AM Edition: Top 10 Politics Articles on LiveNews.co.nz for April 14, 2026 – Full Text

Source: Radio New Zealand

Some of New Zealand’s top exporters and business associations have signed an open letter calling on all political parties to back New Zealand’s free trade agreement with India.

The letter described the FTA as a “strategic necessity” for New Zealand’s economic security, but New Zealand First has hit back at the signatories, saying their involvement is an “appalling commentary.”

The government confirmed negotiations had concluded with India in December, but New Zealand First withheld its support over immigration concerns.

It means the government needs Labour’s support to pass the deal through the House, but Labour is still to decide whether it will back the deal.

The open letter, organised by BusinessNZ, was signed by 28 exporters and industry associations, such as Federated Farmers, Zespri, Seafood New Zealand, and Beef and Lamb New Zealand.

The letter said trade was critical to New Zealand’s prosperity, and the FTA was the next significant step forward.

“In an increasingly uncertain global environment marked by rising protectionism, geopolitical tension, and supply chain disruption, New Zealand cannot afford to stand still. Securing better access to India will help build resilience, spread risk, and strengthen our economic position,” the letter said.

“An FTA with India is not a luxury; it is a strategic necessity for our economic security.”

BusinessNZ chief executive Katherine Rich said bipartisan support underpinned the strength of New Zealand’s trade.

“New Zealand relies on global markets to drive growth, support jobs and lift incomes,” she said.

“That only works when there is consistency and confidence in our trade settings. That’s why we’re making this call to all political parties today.”

The open letter refers to the benefits of the Free Trade Agreement to a number of sectors, including horticulture, sheep meat, seafood, wine, honey, wood products, seeds and natural fibres, machinery, digital technology and services.

ExportNZ, which sits within the BusinessNZ network, said the deal would be a “major win” for exporters and the wider economy.

Its executive director, Joshua Tan, told Midday Report the letter was aimed at all political parties, not just Labour or New Zealand First.

“We want to have trade seen as a bipartisan, non-political issue here. We think that all political parties need to sign this deal and agree to it,” he said.

“India is on track to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030. Securing fair access to a market the size of India’s backs our farmers, growers, manufacturers, innovators and service providers, as well as the communities that depend on them.”

Tan said the sooner the deal was in place, the better.

“If we are too slow, sectors can be left at a disadvantage to other deals that India… are completing. Namely, the EU deal, which offers better access to the wine exporters, for example,” he said.

“So if we do get this deal in force before that, then we also stand to benefit from the access that the EU has negotiated. That’s why speed is the key here.”

The Meat Industry Association was one of the signatories.

Its chair Nathan Guy told RNZ political parties had a long history of supporting free trade agreements together.

Guy said the deal would remove a 30 percent tariff for the sheep meat sector, and was also significant for wool, pharmaceuticals, and blood products.

“It’s a fantastic deal for our primary sector at a time where there’s geopolitical issues raging around the world, we need this deal more than ever,” he said.

“We’re calling on the government to sign the deal, and we’re calling on political parties to get behind and back it.”

“Signing a contract blindfolded” – Winston Peters

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the letter was a “breathtaking” position for BusinessNZ to take.

“How they and the 28 other businesses and associations could have signed up to support the India FTA without knowing what is in it is an appalling commentary on them all,” Peters posted on social media.

“How on earth can there be any sort of proper analysis of the FTA if they haven’t even read the agreement?”

Peters said his office had asked that question to BusinessNZ, but had not received a response.

“This is tantamount to those businesses signing a contract blindfolded,” he said.

“If it is true that this support for the FTA is not based on the actual text but instead relies on media reports and conflicting perspectives from different parties, it is a terrible indictment on how they operate.”

“Issues and inconsistencies” – Labour

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said Labour had seen the open letter “from the businesses which would benefit from the trade agreement”, and it was important that any deal worked in the long-term interests of all New Zealanders.

Hipkins said Labour had been asking the government for a response to its concerns for almost two months, but the government was yet to provide the detail Labour had requested.

