Latest news with #NZ
RNZ News
10 hours ago
- RNZ News
Police launch homicide investigation in Tūrangi
Police have stationed a guard at the scene. Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER Police have launched a homicide investigation, after a woman was found dead at a property in the central North Island on Friday. Emergency services were called to an address in Hinerangi Street, Tūrangi at about 6.30am. Police say a scene guard is currently stationed at the property. They are asking anyone who has information or footage relating to the incident to get in touch. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
11 hours ago
- General
- RNZ News
Why ‘cute' pets are now included in pest management plan
The red-eared slider turtle is capable of growing to the size of a dinner plate. Photo: Supplied/ NZME- Doug Sherring Bay of Plenty turtle owners must now securely house their pets, as the regional council changes its pest plan to prevent escapees. While unlikely to form a sewer-dwelling gang of martial arts fighters, escaped or released pets can harm ecosystems and native species. The Regional Pest Management Plan sets the Bay of Plenty Regional Council's priorities and goals for managing animal and pest plants, and includes rules to comply with the Biosecurity Act. A recent council review has seen new species added as pests and changes to how others are categorised. As of this week, all wallaby species known to be in the country and all introduced turtles will be included. Biosecurity team leader Shane Grayling said the pest management landscape was "ever changing". "The pests included in the [plan] and the ways to manage them have recently been reconsidered to reflect emerging pest issues." The Bay of Plenty Regional Council has adopted new rules for turtles, wallabies, and invasive exotic species of seaweed and freshwater clams. Photo: Collage/ NZME and supplied Turtles were included in the plan for the first time, covering all introduced freshwater types. Consultation on the topic showed split views on the need to manage turtles. Some submitters asked for introduced turtles to be included in the eradication programme, rather than sustained control. Some wanted a ban on the sale and breeding of them, while others did not believe turtles caused adverse environmental effects that needed managing. Grayling said climate change and the Rotorua area's warm geothermal soils increased the likelihood turtles could successfully breed in the wild. This included red-eared slider turtles, which have been found abandoned and breeding in Bay of Plenty waterways. Katikati reptile breeders Donna and Graeme Hannah, who have worked to raise awareness of the issue, told SunLive last year they were often called by people who found abandoned turtles. "They start off cute around the size of a 50c piece," Graeme Hannah said, but they could live 50 years and grow to the size of a dinner plate, needing more maintenance, and a bigger tank or pond, leading owners to abandon them. Sightings reported to the regional council included a female found nesting in Tauranga's Gordon Carmichael Reserve with 16 eggs. The turtles feed on small fish, plants, kōura (freshwater crayfish) and small birds such as ducklings, degrade water quality by disrupting the ecosystem, and displace wetland birds by taking over nesting sites. Under the new regional rules, turtle sales could continue, but pet owners needed to house them securely to prevent escape. "There have been instances previously where there has been no barrier around a pond to prevent the turtle from relocating elsewhere," Grayling said. He said, anecdotally, there had been increased reports of turtle sightings throughout the Bay of Plenty during the past couple of years. Most were red-eared sliders. Turtles were "inherently difficult to catch" and therefore controlling them was challenging. The council would respond to reported sightings in the wild and consider options for control on a case-by-case basis. "The focus for council, particularly in the short term, will be on education and advocacy for responsible turtle ownership." All wallaby species found in New Zealand are now included in the plan. Photo: Supplied via Local Democracy Reporting: The Rotorua Daily Post/ Andrew Warner The pre-amended plan only listed the dama wallaby as a pest, but Grayling said the need to include all known species found in New Zealand was identified, after the parma wallaby was discovered around the Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes in 2023. Dama and parma were now listed under the progressive containment and eradication programme. Other species not known to be in the Bay of Plenty were under the exclusion programme. "The amendment is a technical one, and there is no change in how wallaby control is managed or funded," Grayling said. Efforts to control wallaby spread were funded with $1 million this year under the International Visitor Levy, including work in the Te Arawa area. Exotic caulerpa - a pest seaweed - was also included in the plan to minimise the risk of it entering the region. It has been described as the country's most serious marine biosecurity invasion in a lifetime. Corbicula - invasive exotic freshwater clams - were also listed as exclusionary pests. Other changes in the plan included treating certain species of conifers as pests, regardless of whether they were deliberately planted. The amendments prohibited new plantings of these species to ensure that the region's biodiversity was protected from the potential impact of pines growing in the wild. LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
RNZ News
15 hours ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Despite decades of cost cutting, governments spend more than ever. How can we make sense of this?
