Prominent Dunedin man facing rape charge granted name supression
Photo:
RNZ / Nate McKinnon
A prominent Dunedin man facing sexual assault charges will keep his name secret for now.
The man appeared at the High Court on Wednesday.
He has previously pleaded not guilty to five charges of unlawful sexual connection and one of rape.
The man's name and occupation will remain suppressed until at least next month.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero
,
a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Commerce Commission wants more rules for big supermarket players
Grocery Commissioner Pierre van Heerden. Photo: Change is on the cards for the supermarket sector, as the Commerce Commission looks at ways to improve competition. It has released a draft report into the review of the Grocery Supply Code and a preliminary view into its wholesale market inquiry. The Commission identified two commercial behaviours which it said reinforced the power of the major supermarkets - Foodstuffs and Woolworths - and the country's biggest grocery suppliers. Grocery Commissioner Pierre van Heerden said a key problem was the power imbalance between major retailers and small suppliers -- meaning those suppliers were reluctant to push back and insist on better prices. He said small suppliers feared damaging relationships or losing access to shelves. "This leads to smaller suppliers taking on costs and risks that are best managed by the retailer." The Commission has also taken issue with promotional payments in wholesale markets, where small retailers cannot compete for deals against big players. "The prices the major supermarkets pay suppliers are subsidised by around $5 billion in rebates, discounts, and promotional payments," van Heerden said. "Competing retailers can't negotiate similar levels of support due to their weaker buying power." The Commission recommended four changes to the Grocery Supply Code, including adding a requirement that if a retailer bought groceries at a discount for a sale period, and then sold the product at a higher price after the sale period, they had to pay the difference to the supplier. It would also prohibit retaliation against suppliers exercising their rights under the code. In the wholesale market inquiry, the Commission recommended two changes, including major supermarkets expanding their wholesale product range and putting in systems to pass promotional funding through to their wholesale customers, so that other retailers could access cheaper prices. It also recommended suppliers reduce their reliance on promotional funding, or allocate the funding to more retailers. The Commission has sought submissions on the draft Grocery Supply Code and would consider those before a final report due by the end of September. It said changes proposed for the wholesale market would be voluntary for now, but if there was no "meaningful progress" in a year, it would decide whether it needed to change regulations. It said a final report on its wholesale supply inquiry would likely be completed in 2026. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
New Zealand's invisible children
Photo: janfaukner/123RF When Helen Clark's Labour government brought in a law that would create waves of undocumented children, even the immigration experts had no idea of the impact it would have on thousands of lives. The 2006 Citizenship Amendment Act ended automatic citizenship for children born here to overstayers or parents with temporary visas. It was also supported by the National party. Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont has been working in the sector for more than 25 years, but only recently discovered the fallout from the law. "It never really occurred to me that this would actually be a problem," he says. "It was only really when these children started coming forward that I thought 'this is really unusual, I wonder how many other children are in this sort of situation'. "It is only recent because these children are now finishing high school and realising that their life has now come to an end, they don't have any options as to what to do." They are called 'the invisible children', says RNZ immigration reporter Gill Bonnett. They are mainly children of overstayers or temporary visa holders from Pacific countries, India or China. She's known about them for many years, but they have been hidden or protected by their parents and communities. "These people don't want to come forward because they are scared about the consequences of doing so and they don't want to speak up either in the media or necessarily don't want to put their case in front of immigration officials in case it means that they or their parents get deported." The case of Daman Kumar brought the issue to light, she says, when he bravely spoke to RNZ Asia reporter Blessen Tom two years ago . At the time, the teenager's voice was disguised and he went unnamed for fear that he would be deported to India, along with his parents. This year he hit the headlines and his identity was revealed when he was on the verge of deportation. "He'd been able to go to school okay but when it came to thinking about university or work he realised that he had nowhere to go," says Bonnett. To further complicate the matter, Kumar's sister was unaffected because she was born before the 2006 law, meaning she is legally a New Zealand citizen. And it is not unique to the Kumar family, Bonnett says. She explains to The Detail what was happening in New Zealand when the law was brought in, including the sense of moral panic. At the time Helen Clark said she was concerned about incidents of people flying to New Zealand for a short time and having babies here to ensure they gained passports, known as "birth tourism". Clark said the government would be silly not to look at this, given what other countries were doing. "They call it the 'anchor babies'," says Bonnett. "The idea that if your child had citizenship that later on in life you might be able to get citizenship yourself or that you would just be bestowing good privileges on them for later on." She says there were concerns on both sides of the ledger at the time, concerns on one side about birth tourism, where a child born on New Zealand soil would automatically get citizenship, and on the other side concerns about children who had lived here all their lives but didn't have citizenship. It is not clear how many children are undocumented, but McClymont says it could be thousands and the number will keep growing. "Every year now more and more children are going to be coming out of high school and realising that they can't study, they can't go and get jobs because it would be a breach of the law for employers to employ someone who's here unlawfully. So they can't work, they can't study, they can't travel, they just simply cannot do anything." McClymont says he has not had a satisfactory response from the government to his suggestion that New Zealand follow Australia and Britain by giving children birthright citizenship after 10 years of habitual residence. "Really, it's hard to see what the justification is for punishing these children. Nobody is making the argument that these children have done something wrong and that they deserve to be punished. "The only potential argument is that these children are being punished as a deterrent for others against having children here in New Zealand," he says. "It's just unfathomable as a society that we can actually do this to children and use them for this purpose. There doesn't seem to be any moral justification whatsoever for treating them so badly." Check out how to listen to and fol low The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Why wasn't PM told about police investigation into senior press secretary Michael Forbes?