“There are issues and inconsistencies that still need to be clarified by the government to ensure any deal works in the long-term interest of New Zealanders,” Hipkins said.

“Once we’ve received the details and worked through all the advice, we will discuss as a caucus and make a decision about whether to support the legislation.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Christopher Luxon says he’s happy to be labelled woke if it means New Zealanders are not losing their lives in the recent cyclone.

The Prime Minister held a briefing with reporters in Auckland on Monday afternoon, after Cyclone Vaianu’s course shifted away from Hawke’s Bay late on Sunday.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, Napier, Hastings, and Central Hawke’s Bay councils declared local states of emergency for coastal areas before midday on Saturday, but Wairoa mayor Craig Little refused – saying “we’re becoming woke as a country when it comes to states of emergency”.

Luxon said states of emergency were not woke.

“No, they’re not. I love Craig, I’ve spent a lot of time with him given he’s had some major weather events in Wairoa over the last few years, and so I’ll happily wear a woke label this time if it means we didn’t lose anyone’s lives,” he said.

“This was a significant event with 10 local states of emergency actioned, and in a number of regions there were road closures, power outages and flooding.”

He said the government had worked “incredibly well” with Mayor Little in the past including supporting dredging at the harbour entrance, and “I’d sooner be prepared than talking to you about an event that we were underprepared for”.

He said the response got better “each time we have one of these severe weather events”.

“The joinup and the teamwork that we saw between local and central government, NIWA and civil defence, iwi and marae, rural support and first responders and emergency management is truly inspiring.”

The second iterations of Dunedin flooding and fires on the Port Hills had been much better handled than the first time around, but “sadly the same thing’s been happening with our weather events,” he said.

Luxon said it was incumbent on households to prepare for the worst.

“Think about an evacuation plan, make sure we have a container full of our key supplies, don’t go driving through floodwaters because that’s how we’ve been losing lives.

“I think New Zealanders are taking it more seriously, we’re getting better at responding, and that’s all good.”

He said he wanted to thank the New Zealanders who “heeded the call to take personal responsibility and actions to keep themselves and their family safe in this event”.

‘Adult to adult’: Fuel rationing plan to take weeks to finalise after business feedback

Luxon offered reassurance New Zealand had “sufficient” fuel after the latest official numbers from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, but it would take “a few more weeks” to finalise the phase 3 and phase 4 fuel prioritisations.

“One of the learnings out of Covid is we don’t want to do this to industry, we don’t want to be operating in a parent-child manner, we want to be operating in an adult-to-adult manner working with industry.

“And they have many of the solutions that we need in order to make sure that we could manage ourselves… if needed,” he said.

“We’ve just had the submissions come in, there’s 2000 of them, we have a series of forums and groups we’ve worked with from day one, we’ve worked with diesel users, we’ve worked with importers, we’ve worked with big key CEO groups and we need to digest all of that.”

While fuel stock numbers were slightly down on the previous update, it was within normal fluctuations, reflecting distribution around the country and “no material issues” with incoming shipments, he said.

“We also do welcome the ceasefire and we hope seriously for constructive negotiations between the parties involved to stop this conflict, but we have all seen how volatile and unpred this conflict has been and how fragile this ceasefire is and negotiations are.

“We continue to call for the Straits of Hormuz to be reopened. The longer shipping in the strait is disrupted, the more it impacts New Zealanders here at home… it is urgent to find a diplomatic solution.”

He refused to confirm further targeted support for those struggling with high fuel prices.

“Our prices at the pump are really set by global prices, as you’d understand… price of oil today is probably $20 lower than what it was just a week ago, we expect those prices to flow through within a week or two.

“Equally, those prices can go up or down very easily based off what’s happening with the conflict.”

Luxon repeated comments that New Zealand could not afford untargeted spending to cushion the blow for all New Zealanders after “reckless Covid spending” had “used up the rainy-day fund and maxed out the credit card”.

He said he thought the government had done well handling the fuel crisis.

“I think we’ve done a very good job. We already had an essential treaties agreement with Singapore for example … I’ve spoken with the Singaporean Prime Minister again but also the South Korean President as well where the vast majority of our supplies come from.

