZ Herald, who broke the story about Smith on Friday, were clearly “unhappy and untidy”.

“I am prepared to accept that. That is sort of a statement of fact, I am not going to deny the reality.”

The transport and housing minister said he wasn’t aware of anyone in the caucus who thought Luxon shouldn’t be leader, and said he didn’t believe the prime minister was dragging down the party’s performance.

A fresh poll result showing National would lose 12 MPs if that result was replicated on election day might give those at risk of losing their job plenty to think about ahead of Tuesday’s gathering.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Green Party is calling for a national plan to electrify homes, transport and industry with natural energy, as a response to the fuel crisis.

Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick have delivered their ‘State of the Planet’ speeches in Wellington.

The annual address is the Greens version of the sweeping ‘State of the Nation’ speeches delivered by leaders of other political parties.

First to speak, Davidson said the Middle East war was a human catastrophe and New Zealand’s dependence on unpredictable global fossil fuel markets needed to end.

“What is happening in the Middle East is, first and foremost, a human catastrophe,” she said. “Civilians are being killed and injured, livelihoods are being destroyed, international law is being broken.

“The warnings about fossil fuel dependence, about food sovereignty, about what happens when a small country ties its fate to extractive, corporate and ultimately unstable global systems… those were not abstract concerns. They are what families across this country are living through right now.”

She said households were feeling the brunt of the fuel crisis’s economic impacts.

“The cost of food, of energy, of rent keeps climbing, while wages stay flat. Communities that were already struggling are being hit hardest by rising price, by wars they did not start, by a global fossil-fuel economy that treats ordinary people as an afterthought.

“These crises do not sit apart from each other. This is not a theory, it is people struggling to cover the weekly shop.”

Swarbrick spoke about the party’s call for a National Electrification Plan to build energy security.

“We must electrify everything we can,” she said. “We need homegrown, sustainable resilience in our energy system, powering everything we do.

“We don’t need to depend on expensive fossil fuels hauled from the other side of the planet. We have everything we need here, at home.

“No-one is hoarding, attacking, or starting wars over sun, wind, water and geothermal energy. They don’t come through the Strait of Hormuz.

“We can immediately harness the power of our sun to power our homes, schools, farms and marae.”

She said such an electrification plan would cut household power bills and build energy security.

“There is no trade-off between fixing the cost of living, addressing the fossil-fuel crisis and climate crisis. They are the same problem, all driven by the same rules that prioritise profit over people and planet,” Swarbrick said.

“We can lower the cost of living by rolling out rooftop solar and batteries for all homeowners, renters, marae, schools, farms.”

The Green Party is also calling for the government to boost funding for public transport networks it had previously declined.

“It would have cost $150 million to expand the networks, just three quarters of just one of the subsidies the Luxon government is instead dishing out to support fossil-fuel dependence.”

As for leaders’ input on the global stage, Davidson said the Green Party believed New Zealand should take independent, principled stances.

“We believe in building an international rules-based order that protects the environment, upholds human rights and supports enduring peace-building work,” she said.

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

Source: Green Party

The Green Party has used its 2026 State of the Planet address to set out a vision for a resilient, independent Aotearoa and to call on the Government to create a National Electrification Plan.

Co-leader Marama Davidson spoke about the middle-east crisis, the case for an independent, principled foreign policy, and the Green Party’s consistent stance on getting off fossil fuels. 

“What is happening in the Middle East is first and foremost a human catastrophe. Civilians are being killed and injured. Livelihoods are being destroyed. International law is being broken,” says Green Party Co-leader, Marama Davidson. 

“The warnings about fossil fuel dependence, about food sovereignty, about what happens when a small country ties its fate to extractive, corporate and ultimately unstable global systems, those were not abstract concerns. They are what families across this country are living through right now.” 

Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick set out the Green Party’s call for a National Electrification Plan as the practical response to the fossil fuel crisis on top of the Party’s previous calls for free public transport and measures to ease the cost of living.  

The plan would electrify homes, transport and industry, ending New Zealand’s dependence on unpredictable global fossil fuel markets, cutting household power bills, and building real energy security at home. 

“There is no trade-off between fixing the cost of living, addressing the fossil-fuel crisis and climate crisis. They are the same problem, all driven by the same rules that prioritise profit over people and planet,” says Green Party Co-leader, Chlöe Swarbrick. 

“If we want a resilient economy, we’ve got to power it with homegrown sun, wind, water and geothermal energy. That doesn’t need to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.” 

“We can lower the cost of living by rolling out rooftop solar and batteries for all, homeowners, renters, marae, schools, farms.” 

Swarbrick called for the Government to immediately support the Ratepayers’ Assistance Scheme, an initiative backed by groups such as Rewiring Aotearoa. 

“It’s simple, fast, and it cuts the upfront cost barrier for thousands of New Zealanders. We know this will save the average household a $1000 on their power bill,” says Swarbrick. 

