NANNING, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 21 May 2026 – The China-ASEAN Business and Trade Information Platform was officially launched in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Tuesday.

The platform offers comprehensive information services and an international communication platform to support economic and trade cooperation between China and ASEAN countries.

Built and operated by China News Network, the official website of China News Service, the platform serves as ASEAN trade agencies, industry associations, overseas Chinese communities, and cross-border enterprises, providing one-stop trade information services.

China News Service will leverage its strengths to build the China-ASEAN Business and Trade Information Platform into an influential and dynamic communication channel that promotes information sharing and provides services, to facilitate trade and people-to-people exchanges between China and ASEAN countries.

Currently, a trade information network between China and ASEAN countries has been built, with key content covering policy explanations, market conditions, investment promotion, business cooperation, and industry analysis, to comprehensively support cross-border trade activities.

Prior to the platform’s launch, representatives from government departments, media outlets, research institutes, and universities in China and multiple ASEAN countries participated in discussions on economic and trade information exchange between China and ASEAN countries, as well as the development of the platform.

Consular officials from ASEAN member states including Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam, stationed in Nanning expressed their hopes for enhancing China-ASEAN economic and trade connectivity as well as people-to-people ties through information sharing.

Against the backdrop of the signing of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 Upgrade Protocol, the platform serves as an information bridge for expanding cooperation, promoting trade, enhancing industrial upgrade, and achieving mutual benefits and win-win outcomes, they said.

They hope that the platform will play a greater role in trade facilitation and logistics services, empowering micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and investment policies and regulatory measures, while helping share cooperation stories between China and ASEAN countries.

Hashtag: #Nanning

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

Seeing a stoat den lined with feathers from rare native birds motivated Elaine Murphy to become a scientist at the Department of Conservation over 30 years ago. Elaine has since spent most of her career studying introduced predators and finding ways to protect native species. 

Now in her final year with DOC as Principal Scientist in the Predator Science team, Elaine recently announced a major breakthrough for the Predator Free 2050 programme – a new meat sausage bait to target stoats with the toxin PAPP (para-aminopropiophenone).  

“We’ve been working for about a decade to come up with a humane, cost-effective tool for removing stoats. We just finished our trials in stoat-heavy territory in Fiordland, and the results exceeded our expectations. We couldn’t detect any stoats in the project area after aerially applying one bait every hectare.” 

Strengthening the tool kit to protect native species

The sausage bait will need to be approved and registered by the Environmental Protection Authority and Ministry for Primary Industries, and Elaine hopes it will be available for wide-spread use by DOC, other agencies and community groups within the next two-three years. 

“It will be very helpful addition to the Predator Free 2050 tool kit. It provides an additional option to 1080 for targeting predators across large landscapes. It will also be very effective for ground-based efforts, for example in places like Waiheke Island where we are trying to remove stoats to protect kiwi and other native birds.” 

Elaine has a long history with stoats. In the 90s she discovered that they could have home ranges of over 100 hectares. She also figured out they can be controlled through secondary poisoning by targeting rats. This method has been critical in the fight to save native species from going extinct.  

“I have great respect for stoats; they are incredibly smart but so damaging for our native species. When they kill prey, they use the feathers to insulate their dens. I’ve seen dens lined with some of our most vulnerable species including kākā, mohua and kiwi.” 

A predator-free champion

Ealine’s research has been funded through DOC’s Predator Free 2050 Tools to Market programme, and further tests will be done on a higher-potency bait to target feral cats.

To continue making progress towards the Predator Free 2050 goal, Elaine says we need to trust our ability to learn and take confidence in the results already being achieved for native wildlife.  

“I sometimes get frustrated when people question our potential in the predator-free space. We are already achieving great things, so let’s continue to build off that and see where we get to.” 

Elaine is a member of the technical advisory groups for Te Korowai o Waiheke and Pest Free Banks Peninsula. She says these projects show Predator Free 2050 is a vision worth buying into. 

“The community support is huge, and people are seeing first-hand the benefits with increasing numbers of birds and other species. At our family bach on Waiheke, we never used to see kākā, but recently I saw six of them flying over us.” 

Predator Free 2050 is the change we needed for conservation – something big to aim for, she says.  She uses the example of Predator Free South Westland where DOC, Zero Invasive Predators and the local community are creating the largest mainland predator-free sanctuary. 

“The team are trying to keep this huge area clear of rats and stoats, while coming up with new tools and methods along the way. Of course there are re-invasion challenges, but most importantly they are learning how to manage these and make the predator removal process more cost-effective.” 

Creating space for young scientists to get involved

Although Elaine is retiring from DOC at the end of the year, she will continue be a champion for science and innovation in New Zealand. She hopes to see more opportunities created for younger scientists to step into her shoes.  

“Science jobs can be hard to find in conservation. We need to keep encouraging young people to come through the universities and create space for them. We don’t want smart young people going overseas because of a lack of investment here. 

“That’s why Predator Free 2050 is such an exciting mission – it’s capturing people’s imaginations across the country, and thankfully we have some resources to help make it happen.”  

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/new-stoat-bait-a-30-year-journey-for-predator-free-scientist/

Simulations vs reality

Beginning the journey

Travelling deeper

The destination

Exploiting insecurities

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/we-analysed-the-tiktok-history-of-142-men-heres-what-it-taught-us-about-the-manosphere/

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/whats-next-for-stephen-colbert-after-the-late-show/

May 23rd is World Fish Migration Day – a worldwide celebration of free-flowing rivers and the life they support. We have some very special fish here in Aotearoa, and this year we’re literally shining a spotlight on five species of galaxiid that move between freshwater and the sea during their lives.  

So, so, much more than fritter-fare 

The galaxiid species are collectively known as whitebait and they’re caught in their tens of thousands around the country as they migrate into and up rivers in the spring. And traditionally made into fritters. A touch of egg, salt, two minutes in the pan, white bread, squeeze of lemon, and you’re holding a Kiwi icon in your hand. 

But as we’re about to find out, there’s a whole lot more to whitebait than that.  

Before the 1960s many scientists thought whitebait was just one species – īnanga. But enter Bob McDowall, the ‘godfather’ of New Zealand freshwater ecology. In 1964, his research found several different species in the Awarua River in South Westland. Later that decade the five galaxiids we know today were described and reported in the scientific literature.  

Here’s roughly what’s in a typical whitebait catch: 
→ 85% īnanga (Galaxias maculatus)
→ 5–10% kōaro (Galaxias brevipinnis) and banded kōkopu (Galaxias fasciatus)
→ less than 1% giant kōkopu (Galaxias argenteus) and shortjaw kōkopu (Galaxias postvectis)

There are also likely to be smelt and possibly other species like eels present. (Fun fact: the name galaxiid comes from ‘galaxy’, after the starry pattern found on the skin of adult fish.) 

Digging into the mystery 

McDowall and his colleague Tony Eldon went on to publish a report called The Ecology of Whitebait Migrations in 1980. It’s become a bit of a classic.  

This was the first time the whitebait fishery had been examined in such detail (173 pages of detail), including the numbers and mix of species present, timing of whitebait runs, water level and temperature, salinity, sediment, weather conditions and day length reported across several rivers.

One of the most helpful things in the report is a line drawing of the five species, and information about how to tell them apart. 

McDowall rather delightfully notes: 

The species also differ in stoutness…G. fasciatus, though the smallest whitebait, is also the stoutest, G. brevipinnis is intermediate in stoutness, and G. maculatus is generally the largest and most slender. 

Time for an update 

That guide was published 46 years ago and we thought it was time to put out an updated version – something our staff and whitebait fishers could use to find out which species were being caught when and where around the country.  

We’re proud to be working with a contemporary expert, Professor Angus McIntosh. He’s a freshwater ecologist based at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury. Not only is he a freshwater researcher, he’s also a passionate and excellent photographer.  

“We’re essentially updating the identification guide, trying to figure out who all the galaxiids are, given the subtleties of how they’re different. It’s very interesting and quite a mystery – but also a lot of fun,” Angus says. 

The tech we have to hand now is a lot more powerful with digital photography, online databases like iNaturalist, affordable genetic analyses and AI species detection available.   

“One of the main differences is that McDowall worked on preserved or frozen specimens under a microscope. Our goal is to produce something that could be used with a fish viewing box or a good quality photo. Obviously that’s a lot more challenging.”  

While adult galaxiids look really different to each other as adults, they’re very similar as juveniles.  

“We’re looking to identify them when they’re about 5 cm long and have been in the rivers for just 4–6 weeks – before they develop pigmentation.” (Pigmentation is an adaptation that makes them less visible in freshwater than translucent sea-going fish.)

Close-up photography reveals patterns and colours that could help identify different species. Photo: Angus McIntosh 

Wriggly little fish just keep on swimming  

Photographing tiny fish isn’t easy, but Angus has developed a few techniques that make it possible.   

“I have a tank that I use, so I took this over to Hokitika and set it up in DOC’s garage. Suze Harris, DOC Freshwater Ranger, and I went out and caught a range of fish in streams and at the river mouth. We brought them back and put them into the tank to photograph, a few at a time.”  

The challenges build because the fish need to be square on, with head and tail in focus. This orientation best shows the features needed for identification.  

“When you’re working in macro, the depth of focus is very shallow, so there’s not much to work with. I’m also using flash with a soft box to reduce the shadows. And I have a big, black, blanket over the top of me to reduce the reflection in the glass of the tank.  

“So I’m sitting there trying really hard to get a fish in focus and fire the flash at the right time, under a blanket and only looking through the viewfinder. It’s quite comical!

Identifying characteristics  

Here are some of the stand-out features that generally help identify the species: 
→ Bandeds have big eyes.
→ Giants have big mouths.
→ Shortjaws have an undershot jaw even as juveniles.
→ Kōaro have a snout-shaped head. 

There are more subtle differences like how far the edge of the mouth extends under the eye, and the placement and angles of their fins.

Not only is this work replicating McDowall’s identification chart, it’s also showing up some quite new features.  

