Winston Peters announces new US ambassador
Seed's appointment comes at a crucial time for diplomatic relations between New Zealand and the US, New Zealand's second biggest trading partner.
He would step into the role in January 2026.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration levelled a surprise 15% tariff on New Zealand.
Just a day prior, the FBI opened its new office in Wellington to "strengthen and enhance" its cooperation with a "key Five Eyes partner in the southwestern Pacific region". Director Kash Patel also said the new office would be working to counter China's influence in the Pacific.
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Seed was currently filling in as acting High Commissioner to the UK, stepping into the role after Phil Goff was sacked after he made comments about US President Donald Trump. He has previously served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 2019 to 2024, as well as leading New Zealand High Commissions in Canberra and Port Moresby.
Hamish Cooper would take up the role of High Commissioner to the UK in September.
Peters today described New Zealand's strategic partnership with the United States as, "one of our most important and long-standing relationships".
He said it was "essential" that New Zealand's ambassador to the US was experienced and had the "judgement and influence to effectively represent our country in Washington DC and navigate the range of important and pressing issues that are vital to New Zealanders".
'Mr Seed is one of New Zealand's most senior and accomplished diplomats and is, accordingly, the right person for this vital role."
Seed would be replacing Rosemary Banks, who would be completing her second term as ambassador by the time Seed arrives in Washington DC.
"Ms Banks has had a most distinguished diplomatic career, having led New Zealand missions in Paris, New York and Washington,' Peters said.
'Twice Ms Banks has been asked by her Government to serve in Washington DC and we are enormously grateful to her that twice she answered that call to serve with distinction as New Zealand Ambassador to the United States.
'Ms Banks' long diplomatic experience and her elevated standing amongst her US counterparts, during such a challenging time in global affairs, has seen her contribute greatly to one of New Zealand's most critical bilateral relationships."
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The Spinoff
4 hours ago
- The Spinoff
‘How do I not get rage-baited?' Meet the under-25s vying for council seats
They're young, full of ambition and just want to make sure their mates stop leaving the country. The competitive world of local politics, where greying heads and people named John dominate, is not a domain younger New Zealanders have traditionally gravitated towards. While this is changing – the number of under-40s voted in at the last last local elections in 2022 had doubled since 2016 – the median age was still 55, and only around 6% of members were aged 18-30. Looking to further increase that percentage when the country heads to the polls in October, these young candidates are hoping another youthquake could be possible in local government. Born on a leap day in the year 2000, 25-year-old Wellingtonian Sam O'Brien may have only had six real birthdays, but he reckons he's got enough life experience to represent the Motukairangi/Eastern Ward on Wellington City Council. Running on the Labour ticket, O'Brien is the second-youngest candidate in his race after the Act Local-backed 21-year-old Luke Kuggeleijn. Though their political stances are poles apart, they're both driven by the same motivation: to prove the youth voice can speak for all New Zealanders. It's a rainy day in Kuggeleijn's home suburb of Lyall Bay – Motukairangi/Eastern Ward stretches eastwards from Roseneath, Kilbirnie, Hataitai and Lyall Bay to cover the Miramar Peninsula that juts out into the mouth of Wellington Harbour – when we meet for a coffee at Maranui Cafe, just a stone's throw from the Surf Life Saving Club where he works. A postgraduate medical technology student and athlete, Kuggeleijn told The Spinoff he decided to throw his hat in the ring after seeing the party he voted for at the last election move into the world of local government – he figured the support that Act could offer would make it easier for a first-time candidate at his age to 'have the confidence to stand'. Also, it's pretty handy to have some mentors around who can answer the hard questions, like 'how do I not get rage-baited?' Running in a Green/Labour stronghold city, Kuggeleijn reckons his chances of winning one of the three ward councillor spots are slim (and the Eastern Ward race in particular is pretty stacked, with mayoral candidates Alex Baker, Rob Goulden and Karl Tiefenbacher also running), but he says it's still worth it if it encourages other young people to get into local politics. 'Usually, [young people] only see older people on council, and they think it's shit – you know, what's the point [of caring?],' Kuggeleijn says. 