“Those refineries have been doing a good job of trying to find alternative feedstocks and that gives us great confidence and that’s why I say to you, I want to reassure New Zealand, that’s what you’ve seen, New Zealanders are reassured, they know that there is supply of fuel in the country and I think that’s because we’ve done some good work on it.”

Luxon batted away concerns about rising inflation, after ANZ’s prediction earlier in the day of three OCR hikes before the end of the year.

“By the ANZ’s own admission it’s pretty uncertain and there’s a lot of economists with a lot of views about where inflation will go and where economic growth will go… our job from day one as I’ve been saying has been to make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes of Covid.

“We want to be economically responsible economic managers so we actually protect the long-term economy for New Zealanders.”

India FTA talks with Labour ‘very constructive’

Top exporters represented by Business NZ have also signed an open letter calling for all political parties to back the India free trade agreement Luxon announced at the end of last year.

The deal had not been supported by New Zealand First, so support from the opposition will be needed to pass the related legislation.

Labour has not yet agreed, saying there were inconsistencies between National’s public statements about the deal and what the text of the agreement said.

Luxon said conversations with Labour about the deal were “very constructive and good”.

“It shouldn’t be about politics, I don’t think it is, we’re having constructive conversations with Labour – but [they should] get on board because it’s a bipartisan thing, trade.

“Very constructive and good conversations undertaken I think with a tremendous amount of goodwill, we’ve made our ministers and officials available to the Labour side in many meetings now, there’s been an exchange of letters and it’s just essentially alleviating their concerns… helping them understand why we think this is such a fantastic deal.”

He said India was the most populous country in the world and the deal would be looked back on in future as a good one.

“This is about benefiting regular everyday New Zealanders. One in four of them have their jobs tied to trade, in a crisis like we’re experiencing now you want to create more optionally so that our traders and our exporters have more markets to move product to.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Cuba has been under US trade sanctions since 1962 and the past few months have further challenged the Caribbean nation, with tightened economic blockades by America.

University of Canterbury lecturer Josephine Varghese and Ambassador Luis Morejon Rodriguez talk to Kadambari Raghukumar in this Here Now episode.

Last December Josephine Vargehese found herself in the rare position of a being a speaker at a conference in Cuba. It was a chance she’d long been waiting for.

Indian-born, Christchurch based, Josephine Varghese is a lecturer at University of Canterbury, with a focus on analysing geopolitics through a post-colonial lens. She’s always felt drawn to Cuba.

“It’s a nation state that resisted imperialism, just 90 miles away from the United States coast. People are very fascinated by that in Kerala” said Varghese who was born in the south Indian state.

“Kerala has a a revolutionary history itself.”

Kerala occupies a long, narrow strip on the southwest coast of India. Since its formation in 1956, the people of Kerala have often elected the Communist Party of India to lead their legislative assembly.

The state has achieved the highest literacy rate in India and a consistently high GDP, while making huge investments in health and education. And over the years, it has built ties with the communist government and people of Cuba involving ideology, medical research, sport and literature.

“When I was in Cuba, just walking through the streets and having the interest that I have, I invariably talked to people about politics and people are well aware of international politics. When I’m in the West, it’s more around ‘oh India’s poor or backward and you’re running away from there’ – a very narrow understanding of India’s history, whereas in Cuba I felt that the awareness about India was rooted in India’s anti-colonial past.”

Varghese was a speaker at the Tricontinental Conference. The first Tricontinental Conference took place in Havana in 1966. This 60th anniversary event saw over 500 delegates from anticolonial movements across 82 countries from the Global South.

“I saw this as the pinnacle of my career and my life so far,” Varghese said.

She was visiting at a tough time for the Caribbean nation. Cuba’s in the midst of an economic and humanitarian crisis. Its economic struggles date back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s critics point to the communist government’s failure to adapt to the post-Soviet era.