“We’ve noticed that bandeds have colouration on their heads that nobody has ever identified before – iridescent blue with white spots. Kōaro can be quite golden when they’re young, and kind of sit up a bit. Īnanga have a small mouth but develop pigmentation quite early. We’ve also seen distinctive colour patterns like two lines under their bellies that might be characteristic.”  

Zeroing in on a correct ID   

Even with these detailed photos, it’s not easy to distinguish some of the species. It’s also hard to find some of the rarer species, like shortjaw that only make up a really small percentage of the fish.  

“They’re the one in a hundred fish – so it’s going to take a few trips to the coast to get those done. The goal is to have photos of each species at four different life stages.   

“We talk to our colleagues and try to agree the characteristics among ourselves. We can also use genetic analysis to confirm the identifications of particular fish we’ve photographed.”

Research for a sustainable fishery  

In the foreword to McDowall’s report it says:  

Maintenance of the unique whitebait fishery poses a series of unusual problems, but it is quite apparent that appropriate resource management cannot be achieved unless the fish themselves are better understood. 

This premise is still true today – it’s the basis of our work to manage the whitebait fishery to ensure its sustainable and will be there for future generations.  

“We’re trying to solve the same problems – the fish haven’t changed but we’ve got much better methods than they had.”  

What has changed is the urgency of the task. Whitebait were once a plentiful resource but catches have declined, even from the 1980s, and all the species are now threatened or at-risk of extinction.  

Whitebait are in trouble because of the loss of spawning habitat, water pollution, predation by invasive species and barriers like dams, culverts and floodgates that make it hard for them to swim between rivers and the sea. 

“I hope my photos can support DOC in their important work to better understand and protect these amazing fish.”  

Thanks Angus – you’re a star 

Angus has generously shared his fish photos with us over the years. We are very grateful for the opportunity to use them – they show the beauty that would otherwise be missed. THANK YOU ANGUS!  

“When life is a bit less busy and maybe when I retire, I really want to spend 5 years on the photography – there are so many things that people just don’t get to see.”  

We’re definitely looking forward to that! (And we’ll let you know when the guide is done.)

Links 

McDowall and Eldon report
How you can help whitebait: Whitebait

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/22/smile-for-the-camera-using-new-tech-to-identify-baby-native-fish-2/

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/why-432hz-tuning-isnt-your-shortcut-to-health/

A once-controversial decision to prioritise access to type 2 diabetes medication for Māori and Pacific people is showing life-saving benefits, just as Pharmac proposes removing that access.

Pharmac is proposing to widen access to three type 2 diabetes medicines from August, it expects 10,000 more people will benefit, but in the process the criteria which enables access to Māori and Pacific people would be removed.

Type 2 diabetes has a long history in Graham King’s whānau, his grandmother died at 69 from complications with diabetes, his father was on dialysis and he was diagnosed in 1989 while living in Scotland.

“A lot of people think that because you eat bad food and you’re fat, you’re going to be a diabetic, but type 2 is all about the gene pool, right… and a complication of that gene pool is if you do become obese and stuff, there’s a good chance that you’re going to end up a diabetic.”

When King, who is a board member for Diabetes Foundation Aotearoa, returned to Aotearoa he took part in a trial for the drug Jardiance, it changed his life but he said it was out of reach for many Māori.

“No matter what stats you looked at for urban Māori, it’s really bad in relation to the way in which they receive treatment and all that sort of stuff, and a lot of it is because a lot of those people, especially in counties, can’t afford to go to a doctor, you know, I’ve just been lucky, and they also can’t afford the medications, you know, when Jardiance first came out, it was costing me a hundred dollars a month to take it, but it made a huge effect on my diabetes.”

‘Reduced mortality by up to fourfold’

Jardiance was among the medicines funded by Pharmac in 2021 with prioritised access for Māori and Pacific people.

A recent study, published in Diabetologia and led by the University of Waikato’s Dr Lynne Chepulis, found that sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors deliver a greater reduction in risk of death for Māori and Pacific communities.

Co-chair of Mahitahi Matehuka (National Diabetes Network) Dr Ryan Paul told RNZ if treatment began soon enough the medications could delay dialysis by up to 15 years.

Approximately one in 12 Māori have diabetes, and for Pacific people it is one in seven, compared to roughly one in 20 Pākehā, he said.

“It’s not only that Māori and Pacific are much more likely to get type 2 diabetes, but once they’ve got diabetes they’re at least twice more likely to develop complications from their diabetes and to die from their diabetes,” he said.

Pharmac announced last week it was seeking feedback on a proposal to widen access to empagliflozin, dulaglutide, and liraglutide (branded as Jardiance, Trulicity, and Victoza respectively).

In a statement Pharmac’s director advice and assessment Dr David Hughes said its equity focus was on making sure people with the highest health need could access effective treatment.

“If this proposal is approved, around 10,000 more people are expected to benefit from these medicines in the first year, increasing to around 23,000 after five years. We expect that around a third of the people who will benefit from widened access to these medicines will be from Māori and Pasifika backgrounds.

“No one currently receiving these medicines will lose access. They will continue treatment and will not be affected by the proposed changes.”

Pharmac’s expert advisors said expanding clinical eligibility would mean most Māori and Pacific peoples with type 2 diabetes would meet the proposed criteria, and that clinical criteria were an effective way to determine who has high health need, he said.

“The study published in Diabetologia shows that Māori and Pasifika people with type 2 diabetes and a high risk of cardiovascular, respiratory and related disorders will benefit from having access to diabetes medicines.

“Our expert advisors have told us that expanding clinical eligibility criteria by lowering the five-year cardiovascular risk threshold will mean most Māori and Pacific peoples with type 2 diabetes and at high risk of cardiovascular or renal disease will meet the proposed criteria.”

Associate Health Minister David Seymour welcomes proposal

Associate Health Minister David Seymour said Pharmac’s mandate is to help people based on their medical need regardless of their race.

“So if they’ve got an objective which is premised on helping people depending on their race that is now contrary to government policy, which is need not race.”

Seymour said very rarely was it the case that race was the only way to define need, although it could sometimes be an indicator.

“But if you look at the Cabinet circular on ‘need not race’ it requires agencies to look at all of the variables in front of them and use race as a variable for allocating resources only if there are no other good indicators.

“In this case I’m sure there probably are and that will [be] why they’ve made their decision, I, by the way, don’t get involved in their specific decisions.”

‘The scientific community does not believe this is a warranted decision’

Pharmacist prescriber Dr Leanne Te Karu told RNZ Pharmac’s 2021 decision was not done on a whim, it had wide support from clinicians and researchers. So last week’s announcement came as a surprise to her.

“I didn’t have, perhaps naively so, any inkling that this was going to be removed when we had been discussing where these medicines could be targeted even more so that they would benefit all of society and that was specifically in people who have got chronic kidney disease.”

Te Karu said she would like Pharmac to undertake consultation authentically and examine the evidence with an open mind.

“These medicines have been shown to move us towards the equity line for rate of death. I mean it’s so rare in medicine to have anything that we can demonstrate an equity outcome like this and, you know, this is huge bang for bucks across all of society so why we wouldn’t want to hold on to that and build from it, I’m left wondering.”

The evidence clearly showed that the ethnicity criteria was introduced precisely because clinical need was not being met equitably, she said.

“Māori and Pacific people develop diabetes and kidney disease significantly earlier, they experience more severe complications, less likely to receive timely evidence-based treatment despite this absolute greater need. So the criterion was not replacing clinical judgment, it was helping ensure that clinical need translated into actual access.

“If the health system were already delivering equitable assessment, prescribing and follow-up, the ethnicity criteria would never have been necessary. But everybody agreed that it was necessary in the first instance and the evidence has now shown that it’s improved access, it’s helped narrow survival inequities… So removing it before the underlying inequities are resolved just risks widening the gap again.”

Te Karu said clinicians have not been given any breakdown on the data Pharmac is using, making consultation much more difficult.

Paul agreed that Pharmac have not been willing to share its data.

“So we are going away to look at our own data to try and see whether their claims are true. But I think to put this in perspective this has led to a very strong response in the diabetes workforce, the diabetes scientific community, diabetes organisations as well and you will see.

“I think there’ll be a lot of joint submissions against the proposal to remove the ethnicity criterion… it’s non-Māori and non-Pacific who are actually aghast at this. The scientific community does not believe this is a warranted decision.”

One of the largest Iwi Māori Partnership Boards in the country, Waikato based Te Tiratū, is also calling on Pharmac to reconsider. Co-chair, Glen Tupuhi said treating all universally in the system did not create fairness, it entrenched inequity.

Consultation closes on 28 May, and if successful the changes would come into effect from August.

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/pharmac-proposes-removing-priority-access-of-type-2-diabetes-meds-for-maori-pacific/

Replacing public servants with artificial intelligence could come with more costs that will eat into any savings, say critics.

The government says the plan to cut another 8700 people sector jobs in about 40 core agencies will save $2.4 billion over four years.

The coalition government’s basic recipe for cutting the public sector size and wage bill is to reduce the head-count and increase use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

When Roger May, a retired forestry consultant of Motueka heard this, he emailed Finance Minister Nicola Willis to say that “is going to take time and money”.

He then told RNZ: “8700 knowledgeable bureaucrats are about to be axed. She expects that AI will replace a lot of these people.

“But there’s not been any explanation of the costs and time involved, and I wouldn’t mind betting that’s going to eat into their $2.4 billion.”

He got back an acknowledgement from the minister’s office.

‘I’m not aware of a current local AI provider’

Labour tried to get some details on Wednesday afternoon in Parliament, asking what the rollout and licensing cost of AI would be.

Digitising Government Minister Paul Goldsmith responded: “I don’t have that exact figure at the moment, but of course it varies.

“And what we inherited, of course, was a wide variety of arrangements in place across many government departments, and that is precisely why we’re putting together a more coherent and centrally guided system.”

Goldsmith was then asked if it would use local or overseas AI technology.

“Mister Speaker, I’m not aware of a current local AI provider in the scale of Claude or Copilot, but what I would say is that we’ll be making use of the best technology available.”

Claude and Copilot are leading AI models from US companies Anthropic and Microsoft.

