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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Parliamentary Service says threats against MPs are increasing, but staff feel hampered by MPs’ ”underwhelming” engagement with security efforts.

Parliament’s Petitions Committee has considered a call for an inquiry into the scale and nature of abuse and intimidation targeting women MPs and local body representatives.

Petitioner and former political staffer Sam Fisher said aggressive behaviour and violent threats were discouraging women from entering politics and damaging democracy.

His petition asked Parliament to investigate the scale and nature of threats.

In a submission, the Parliamentary Service told the committee it had noticed an increase in threats and abuse directed towards MPs, both online and in the community, despite what it believed to be a

high threshold before MPs reported abuse.

”It believes it is already well established that threats and abuse towards elected representatives, particularly those who are women, is a serious issue requiring attention,” the Select Committee report said.

”The Service told us that its main limitations are resourcing and “underwhelming” engagement by MPs with its security offerings. It plans to continue expanding its offerings and hopes that members will be proactive in learning about and engaging in the services available to them.”

Researchers from the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre also provided a submission to the committee.

Its clinical lead Justin Barry Walsh said the prevalence of threats and abuse against MPs was a ”concerning” and ”wicked” problem.

”I would not underestimate the harm that this causes, both to the public figures and their staff, but also I would suggest to our communities and our society,”‘ he said.

Local Government New Zealand told the committee that there had been an increase in harassment of politicians.

”A mid-2025 survey of LGNZ members found that bullying and harassment was very common, reported by 91 percent of women and 83 percent of men surveyed. Women reported more harassment on social media and in

everyday interactions outside formal settings,” the report said.

”Survey results showed that most respondents take no formal action, which echoes the concerns of underreporting expressed by the Parliamentary Service.”

Anecdotally, LGNZ’s female members had reported gendered abuse, sexualised comments, and threats, with wāhine Māori particularly targeted.

”It notes that much abuse is online and that this abuse is unavoidable when politicians need to use social media to campaign. In-person abuse has taken place at public events, in the supermarket, and at

politicians’ homes. Children have been present during instances of in-person abuse and some women reported that their children had been followed home from school,” the report said.

The committee said that consideration of a report from the Ministry for Women would provide a chance for parliamentarians to consider many of the issues raised by the petitioner.

”We consider that opening a separate inquiry is not necessary at this stage.”

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

Source: New Zealand Government

Increases to the Rates Rebate Scheme will help ease cost of living pressures for ratepayers in need of assistance and lower income SuperGold Cardholders, Local Government Minister Simon Watts and Seniors Minister Casey Costello announced today. 

“We know the cost of living is putting immense pressure on Kiwis, with rising rates adding a further burden to household budgets,” Mr Watts says.

“The Government is committed to easing cost-of-living pressures for Kiwis. By making increases to the Rates Rebate Scheme, we are delivering targeted support to low-income ratepayers in need of assistance with paying their rates bill.”

From 1 July 2026, the maximum rebate will increase from $805 to $830. The income abatement threshold for SuperGold Cardholders will increase from $45,000 to $46,400. The income abatement threshold for other ratepayers will increase from $32,210 to $33,210. 

“The New Zealand First – National coalition agreement had a commitment to explore options to build on the Local Government Rates Rebate Scheme for SuperGold Cardholders,” Seniors Minister Casey Costello says.

“This change was funded in last year’s Budget and was the first time a separate income abatement threshold to the Rates Rebate Scheme has been introduced. The 2026/27 financial year marks the second rating year that SuperGold Cardholder eligibility changes have been in effect.”

“It will mean that every SuperGold Cardholder earning only NZ Superannuation, with rates higher than $2000, will be eligible for the full rebate. SuperGold Cardholders earning more than $46,400 from 1 July 2026 may also be entitled to a smaller rebate.

“This will particularly help those seniors who are on fixed incomes and dealing with rates increases.”

Mr Watts says this will make a real difference for low-income homeowners.

“By raising the income thresholds, we are ensuring that Kiwis, especially our seniors who are on a limited income, don’t lose their eligibility just because their incomes have risen slightly to keep pace with inflation,” Mr Watts says.

From 1 July 2026, new application forms will be available from councils. Forms can also be downloaded from the New Zealand Government website (www.govt.nz) from 1 July 2026 and then submitted to the applicant’s local council.