But much of the current pressure stems from America escalating its embargo on Cuba this year – blocking Venezuelan oil and President Donald Trump threatening to “take” the country

Josephine arrived in Cuba in late 2025, before the escalation, but she was already seeing the pressures Cubans were facing.

“I went there in December 2025, actually the last shipment of oil to that country before this recent Russian oil tanker which broke you know USA’s blockade reached there. The last one was December 2025, just before we arrived there. And so it was a very critical time in Cuba.”

Back in New Zealand, Josephine was invited to share her experiences at a talk in Auckland a few weeks ago -where the Cuban ambassador to New Zealand, Luis Morejon Rodriguez was also present.

“We live under sanctions for more than 60 years and we continue trying to do our best. In the current context, diplomacy becomes more of an important. My role is to provide accurate informal information about Cuba, strengthen bilateral relations and promote cooperation between our people. It’s also important to explain the real impact of the blockade and the consequences of that policy to attempt to isolate Cuba. Many people here understand the differences between countries should be resolved through dialogue and mutual respect, not through economic coercion that ultimately affects ordinary people,” Luis Morejon told Here Now.

Some critics point out, however, that many ordinary Cubans have been pressured into silence by their government. Here Now tried to contact people within the Cuban community in New Zealand, but none of the persons contacted wanted to be interviewed.

In response, Luis Morejon responded “Here in New Zealand we have a very small Cuban community and they are spread out for the whole country. It is natural that there are different perspectives regarding Cuba this diversity of view exists in many societies, not only in Cuba. What is important is that discussions are based on respect, facts and understanding and complex reality faced by Cuban people we are consistently emphasize is that political differences should never justify policy that harm the entire population. The Cuban people deserve the opportunity to develop without external pressure or economic strangulation,” Morejon said.

Here Now’s Kadambari Raghukumar asked Varghese if global issues like the embargo on Cuba connect back to New Zealand at all. She said “communities in New Zealand have in the past spoken out vociferously against imperialism, for example, when it came to the anti-apartheid struggle, New Zealand took a leading role among the West, for example, in opposing apartheid, um, but also the anti-nuclear movement over here. We understand that the Pacific is one of the contested spheres of influence. I think that our interest in Aotearoa New Zealand is to have an independent foreign policy that protects us and also protects the Pacific from imperial wars”.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Senior climate scientists say the major funding for extreme weather research is drying up just as the country needs it the most.

In a joint comment provided to RNZ, three leading New Zealand researchers said there was little upcoming investment into understanding severe storms, even though that was how most New Zealanders were experiencing climate change at the moment.

Their perspective was supported by the New Zealand Association of Scientists, which warned that changes to science investment announced by the government this month could see even more funding diverted away from New Zealand-specific climate research.

The government said it invested around $170 million into climate-related research every year and “there will always be some who are disappointed at funding decisions”.

University of Canterbury professor Dave Frame, University of Waikato senior lecturer Luke Harrington, and Earth Sciences New Zealand researcher Suzanne Rosier wrote that the vast majority of New Zealand’s extreme rainfall was driven by “atmospheric rivers” arriving from the tropics.

Recent research had made good progress in trying to understand how climate change was influencing that, but major projects were now ending, with little to follow them.

“Just as the costs of extreme weather are becoming more and more apparent, our ability to understand and inform adaptation actions has diminished.”

While rain events had been striking the country for “millenia”, things were now changing as Earth warmed, they wrote.

“As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more water vapour. When those atmospheric rivers come out of the tropics, they contain more moisture than they did, providing the potential for more rain when they strike.”

Speaking to RNZ on the trio’s behalf, Dave Frame said researchers knew that storm behaviour was also changing, with total rainfall squeezed into a shorter timeframe.

“So that’s an amplification of those very wet events when they actually occur, often on quite short timescales of a few hours.”

Both ends of that rainfall distribution were changing, meaning longer dry and drought periods too, he said.

‘Large investments’ have ended

There were “large investments” in previous years to learn more about those atmospheric phenomena, he said, including two major Endeavour Fund research programmes totalling $25m, and the Deep South National Science Challenge, which Frame directed in its first year.