ACT’s David Seymour then asked if the public sector would build its own silicon chips or import them.

Goldsmith replied, “My suggestion is that we focus on the things that we do well and sell them to the world and then we purchase the things that other people in the world do better than us and hopefully if we have made enough money in our economy we can afford to have the best ones.”

Professor Alexandra Andhov, chair of law and technology at the University of Auckland, foresaw huge challenges to the government’s savings goal, quite apart from the lack of clarity at how it settled on the $2.4b figure.

“The published material doesn’t really show the cost side of the AI,” she said on Wednesday.

Enterprise-scale AI was not a one-off buy but had ongoing costs in licence fees, model upgrades and responding to companies dictating when and how models were replaced or integrated, plus audit and oversight of its operations, Andhov added.

“And even I think more importantly, it’s to recognise that the costs that we pay for AI today are heavily subsidised while the AI companies are trying to capture as much of the market, these are not the real costs that AI will cost.”

Real-world pricing, and cyber security demands “will push up the cost of AI and generally any kind of digital infrastructure to such an extent that I think that we are not yet even in a position to foresee”, Andhov said.

The security landscape is in flux after Anthropic released its new model Mythos recently to a select few organisations to test how good it was for hacking. In response, one of the world’s largest cybersecurity firms Palo Alto Networks put out 26 security advisories at once last week – when it normally issues five a month – because Mythos had found so many more vulnerabilities than usual.

“We intend to fix every vulnerability we find before advanced AI capabilities become widely available to adversaries,” the US firm said.

Here, Treasury told public agencies last year they must prepare for the encryption-breaking threat of quantum computing due in 2030.

Andhov said there was still more cause for pause.

“But wait a second, who we are actually using, who are these AI providers?” she asked.

“To my understanding, the majority of the providers that government is considering are not New Zealand companies, not the companies that are governed by New Zealand law, but they are US-based companies that only need to comply with the US law, given the fact that also New Zealand doesn’t want to regulate AI.”

(The government has chosen a lighthanded approach to regulation.)

“If the New Zealand government ultimately uses, let’s say, Microsoft’s AI … then they’re paying OpenAI, which is based in California, which doesn’t pay any taxes [here].

“All of this amount is taken to the US and actually brings nothing back to New Zealand … and it has involved loss of jobs here.”

Australia is undergoing its own AI moves across its public sector AI, and it also relied on US Big Tech, said Jeannie Paterson, Professor of Law and director of the Centre of AI and Digital Ethics at the University of Melbourne.

But it had some things New Zealand did not have, like a new AI Safety Institute and a new AI Employment and Workplaces Forum that just had its first meeting with unions and businesses.

Australia also has a new central registry the public can use to check how agencies are using AI, [www.gov.au/articles/new-central-register-ai-transparency-statements-commonwealth-entities stating], “Bringing this information together in one place provides a clearer, more complete picture of AI use across government.”

“The first question to ask is, what’s the framework for deploying AI?” said Paterson.

“Because we know that AI is not the genie … and that there’s a number of risks. AI only works well with expert humans around it.

“So unless there’s an investment in training and resources from humans and a pretty clear democratic commitment to what role AI should be playing in society, then it’s sort of a rush to lowest, to the bottom.”

The New Zealand government has issued a Digital Government Target State for a centralised approach to improve tech while saving billions.

RNZ approached ministers Willis and Goldsmith for comment but they did not respond by deadline and they declined to do a recorded interview.

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/replacing-public-servants-with-ai-could-come-with-hidden-costs-critics-warn/

Health economists say the government will need to spend an additional $1.405 billion on health in Budget 2026 if it is to maintain the country’s current level of service.

The number is in a new report, commissioned by public health campaigners Kaitiaki Hauora, titled How much funding is needed for Health in the 2026 Budget? by Dr Jacqueline Cumming and Dr Bill Rosenberg.

Cumming, an independent health economist, said it considered factors like rising labour market costs, population growth, and the fact the population is aging.

“This is how much money we actually need to deliver the same set of services as we did last year,” she said. “If we get less than $1.405 billion for Vote Health next week, then we’re going backwards.”

Last year, the increase was $1.37b, bringing total health spending in 2025/26 to $32.7b.

Rosenberg, a former Council of Trade Unions economist and now part of Kaitiaki Hauora, explained: “So this is the amount that would just keep the current health system running at its current state, which many people would say is running down. It is enough to meet costs and population pressures.”

As Budgets tend to cover four-year periods, two previous budgets have now promised another $1.37b increase this year to cover what the government describes as “funding for core demographic, volume and price pressures for frontline health services delivered by Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora to maintain current health policy settings”.

Last year was a “record investment in healthcare”, Health Minister Simeon Brown said at the time.

But this number falls short of what these economists say is needed to fully fund the current system – and Rosenberg said it would leave any new initiatives unfunded.

How do we compare to other countries?

New Zealand usually spends less than the OECD average on health, aside from one year during the Covid pandemic, where our spending peaked later than the rest.

According to Rosenberg and Cumming’s report, Vote Health – that is, the portion of the Budget going towards health spending – was currently $1.1 billion below average.

But between 2010 and 2017, that gap was as wide as $3.2 billion per year on average (in 2025 dollars).

University of Auckland health policy professor Tim Tenbensel said when compared to other high-income countries, New Zealand used to rank quite well, up until about 2009.

“And then as the 2010s progressed, we fell behind, and we fell further and further and further behind over the course of that decade.”

There had been some significant increases in Budget 2022, Tenbensel said, “but now early indications are that the gap is opening up again”.

The UK was a useful comparator. They, too, began to drop off in the 2010s, but New Zealand more steeply. In contrast, Australia’s health spend as a proportion of GDP had increased during the 2010s.

“You see the effect of that in workers choosing to go to Australia for better salaries, for example.”

Where should we spend it?

Currently, wages made up about two-thirds of the operational cost of health.

Health economics professor Paula Lorgelly said the best bang for buck would come from investing in primary care – “putting things much further upstream to avoid any kind of downstream costs”.

GenPro, the association for general practice owners, has already called for an increase in investment in primary care from the current six percent of total health funding up to 14, in-line with international WHO/OECD benchmarks.

Cumming agreed. She said with hospitals under a huge amount of strain, “the tendency is to put the money into there, but where we really need it is in primary care and prevention services so that we actually try to keep people well, out of hospital”.

Te Whatu Ora was currently spending just 1.76 percent ($510m) of its overall budget on “population health”, Cumming said – that included things like cancer screening, vaccinations, pandemic prepardness and health initiatives involving tobacco, alcohol, food, and physical activity.

“We would like to see it move up to five percent,” she said.

In Australia, that made up about 4.8 percent – with the caveat that it was often hard to know exactly what services other countries were counting in their estimates.

Evidence pointed to “very high cost-benefit ratios of spending on population health”, Cumming said. “You get back what you put in.”

Hauora Māori service spending also needed to go up, according to the report.

Current spending was 2.68 percent of the total Vote Health – or $773m – and the authors say that needs to increase to five percent to address current inequities.

How long would it take to see a difference?

Tenbensel said increases in funding could take up to 15 years to start showing effects in health outcomes.

Cumming explained increasing vaccination rates would have almost an immediate effect, but investment in tobacco, smoking, cardiovascular disease and diet would take a lot longer.

Cancer screening programmes would take somewhere in the middle, she said. “It’s not going to happen immediately, but it’s even more reason why we need to do it, because every year we leave it is another year that our population health is not doing great.”

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/projected-health-funding-falls-short-to-maintain-status-quo/

Why are these essential?

Can’t I just take supplements?

Why do we have these deficiencies?

So what foods can help?

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/21/what-are-new-zealand-diets-deficient-in/

“River Lord” takes Senior Secondary Division Grand Award and “My Favourite Team” Award in Hang Seng x HKFYG Seek Our Ways Ideation Programme

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

From lecture halls in Malaysia to one of the world’s leading universities, ten students from MCKL College (Penang, Pykett Campus) have achieved a remarkable milestone by securing admissions at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

– Published and distributed with permission of Media-Outreach.com.

A disease which was once the biggest killer of children in New Zealand is having a resurgence in Australia.

ABC News is reporting more than 220 cases of diphtheria in 2026, primarily in the Northern Territory, but also in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.

The outbreak is the largest in decades, with the disease previously considered largely eradicated, and authorities are now waiting on confirmation of a reported death in the Northern Territory, which would be the first caused by diphtheria in almost a decade.

Professor of public health at Otago University Michael Baker explained diphtheria was a bacterial infection of the throat and skin – and nowadays, it was very rare.

But a century ago, it was the biggest killer of children in New Zealand, he said.

In its respiratory form, the bacteria produced a severe toxin which damaged the heart, nerves and kidneys. The other form, a chronic skin infection, caused ulcers on the skin.

“What it used to do is circulate very widely in households, particularly where there is household crowding, and that’s probably what is driving this really remarkable outbreak in Australia at the moment,” Baker said.

High income countries generally had good vaccination against this disease. In New Zealand, the last case of respiratory diphtheria had been in 1998 – more than 25 years ago.

There had also been occasional skin infections, Baker said, but those were more easily managed and they too were rare.

Antibiotic treatment was effective – if received in time – and sometimes an anti-toxin was given to prevent damage caused by the bacteria.

“It’s going to be very tough in Australia where they’ve got tens of cases occurring in quite remote communities, and so healthcare might be quite a long way off for these mainly children,” he said.

How worried should New Zealanders be?

With regular movement of people between Australia and New Zealand, the risk of importing cases was slightly elevated by this outbreak across the ditch, Baker said.

“It does increase the concern for all countries in the region, but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge problem for New Zealand.”

But, it was a reminder not to be complacent about vaccination “and our coverage levels actually are less than Australia for this vaccine”, he said.

According to Health NZ data, the percentage of fully vaccinated young children in New Zealand is in the mid-80s.

In Australia, vaccination rates in children had been higher than 90 percent since 2000, according to the Australian government.

Anyone, of any age, could receive a booster, Baker said, as immunity warned over the course of a lifetime. A booster can cost between $40 and $90 depending on where you book, according to Te Whatu Ora.