'We have a 45% voter turnout [in Wellington], and they're mostly older property owners and people who are already interested in politics.' Kuggeleijn says he feels 'fairly aligned' with Act's principles and 'commonsense mindset' on council spending, a position also informed by the experiences of his parents, two local business owners dealing with the rising cost of rates. As a councillor, Kuggeleijn says he'd be focused on 'ending wasteful spending and focusing on core services'. There are times when Kuggeleijn feels slightly out of step with his more progressive peers, but he's a firm believer that 'in a democracy, you've got to give people a choice, even if it's a minority view'. 'I think the best course of action you should take if you're elected is that [you see yourself] as a public servant, so you have to serve. People should make decisions that are not based on ideology or political favour – you're supposed to make decisions based on what the people want,' Kuggeleijn says. In Hataitai, Sam O'Brien's vision for the Eastern Ward looks vastly different. Over a coffee and toastie from Coolsville Cafe, just up the road from his flat, the regional council environment policy adviser (who's been endorsed by outgoing Eastern Ward councillor Teri O'Neill, herself elected to council at age 21), reckons he's been to far too many leaving parties for his mates who are heading overseas for better opportunities. Encouraging development and demand in the Eastern Ward will be key to curbing the 'general down-buzz' permeating the air in the capital, he says, and to turn off the tap on the brain drain. Alexandra born-and-raised O'Brien is running for council in the city he moved to post-university because he believes the council could be more proactive at listening to the concerns of younger Wellingtonians. The Eastern Ward in particular has seen very little growth in terms of population, O'Brien says, and as a councillor he would push to enable housing intensification and greater density. Ignoring these issues will 'affect young people more than anyone else' in the long run, he says. Having affected mobility due to hip and knee replacements as a child, O'Brien is also pushing for a more accessible capital by way of supporting more pedestrian-friendly urban spaces and improving the public transport system in the city. And should he make it onto the council table, O'Brien hopes older Wellingtonians will be able to see themselves and their interests reflected in his work. 'What benefits young people benefits everyone, and I don't want to come across a candidate that only cares about young people,' he says. 'A lot of older voters that are on fixed incomes are really struggling, and you can see the similarities between them and students.' 'I'll sacrifice myself, I guess' Further north in Auckland, 21-year-old Caitlin Wilson is running for the Waitematā Local Board with City Vision, the Labour-Greens-independent local government coalition in the supercity. She's also seen too many of her mates headed to Australia for work opportunities, and as a former co-convenor for the Young Greens, Wilson had tried last year to put together a campaign to 'push the vote out for our younger audiences', but struggled to find any young candidates keen to stand in 2025 – until she realised she should just do it, deciding, 'I'll sacrifice myself, I guess.' 'There's no pathway, which is why a lot of young people say, 'I don't know where to start',' Wilson says. 'You feel like you have to fit a certain mould, talk a certain way, look a certain way … But I definitely think I'm learning that people should respect me for who I am, regardless of how I dress and speak.' Wilson says local government isn't designed to engage young people – too few councillors are showing up in youth-focused spaces, and holding local board meetings at the 'retiree time' of 1pm can be a barrier to accessibility. 'Young people, and myself included, have in the past thought, 'they don't care about us, they don't care about our opinions, so why should we be engaged?'' Wilson says. Her own interest in politics happened by accident – she was 15, there was a global pandemic going on, and Green MP (now co-leader) Chlöe Swarbrick was on Facebook Live talking about the cannabis referendum. It was the first time Wilson had seen a politician 'speaking in a language I could understand'. She hopes that standing for council and replicating some of Swarbrick's 2020 campaigning by hitting the universities and letterboxes can also help the youth vote grow. 'My whole thing has just always been to bring people into politics, people who've never felt welcomed or that they needed a certain level of knowledge to enter this space,' Wilson says. 