“We want to ensure every eligible household gets the support they are entitled to. I encourage you, or members of your family, to get in touch with your local council or retirement village operator if you have questions,” Mr Watts says.

The Government is also introducing a rates cap to keep rates under control and ensure council spending remains disciplined.

“Everyone is having to prioritise due to the tough economic times – councils are no different. They need guardrails so that they can focus on prioritisation and make decisions about what it is best to spend their revenue on,” Mr Watts says.

“Councils effectively operate as monopolies, and we have seen year on year rate increases which ratepayers cannot continue to sustain. That’s why we are introducing a rates cap to keep rates under control.”

Details on the final rates cap model are expected to be announced later this year.

MIL OSI

Source: Radio New Zealand

Hundreds visited Auckland Art Gallery over the weekend to view more than 60 works by 42 Chinese artists that included photography, sculptures, installations, moving images and new media.

Titled Forever Tomorrow: Chinese Art Now, the exhibition is the first major survey of Chinese contemporary art displayed in Auckland on this scale.

The exhibition features work by some of China’s best-known contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei, Xu Zhen, Xiao Lu and Cao Fei, alongside artists exhibiting in New Zealand for the first time.

Among the key works is Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, a photographic series capturing an act of deliberate destruction that raises questions about history and cultural memory.

Also on view is a striking sculptural work by multimedia artist Xu Zhen.

Standing 7.5 metres tall and weighing 3 tonnes, the work brings together a Buddhist figure associated with China’s Tianlongshan Grottoes and the sweeping form of Greek sculpture Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Another featured work is a robotic Corinthian column that stands nearly 4m tall and occupies an 8m x 8m footprint, giving a classical symbol of Western civilization an unsettling – almost living – presence.

The exhibition opened to the public on Saturday, attracting visitors from all walks of life for a first look.

Troy Zhou, who has lived in New Zealand for about a decade, said he felt proud as a Chinese New Zealander to see such a large-scale presentation of Chinese contemporary art.

He said the exhibition offered people from different backgrounds an opportunity to better understand Chinese culture.

“I think it is a window for the world to understand China,” he said.

“Artistic expressions are diverse. Through the work of these artists, visitors from different countries and ethnic groups can find resonance with their own cultures.

“They can learn more about Chinese culture through these artworks.”

Heather Cunningham, who has previously visited China with her daughter, said she was struck by some of the political elements in the exhibition and by the courage of some Chinese artists in questioning and challenging history.

She said the exhibition also gave her a new perspective on Chinese contemporary art, including its use of technology.

“This is very technologically advanced in terms of the video,” she said.

“The layered look, how the videos are used, how the photographs are used, how they are presented, the subject matter. It is very new to me, which is so exciting.”

Clara Curtice, who visited Beijing and Shanghai about a decade ago, said she was also struck by the political elements represented in the exhibition.

“I am really enjoying considering that there is still a strong political element to what these artists are trying to say, and that they use old types of Chinese art to express modern political ideas,” she said.

Curtice was impressed by the way the exhibition reflected China’s rapid transformation and the enormous disruption experienced by its people over a short period of time.

“It reminds me that this is a significant population, and there are a multitude of different ways of seeing the world,” she said. “It is a really interesting space.”

Hutch Wilco, exhibition project manager at Auckland Art Gallery, said Auckland’s Chinese community had grown rapidly over the past 15 years and that New Zealanders’ interest in contemporary Chinese culture and art had also increased.

Wilco said the exhibition highlighted the breadth of contemporary Chinese art.

Spanning the period from China’s reforms and the introduction of an “open door” policy in 1978 to the present day, the show reflects the country’s dramatic transformation over more than four decades, he said.

“There’s this sense of speed in the development in China,” he said.

“That is something we are all feeling globally, particularly since Covid, with changes to society, changes to global politics … and the impact of artificial intelligence.

“I think we can learn from the experience that has really sort of preceded us in the experience of China and Chinese artists.”

Pu Yingwei, a Beijing-based artist, has two paintings on display in the exhibition – one titled Purple King Kong: Red and Blue Entangled in Space and the other Chinacapital 1978.

Pu said his artworks explored the complexities of China’s rapid development, its rise as a global power and the ways that transformation had shaped the country’s relationship with the wider world.

“Chinacapital 1978 tells the story of China’s reform and opening up, and the emergence of a completely new China,” he said.

“It looks at the impact that transformation had on the world, as well as the changes within China itself.”