Usually it is administered to babies, as part of a single vaccination against tetanus, whooping cough and polio.

Then, boosters were offered from the age of four – and anyone unsure of their vaccination status should get one, he said.

“We can’t be complacent about these diseases,” Baker said.

“Because they used to be huge killers, and they’ve largely disappeared because of high vaccine coverage, people are starting to think, ‘Oh, I don’t need to worry about that anymore’. But actually, that’s not the case at all.”

Symptoms of diphtheria, according to Te Whatu Ora

Diphtheria can affect either the throat or the skin. Many people have no symptoms.

When diphtheria affects your throat it can cause:

• thick, grey-white coating at the back of the throat which can block breathing and cause death
• fever
• sore throat
• difficulty breathing
• headache
• difficulty swallowing
• bad breath
• sleepiness
• throat and neck swelling caused by swollen glands known as a ‘bull neck’
• bark-like cough

If diphtheria affects your skin, it can cause:

• pus-filled blisters on the skin
• large ulcers surrounded by red, sore-looking skin

Complications can include heart issues or failure, paralysis, kidney failure or death.

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/diphtheria-resurging-in-australia-one-person-reportedly-dead/

As the only university that’s an official nominator in New Zealand, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington is privileged to announce its choice of nominees for the The Earthshot Prize.

The six local climate solutions nominated for the multimillion-dollar funding represent the very best of Kiwi innovation, and the power of people coming together to tackle global environmental challenges.

They include bale wrap made from jute, packaging made from mushrooms, and interior design panels made from recycled plastic. Collective efforts are helping to clean the ocean from plastic pollution, to support farming be more sustainable, and to grow kelp forests.

Andrew Wilks, Manutaki—Director, Sustainability at Victoria University of Wellington, says, “As a sustainability thought leader in New Zealand, Vic Uni is charged as an official nominator in a global network of 361 nominators for The Earthshot Prize.

“There were remarkable applications again this year, but Vic Uni is excited to elevate these six New Zealand solutions to the world stage through The Earthshot Prize because every single one has the power to change the world. They’re affordable, immediately scalable, and could create true global transformation.”

Mr Wilks says the prize is awarded to projects that highlight human ingenuity, drive change, and inspire collective action.

“The very best national qualities are clear in our successful New Zealand nominees. There’s the No. 8 wire ingenuity that’s led to developing alternatives to plastic or reusing it by Critical, Mushroom Material, and KiwiEconet. Meanwhile, the power of the Kiwi working bee is evident in the community-building work of AgriZeroNZ, Mountains to Sea Wellington Trust, and Sea Cleaners.”

Our six New Zealand nominees for the Earthshot Prize 2026 are:

AgriZeroNZ: The public-private partnership AgriZeroNZ invests to accelerate the development and deployment of tools for farmers to reduce agricultural emissions while staying profitable and productive. Half-owned by the New Zealand government and half-owned by major agribusinesses and banks, it’s driving solutions for pasture-based farms that can be scaled globally.

Critical.: Critical. is a Māori-led clean-tech company transforming hard-to-recycle plastic waste into near carbon-neutral circular building materials called Cleanstone. Made in Aotearoa from 100 percent reclaimed plastic waste, Cleanstone replaces short-life interior materials that typically end up in landfill after only a few years. Critical. is now developing compact microfactories designed to help communities around the world transform local waste into high-value materials, jobs, and circular economic opportunity through regenerative manufacturing.

KiwiEconet: This Southland invention of 100 percent natural and organic jute fibre netting, KiwiEconet, replaces the plastic wrap used for baling hay and silage. It is eco-friendly, biodegradable and edible by livestock, with nutritional benefits.

Mountains to Sea Wellington Trust: The Love Rimurimu project, led by the Mountains to Sea Wellington Trust, is restoring declining kelp forests in Wellington Harbour through science, community action, and Indigenous partnership. It also empowers communities with hands on education and open source knowledge sharing.

Mushroom Material: A fully biodegradable alternative to expanded polystyrene on which the packaging industry relies is Mushroom Material. The innovation lies in mycelium-based pellets, designed to integrate seamlessly with existing moulding equipment, making the switch to a sustainable solution a truly viable option.

Sea Cleaners: Sea Cleaners operates a fleet of purpose-built vessels intercepting plastic pollution at the final point before it disperses beyond recovery, removing millions of litres of waste from waterways each year. Now expanding into the Pacific, it is building an island-led clean-up network that combines on-water recovery, data, and circular recycling to stop plastic pollution at scale.

The Sustainable Business Network encouraged applications for nominations from its Next List—the innovators, entrepreneurs, projects, and organisations who were finalists in its Sustainable Business Awards. Mushroom Material and Critical are successful nominees from these recommendations.

James Griffin, General Manager at Sustainable Business Network, says, “What’s exciting about these nominations is that they show world-class sustainable innovation is already emerging in Aotearoa New Zealand—not as distant ideas, but as practical, scalable solutions solving real problems right now. We’re thrilled to see Critical and Mushroom Material nominated for the world’s most prestigious environmental award. Both were selected because they’re on our Next list, which exists to help elevate the innovators building tomorrow’s economy today.”

About the Earthshot Prize

Every year in the 2020s, The Earthshot Prize Trust, led by Prince William, will award £1 million ($1.9 million) each to five environmental solutions. The global search identifies the most ambitious and inspiring solutions to the planet’s greatest environmental challenges across five goals or ‘Earthshots’: ‘Protect and Restore Nature’, ‘Clean our Air’, ‘Revive our Oceans’, ‘Build a Waste-Free World,’ and ‘Fix our Climate’.

In 2023, one of Victoria University of Wellington’s nominees, Sea Forest Ltd, made the highly-competitive global shortlist to be one of the fifteen finalists for The Earthshot Prize. This year’s finalists will be announced in September, and the winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in Mumbai in November.

MIL OSI

Explainer – Everybody knows what a stalker is. But until this month, stalking wasn’t officially a crime.

The Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill creates a new offence for stalking and will take effect on Tuesday 26 May, after a years-long battle by anti-stalking advocates pushing for change.

“This is certainly a step in the right direction,” said the government’s Chief Victims Advisor Ruth Money.

Here’s what you need to know.

What will this bill do?

For the first time, stalking is now codified as an actual criminal offence under the law. It will become punishable by up to five years in prison.

“The law will protect people against this pattern of behaviour, which has never been done before,” Money said.

Wait a minute, was stalking legal until now?

Not exactly.

Some stalking behaviours were already illegal and could be covered under legislation like the Harmful Digital Communication Act and the Harassment Act 1997, but stalking itself was not specifically defined under the Crimes Act.

The new law lays out what exactly counts as stalking and makes a series of amendments to the Act and other legislation to include it.

“This legislation, which creates a new offence of stalking and harassment, is long overdue,” Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said at the bill’s passing in November. It’s just taking effect now to allow for training and implementation.

“We haven’t traditionally looked after victims and survivors of stalking at all well,” Money said.

“For us to have a stalking law that now acknowledges a pattern of events which many, many victim-survivors were suffering at the hands of, is certainly a transformation within that space, for sure.”

There had been a push to make stalking illegal for years, but the key tipping point for the law changes was the murder of 21-year-old law student Farzana Yaqubi in 2022.

She had made several reports to police about her stalker, Kanwarpal Singh, before her death. The Independent Police Conduct Authority later found multiple failings in how police responded to Yaqubi’s concerns.

“Stalking can culminate in the worst crime, being homicide,” Money said.

In 2024, a petition signed by more than 20,000 people was presented to Parliament demanding a bill to make stalking illegal.

So what counts as stalking?

Stalking is usually seen as repeated harassment and threats. In a policy briefing in 2022, a collection of groups calling for the law noted that “it is a form of abuse”.

“Women are disproportionately affected by stalking, particularly young women, disabled women, rainbow women and likely wāhine Māori, while migrants and ethnic minorities may experience unique forms of stalking.

“The most dangerous, and persistent stalking is conducted by ex-partners of women, with child contact being a particular risk factor.”

The Crimes Act amendments define stalking as anyone who engages in a pattern of behaviour against another person “knowing that it is likely to cause fear or distress” on at least two separate occasions within a period of two years.

The specified acts will include:

• Watching, following, loitering near or obstructing a person
• Recording or tracking
• Contacting or communicating with the person
• Damaging, devaluing, moving, entering or interfering with taonga or property (including pets) that the person has an interest in
• Damaging or undermining a person’s reputation, opportunities or relationships
• Publishing statements or other material relating to a person or pretending to be from that person – which other material from the Justice Committee also defines as “doxing”, or “collating and publishing private and identifying information about an individual, including posting information on their behalf”
• Acting in any way that would cause fear or distress to a reasonable person

It also takes into account acts done to any third party who is known to a stalking target that are done “wholly or partly” because of that person’s relationship to the target.

The law also lays out that these acts could be done in person but also through means including digital applications, drones, spyware, tracking applications or the use of artificial intelligence.

The law also makes changes to other legislation:

• Anyone convicted of stalking in the previous 10 years will be disqualified from having a firearms license.
• The Family Violence Act will now include stalking under its definition of psychological violence
• Restraining orders can be made under the Harassment Act and Harmful Digital Communications Act if someone is convicted of stalking
• Stalking-related aggravating factors can be considered in extending sentences for those convicted of other crimes

What penalties will there be?

If you’re found guilty of stalking you could face a prison term of up to five years.

Constitutional lawyer Graeme Edgeler noted that the law may not stop all stalkers, but it does give anti-stalking measures more teeth.

“Stalking behaviours are already highly deviant behaviours. Those engaging in it probably aren’t rationally weighing up the possible consequences in advance.

“I doubt many stalkers will be discouraged from stalking because of the new law, so if the law is to have effect it will have to be through the police and courts taking stalking more seriously.”

How exactly is it going to be enforced?

Police are “well prepared” for the law, acting director for prevention Inspector Natasha Allan told RNZ.

A constable can now “notify a person in writing that their behaviour is causing, or is likely to cause, fear or distress to the victim and that engaging in that behaviour may constitute an offence”, she said.