'It's not just young people – I feel I can represent disengaged communities in general, families and people who don't have the time and luxury to be in the know with local government.' Young enough to know when to quit Rohan O'Neill-Stevens was only 19 when they were first elected to Nelson City Council in 2019, and had just turned 22 when they became the city's deputy mayor, after putting their name forward for the top job. Now 25 and having spent a quarter of their life in local government, O'Neill-Stevens reckons it's the right time to give someone else a chance to bring their ideas to the council table. 'I promised myself when I was first elected that I'd ask myself every single day, 'Is this where I'm most effective and most able to drive change?'' O'Neill-Stevens tells The Spinoff. 'I can step away with confidence that I'm making space for someone else to have those opportunities to shape the future, and that I'll be able to find new ways to do the same.' Their experience in council has shown them that younger elected members tend to face more scrutiny than their older counterparts – it wasn't uncommon to field 'way more technical questions' to prove that they were on par with older councillors. 'There was definitely that period of being sized up,' O'Neill-Stevens says. 'It's so hard to know what my experience would have been like if I wasn't young. But also, I'm a male-presenting white person, so those layers of perception are different in terms of what it takes to earn respect, and to have your voice be treated as one of authority.' To the next generation of young councillors, O'Neill-Stevens says the 'service to the kaupapa' has to be the driving force behind a campaign, and to 'approach every conversation with the expectation that you'll learn something'. Being able to create meaningful dialogue with community members, even those who might never vote for you, is still 'an innate source of information' for what's going on in your area. That attitude to conversation even works with fellow candidates. 'So many people will tell you exactly what their debates are before you go in, even if they are completely opposed to you,' O'Neill-Stevens says. 'Use that to your advantage, get them talking. Let them spill their secrets.'
NZ Herald
4 hours ago
- NZ Herald
NZ debt nears $1 trillion as growth moderates, savings fall
At the current rate of growth, we'll hit that landmark inside the next three years. The rate of growth has moderated in the past two years as the Government has sought to curb borrowing, and the housing market, which accounts for the largest chunk of our debt, has been flat. Businesses have also been hunkering down, afraid to invest and expand, and farmers are getting good returns but using them to address high debt levels. But while the rate at which we're borrowing has eased, so too has the rate at which we are saving and growing wealth. The easiest path out of debt is wealth creation, shrinking our net debt and our debt-to-GDP ratio. So going backwards on that front is a cause for concern. The big, ugly numbers In the year to May 31, we hit a total of $872.6 billion in gross debt. That figure is up from $827.3b last year, a rise of 5.4%. It represents an average of $163,717 in raw debt for every Kiwi in the country. The rate of growth is relatively subdued by the standards of previous years. In the first New Zealand Herald Nation of Debt feature, in 2016, the total gross debt figure was $492.5b. We have seen total debt rise 77% since then. That represents an average annual increase of 6.65%. Given we are still coming down from a period of high interest rates, it was not surprising that borrowing growth was subdued, said Reserve Bank adviser for financial stability assessment and strategy, Charles Lilly. 'We're still in a relatively contractionary phase,' he said. 'We want to see stability. We don't want credit debt off the scale and people taking too much risk.' On the downside, a lack of borrowing growth was more of an issue with the financial system if the banks were not willing to lend, he said. 'I think banks are still willing to lend; it's mainly from the demand side, they just don't have customers coming through the door.' Crown debt also continues to rise, despite the Government's efforts to curb spending. Core Crown borrowing (the baseline we've used since 2016) was $238.8b in the year to May 31, 2025. That's up from $215b in the year to May 30, 2024 – an increase of 11%. It follows an increase of 11% for the previous year. While the coalition Government hasn't been able to stop Crown debt rising in double digits, it has at least reduced the annual rate of increase. It was 27% and 17% respectively in the years to May 2022 and May 2023. Crown debt is always a hot political topic. Wellington business editor Jenée Tibshraeny will take a deep dive into the state of the Government books tomorrow in part two of this series. The other side of the ledger Of course, the nominal figures still look scary. So does your mortgage if you don't weigh it against the value of your house. It is important to compare the gross debt figure to our saving rates and assets to add more context. Unfortunately, the latest Stats NZ figures (for the year to March) showed New Zealanders' household net wealth has fallen. Household net worth, the