Pu said his second work, Purple King Kong, examined the entangled relationship between red and blue.

“Red represents China and blue represents Western ideology,” he said.

“The purple figure, formed from a mixture of red and blue, is a metaphor for China’s reform and opening up.”

Pu said the exhibition had also given him an opportunity to see works by other Chinese artists, some for the first time.

“I think this exhibition will provide both New Zealand and Chinese audiences with new insights into contemporary Chinese art,” he said.

Chen Wei, another Chinese artist who travelled to Auckland for the opening of the exhibition, has a photographic work titled Today Is Unsuitable for Shooting on display.

The image, made from a carefully constructed set assembled in his studio, reflects the difficulty of accurately capturing Beijing’s smog.

Chen said the exhibition of contemporary art gave visiting Chinese artists a chance to catch a glimpse of New Zealand’s artistic and cultural landscape.

“When we come here, we can also learn about local culture. At the same time, we invite local audiences to walk into a period of our history,” he said.

“All history is connected. China’s development is closely related to the development of the world.”

Wang Ziquan, a Shanghai-based cross-media artist, has a sculptural work titled Compromise on display in Auckland.

Wang said his practice focused on creating sculptures without relying on traditional sculpting methods.

He hoped audiences could sense the rapid changes taking place in Chinese contemporary art in his work.

“Even things that might once have barely been considered art are now becoming artistic [in China],” he said, noting that internet memes could now be considered a form of contemporary art.

“The shift is enormous,” he said. “Contemporary art today does not necessarily need to be about profound social issues or grand themes. It can also be about small things hidden in the details.”

Wilco agreed, saying the exhibition explored globalization, its effects and the ways different cultures come into contact with one another.

He hoped every visitor would find something in the show that resonated with them.

The exhibition is supported by the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation and the New Zealand government’s Events Boost Fund. It runs through 23 August.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Regulation Minister is taking aim at what he says is excessive red tape around rooftop solar that makes it too hard for home-owners and businesses to set up panels.

David Seymour is ordering a review of the installation process, saying he wants to make New Zealand the easiest place in the world to switch to solar.

He said just three to four percent of New Zealand households used solar, despite average power savings of about $1000 a year.

“Solar installation in New Zealand is a red tape nightmare. Just getting it approved can take months,” he said.

“There are up to eight layers of sign-off before small-scale solar systems can be switched on. This requires up to five separate site visits, from four separate entities. For example, during installation the installer often cannot turn off or reconnect the fuse, update the meter, or carry out the required independent electrical inspection. These tasks must be done by other entities, requiring additional site visits.”

In parts of Australia, approval of similar low-risk solar could be granted within 24 hours, Seymour said.

“In Victoria Australia there is one layer of sign-off for small-scale solar installation. The whole solar installation process is managed and carried out by the chosen installer. Standard installations are inspected by a licensed electricity inspector without a site visit. Photos clearly show compliance. A site visit is only carried out in person if something unusual or non compliant is identified in the photos.”

Seymour said more than 30 percent of Australian households used solar power.

He made the announcement at Electric Cherries near Cromwell on Thursday, which is believed to be the world’s first fully-electric farm, powered largely by solar.

Owner Mike Casey, who is also the chief executive of Rewiring Aotearoa, said regulations needed to keep pace with technology and he was pleased to see the government looking at ways to help.

“In Australia, virtual inspections allow the installs to be approved remotely and much more rapidly and other countries have centralised systems that don’t require a physical visit and use an auditing process to ensure standards are being met,” he said.

Researchers have said New Zealanders investing in solar will almost certainly save more money than they spend.

Casey said Rewiring Aotearoa wanted to see national standards across lines companies for solar and legalisation for plug-in solar set-ups which were becoming popular overseas.

“We need more solar in New Zealand, it is very safe when installers are well-trained and given our very low uptake rates at this stage, it is unlikely to affect the network. Approval should be instant here.”

Bureaucracy not the biggest barrier – solar expert

Alan Brent, professor and chairperson in Sustainable Energy Systems at Victoria University of Wellington, said upfront cost was the biggest barrier for most households considering solar – not the installation time.

“It’s not a technical issue in terms of how long it takes. I mean, I have a solar and a battery system in my house, and they came and installed it within a day. We have all the regulations in place … all the technology is there,” he said.

“It is quite a significant investment up front. And it’s quite complicated for people to think about what the long-term savings will be.”