“The notice system in the act builds on the existing Harassment Act letters that police previously developed.

“A person can only be charged with the stalking offence once two specified acts have been committed within a two-year period, as set out in the legislation,” she added. “However, a formal notice can be issued after a single specified act.

“This notice is not simply a warning, it creates a legal presumption that the person is aware their behaviour is causing fear or distress. If a further specified act occurs, this provides a strong foundation for police to take prosecution action.”

Police will also be required to inform victims before giving a warning to people who may be stalking them.

“As part of that process police will talk to the victim to discuss their safety and ensure a plan is in place for both when the notice is served and afterwards,” Allan said.

“Our focus is first and foremost on the victim’s safety and wellbeing. We want victims to feel supported and reassured, with a clear plan in place and confidence that they can contact police at any time if they feel unsafe.”

Stalking behaviours don’t necessarily have to involve criminal charges under the new law, Money said, and can involve a variety of court orders depending on the situation.

Money said the select committee process for the draft bill and testimony by victims was helpful in focusing the law and making some changes, such as reducing the threshold for the number of stalking incidents from three to two.

“I was humbled by the bravery and the resilience of the victims who didn’t have to but chose to speak up and share their story with politicians that they don’t know in a scary room.”

Leonie Morris of the Auckland Women’s Centre is the project lead for Aotearoa Free From Stalking.

“This law has significant potential to make stalking victim-survivors and all our communities safer,” she said. “However, its effectiveness will ultimately depend on how it is implemented and resourced by the state.”

What’s being done to get ready for the law?

“Police have made a really concerted effort in a short amount of time to operationalise this new law,” Money said.

“More than 80 percent of staff have already completed online training, demonstrating strong workforce readiness,” Allan said. “Police are committed to ensuring all staff complete this training and work is actively underway to achieve full completion across the organisation.”

Allan said it has been a cross-agency approach with the Ministry of Justice, the Centre for Family Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention and the Ministry for Women.

Some of the clauses in the law could be seen as open to interpretation, such as what constitutes behaviour “knowing that it is likely to cause fear or distress”.

“Where a notice has been given, it creates a presumption in court that the person knows their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress,” Allan said. “The onus is on the defendant to rebut this presumption on the balance of probabilities.”

Some stalkers may have mental health issues, as well, Money said.

“(The law) will go some way for deterrence for some people but it certainly is not going to help the medically obsessed mental health challenges, for example, but no law will, that’s a health response that’s required.”

Is there a chance that free speech ideas could come into conflict with the law?

Edgeler said “the law already prohibits death threats, and threatening other physical harm,” and the definitions in the stalking law are “a justified restriction”.

“Of course, anytime you give police the power to arrest someone, and the state the power to prosecute some, there’s a risk that someone will apply the law incorrectly or overzealously, but that’s a reason for police and the courts to be careful, not to not have a law dealing with stalking.”

Does the law go far enough?

“The law isn’t quite everything we hoped for – but it is better than the bill that was first introduced,” Morris said.

She said there will be much to be seen in how the law works in practice, and it’s troubling that other services that help victims are facing cuts.

“We need adequate and fit-for-purpose safety and support services for stalking victims – including those being targeted outside of a family violence context.

“We see zero evidence these stalking-response services have been created – while funding has been taken away from general support and services such as women’s centres and women’s self-defence, as well as ACC sexual violence prevention. Overall, the picture is bleak.”

Aotearoa Free From Stalking and others have called for the government to provide specialised stalking advisors who can help victims through the process.

“Addressing this gap must be a priority,” Morris said.

Police said they aren’t introducing such advisors themselves, but “significant work has been undertaken to strengthen how staff support victims,” including engaging with specialists.

“This has helped ensure our approach is victim-focused, culturally responsive, and reflects diverse lived experiences across rainbow, ethnic, and other communities,” Allan said.

Police have also worked with multiple groups and agencies in a coordinated approach to develop public information on the new law, Allan said.

What else needs to be done?

Stalking is being talked about more than ever, with projects such as the new local documentary series Stalked or Louis Theroux’s dive into the misogyny of the “manosphere.”

That doesn’t mean it’s happening less, Morris said.

“It’s unclear what is happening exactly – is stalking more talked about because more of it is happening?”

“Orchestrated campaigns of disinformation and online and offline attacks on leaders who are wāhine Māori or other women and/or queer leaders have massively increased over the last few years, as outlined recently in the Mana Wahine hearings at the Waitangi Tribunal.

“Ideally, the state will work to prevent people committing stalking offences in the first place – for example, public awareness campaigns to increase respect for women, as power and control over women is a key driver of stalking behaviour.”

Stalking via social media also remains tricky to deal with, Money said. Platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram aren’t being held accountable for stalking behaviour that occurs via their technology.

“I think the companies need a lot more regulation and proactive management, not reactive management. There is a lot of things going on in that wild world of technology that needs a lot more regulation.”

Money said that curtailing stalking behaviours is ultimately the work of everyone.

“Ideally, we wouldn’t need the law, right? Ideally there would be prevention in our communities. People would be held to account for their behaviour by their friends – if you notice that your mate’s getting a bit creepy and keeps suggesting to go to a certain bar to follow someone, for example – you know, there are things that we can all do to help people.

Money said she encourages workplaces, universities, schools “to challenge themselves. What are you going to do to keep people safe?”

“Don’t expect someone to ask for help. Be the help, offer help, ask if everyone’s all right, but also call out obsessive behaviour for what it is and try to stop that harmful behaviour.”

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/explainer-how-new-zealands-new-anti-stalking-laws-will-work/

An economist says more than 3500 jobs could be cut in Wellington, and the capital is set to “bear the brunt” of a major shake-up to the public service.

Some residents and cafe-owners fear the government’s plans will crush the city’s morale, leaving it a “ghost town”.

But senior ministers from Wellington insist the capital is more than a “boring” hub for bureaucrats, with the mayor pushing the city’s tech sector.

3700 jobs may go in Wellington alone – economist

The government has plans to slash the public sector workforce – which sits at about 64,000 – by 14 percent, or 8700 jobs, by mid 2029 in a move it says will save the country $2.4 billion.

Are you a public servant affected by these job cuts? Email iwitness@rnz.co.nz

A number of ministries are set to be amalgamated, and most agencies will have operating budgets shaved by 2 percent in the coming year, then by a further 5 percent in the next two.

The Defence Force, Corrections and the Ministry of Health were so far excluded from the shake-up.

Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon said he expected Wellington to be hit hardest by the plans.

He said looking at numbers from the Public Service Commission and applying the 14 percent cut to the city’s core public service population of just over 27,000 – excluding frontline roles in education and health – could mean job losses of around 3700 for Wellington.

“Based on [Finance Minister Nicola] Willis stating a target of 8700 jobs gone from the core public service, that works out to about 1.3 percent of all jobs in Wellington. For all other regions it’s a much smaller share, sort of 0.3 percent or less.”

Applying the 14 percent reduction to Canterbury’s 6700 public service equated to 909 jobs, or 0.3 percent of the region’s total jobs, Brunsdon said. He said Manawatū-Whanganui, Northland and West Coast had a 0.3 percent reduction through this modelling.

About 42 percent of public service employees are concentrated in Wellington, and the rest spread throughout the country.

“Those sorts of back-office – if you will – jobs are mostly concentrated in Wellington in those government agencies, and that’s why cutting the core public service hits Wellington so much harder,” Brunsdon said. “If it was a target across the entire public service it would be spread a little bit more evenly across the country.”

Brunsdon said it was important to ensure the public service was not bloated.

“The point of the government isn’t to support Wellington, and ultimately it’s funding what it does through taxes on everyone. So we’ve got to make sure those taxes are fair and we are getting fair bang-for-buck for everyone.”

But he said the challenge with the plan was how each agency would apply a budget cut directive, and it might miss a wider view of where investment is needed overall.

Willis said the changes will be phased in over several years, and it was too soon to say where specifically they will occur.

“Wellington and other centres will have time to adjust. The labour market is dynamic. Every quarter, something like 150,000 jobs are created in New Zealand.”

Cafe owner calls move ‘heartless’, resident fears ‘ghost town’

The view from some parts of Lambton Quay was less optimistic.

Kirsten Saunders, co-owner of Smith the Grocer Cafe, said the last round of public sector cuts saw foot traffic dry up – and the prospect of more job losses was crushing.

“You see the stress that it takes on all the people coming in who are going through the restructures and losing their jobs.

“That was very noticeable here, because we see a lot of those sort of business meetings, meetings with recruitment agents, recruitment agents were telling us that there’s just not a lot of jobs around, lots of people hunting for them.”

Saunders said the city had not fully recovered from its economic downturn, and this was another blow.

“People just don’t have the same discretionary spend… The current government seems a little heartless, I would suggest. It would be nice to see a bit more compassion.”

Wellington resident Tracy Day said the culture in Wellington was already dying, but the cuts would finish it off.

“People aren’t going to want to stay in Wellington, then the shops are empty, the rates go up, and Wellington’s just going to be another ghost town.”

As a mum, she worried for students leaving university and looking for jobs.

Kim Thomas said the cuts would not be good for the city.

“You’re already seeing lots of shops close and cafes close and restaurants close… It’ll probably be more of that.”

Sagar Sharma, who owns the Annexe Cafe and Cafe Coffee Station in central Wellington, said he had reduced staff about 30 percent over the past two years, due to a combination of the public sector job cuts and a new working-from-home culture.

A recent move of the Wellington City Council offices had not helped Annexe Cafe, he said. He doubted both businesses could remain open if thousands of jobs were slashed in the capital.

“At the moment, we are 11.30, it’s almost 12 o’clock, we have four customers in the cafe… If [the job cuts happen] I don’t think we will survive anymore.”

But Mia Tracey from Dough Bakery, Slice and Pickle and Pie, said she was trying to keep positive amid the unfortunate news.

“We just have to continue to ride the metaphorical wave. Control what we can control and try to have a positive outlook.”

She said the city library’s recent opening was good news, and could breathe some new life back into the CBD.