The Prime Minister's deputy chief press secretary, pictured back left, has resigned. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi The sudden resignation of one of the Prime Minister's senior press secretaries is raising questions about why Christopher Luxon's office was not told about the police investigation last year. Michael Forbes left his job on Wednesday and has apologised after accusations he recorded audio of sessions with sex workers, and had intrusive photos of women in public and footage shot through windows at night. Police said they got a complaint from a Wellington brothel last July after images were found on a client's phone, but decided the case did not meet the threshold for prosecution. Michael Forbes was working for Social Development Minister Louise Upston at the time. She and the Prime Minister's office said they knew nothing about the complaint until Tuesday night. He resigned before he could be sacked. Ministerial Services said it is in contact with Police and was working urgently to find out why details of the investigation were not passed on. An advocate for the sex workers who accused Forbes said they were not surprised police did not charge him. The Wellington co-ordinator for the NZPC Aotearoa Sex Workers' Collective, Cherida Fraser, said it would have been hard for police to prove the footage that was on the phone, showing women getting changed through a window, was filmed illegally. "I can see that it was complex ... to identify those women would have been difficult and to ensure they weren't consenting to being filmed." Michael Forbes has offered an apology for the harm his actions caused to women. Photo: LinkedIn/Michael Forbes A Stuff investigation revealed that Forbes, a former journalist, allegedly recorded audio of multiple sessions with Wellington sex workers, and amassed a gallery of women working out at the gym, shopping and filmed through a window getting ready to go out. A Wellington sex worker told Stuff she realised while Forbes was in the shower that his phone's voice recorder was allegedly activated back in July 2024. She told the outlet she and other sex workers working that night asked Forbes for his phone PIN code. They claim to have found multiple audio recordings of sessions with sex workers, albums full of photos of women, and videos of women getting ready to go out, filmed through a window at night. Forbes, who was press secretary for Minister of Social Development Louise Upston at the time, has offered an apology for the harm his actions caused to women. "I want to offer my sincerest apologies to the women I have harmed," he said in a statement. "In the past, I was in a downward spiral due to unresolved trauma and stress, and when confronted with the impacts of my behaviour a year ago, I sought professional help, which is something I wish I had done much earlier. "What I failed to do then was make a genuine attempt to apologise. Instead, I tried to move on without offering those I had harmed the acknowledgement, accountability, or amends they deserved. I recognise how wrong that was." Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's deputy chief press secretary Michael Forbes shaking hands with India Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Youtube/Narendra Modi Forbes said he spent the past year "reflecting on how I may have affected these women's sense of safety and ability to go about their lives and work". "No one should ever feel violated, unsafe, or disrespected, especially in spaces where they should feel secure, and I am truly sorry for contributing to an environment where women may have felt otherwise," he said. "The therapy I've received over the past year has helped me to understand the roots of my behaviour and begin addressing the patterns that led to it. This is a long-term commitment to change that I take very seriously. "I understand that my past actions may have undermined the trust people place in me. So, I have resigned from my job to focus on the work I need to do." The Prime Minister is expected to address media at Parliament on Thursday. A spokesperson from his office said they were informed at 4pm on 3 June. "The matters were immediately raised with Ministerial Services and the prime minister was informed that evening. The allegations were serious and concerning. They were discussed with the staff member on the evening of June 3 and it was clear their employment was untenable," the spokesperson said. "It was agreed that the staff member was stood down that evening and they resigned the following morning. Had the staff member not resigned, we expect their employment would have been terminated after a short investigation." Michael Forbes pictured during Christopher Luxon's visit to India. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi The office of Forbes' former boss Upston said: "The Minister was not aware of any allegations before they were raised with PMO yesterday. Minister Upston has nothing further to add to the PMs statement on this." When asked by RNZ why the minister, her office, the prime minister, or the Dignitary Protection Service were not informed of the police investigation into Forbes, Ministerial Services said any questions about the investigation should go to Police. It also did not answer whether there were any typical thresholds that would see Ministerial Services informed by police of an investigation into an employee. Deputy secretary partnerships and commissions Hoani Lambert said this was a "serious and concerning matter" for the department. "We were made aware of this matter late on 3 June and met with the employee that evening. The individual concerned is no longer employed by the Department. We are working with urgency to thoroughly understand what has happened. This includes further engagement with the NZ Police. As the employer, DIA has important obligations to provide a safe workplace and ensure people are held accountable for their behaviour. We are taking this matter seriously, we are moving quickly and ensuring accountability. We will not comment further at this time." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