Brent said the best thing officials could do to boost solar uptake was a public information campaign highlighting what residents would spend and what they would save.

The government could also help residents with the upfront costs, he said.

“Something similar to what we have with industry, like the GiDI (Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry) fund – that might be an option … a long-term loan that’s underwritten by the government,” he said.

German and Australian residents also received “quite reasonable” tariffs for returning electricity to the grid, he said.

“That’s provided the incentive for people to put up solar systems,” he said.

However Seymour said cutting red tape would help with upfront cost.

“The more people involved the more expensive it is. So if you’ve got to pay someone to come and do your disconnection and then another person to do the installation, then the first person comes back to do the reconnection, that all adds cost. But I think it’s also about hesitancy and being able to just do it. If you knew that you could get this done in a weekend, you’d be a lot more likely to do it than if you’d heard that your neighbours ended up taking a couple of months to do something that could have been much simpler,” he said.

“If I can honestly say that we have the simplest, most straightforward system in the world, then how much people take advantage of that is up to them.”

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

MIL OSI

Source: New Zealand Government

As part of the Government’s $2 billion investment into school infrastructure, $56.6 million has today been announced to fix longstanding condition issues and bring facilities up to standard at six schools to ensure students are learning in warm, safe, fit-for-purpose classrooms, Education Minister Erica Stanford and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop say.

“As Minister, I’m delighted that six schools will be receiving these major redevelopments, covering 52 teaching spaces up and down the country. These projects are rolling out as part of the Government’s investment through Budget 24 and 25,” Ms Stanford says.

“After years of undelivered promises and underinvestment by the previous Government, we have prioritised school infrastructure to get school communities the classrooms, upgrades, and maintenance work they have long waited for.

“When we came into Government, we inherited a school property system nearing crisis. Schools were promised new projects but were left waiting, often for years, on unfunded, bespoke, expensive plans.”

“Through Budget 24 and 25, we increased funding for school maintenance work by $880 million. This more than doubled the maintenance funding increases in the previous six years combined,” Mr Bishop says.

“We’ve significantly reduced the average cost of a classroom by increasing the use of offsite manufactured builds and repeatable designs, and delivered 583 classrooms last year alone, 31 percent more than in 2023.

“That means more classrooms, delivered faster, providing better learning environments for our kids and better value for taxpayers.

“After decades of underinvestment, we’re a Government that’s both funding and delivering the classrooms that our teachers and students deserve.”

Mr Bishop says work is set to begin in the next six months.

In total, 52 teaching spaces will be redeveloped at the following six schools:

• Kerikeri High School, Northland, 12 replacement classrooms
• Pinehill School (Browns Bay), Auckland, 3 replacement classrooms
• Hutt Intermediate, Wellington, 14 replacement classrooms
• Natone Park School, Wellington, 7 replacement classrooms and admin space
• Ashburton Intermediate, Canterbury, 8 replacement classrooms
• Maruawai College, Southland, 8 replacement specialist classrooms

MIL OSI

Source: Radio New Zealand

The Green Party has criticised the government’s decision to scrap the fees-free tertiary education scheme.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed the scheme will be ditched in the upcoming Budget, following comments made by NZ First Leader Winston Peters on Newstalk ZB.

“Ongoing coalition negotiations have led to good budget policy decisions that further the immediate and long-term interests of New Zealanders,” she said.

Willis also confirmed students completing their tertiary studies this year would remain eligible for fees-free, but many of those students completing three-year-courses or longer had already had their first year free.

At the end of 2024, the government modified the system, offering students their last year free, rather than the first, as it was when Labour first introduced the policy.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson told RNZ the government should be investing more in the future of young people, not less.

“This is absolutely outrageous – another kick in the guts for our generations of young people particularly and anyone who wants to dream about giving back to their community.”

The Greens would fight to re-instate fees-free support, she said.

“The Greens know that it is a fantastic, wise, smart investment to invest in tertiary education for students and our communities.”

The government should be incentivising tertiary study, given more than 14 percent of young people were not in work or education, she said.

Students disappointed, not surprised

Victoria University Student Association president Aidan Donoghue said he was disappointed the scheme was getting the axe, but not surprised.

“We’ve continually seen attacks on students from this government and this is just another example.”

Fees free encouraged some students to enter or continue study, because debt was a deterring factor, he said.

“To pay an extra $12,000 in fees is not a good pill to swallow.”