Not just a ‘public sector town’ – ministers

Willis said Wellington was more than just a hub for bureaucrats, with an extraordinary film and tech industry and world-leading firms.

Senior minister and MP for Hutt Valley, Chris Bishop, agreed.

“We’ve got to stop stereotyping Wellington as just a boring, public service town… it is so much more than that and we’ve got to stop thinking about it like that.”

Bishop said Wellingtonians and Hutt Valley residents he talked to wanted a high-quality, “fit for purpose” public service.

When asked whether public servants might feel vilified, Bishop said people would have a range of reactions to the news, but he valued the contribution of the public servants he worked with

Wellington Mayor Andrew Little said the cuts would spread anxiety for residents and businesses as people wondered “when the axe is going to fall”.

But he said the city had a strong tech sector, which he hoped would provide resilience.

“We have a really strong tech sector, not just fin-tech but govt-tech, technology that supports government, so this is a city that can help the government make a difference.”

Little said he would be contacting senior ministers to discuss the impact on the city.

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/heartless-fears-wellington-will-be-ghost-town-after-public-service-cuts/

A national study has found New Zealand children’s enjoyment of reading, writing and maths has dropped, in some cases significantly.

The number of older primary school children who do not enjoy the subjects has doubled since 2018/19, as has the percentage who believe they are not good at them.

The figures come from the Curriculum Insights Study, which tested representative groups of children each year, and its predecessor, the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA).

The studies were conducted for the Education Ministry by the University of Otago and New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER).

They showed the percentage of Year 8s who said they did not like reading climbed from 8 percent in 2019, to 11 percent in 2023 and 16 percent in 2025.

In the same period, the percentage of Year 8s who did not agree they were good at reading was 6 percent in 2019, 4 percent in 2023 and 13 percent in 2025.

Year 6 students’ enjoyment of reading also dropped – with 11 percent saying they did not enjoy the subject in 2025, up from 4 percent in 2023; while 10 percent believed they were not good at reading, up from 2 percent in 2023.

Year 3 students’ enjoyment of reading improved – with 10 percent saying they disliked it in 2025, compared to 13 percent in 2023 – but the number who believed they were good at it fell from 15 percent to 8 percent, respectively.

However, the 2019 NMSSA had just 6 percent of Year 4 students disliking reading, and 3 percent believing they were not good at reading.

In maths, 9 percent of Year 8s did not like the subject in 2018, rising to 13 percent in 2022 and 19 percent last year.

The percentage of Year 8s who believed they were not good at maths increased from 9 to 12 to 19 percent in that period.

Researcher explains

One of the researchers, Sue McDowall from the NZ Council for Educational Research, said some of the drop might be because children were asked if they liked the subjects after completing a number of tests and previously they were asked as part of a survey.

Even so she said enjoyment was down across the board.

“We see internationally and in New Zealand a general overall downward trend in reading motivation over time.”

McDowall said the study did not show why enjoyment was falling, and there was not enough evidence to show if the decline had accelerated.

“There’s some speculation and hypotheses out there, also in the international literature, to do with screen time, for example, although we do have to remember that students do read on screens as well as on paper… but we don’t really know the reason.”

McDowall said the trend was important.

“It really matters. Let’s take reading again as an example. We know there’s a bi-directional relationship between being motivated to read and your achievement as a reader.

“It works both ways, so that students who are successful readers, who achieve well on reading, are motivated readers. And if students’ reading motivation is high, then they achieve well.

“So it’s really important that teachers not only focus on teaching children how to read texts and to make meaning of them and to critically analyse them and to use them to meet their own needs.

“It’s also important that teachers provide children with opportunities to engage with texts and to read for pleasure, to read to meet their own interests and needs, to become motivated readers and see reading as something that they want to do in their own time.”

Other perspectives

AUT associate professor Ruth Boyask said New Zealand was joining an international trend picked up by the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) a few years ago.

“[In the] PIRLS report in 2021, there seemed to start to be for the first time some noticeable decline in enjoyment levels for children in New Zealand, and prior to that we were kind of bucking the trend really because reading enjoyment has been declining internationally for a while.”

Boyask said she had examined the NMSSA data in depth and it showed that children enjoyed reading more if they had control over what they read and less direction from teachers.

She said the government’s focus on structured literacy approaches to reading might be affecting that.

“There are differences of approaches that are being promoted within the educational and school environment at the moment that perhaps are moving away from children being more actively involved and engaged in their reading.”

The principal of Point Chevalier School in Auckland, Stephen Lethbridge, was critical of strict adherence to the structured approach but said it was too early to know if that was driving down children’s love of learning.

“What we do know as good teachers is that having quality books, talking about what kids are learning, especially at Years 4, 5 and 6 we’re getting into talking about themes, talking about what’s going on in stories and that may not be happening as much in the senior school anymore as they are also doing structured literacy at the moment.”

Auckland University associate professor Fiona Ell said the results could be influenced by the after-effects of the Covid lockdowns.

“We do need to think about what Covid means for people’s learning and their attitudes towards learning and learning in institutions and going back to school.

“All those things, I think, are having a much larger impact and a longer tail of impact than we perhaps realise.”

Ell said it was possible the new, more difficult maths curriculum introduced last year, together with a different approach to teaching maths, had affected students – but difficult work did not necessarily put children off learning.

“Plenty of enjoyment can come from the satisfaction of mastering something and knowing you can do it.”

Ell said it was also possible the government’s new English and maths curriculums were contributing to the decline.

“I suspect that students perhaps see less of themselves in these subjects, less opportunity for self-expression, for exploration. Children are naturally curious and interested.

“They have things to say, they have interests, things they want to read about, things they want to find out about, things that they’d like to work out mathematically and we’ve sort of eliminated the space for that.”

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/childrens-enjoyment-of-reading-writing-and-maths-drops/

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/getting-the-kids-to-school-drives-me-bananas-how-can-we-make-mornings-calmer/

Scientists are once-again raising concerns about de-extinction as a US biotech company promotes a “major breakthrough” in artificial egg technology.

Colossal Biosciences on Wednesday announced the development of an artificial egg that it says is a crucial step toward resurrecting the South Island giant moa – a project financially backed by filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson and run in partnership with Ngāi Tahu Research Centre and Canterbury Museum.

Colossal said 26 chickens had been successfully hatched from its largely transparent, silicone-based membrane lattice, which it said could be produced at scale and at any size.

Chief biological officer Andrew Pask said an artificial egg is necessary in any attempt to bring back the moa, as no living species is large enough to be a surrogate host.

The large flightless bird died out around 500 years ago.

Pask described the recent developments as “major, major breakthroughs”.

University of Otago associate professor and paleogeneticist Nic Rawlence has been an outspoken critic of Colossal’s mission and claims of de-extinction.

He noted there was no data or peer-reviewed publication to go with Colossal’s announcement, but nevertheless considered its artificial egg a breakthrough.

“Credit where credit is due, this is really impressive work that could result in a new tool in the conservation toolbox in the future.

“Combined with genome engineering techniques still in development, [this technology] may be able to reverse the impacts of inbreeding on low hatching success for example.”

But he warned it was no “silver bullet” – the grunt work of conservation remained critical.

For him, the impressive development was the artificial egg membrane that allowed oxygen to diffuse from the environment into the egg – overcoming a decades-old gas-exchange hurdle.

He said despite the achievement, moa de-extinction was not imminent.

“It still requires an embryo and yolk to be carefully added to the artificial egg. Given the large size differences between chicken eggs and emu (up to 12 times bigger) and moa (up to 80 times bigger), there won’t be enough yolk in living birds’ eggs for the development of a giant ‘moa’ chick.

“The development of a genetically engineered emu and calling it a moa for no good conservation or ecological reason is still a long way off.”

Rawlence remained concerned about opposition to de-extinction from some iwi but hoped the technology would be made publicly available for conservation.

His university colleague, associate professor and geneticist Michael Knapp said the future of the technology raised many questions, but considered the artificial egg to have real conservation potential when combined with gene-editing.

He said species such as kākāpō and the kakī/black stilt – which only had a few hundred birds left – could profit from both breeding in artificial eggs and introducing genetic variation.

Knapp said Colossal had drawn criticism from him previously, and others, around its de-extinction announcements.

“But the longer I look at it, the more I think, it doesn’t really matter how its communicated. The innovation is real and the progress is real and it’s done with money, which I’m fairly certain would otherwise not have been available for conservation research.”

Massey University professor and animal welfare scientist Ngaio Beausoleil said Colossal’s achievement did nothing to address the “ethical, ecological and social complexities of this and other applications of genetic technologies to animals”.

She said the necessary checks and balances were not in place to protect the welfare of ‘some day animals’, and considered the Gene Technology Bill – awaiting its second reading – a missed opportunity.

“The concern for us as animal welfare scientists is that we have seen first-hand just how difficult it is to change systems once they come into existence, systems that are found to cause animal suffering and once they’re in place they’re incredibly difficult to change.

“We kind of get a ‘Pandora’s box’ situation, where once something is possible … it’s very unlikely we’re going to be able to put a stop to it.”

She wanted to see rules in place that embedded animal welfare evaluation in such technological development.

Not ‘Jurassic Park’ – Colossal

On the subject of animal welfare concerns, Pask said a committee was currently considering the ethical and policy implications of the potential release of a de-extinct Tasmanian tiger.

He said such work would begin for each de-extinct animal that approached potential release.

“I think the saddest thing would be to make a moa or to make a Tasmanian tiger but not have the ability to actually put it back into the environment.”

Pask said the data underpinning the technology would ultimately go through a peer-reviewed process, but considered the implications for conservation warranted early announcements.

He told RNZ the de-extinction projects brought in money that could not be found in conservation, and ultimately Colossal’s tools would be made freely available for conservation purposes.

“Colossal now has agreed that any of the technologies they develop – if they’re being applied purely for conservation and not for any money gain – they always will be able to be used free-of-charge for any conservation outcome.”

Pask believed public opposition to Colossal would diminish as understanding of its technology improved maintaining the company was carrying out “core conservation biology” and was not “Jurassic Park”.

He said even if the technology simply led to more genetic diversity among critically endangered New Zealand birds, it was “a huge win and outcome from the work that we’re doing”.