The speech also called for boosting funding for public transport networks across the country that were previously rejected by the Government.

“It would have cost $150 million to expand the networks, just three quarters of just one of the subsidies the Luxon Government is instead dishing out to support fossil fuel dependence.” 

The Party called for the Government to work towards a National Electrification Plan. 

“The same arguments that have made sense forever – cleaner air, cheaper living, less congestion, easier ways of getting people around – make even more sense when we also need to conserve the fuel for those who don’t yet have another option,” says Swarbrick. 

“We need an industrial strategy electrifying freight and production, which requires Government to put its hands back on the wheel of the economy, not leave the fate of our country to bets in boardrooms.” 

Marama Davidson said, “our government should work for the people and the planet, not for the greed of corporations, their faceless boards and shareholders. Together we can reverse the damage that has been done and make decisions for the good of everyone.” 

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MIL OSI

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Defence Force has taken part in a wargame with the United States based on a Russian nuclear blast aimed at taking out satellites.

The classified exercise was run by the American space warfighting agency, alongside 60 companies.

About the same time, the government put out a new NZ-US space dialogue that aimed to expand commercial and military space co-operation.

New Zealand had also signed up to “accelerating defence industrial cooperation” through a US-led 16-nation group in the Indo-Pacific.

The US partners of the NZDF – its Space Command and US Space Force – had also released a vision of space in 2040 that imagined China developing an AI-driven ‘Supermind’ that could strike with “unmatched speed and lethality”.

In the here-and-now, the force’s leading general told US lawmakers recently that space systems were critical to the ‘Epic Fury’ war in Iran.

‘Forced us to prepare’

The desktop wargame in March focused on a “worst-case” scenario of weapons of mass destruction in orbit.

“Reporting about Russia’s plans to launch such a weapon… has forced us to prepare,” said the general in charge, US Space Command head Stephen Whiting.

Exactly what went on remained secret, but participants, including the NZDF and more than 60 companies, “shared innovation, courses of action, and new and interesting ideas on how to deter the use of nuclear detonation in space”.

Whiting has designated 2026 the “Year of Integration” of the US Space Force, with both commercial partners and America’s ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence group partners.

NZ is part of Five Eyes and also a member of the elite US-led Operation Olympic Defence space security group.

The wargrame was the first of four in Space Command’s new ‘Apollo Insight’ commercial integration series.

“These partnerships are not symbolic,” Whiting said. “They accelerate innovation, expand warfighting capacity and increase operational tempo that government alone cannot achieve.”

‘Overwhelming American firepower’

The US warned allies two years ago that Russia might put a nuclear weapon in space.

Last month, Senate Armed Services Committee chair Republican Roger Wicker said he was particularly concerned that the current US space and nuclear strategy “does not address space and nuclear threats with anywhere near the urgency they deserve”.

Since the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty’s (New START) nuclear weapons limits expired in February, there was now no verifiable agreement to cap nuclear arms for the first time since the early 1970s. Last year, US President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to resume testing nukes, in place of simulations, for the first time in 33 years.

After Wicker’s call to up their game, the US Space Force this week put out a report on what 2040 might look like.

The 2040 report stressed how vital integration with allies was across surveillance, warning and targeting and stated, “Success means that the Space Force dominates the domain in the long tradition of overwhelming American firepower.”

‘Accelerating defense industrial collaboration’

RNZ asked the NZDF what benefits New Zealand gained from taking part in the Apollo wargame and if it gave any undertakings to the US.

On 20 March, New Zealand re-affirmed its commitment to “accelerating defence industrial cooperation” through the US-founded 16-member group PIPIR (Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience).

In late 2024, RNZ revealed NZ had joined this group and, earlier, that America had unilaterally inserted New Zealand into its defence-related national technology industrial base or NTIB.

“We agreed that PIPIR continues to make tangible progress toward addressing barriers and accelerating defense industrial collaboration to promote a stronger, more resilient, more integrated, defense industrial base,” a joint statement from the group’s second annual meeting said.

The group was working on getting more drone motors and batteries made, and a support hub in Australia for P-8 Poseidons, which the NZDF flies.

Expanding ‘space situational awareness’

Also last month, the US and New Zealand governments signed a new space dialogue that mentioned the military directly once.

“Both sides also discussed opportunities for further cooperation to address space-related threats to shared security interests, including military space cooperation and managing the risks to ground-based space infrastructure.”

It had more to say about the commercial side, such as, “They decided to work closely together to address regulatory constraints that hinder effective cooperation, commercial engagement, and mutual benefits.”

It also talked about expanding “space situational awareness, launch and re-entry”. While satellites were already key to missile defence and targeting systems – and to the Trump administration’s Golden Dome – defence documents showed that another key was space situational or domain awareness monitoring systems which include one the NZDF runs for the US in Auckland that produces unclassified reports on satellite movements.

Recently, the Senate Armed Services Committee talked about the threat from China and recommended expanding the Pentagon’s commercial space-or-ground-based monitoring systems.