Scrapping the scheme would have a particularly tough impact on those from lower-income backgrounds, Donoghue said.

“Students have been calling for more money week-to-week and… we’re not sure that this will be replaced with anything else that will address the concerns of students with the cost of living.”

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

Source: Media Outreach

LOS ANGELES, US – Newsaktuell – 7 May 2026 – The newly released 2026 Berggruen Governance Index (BGI) paints a mixed picture of global governance heading into a future of mounting shocks, finding widespread gains in public-goods provision from 2000 to 2023 even as democratic accountability edged down and state capacity showed little overall improvement.

The BGI, presented Wednesday by an international group of governance scholars, analyses measurable benchmarks of democratic accountability across 145 countries.

On a 100-point scale, the global score for democratic accountability slipped slightly from 65 in 2000 to 64 in 2023, the most recent data used in the project. The wave of democratisation observed in the closing decades of the last century has stalled in the last 15 years. Democratic accountability fell in 54 countries while it improved in 48 countries.

Yet the BGI — a collaborative project of the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Berlin’s Hertie School and the Berggruen Institute, a think tank headquartered in Los Angeles — captures remarkably widespread growth in provision of public goods.

Encompassing healthcare, education, infrastructure, environmental sustainability and conditions to foster employment and rising prosperity, public goods improved in 135 of the countries studied, while declining slightly in just four. The global average jumped from 58 to 69 points from 2000 to 2023.

The third component of what the BGI authors refer to as the “governance triangle” is state capacity, defined as the ability to tax, borrow and spend, control territory, operate scrupulous, competent bureaucracies and administer predictable rule of law. The index finds the global average ticking up from 48 to 49 points; 56 countries had increased state capacity while 57 declined.

“What does it tell us about the world ahead?” Prof. Helmut K. Anheier, a Luskin School sociologist and BGI principal investigator, asked during the public release of the 2026 BGI on the UCLA campus.

“Countries are not really improving in their governance performance in significant ways. … We’re not really having forward-looking investment in governance capacity. There is considerable inertia.”

The largest improvements across all three BGI components occurred in Gambia, which the report groups with “low-capacity developing states.” These states score low across the board, particularly in the provision of public goods. This cluster constitutes the poorest countries with the least developed economies, which face the most serious challenges.

“They have the greatest exposure to likely future crises, whether it’s global warming, whether it’s a new pandemic, whether it’s another financial crisis, whether it’s the impact of AI,” Anheier said. “And they have the least capacity to respond to it.”

Bhutan, Georgia, Iraq and Tunisia — which make up the remaining top five countries with the largest improvements in the BGI — are classified as “capacity-constrained states.” They tend to be middle-income with struggling democracies. These countries score higher across the board than the low-capacity developing states, but their state capacity tends to lag compared to public goods and democratic accountability.

The capacity-constrained states risk falling into “a cycle that erodes the institutions they have built,” Anheier said.

“Consolidated democratic states”, a cluster of most of the world’s richest countries, which score highly in all three BGI components, have to confront domestic complacency. Further, in the United States and some others, “political dysfunction” is leaving mounting problems unaddressed and risking erosion of state capacity, Anheier said.

At the other end of the spectrum, the country with the farthest fall on the BGI since 2000 is Nicaragua. Second from last is Venezuela, followed by Hong Kong, Hungary and Turkey. The rest of the bottom 10 are Russia, Iran, Poland, El Salvador and Belarus.

Since 2023, which is the last year of data available for the study, Poland and Hungary have both seen government changes via election, despite serious democratic backsliding. Both had fallen out of the group of “consolidated democratic states” by 2023 and moved into the capacity constrained cluster.

The other eight countries at the bottom of the list are all places that once had some semblance of competitive elections, but by now have little or no remaining pretense of democracy. They are grouped by the authors among the “authoritarian and hybrid states”, which have by far the lowest democratic accountability but outperform even some struggling democracies in delivering public goods.

These regimes have tended toward faster economic growth in the period observed. But that seeming prosperity, typically fueled by extractive industries or overreliance on exports, masks “serious institutional weaknesses in these countries, including divided elites,” Anheier said.

Relatively few countries — 21 of the 145 — changed enough for better or worse to be classified in a new group by the end of the 23-year study period.