But all three of those programmes have now ended, with many outstanding questions.

“There’s quite a few questions about compound events, where you’ve got different sorts of events combining with each other in a way that really makes risks go up quite fast that we’re really still pretty uncertain about,” Frame said.

“Things like the particular timings of events, whether or not you get an atmospheric river at the end of a drought, what the interactions between things like snowpacks in spring, the melting snowpacks and an extreme rainfall event are like, the interaction between sea level rise and extreme rainfall.”

He and his colleagues worried there was little funding on the horizon to continue that work.

“I think a lot of people around the country would find [it] a bit crazy, actually, that just as… people are really feeling the sharp end of climate change through these extreme events, there’s been a bit of a walking back from investing in the science.”

In a statement, new Science, Innovation and Technology minister Penny Simmonds said $170m was invested in climate-related research each year, alongside another $70m committed to the Natural Hazards and Resilience Platform between 2024 and 2031.

RNZ searched some of the major researcher-led contestable funds for climate-related projects.

Endeavour Fund grants for all projects with a major climate change element to them totalled $463m since 2010, with just under half of that to be spent between now and 2030.

However, only a fraction of that funding ($67m) went to research programmes or smaller projects looking at extreme weather patterns and modelling, or using that information to manage and plan community responses.

Of that, there is $46.5m still to be spent – about $9m a year until 2030.

A similar search of Marsden grants – another major public source of research funding – found $54 million awarded to 86 climate change-related projects.

That represented 4.5 percent of all Marsden funding since 2008.

Again, only six appeared to be projects looking specifically at climate extremes in New Zealand or the southern hemisphere, receiving $4.9m of funding between them.

In contrast, $29m was given to climate change projects looking at Antarctica, glaciers and oceans.

All of that work was also important, Frame said.

“Some nerd sitting in an office, you know, doing some advanced Python while a computer blinks at them doesn’t seem quite so cool.

“But all the things like extreme rainfall and other things which go on top of that, which usually really do the damage, storm surges and things like that – that stuff is much closer in time than the effects of the West Antarctic ice sheet in a couple of hundred years,” he said.

“The way that most New Zealanders are feeling climate change at the moment, which is through a stream of events, really isn’t part of those [other research] platforms at all.”

Research capability has been lost

Association of Scientists co-president Lucy Stewart said the loss of a funding pipeline had been compounded by job cuts at Earth Sciences New Zealand and some universities.

A small team of specialist climate modellers – who translated global climate models into New Zealand-specific ones – were among 90 roles disestablished at ESNZ last year, following budget cuts.

“A lot of those climate modellers have gone, they’ve moved overseas, because they were disestablished.”

The government had also ended Marsden funding for humanities and social science research, which would have an effect on climate research too.

“A lot of climate response work is social science. Things like, if you think about managed retreat, understanding how people think about it, communicating it to them, working with communities on what just transitions look like – all of that is social science.”

At the start of April, the government announced it would back the recommendations in an advisory report to shift science funding to four priorities.

That included shifting $122m of current funding to a new “advancing technologies” priority over the next two to three years, which would include AI, quantum computing and advanced manufacturing.

That funding would be reallocated from other areas, including environmental science, Stewart said.

“If the government wants to fund advanced tech, sure, they should do that, but they are robbing Peter to pay Paul and it will result in less climate research getting done.”

The result would be researchers lost to jobs overseas or other careers.

“We’ve lost about 700 people across the science system in the last couple of years in terms of cuts,” she said.

“We’re losing institutional knowledge, we’re losing connectivity, we’re losing networks of researchers… once it’s gone, it takes years and decades to get it back.”

Researchers were unlikely to come back into the system “because there’s nothing to come back to”.

Finding funding from alternative sources, such as philanthropy, was difficult, Stewart said.

“There are so many things on fire in New Zealand right now, if you look at the health system and education and the cost of living – competition for dollars is very high.

“You have to make a bloody good argument that people who want to do philanthropy are better off putting that money into research than making sure people can eat.”

The same argument could be made by the government, “but they’re not doing much to make sure people can eat, either”, Stewart said.