By Ian Lovering* of International relations academic Ian Lovering delves into some of the history and social structures at play behind decisions about the national budget. Photo: RNZ Analysis : Recent controversies over New Zealand's Ka Ora, Ka Ako school lunch programme have revolved around the apparent shortcomings of the food and its delivery. Stories of inedible meals , scalding packaging and general waste have dominated headlines. But the story is also a window into the wider debate about the politics of "fiscal responsibility" and austerity politics . As part of the mission to "cut waste" in government spending, ACT leader and Associate Education Minister David Seymour replaced the school-based scheme with a centralised programme run by a catering corporation. The result was said to have delivered "saving for taxpayers" of $130 million - in line with the government's overall drive for efficiency and cost cutting. While Finance Minister Nicola Willis dislikes the term "austerity", her May budget cut the government's operating allowance in half , to $1.3 billion. This came on top of Budget cuts last year of around $4 billion. Similar policy doctrines have been subscribed to by governments of all political persuasions for decades. As economic growth (and the tax revenue it brings) has been harder for OECD countries to achieve over the past 50 years, governments have looked to make savings. What is strange, though, is that despite decades of austerity policies reducing welfare and outsourcing public services to the most competitive corporate bidder, state spending has kept increasing. New Zealand's public expense as a percentage of GDP increased from 25.9 percent in 1972 to 35.9 percent in 2022. And this wasn't unusual. The OECD as a whole saw an increase from 18.9 percent in 1972 to 29.9 percent in 2022. How can we make sense of so-called austerity when, despite decades of cost cutting, governments spend more than ever? In a recent paper , I argued that the politics of austerity is not only about how much governments spend. It is also about who gets to decide how public money is used. Austerity sounds like it is about spending less, finding efficiencies or living within your means. But ever rising budgets mean it is about more than that. In particular, austerity is shaped by a centralising system that locks in corporate and bureaucratic control over public expenditure, while locking out people and communities affected by spending decisions. In other words, austerity is about democracy as much as economics. We typically turn to the ideology of neoliberalism - democracy as much as economics. We typically turn to the ideology of neoliberalism - "Rogernomics" being the New Zealand variant - to explain the history of this. The familiar story is of a revolutionary clique taking over a bloated postwar state, reorienting it towards the global market, and making it run more like a business. Depending on your political persuasion, the contradiction of austerity's growing cost reflects either the short-sightedness of market utopianism or the stubbornness of the public sector to reform. But while the 1980s neoliberal revolution was important, the roots of austerity's managerial dimension go back further. And it was shaped less by a concern that spending was too high, and more by a desire to centralise control over a growing budget. Godfather of 'rational' budgeting: US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara (right), with US president Lyndon B Johnson (centre), in a Cabinet meeting, in 1968. Photo: Yoichi Okamoto - Public Domain Many of the managerial techniques that have arrived in the public sector over the austerity years - such as results-based pay, corporate contracting, performance management or evaluation culture - have their origins in a budgetary revolution that took place in the 1960s at the US Department of Defence. In the early 1960s, Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was frustrated with being nominally in charge of budgeting but having to mediate between the seemingly arbitrary demands of military leaders for more tanks, submarines or missiles. In response, he called on the RAND Corporation, a US think tank and consultancy, to remake the Defence Department's budgetary process to give the secretary greater capacity to plan. The outcome was called the Planning Programming Budgeting System . Its goal was to create a "rational" budget where policy objectives were clearly specified in quantified terms, the possible means to achieve them were fully costed, and performance indicators measuring progress were able to be reviewed. This approach might have made sense for strategic military purposes. But what happens when you apply the same logic to planning public spending in healthcare, education, housing - or school lunches? The past 50 years have largely been a process of finding out. What began as a set of techniques to help McNamara get control of military spending gradually diffused into social policy . These ideas travelled from the US and came to be known as the " New Public Management " framework that transformed state sectors all over the world. Dramatic moments of spending cuts - such as the 1991 " Mother of all Budgets " in New Zealand or Elon Musk's recent DOGE crusade in the US - stand out as major exercises in austerity. And fiscal responsibility is a firmly held conviction within mainstream political thinking. Nevertheless, government spending has become a major component of OECD economies. If we are to make sense of austerity in this world of permanent mass expenditure, we need a broader idea of what public spending is about. Budgets are classically thought to do three things. For economists, they are a tool of macroeconomic stabilisation: if growth goes down, "automatic stabilisers" inject public money into the economy to pick it back up. For social reformers, the budget is a means of progressively redistributing resources through tax and welfare systems. For accountants, the budget is a means of cost accountability: it holds a record of public spending and signals a society's future commitments. But budgeting as described here also fulfils a fourth function - managerial planning. Decades of reform have made a significant portion of the state budget a managerial instrument for the pursuit of policy objectives. From this perspective, underlying common austerity rhetoric about eliminating waste, or achieving value for money, is a deeper political struggle over who decides how that public money is used. To return to New Zealand's school lunch programme, any savings achieved should not distract from the more significant democratic question of who should plan school lunches - and public spending more broadly. Should it be the chief executives of corporatised public organisations and outsourced conglomerates managing to KPIs on nutritional values and price per meal, serving the directives of government ministers? Or should it be those cooking, serving and eating the lunches? * Ian Lovering is a lecturer in international relations, at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. This story was originally published on The Conversation .
RNZ News
15 hours ago
- RNZ News
Smoke from plane at Christchurch Airport, fluid leak suspected
Christchurch Airport (file photo). Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon Firefighters have been called to Christchurch Airport after a cargo plane on the tarmac began billowing smoke from its undercarriage. Fire and Emergency shift manager Lyn Crosson said crews responded shortly before 9am on Friday. She said there was no fire on board the Boeing 737, and it was thought a fluid leak onto the plane's brakes was responsible. A spokesperson at Christchurch Airport confirmed there were no passengers on board at the time. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Bloomberg
15 hours ago
- Science
- Bloomberg
Scientists Stumble Upon Way to Reduce Cow Dung Methane Emissions
Twice a day at milking parlors all over New Zealand, the world's biggest dairy exporter, sheds are hosed down to wash away cow dung into large manmade ponds. In an attempt to recycle the water in the lagoons, two local scientists — Keith Cameron and Hong Di — began testing the addition of polyferric sulfate, a chemical that's been widely used in wastewater treatment to separate liquids from solids. The process worked, but that didn't prove to be their most interesting finding.
