DARTZ up for multiple awards at Aotearoa Music Awards
music national 35 minutes ago
Kiwi band DARTZ are up for multiple awards at Thursday night's Aotearoa Music Awards. Lead singer Daniel Vernon spoke to Charlotte Cook.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

RNZ News
26 minutes ago
- RNZ News
Live: Gales hit Wellington, roof ripped off, cold snap for South Island
Strong winds have lifted the roof of a house in the Wellington suburb of Newlands to land on a house on another street. The gales followed a night of heavy rain, thunderstorm warnings and strong winds across much of the country. MetService said the downpours across the North Island and parts of the South Island were giving way to snowfall on Wednesday night. Last night, Fire and Emergency crews responded to over 30 weather related callouts as thunderstorms lashed the top of the country. 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
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 .