Prime Minister backs NBR Rich List's celebration of success
The country should be celebrating the success of NBR Rich Listers, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says.
The 2025 NBR Rich List was released today, revealing that the country's leading wealth creators are now collectively worth more than $100 billion.
The latest NBR Rich List, published today,
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RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
Fieldays: Farmers expected to come on board as methane science advances
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Science for Farmers tent at Fieldays. Photo: Eloise Gibson The Prime Minister's new chief science adviser believes farmers will come around to technologies that cut their emissions. Some farming groups oppose inventions like methane vaccines, but John Roche says farmers will accept change once they see the products work. For a long time, one of the main concerns for farmers about tackling climate change was the lack of new technologies to lower emissions, without hurting productivity. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon listen to a speech in the Farmers for Science tent. Photo: RNZ / Eloise Gibson Now emissions-cutting products are close to being launched, and some farmers are saying they don't want them. Groups such as Beef + Lamb say methane emissions shouldn't be priced because it would force farmers to use products such as methane vaccines and other technology when they shouldn't have to. Groundswell recently released a survey saying its members did not want to use methane-cutting products (called inhibitors) and didn't believe action on emissions should affect their access to overseas markets. Fonterra, by contrast, has signed up to reduce dairy emissions to secure what it says are higher value exports to customers such as Nestlé. Roche said although there was a noisy segment that still needed a little convincing he was confident most farmers will come round. "New Zealand farmers have always adopted technologies that improve their efficiency, that improve the saleability of their products," he said. "I think it will be the same here, and they will adopt the technologies as they come on board, as they become more affordable and importantly as they see other farmers use them and see that they work." Roche splits his time between his new role as Christopher Luxon's chief science adviser and being the chief science advisor for the Ministry for Primary Industries. John Roche has a split role. Photo: Supplied He helped arrange a tent called Science for Farmers at Fieldays, where farmers could speak to researchers working on scientific innovations, including emissions-cutting products. One stall housed rectangular planter boxes of lush pasture - not your typical ryegrass and clover, but diverse mixtures of up to seven species including the herb plantain. Danny Donaghy from Massey University said these pasture mixtures should better withstand droughts and/or floods, and contribute less to the problem of global heating by releasing less nitrous oxide from the soil and methane from the animals that eat them. Research funding group the Ag Emissions Centre was also there, sharing research showing dairy cow daughters inherit low-methane traits from their fathers. It said that paved the way for lower-methane breeding bulls from late 2026. Less advanced, but moving quickly, was Lucidome Bio's methane vaccine, currently being trialled in Palmerston North. Chief executive David Aitken said the company was aiming for a 20-30 percent reduction in methane from sheep and cattle lasting for about six months - and to have it on farms within five years. "The vaccine stimulates antibodies in the saliva of the ruminant. The antibodies are then transported into the rumen, where they bind onto the methanogens that produce methane, inhibit the growth and reduce the amount of methane." Over time the company hopes to get a productivity gain from the vaccine, since methanogens steal some of the animal's energy. "But at the minimum we are looking at a solution that's neutral on productivity so we get the climate benefits without losing profitability or productivity." At another stall in the tent, farm software company FarmIQ was explaining how its software can estimate changes in profits, production and emissions from changing various aspects of a farm. Chief executive Gavin McEwen said farmers can already reduce emissions by one to five percent through measures like using less nitrogen fertiliser and reducing stocking rates, often without sacrificing production. But bigger-hitting technologies are coming soon, like slow-release boluses that animals swallow to lower emissions. Head of sales Russell MacKay, a fifth generation farmer, says good financial times should help farmers buy new climate tech. "When the farmers are making money that means there more cash more money for fencing off waterways and bringing in new technology to help the environment."