Ministerial response

Penny Simmonds said the new advanced technology research area was “critical to weather and climate research”.

The advisory report provided a clear path forward, she said.

“It will inform the development of the Science Investment Plan, which will set New Zealand’s long-term research priorities and align public investment with national missions.”

The plan will be released later this year.

One of the aims of the government’s science reforms was to improve the training and retention of scientists, Simmonds said.

In addition, the Weather Forecasting Bill before Parliament would enable ESNZ to acquire MetService, which would “create efficiencies to reinvest in improvements to our climate science and weather forecasting capabilities”.

“That is already delivering real-world results, including direct support to emergency management during recent severe weather,” she said.

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

MIL OSI

Source: Radio New Zealand

Hungary’s veteran nationalist leader Viktor Orban conceded defeat after a landslide election victory by the upstart opposition Tisza party, in a setback for his allies in Russia and US President Donald Trump’s White House.

Results based on 46 percent of votes counted showed the centre-right, pro-EU Tisza party of Peter Magyar winning 135 seats – or a crucial two-thirds majority – in the 199-member parliament, ahead of Orban’s Fidesz party.

“The election results are not final yet, but the situation is understandable and clear,” Orban said at the Fidesz campaign offices. “The election result is painful for us, but clear.”

Pollsters predicted a record voter turnout, with Hungarian television showing long queues outside some voting stations in Budapest. Data at 1630 GMT, half an hour before polls were due to close, showed 77.8 percent of voters casting their ballots, up from 67.8 percent four years earlier.

If the final results confirm the early readings, an end to Orban’s period in government after 16 years in power would have significant implications not only for Hungary, but for the European Union, Ukraine and beyond.

It would likely spell an end to Hungary’s adversarial role inside the EU, possibly opening the way for a 90 billion euro loan to war-battered Ukraine blocked by Orban.

Defeat for Orban could also mean the eventual release of EU funds to Hungary that the bloc had suspended due to what Brussels said was Orban’s erosion of democratic standards.

Orban’s exit would also deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of his main ally in the EU and send shockwaves through Western right-wing circles, including the White House.

In Hungary, a Tisza victory could open the way for reforms that the party says would aim to combat corruption and restore the independence of the judiciary and other institutions.

However, the extent of such reforms will depend on whether Tisza can secure the two-thirds constitutional majority it would need to reverse much of Orban’s legacy.

Economic stagnation hurt Orban’s support

Orban, a eurosceptic, carved out a model of an “illiberal democracy” seen as a blueprint by Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and its admirers in Europe.

But many Hungarians have grown increasingly weary of Orban, 62, after three years of economic stagnation and soaring living costs as well as reports of oligarchs close to the government amassing more wealth.

Tisza’s leader Magyar appears to have successfully tapped into this frustration.

Casting his vote for Tisza in the Hungarian capital, Mihaly Bacsi, 27, said the country needed change.

“We need an improvement in public mood, there is too much tension in many areas and the current government only fuels these sentiments,” he said.

Another voter, who gave her name as Zsuzsa, said she wanted continuity.

“I would really like if all the results that have been achieved in recent years remain – and I am terribly afraid of the war,” she said, referring to the conflict raging in Ukraine, Hungary’s eastern neighbour.

Orban sought to cast Sunday’s election as a choice between “war and peace”. During campaigning, the government blanketed the country with signs warning that Magyar would drag Hungary into Russia’s war with Ukraine, something he strongly denies

– Reuters

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand’s top spies will be weighing cutting the US out of some intelligence it shares with other Five Eyes partners, a former CIA head of counterintelligence has told RNZ.

Susan Miller had a long career in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including as its head of counterintelligence. She worked under the first Trump administration, but has since retired from the agency and seen her security clearance cut off by Trump in retribution for leading a probe into the Russian influence campaign during the 2016 US Presidential election.

Miller spoke with RNZ for a new podcast, The Agency, which has just been released in partnership with Bird of Paradise Productions. The podcast examines New Zealand’s close links with the CIA through the story of a Kiwi spy who spent six years in cover for the US agency.