On rocket launches, the dialogue said the partners “acknowledged New Zealand’s geographic advantages have enabled frequent and responsive launches”. Responsive is a term used for rapid launches.

US lawmakers got a report last month looking in part at what spaceports in other countries it could use for military and spy launches. It had not been made public, although RNZ has sought a copy.

‘Diversified spaceports’ and ‘select niche competencies’

The report on what 2040 might look like said China would remain the No.1 threat.

Its “vision for victory” said allies and partners would operate as “integral nodes within the decision lattice… preserving the continuity of Joint All-Domain Command and Control”. Command and Control or C2 is central to data-integration partnerships the NZDF now has with each of the US navy, army and air force.

The NZDF told MPs recently that the data-crunching software in military platforms would dictate how good weapons were in future.

New Zealand has signed up to the US army’s Project Convergence; it also has the NGC2 (Next Generation Command and Control) battlefield tech system, and had to report back to lawmakers by 31 March on NGC2 with details about how it was mandating “interoperability with NATO and Indo-Pacific allies as a requirement in its new command and control software program”, a congressional report said.

This month as part of these data-powered-military moves, the US army launched a new data operations centre, called ADOC. The NZDF was scheduled to join a US army exercise with emerging technology in mid-2026.

The 2040 report Saltzman had put out envisaged allies offering “rapid launch and diversified spaceports”.

“Allies in the Indo-Pacific will seek to contribute through geography and select niche competencies,” it said.

It emphasised a future where US and allies’ systems were integrated with each other, and human decisionmaking integrated with machine speed, to break adversaries’ “long range kill chains”.

Whiting’s fellow space general, Chance Saltzman, released the 2040 report this week in a speech at US Space Force’s largest space symposium in Colorado. Last year, Defence Minister Judith Collins gave the keynote speech there, but successor Chris Penk was not there this week.

Saltzman talked about bringing “commercial services to the fight”.

“Today, the Department of War is implementing new initiatives to unshackle our industry partners and continue putting our space industrial base on a wartime footing,” the head of US Space Force said.

‘Bodyguard’ satellites

The second Apollo Insight wargame – otherwise known as a ‘Campaigning with Commercial Partners’ tabletop exercise – in June 2026 would focus on manoeuvre warfare.

“Participants will explore how commercial, industry and allied partners can enable these approaches, and help challenge traditional methods of operating in space,” said Space Command.

It was worried about China building “bodyguard” and “inspector” satellites that, unlike traditional ones, were not fixed in space, conserving fuel, but moved around.

Whiting used his Colorado symposium speech to warn that China’s first experiment in refuelling a satellite in low earth orbit had shifted space “from a relatively permissive environment into one where US satellites could be tracked, targeted or interfered with during a conflict”.

In response, US and partner satellites had to be built to move more, he said.

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

Source: New Zealand Government

Lower Hutt’s new Eastern Bays Shared Path opens this morning, improving resilience for this coastal route and providing safer walking and cycling connections, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says.

“The new 4.4km seawall and shared path along Marine Drive between Point Howard and Eastbourne is a significant investment in both transport resilience and safer travel for Lower Hutt’s Eastern Bays,” Mr Bishop says.

“This project strengthens a critical coastal route that Eastern Bays communities rely on, helping protect Marine Drive from waves and erosion, as well as extreme weather events.

“The seawall also protects critical infrastructure under the road, including a major wastewater discharge pipe serving the Hutt Valley – making this a value-for-money investment in the services people depend on.

“Sitting alongside the soon-to-be-completed Ngauranga to Petone Shared Path, the project delivers a safer, more attractive walking and cycling connection between local bays and into the wider Lower Hutt network, supporting active travel and reduced congestion.

“I want to acknowledge the patience of Eastern Bays communities during construction. It’s taken a while, but the Bays are now more resilient, and this long-awaited piece of infrastructure is now done.” 

Notes to editor: 

• The project progressed from early community engagement in 2015 and consent approvals between 2019–2021, to construction beginning in August 2022.
• The project is delivered in partnership with iwi mana whenua (Taranaki Whānui ki te Upoko o te Ika and Ngāti Toa Rangatira) through a Mana Whenua Steering Group alongside Hutt City Council.
• Delivery is led by Te Ara Tupua Alliance (NZTA, Downer NZ, HEB Construction, and Tonkin + Taylor), which is also responsible for the Ngauranga to Petone shared path.
• The total cost is $81.9 million, funded by Government (NIFF) $30 million, NZTA $25.5 million, and Hutt City Council $26.4 million.
• Construction has been delivered in stages across the Eastern Bays, with key completions including:
  • Eastbourne to Days Bay (first section opened November 2023; construction completed April 2024)
  • Sunshine Bay and York Bay (completed December 2024)
  • Sorrento Bay (bird protection area completed September 2025; full construction completed December 2025)
  • Point Howard (completed November 2025)
  • Lowry Bay (completed April 2026)

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