NZ Herald
4 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Why travel with PMs is not for the faint of heart
Christopher Luxon was loathe to announce the replacement of the RNZAF's passenger jets until last month's budget. Photo / Getty Images New Zealander Bernard Lagan is the Australian correspondent for the Times, London It was a winter Sunday in 1983 above a seething Wellington sea when Robert Muldoon glanced up from The Economist magazine. 'Tell him to have another go,' the then prime minister told an RNZAF flight attendant as the old Andover aircraft's two propellers struggled to haul into the clouds. The pilot had abandoned a second landing attempt against a rollicking gale. Rain stung the trembling fuselage like buckshot. The ashen passengers, a mix of press and Muldoon's staff, looked queasily at each other. None dared countermand the PM. As the hapless flight attendant conveyed the prime minister's wish upfront, I imagine, the flight deck conversation went something like this: 'He wants you to have another run at it, sir.' 'God, really? Then we'll see how much the dear leader wants to keep his lunch down.' The Andover lurched around for a third attempt. With winds gusting ever higher, it see-sawed violently downward. An overhead baggage locker cracked open, spewing its contents. A fire extinguisher tore off a wall, careening onto the floor, the noise terrifying everybody. We landed crazily on one wheel and skewered down the sodden tarmac to a halt. Muldoon never looked up from his Economist. Leaders have conflicted relationships with their VIP aircraft – treating them as a personal fiefdom but fearing public opprobrium when the time comes to spend money on replacements. Like his predecessors, Christopher Luxon was loath to announce the replacement of the RNZAF's current large and embarrassingly unreliable Boeing 757 passenger jets – now well over 30 years old – until last month's Budget. After David Lange came to power in 1984, one of his first acts was to commandeer an air force Boeing 727 jet, bought second-hand from United Airlines and by then 16 years old, and storm across Africa to apologise for New Zealand's hosting in 1981 of the South African rugby team. The aircraft had a limited range, forcing a highly circuitous route to Africa to allow for refuelling. Things soon went spectacularly awry. After refuelling in Melbourne the travelling party –including your correspondent – stopped in Perth for more gas ahead of the 727's planned island hop across the Indian Ocean to Africa. In Perth, Lange learnt the US government, still seething over his anti-nuclear ships policy, had rescinded approval for his aircraft to refuel at its military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. The Africa tour was in early jeopardy until a compromise was reached – Lange's plane would be allowed to land but without journalists. The gaggle of Kiwi reporters – whisked non-stop from Perth to Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, in a new Qantas 747 – were delighted to be on hand, well lunched, for Lange's African arrival a day after their own. Their cockiness was short lived. Apparently alarmed by the burden the travelling press placed on the aircraft's alcohol supplies as Lange toured East Africa's capitals, the air force cut the booze. Other aerial dramas followed. Somewhere above Nigeria, the sight of three alarmed Nigerian air force pilots pounding the instrument cluster of the helicopter carrying the Lange party to a tea plantation preceded a rapid emergency landing. The lumbering old air freighter the Nigerians sent to retrieve us developed an inflight leak of the toilet system – sending a river of stored effluent backwards down the aisle. After arriving to work in Australia, I travelled on then prime minister Bob Hawke's equally ancient Boeing 707 – known to the rowdy travelling press as the 'zoo plane' where wine flowed while Hawke smoked cigars and played poker. Doubtless the shiny new VIP aircraft ordered by Luxon will prove far more reliable – but nowhere near the fun.
Scoop
15 hours ago
- Scoop
PM Must Stop Changes Further Failing Children
Press Release – New Zealand Labour Party Christopher Luxon must step in and cancel boot camps and restore funding to frontline community providers before its too late, Labour childrens spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime said. Today's damning report on Oranga Tamariki shows Māori children are being left with little chance of success, or even survival, after their experiences in the state care system, and Minister for Children Karen Chhour is making it worse. 'This report is the first of its kind and reveals a disturbing and urgent problem which can no longer be ignored by the Prime Minister who has overseen dangerous changes to Oranga Tamariki during his term in government,' Labour children's spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime said. 'The Government has cut early intervention, continued with botched bootcamps that have never worked, and taken away funding from community-run services that help children and whānau. 'Christopher Luxon has allowed an ACT Minister to recklessly erode the services that have been built up to support children. 'As well as repealing Section 7AA, Karen Chhour has removed a key target for placement of children with whanau, and removed the target for investment for services provided by Iwi organisations. 'The Government has taken away actions specifically put in place to address the significant disparities for Māori children in care. 'Christopher Luxon must step in and cancel boot camps and restore funding to frontline community providers before it's too late,' Willow-Jean Prime said.