Miller, who described New Zealand’s intelligence community as “righteous”, said she was certain they would be weighing how much could be shared with the US under Trump.

“I’m not going to be in that room when the Five Eyes, minus America, probably sit down and say, what do we do? Do we share Russia with him? Do we? Do we even claim that we’re allies anymore when he’s doing this? What do we do? And that’s what I think is probably going on.”

It was likely they would conclude: “We can’t share everything with this guy,” she said.

“I can’t trust him, and maybe they can on some China things and things like that, but when he’s acting like this … I would think that your leadership right now would be, at a minimum, thinking to themselves, wait a minute. I might not want to share this Russian information with this ambassador here, because he’s a Trump appointee.”

Late last year the UK stopped sharing intelligence with the US about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean because it was concerned about getting bound up in potentially illegal military strikes on the boats.

Miller said she was saddened that the intelligence sharing relationship had to be curtailed but cautioned against backing out of the Five Eyes arrangement completely.

“We’re always very focused on our relationship with Five Eyes and our joint things that we do on hard targets, whether it’s terrorism or China or, you know, name something else that comes up in the day … It’s super important that we have this and I would ask them to stay as long as they can and do what they are doing, keep that door open. Don’t completely break off from us.”

During her time with the CIA, Miller said she met with then-Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern as well as senior counterparts here to discuss China.

“Your team there, it’s a very small group that works in your intelligence service. They are righteous. I mean, these guys are super smart,” Miller said.

Listen now to all six episodes of The Agency, via Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

In the podcast, the minister formerly in charge of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies, Andrew Little, agreed the agencies were likely to be thinking about “current conditions”.

“I think given their obligations under the New Zealand legislation – which is they’ve got to act independently, and they have to think carefully about their own legal and human rights obligations before sharing intelligence – I’d be surprised if they weren’t actively considering how they share intelligence and the current conditions.”

The “general sentiment and moves which undermine democracy” were “a cause for worry”, Little said.

“But I’m equally confident that the Five Eyes relationship will endure through that and without agencies like ours, and indeed, the other partners, compromising their principles, their requirement to respect democracy and freedom of expression and all those sorts of things. I think the Five Eyes arrangement will survive.”

A spokesman for the SIS said: “Whilst the global environment continues to be dynamic, the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership continues to function largely as it always has, and our relationships with our Five Eyes counterparts remains strong and enduring, regardless of political change within partner administrations.”

The Five Eyes was a “valued partnership”, with significant benefits to New Zealand.

“There are robust policies and processes in place to ensure that any cooperation New Zealand does with its Five Eyes partners, including the US, is consistent with New Zealand’s policy and legal framework, including human rights obligations.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Wild weather has once again brought flooding, damage and destruction to parts of the country, and uncertainty and stress over a far greater region – particularly those hit before.

There have been four red weather warnings – reserved for the most extreme events – and at least six extreme weather events so far this year, by RNZ’s count – and it’s only April.

Cyclone Vaianu over the weekend brought flooding and damage across much of the North Island, forcing evacuations, shutting roads and leaving many without power.

The prime minister says the response to Cyclone Vaianu has been far better than previous emergencies.

Christopher Luxon told Morning Report on Monday the system responded well – between local and central government as well as civil defence, iwi and hapū.

“This is the sad reality as we’ve dealt with more and more of these events, you know,” he said.

“Whether it’s the mayors, the Civil Defence, NEMA, you know, our first responders, the rural support, you know, there’s just been great collaboration and we’ve had a series of events that have often been similar size and we’re just so much more joined up and sorted.

“But I think I’m also very grateful, particularly in this event, the message went out very strongly and Kiwi families and households also took responsibility.”

Key roads in the eastern part of the North Island, State Highways 2 and 35, were frequently closed during and after major weather events, often by slips and flooding.

Luxon said iwi were having “conversations” about relocating from areas prone to bad weather and flooding due to climate change.

“They’re having those conversations with the elders who have been very connected to those areas, and that’s been a really positive thing.”