“Movement between them is rare, but this is largely what we should expect,” said Stella Ghervas, a UCLA historian on a panel of experts who discussed the BGI findings Wednesday. “Government systems are not created in a moment. They evolve over long periods of time.”

Local conditions shaping governance in each country can rarely be quickly reset through political will or even external shocks, Joseph C. Saraceno, a Luskin School data scientist and BGI co-author, said Wednesday.

“Despite all the talk of major transformations happening in global affairs, the underlying configuration of governance simply doesn’t appear to change very much,” Saraceno said. “We use the term inertia to describe this reoccurring pattern. In other words, the structures of global governance are resistant to movement as the conditions beneath them are quite sticky: political economies, demographics, resource endowments. These are deeply layered, and they push each country toward the world that it already inhabits.”

But the challenges lurking around the world may not wait for the slow and difficult processes of political change and development to catch up.

“With the few exceptions of those countries in the consolidated democratic world,” Anheier said, “the great majority of the countries in the world is ill-prepared for the future.”

The full report, ‘ 2026 Berggruen Governance Index – The Four Worlds of Governance’, can be viewed and downloaded from the website of the UCLA’s Luskin School.

Frank Fuhrig, DNA

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Source: New Zealand Government

Associate Minister Hon Andrew Hoggard visited Silver Fern Farms in Dunedin to hear how the company is responding to growing export market demand for credible nature and biodiversity outcomes.

“For many buyers, demonstrating real nature outcomes is becoming part of the licence to trade – affecting both access and price,” Mr Hoggard says. 

“We need approaches that are practical for farmers, stack up with buyers, and can be trusted.”

Silver Fern Farms has worked alongside Government during the development of the Government’s approach to support expansion of New Zealand’s voluntary nature and carbon markets. It’s also to help test what good practice looks like on farm and in market.

The Minister was briefed on Silver Fern Farms’ nature-positive strategy and saw a demonstration by PRISM Earth — a joint venture with Lynker Analytics using remote sensing and machine learning to support on-farm decision-making and link biodiversity outcomes to export claims.

The visit also covered the Nature Market Accelerator, a market-led initiative to connect supply and demand for nature stewardship, aligned with Government’s voluntary markets objectives.

“Nature positive production is fast becoming central to how New Zealand will be judged as a food producer,” said CEO Dan Boulton. “The Nature Market Accelerator shows what’s possible when Government and the private sector collaborate early.”
 

MIL OSI

Source: New Zealand Government

The Government is investing up to $7.1 million to upgrade six Great Rides cycle trails, strengthening regional tourism and safety, Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston and Conservation Minister Tama Potaka say.

“This investment supports the continued growth of New Zealand’s world-renowned cycle trails, one of our most successful regional tourism assets,” Louise Upston says.

“The Great Rides boost economic growth by creating jobs, supporting local businesses, and attracting new hospitality and accommodation services to set up nearby.

“They are vital to our local economies with people enjoying more than 2.5 million trips on the 23 Ngā Haerenga Great Rides of New Zealand each year and spending an estimated $1.28 billion in the regions.”

Conservation Minister Tama Potaka says the investment will strengthen the connection between people and New Zealand’s natural environment while supporting long-term conservation outcomes.

“Our conservation estate is one of our greatest assets, and these trails give people safe, meaningful access to experience it.

“This investment supports a Bluegreen future, where we grow tourism and regional economies while protecting the natural places that make New Zealand unique.

“It also helps ensure these trails are resilient, well-maintained, and able to support both visitors and conservation outcomes for generations to come.”

The six investments, covering infrastructure and remedial projects, are for:

• Roxburgh Gorge Trail to close the 12 km gap in the trail (up to $1 million)
• Queen Charlotte Track realignment (up to $1,457,500)
• St James Cycle Trail upgrades (up to $2,012,000)
• Mountains to Sea – Ngā Ara Tūhono Cycle Trail enhancements (up to $2,197,000)
• Otago Central Rail Trail restoration (up to $302,000)
• Remutaka Cycle Trail at the Wild Coast Section resurfacing and upgrades (up to $165,000)

The projects are co-funded through the NZ Cycle Trail Fund and the Department of Conservation, to ensure the long-term success and resilience of the Great Rides network.

“These projects will support regional dispersal of visitors and future-proof our Great Rides for both domestic and international riders alike,” Louise Upston says.

“The Government is working together to invest in infrastructure, building a future that delivers for communities, conservation and the economy.”

MIL OSI