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/scientists-concerned-about-de-extinction-ethics-as-biotech-company-heralds-breakthrough/

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/remembering-strangers-who-saved-their-lives/

A multibillion-dollar de-extinction company believes it is one step closer to resurrecting New Zealand’s largest and long-extinct flightless bird.

Colossal Biosciences – headquartered in Texas – is heralding a “major breakthrough” in its development of an artificial egg that it says is crucial to giant moa – which died out around 500 years ago – once again walking the earth.

The company said it had successfully hatched 26 chickens from a novel artificial egg, designed to be reproduced at scale and at any size.

The biotech company, which recently claimed to have resurrected the ‘dire wolf’, has courted controversy with its de-extinction projects, with critics questioning the ethics of de-extinction and whether it is even a valid claim.

Although its South Island giant moa project faced some backlash when it was announced almost a year ago, it has financial backing from filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson and is run in partnership with Ngāi Tahu Research Centre and Canterbury Museum.

[embedded content]

Colossal’s Australia-based chief biology officer, Andrew Pask, is convinced a lack of understanding is the main thing standing in the way of public support and said while the company’s core goal is to restore species, it also wants to use its technology to prevent further extinctions.

Speaking to RNZ, Pask – who is also a professor at the University of Melbourne – said the company’s latest technological development was a significant step in solving the chicken and egg conundrum inherent in the moa project.

Pask said the company is currently sequencing the moa genome (based on bone DNA) and hopes to find it only differs by a few percentage points from the genome of its closest living relatives, emu and the South American tinamou.

After that, he said a living relative’s cells – the best candidate – could be genetically edited with moa-specific genes.

“Once we have that, the cell needs to be turned back into a living bird and for that, there’s currently no surrogate bird species that lays an egg big enough, so we had to make the Colossal artificial egg.”

He said the egg’s silicone-based membrane – a 3D-printed lattice shell – allowed oxygen to diffuse inside, overcoming a major design hurdle since first attempts in the 1980s.

Pask said previous artificial eggs required high levels of oxygen to be piped in, causing damage to the DNA and long-term health of the growing chick.

“So we had to engineer the artificial egg, really from the ground up again.

“We wanted to make it as close as possible to development inside the natural egg, because we want to be able to hatch birds that are going to have a normal lifespan, normal reproductive capacity, so that we can use this for conservation purposes as well as recreating the moa – so we need to be able to recreate that really large egg.”

The egg could be used in a standard incubator, and in addition to good gas-exchange across the egg’s ‘shell’ the transparent design also enabled scientists – for the first time – to monitor the chick’s development in real-time, Pask said.

“All of those [developments] have been major, major breakthroughs.”

Pask said the project is on hold while they study the 26 chickens that have been hatched from the novel egg and provided they’re healthy with normal lifespans, the egg would then be “scaled up” to emu size.

The moa, however, was at least eight times larger in volume than an emu egg, he said.

“It’s an enormous egg, so to do that we’d have to have our initial moa … conceived inside an emu egg and then we’d take that emu egg and put it [the embryo] into a large artificial egg which would be moa sized … add extra yolk, extra albumen [egg white] … to increase the volume of those components, so that it can then sustain the growth of a much larger chick, which is going to be our baby moa.”

Pask said it was hard to say when that would happen, but “less than 10 years, I’d say – if you want a ballpark”.

In addition to the moa project, he hoped the artificial egg would act as a surrogate for critically endangered species – big or small.

“So bird species that are really struggling with reproduction or really struggling [to breed] easily in captivity – this could be an absolute game-changer for us, being able to create a lot of a particular species of bird that we’d be able to release back into the wild and really help to boost population numbers.”

He said the artificial egg also gave them a platform for early “genetic manipulations” on birds, possibly engineering them to be more resilient to disease or climate change.

In New Zealand, he said that could mean introducing genetic variation to species that had tiny populations.

“We can actually go back and sequence the DNA from animals that lived 50, 100, 150 years ago, have a look at the population diversity that they used to have and engineer that back in again, so you have really healthy breeding populations.”

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

Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/20/colossal-biosciences-says-breakthrough-means-its-a-step-closer-to-resurrecting-giant-moa/

By Bhanvi Satija for Reuters

• Favipiravir delivered from Japan to UK for experimental hantavirus treatment, UKHSA confirms
• Drug use is experimental, with limited evidence and no established protocol, experts note
• No details disclosed on quantity of favipiravir doses received from Japan
• WHO says outbreak involves Andes virus, no signs of increased transmissibility or pandemic risk

Britain has received supplies of the antiviral drug favipiravir from Japan as part of its response to a deadly hantavirus outbreak linked to the Hondius cruise liner, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) says.

UKHSA said it accepted delivery of the drug, which remains experimental for use to treat hantavirus, over the weekend and that the supplies would bolster treatment stocks, even though the risk of wider transmission in the UK remained very low.

Neither the UKHSA nor Japanese authorities disclosed details about the number of doses supplied to Britain.

The luxury liner at the centre of the outbreak docked at the Dutch port of Rotterdam on Monday, where authorities disembarked crew members and medical staff. Three people have died from eight confirmed cases and two probable cases linked to the ship.

There is no specific therapy for hantavirus, which is primarily spread by rodents but can be transmitted between people in rare cases and after prolonged, close contact.

Treatment usually focuses on supportive care such as rest and fluids, while some patients may need breathing support.

In Japan, favipiravir is sold under the brand name Avigan by a unit of Fujifilm as an emergency medication for novel or re-emerging flu. The drug, which works by blocking a key enzyme that many viruses need to multiply, is not licensed for use in the United Kingdom.

Use of favipiravir in hantavirus would generally be considered experimental or compassionate rather than standard care, and most likely to treat severe infection early on, said Piet Maes, a virologist at the University of Brussels.

Maes said evidence so far comes only from lab and animal studies, with no strong human trial data showing the drug works against hantavirus. There is no internationally established clinical protocol recommending its routine use for hantavirus.

The outbreak involves the rarer type of hantavirus called the Andes virus, which is the only strain known to spread between people, though typically only after close and prolonged contact.

World Health Organization officials said they have not identified changes that would make the virus more transmissible or severe, and that the outbreak does not pose a pandemic threat.

– Reuters

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

Researchers from the University of Canterbury have created a shoebox-sized laboratory designed to help develop better medicines in space.

The fully-automated lab means biotechnology experiments can be conducted in microgravity, between Earth’s gravity and space’s zero gravity.

The lab is currently being prepared for testing aboard NZ-Dutch company Dawn Aerospace’s reusable unmanned spaceplane.

Leading the work is Associate Professor Sarah Kessans of University of Canterbury’s Faculty of Engineering.

She told RNZ’s Nine to Noon the microgravity environment is important for growing higher-quality protein crystals.

“What we’re trying to do is get better pictures of what a protein looks like on an atomic level,” said Kessans. “That enables us to develop drugs against those proteins.”

“So let’s say if you have a cancer protein; if you know exactly what it looks like you can design a drug to bind to that protein and essentially stop that cancer cell.

“In a microgravity environment you don’t have heavy things sinking, or light things floating, or critically, having what are called convection currents, so lots of things flying around in sort of random orientations.”

Kessans said some proteins won’t cystalise on Earth due to that movement, or only in a poor quality.

She said microgravity allows protein crystals to form more perfect crystal lattices, what she called a “repeating pattern of lots and lots, thousands and thousands, of molecules that basically form a pattern.”

She likens it to a Rubik’s Cube – the iconic cubic puzzle from the 1980s.

“In microgravity you get a perfect cube, that perfect lattice.”

Practical applications

Kessans said there are two applications for what they are doing in microgravity.

One is being able to bring that perfect crystal back to Earth and then “shooting X-rays at it” to understand how the electrons scatter, to understand the protein structure.

The other is actual drug formulation – a prime example being drug company Merck sending the anti-cancer drug Keytruda to the International Space Station in 2007, and crystalising it there so they could make a new formulation.

“Normally Keytruda has to be administered in a hospital setting, which takes about two to three hours in an IV infusion. The crystalline formulation that they developed in space essentially can be administered in a GP clinic as a subcutaneous shot. So, a much better outcome for the patient and obviously a much better outcome for Merck, and they’ve got a whole new patent family and FDA approval for this new formulation.

“What we’re developing is essentially a high throughput screening service both for protein crystal screening, so for that drug development and drug discovery, and then also formulation screening as well.”

Collaborators and future customers

Kessans said the project is a collaboration of a multidisciplinary team that includes experts from Canterbury University, Auckland University, and academics around NZ.

She said they received seed funding from Science for Technological Innovation to make a prototype, and $10 million in MBIE funding that enabled them to fly the prototype to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2024.

The latest phase of the project has received $600,000 through the Kiwi Space Activator programme, announced by the Minister for Space, Chris Penk, in May 2026.

Kessans said that funding will enable the next phase of testing with Dawn Aerospace, along with Intranel and Asteria Engineering, to test components of the full scale version aboard Dawn’s spaceplane, before it goes to the ISS.

“We will be the first mission of its kind, conducting multiple spaceplane microgravity flights, and going to space twice in a single day.”

She said the next step is a new company offering services to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, who can then “go on and make the drugs… from the data we provide them.”

“This is gonna be a big year,” Kessans said, “so stay tuned for the wider role we will play in the commercial space industry.”

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The head of the dental association says some clinics are waiting as long as a year to employ a dentist, and are having to close temporarily or even permanently.

NZDA chief executive Dr Mo Amso told Nine to Noon the number of dentists coming through the country’s only programme at Otago University was not enough, and needed to be increased from 60 to 90 per year.

He said the struggle to get dentists was also reflected in the wider dental clinic workforce with hygienists being hard to find.

“Quite a number of practices in New Zealand do encounter challenges with staffing and recruitment,” he said.

“A survey we ran late last year, and the report of which was released earlier this year, highlighted just how bad it is across the country in some places.

“As you’d imagine, it is worse off in rural areas, and the workforce shortages are not unique to only one cohort of people in the clinic, but it does include dentists, assistants and even hygienists.”