As for the 14 percent – around 675,000 – New Zealanders who currently live in areas prone to flooding, Luxon said it was time to “confront the brutal facts of the reality that actually they are going to be areas of New Zealand that we’re going to have to rethink over time how we manage that”.

“That’s why we’ve got to work on a national flood plan, national adaptation framework… make sure we’re not doing dumb stuff, for example, building back into flood plains.

“And we’ve seen a lot of that over multiple decades, you know, over the last 40, 50 years. Knowledge that existed in the ’50s and the ’60s about where not to build ends up getting built on the ’70s and ’80s, and lo and behold, we have a problem.

“So, we’ve just got to be much more strategic about how we deal with it and then embed resilience into everything that we’re doing.”

As an example, Luxon cited a new four-lane road proposed between Napier and Hastings with “a higher level of resilience and flood protection than we’ve seen”.

“We’ve put $200 million into stop banks and flood protection… that had huge benefits for many different communities.

“We’re working really hard on – we’re going to have a national flood plan for the first time ever by the end of this year. I know this stuff sounds like we should have had it for years, but we didn’t do the practical stuff.”

A response from the Ministry for the Environment released under the Official Information Act detailed that of the government’s claim of “over $1 billion since 2020” in flood protection spending, nearly all of it was committed by the previous government; this government’s contribution has been $200m through the Regional Infrastructure Fund.

Setting aside the $647.5m in one-off disaster recovery funding, the previous government committed $340m over three years to flood resilience.

The present government has also cancelled or scaled back a number of climate measures, including resuming oil and gas exploration, and in December rejected all of the Climate Change Commission’s recommendations to strengthen New Zealand’s emissions targets.

Luxon said New Zealand was not alone in facing climate challenges.

“In fact, many other countries are in the same boat. And you’ve got to think about it. There’s banks, there’s insurers, there’s councils, there’s central government, there’s homeowners and landowners. And there’s going to be multiple generations, they’re going to be dealing with these issues.

“So over time, how do we get much more knowledge data so that we can actually strengthen New Zealand and make it more resilient and not doing it? So for example, last flood I was up in Hicks Bay Way, State Highway 35… and it was interesting talking to the young Wahine leaders who are doing an amazing job and other emergency response leaders of iwi and hapu.

Treasury has warned of an 80 percent chance of another Gabrielle-scale event in the next 50 years.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Retail NZ wants an urgent government taskforce created to crack down on illicit tobacco before the problem reaches crisis levels like in Australia.

An RNZ investigation last month found black market cigarettes were being openly being sold in Auckland shops with huge discounts.

In a report released today, Retail NZ, which represents shop owners, called on a “immediate and rigourous crackdown on illicit tobacco.”

Chief executive Carolyn Young said in Australia the horse has bolted, with organised crime groups terrorising shop owners who did not cooperate.

“In Victoria there has been something like 200 fire bombs in the last year. What happens is that if you say you are not going to sell the illicit tobacco, they’ll firebomb your business, they’ll make threats to your family,” she said.

New Zealand needed to act before the black market trade took off here, she said.

There should be a multi-agency taskforce created, including the police, Customs and health, she said

Currently, the police, Customs and the Ministry of health worked separately to combat the problem and there were low-level penalties, she said.

“We are urging the Government to immediately establish a multi-agency Illicit Tobacco Task Force, increase penalties and have an independent roundtable consider a range of other measures, to ensure the illicit tobacco market is stamped out before it’s too late,” she said.

The illegal cigarettes were also able to skirt many of the measure aimed at decreasing tobacco use in New Zealand, such has packets with warning labels.

There was no way of knowing how much nicotine was in them, she said.

The illicit market was growing very quickly in New Zealand and that was why action was needed now, Ms Young said.

RNZ’s investigation found black market tobacco was sometimes being sold for less than half the price of the regulated product.

One retailer called it an “open secret.”

People caught selling illicit cigarettes, could face a six-month prison sentence, a $20,000 fine or both.

Importing cigarettes without paying the excise duty was illegal under Customs law.

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