Dr Amso said on average, practices were taking six months or attract or replace a dentist, with some clinics waiting for up to a year.

He said that was forcing some to close.

“Imagine if you’re a dentist and you’re looking at selling your practice or retiring and you can’t find anyone. Well, your only option really is to shut up shop,” Dr Amso said.

“If you can’t sell a clinic to someone or recruit someone to cover for your leave or holiday, then you really have no option but to shut off the clinic, either temporarily or permanently in some areas in the country.”

Dr Amso New Zealand had capped the number of domestically trained students to 60, and that had been the case for over 40 years.

In fact, for quite a bit of time during those 40 years, it even went down to 56, he said.

He said dentists had come from overseas to fill some of the void, but since the Covid-19 pandemic, it was harder to get more dentists in.

“We’ve simply not kept up with the pace of population growth and immigration,” Dr Amso said.

“Our population has gone from about 3.5 to over 5 million in that time frame, but we still train the same number of dentists, and what we’ve done to try and fill the gap is relied on overseas trained dentists.

“They are a wonderful cohort of our membership and of the workforce. They make up about 30 percent, about one in three dentists practising currently is overseas trained, and 50 percent of all dental specialists are overseas trained.

“But that reliance on the overseas pipeline has not always been sustainable, ad what we witnessed during Covid with the border shut for quite a while was that we were unable to pick up that workforce shortage, and I don’t think we’ve quite recovered since.”

Dr Amso said nearly 1000 people were vying for the 60 positions in the Bachelor of Dental Surgery training programme.

He said interest wasn’t an issue.

“We certainly don’t have a shortage of people who want to train as dentists. What we do have is currently 60 government-funded positions and about 40 international student positions,” Dr Amso said.

“What we do know is that the University of Otago is open to shifting that balance to having more domestically trained students to help the New Zealand workforce sector.

“What needs to happen really is a change at policy level from government to allow for that to happen.”

He said if the number of training positions was increased, so would the number of graduates.

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The government is set to announce proposals which RNZ understands will seek to reduce the number of government agencies, with amalgamation, more work on digitisation and using AI, and setting a target to reduce the public service headcount to 1 percent of the total population by 2029.

There are 42 ministries and agencies currently in the public sector and just over 63,000 full-time workers.

Willis says the headcount blew out by far too much under the previous Labour governments. It was 48,000 in 2017 and increased to 57,000 by 2020.

Getting the number of public servants back to 1 percent of the total population by 2029 could require thousands of jobs to be cut.

In 2024 RNZ kept a count of cuts in the sector, to get a sense of the changes, and in May 2025 RNZ published an explainer about why it is not easy to finding consensus on the right way to count cuts.

RNZ has republished that below.

Explainer: How many public sector jobs have really been axed?

By Lauren Crimp

First published 28 May 2025

When the coalition government came to power in 2023, it set out to slash public spending, pledging to “move resources out of bureaucracy and into the front line”.

As a result, jobs across the public sector were on the chopping block. Of course, economic pain was also being felt in the private sector, where jobs were also being culled.

The coalition’s cuts followed a 34 percent growth in the public service between 2017 and 2024, much of which was under the Labour government.

The moves were slammed by the opposition and unions, but Finance Minister and then Public Service Minister Nicola Willis said the public had not got bang for buck under the former government.

From April 2024 to the end of the year, RNZ kept careful count of jobs lost as belts were tightened, using information provided by the organisations themselves to understand the scale of the changes.

And in October RNZ asked every ministry, department, Crown entity, Crown agent, departmental agency and Crown research institute (113 in total) whether they had made cuts in response to the government’s cost-saving initiative – 56 had.

The process involved clarifying with organisations things like whether job loss numbers they provided were net or gross, to ensure we were consistent in our approach.

Earlier this month TVNZ’s Q + A host Jack Tame put RNZ’s count – around 9500 – to Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche.

“I’m not sure it’s the correct number actually, because I’m told it’s 2000,” Roche said.

Willis expressed a similar sentiment, saying the media – including RNZ – had reported incorrect numbers.

So why the disagreement?

The Public Service Commission supports the government to implement policies and deliver services, and collates workforce data.

Its figures showed between December 2023 and December 2024 there were 2731 fewer full-time equivalent (FTE) staff.

RNZ’s count reached 9520 by the end of December 2024. That is the net number – taking into account that while organisations disestablished roles, some also created new ones as they reshuffled their workforce.

Read RNZ’s detailed reporting of public sector job cuts.

The Commission’s numbers do not include vacancies, nor jobs gone at every single Crown organisation, because they do not fall under its jurisdiction. RNZ included both in its tally.

“This might explain the discrepancy between our number and the much larger number some media have been using,” a spokesperson for the Commission said.

Should Crown entities be included?

RNZ included jobs lost at Crown entities in its count – as well as those in the core public service – to show the breadth of agencies affected by the government’s savings initiative.

Crown entities are responsible for a range of public services and while they’re part of government and owned by the Crown, they’re run by independent boards.

They include big employers like Health NZ, Kāinga Ora, Police and the Defence Force, as well as smaller entities such as AgResearch, GNS and Niwa.

The head of Victoria University’s School of Government, Karl Lofgren said RNZ’s tally of jobs lost was “as good as any”.

“I’m a bit confused why the current government is surprised by your numbers.”

It was difficult to assess the size of the wider public sector (Crown entities as well as the core public service) because solid workforce data only existed for the core public service, he said.

Another school of government professor and senior fellow at Motu Research, Arthur Grimes said job loss counts would differ depending on what was being measured.

“It’s legitimate to include Crown entities along with the core public service, if that’s what you’re trying to measure. If you’re only trying to measure core public service, obviously you wouldn’t,” he said.

“But if the question is jobs lost from entities, core public sector or otherwise, that are funded by the state sector, then I think adding them [Crown entities] in makes sense.”

Lofgren agreed – “I find it a bit difficult to understand why that should be excluded” – as did associate professor at the university’s school of management, Geoff Plimmer.

“When people think about cuts to public servants, they don’t draw a distinction between Crown agencies and … core Wellington-based government departments,” he said.

“People will want to know how many people have lost their jobs, and whether they meet the fine-grain distinction in the Public Finance Act between a core government department and a Crown agency or a Crown entity is by the by.”

But there is some disagreement over the issue of vacant jobs.

Are already vacant jobs ‘jobs’?

RNZ decided to include vacancies because they represented jobs that once existed, but no longer do because of the belt tightening.

Victoria University school of management senior lecturer Stephen Blumenfeld said it was legitimate to count vacant jobs, but it was impossible to know whether someone would have ever been hired into those positions.

“There’s an assumption being made that the position is vacant but it’s intended to be refilled at some time in the future, whether or not that’s the case,” he said.

“If they’re intending to fill the job, I think it is fair to call that a job that is not filled. But the question is, really, how many of those jobs would have been filled otherwise?”

But Plimmer said vacant jobs should not have been included in the tally of those lost.

Some went unfilled for a long time and were not intended to be filled, he said.

“They’re very much just paper abstracts, they don’t really exist until someone is in the job, doing the job.”

Agencies might hold vacancies without filling them to attract budget funding, said Plimmer.

But for the most part it was simply a nuisance to get rid of vacant jobs and keeping them gave organisations flexibility, he said.

Comparing apples with apples

RNZ has now tallied up a best estimate of what our count might have been if we had matched the Public Service Commission and counted jobs lost only in the core public service, not including vacancies.

Let’s break it down a bit.

RNZ’s count of jobs lost in the public service alone, including vacancies, was 5247.

It gets tricky to subtract vacancies from that, because not all organisations made the distinction between vacant and filled roles. When organisations specified how many of the disestablished positions were vacant, RNZ sought to report that.

Our best estimate, from the organisations that did provide that information, was that 1090 vacant jobs were cut.

Taking that number off the 5247 jobs lost in the public service gets us to 4157 – a little closer to the Public Service Commission’s 2731, but with the caveats noted.

And some of those that didn’t confirm vacancy numbers had reported pretty big cuts – for example, the Ministry of Social Development which slashed about 900 jobs and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which downsized by about 400 roles.

And it’s worth noting that in some cases, vacancies made up a big portion of roles gone: for example, the Department of Conservation had a net loss of 124 jobs, by disestablishing 257 permanent positions (of which 114 were vacant) and creating 133 new ones.

Growth in public service important context

Grimes said it was vital that any count of job loss numbers were put into context, including significant growth in the public service.

“Otherwise you get a very distorted picture of job losses if you’re only looking at it over a very short-term period,” he said.

“I think it’s very misleading to just look at the short-term figure.”

The public service – not including Crown entities – grew 34 percent between June 2017 and June 2024, Public Service Commission workforce statistics showed.

It had been increasing about 5 percent a year until 2022, but in the year from June 2023 it rose 0.7 percent.

At the end of June 2024, there were 63,537 full-time equivalent staff – up slightly on a year prior, but down from 65,699 in December 2023.

At the end of December 2024, there were 62,968 full-time equivalent staff – down 0.9 percent since June 2024, and down 4.2 percent since December 2023.

Willis stands by comments, Collins clarifies differences

RNZ laid out the differences between its numbers and the Public Service Commission’s, and asked Willis whether she stood by her comments that RNZ had been incorrectly reporting job losses.

“Minister Willis stands by her past comments that RNZ’s job tallies were wrong and completely inaccurate,” a spokesperson from her office said.

They said other questions, about whether including Crown entities and vacancies better reflected the number of public jobs lost, should be addressed to Public Service Minister Judith Collins.

Collins said RNZ was conflating job losses in the public service with those that have occurred in the wider public sector, which are accountable to their boards.

“The job losses that occurred in the public service were the result of the Government’s Fiscal Savings Programme where departments were asked to find savings of 6.5 – 7.5 percent.

“Additional job losses have occurred in both the public service and the wider public sector for a variety of reasons, but these weren’t subject to the Fiscal Savings Programme and are not included in how job losses were calculated and communicated.”

They did not count vacancies being disestablished as job losses, Collins said.

“These were vacant roles, so no one lost a job as a result.”

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