value of all assets owned by households less the value of their liabilities, fell $25.4b to $2.42 trillion in the March 2025 quarter. That is still almost three times the total gross debt figure. But in the year ended March 2025, household net worth fell $23.1b (0.9%), after a rise of $61.2b (2.5%) in the year ended March 2024. We're currently headed in the wrong direction. Most of that fall will be related to house prices, although some of it can be attributed to lower savings rates. Stats NZ's household saving data shows how much households are saving out of their current income (ie current income less current consumption). The data shows savings fell $392 million to minus $1.6b in the March 2025 quarter. Sector by sector Housing It should come as no surprise that the nation's mortgage debt accounts for the bulk of what we owe. Housing debt shot up during the big housing booms in the middle of the last decade and again during the first blush of Covid as stimulus money and low interest rates bolstered property prices. In the year to May 2016, the annual rate of increase for total housing debt was 9.2%, in 2021 it was 11.5%. If we look back further, it topped 16% in 2004. So this year's increase of 4.7% looks modest in comparison. It represents a slight increase on the even more modest 3.3% rise in the year to May 2024. That lift in mortgage debt may reflect the slight uptick in prices late last year and early this year (albeit something of a false start for those waiting on a full-blown housing market recovery). But the level of borrowing has also been lifted by record numbers of first-home buyers coming into the market, and fewer investors, said the RBNZ's Lilly. The former typically need to borrow more from the bank than the latter. If the housing market picks up later this year, as many pundits expect, then we'll likely see the rate of increase in mortgage borrowing follow, he says. Mortgage debt, most of which we owe to Australian banks, is a feature of the New Zealand economy that tends to worry international credit agencies more than our Crown debt. It has been a concern for the Reserve Bank in the past. 'In the current environment, subdued is definitely the theme,' Lilly said. Business Business borrowing barely lifted in the past year – and that is not good news for the economy. At $136.5b in the year to May 31, it was up just 0.6%. Businesses typically borrow to invest in new equipment that will improve productivity or to expand, taking on staff, to grab more market share. None of that stuff has been a feature of the past year. In fact, the opposite has been the case. Many businesses are struggling to survive. Those that desperately need cash to stay in business aren't going to get it from a bank. The struggle for many retail businesses is also highlighted in the relatively anaemic growth in personal consumer lending. At $14.5b, it is up 1.1% in the year to May 31. NZ Herald retail reporter Tom Raynel will take a closer look at the consumer borrowing trends later this week as part of the Nation of Debt series. For larger businesses, issues such as global uncertainty and tariffs would be limiting the appetite to borrow and take risks, Lilly said. It was also the case that the commercial property sector remained very weak, he said. Agriculture Unlike the struggling urban business sector, farmers have been benefiting from strong international export prices in the past year. Numerous commentators have suggested increased spending in the agricultural sector should buoy the regional economies and eventually flow through to the cities. The borrowing data for the past year offers some clues as to why that may take longer than many expect. Total agricultural debt is down 1% for the year to May 31, to $62.8b. Farmers appeared to be using their increased earnings to pay down debt in the first instance, Lilly said. This wasn't a bad thing; it is only a few years ago that the Reserve Bank was highlighting dairy debt as a significant risk to New Zealand's financial stability, he said. By the numbers That big, ugly number in our graphic is New Zealand's total gross debt. It combines the latest Reserve Bank figures for private debt with Treasury numbers for Crown debt and Local Government Funding Agency data on council debt, and IRD's data on student loans. The Reserve Bank figures include housing debt, consumer debt, business debt and agricultural debt to June 30. These are updated monthly by the central bank as part of its brief to monitor and maintain financial stability. The Crown debt figure is taken from the Treasury's Interim Financial Statements (11 months to May 31) and is the figure for core Crown borrowings. This is different from the net core Crown debt figure often used by politicians when discussing debt-to-GDP ratios. We use this (on Treasury's advice) as it is a gross debt figure but excludes debt held by state-owned enterprises, which would have been covered in the Reserve Bank statistics. The debt figure supplied by the Local Government Funding Agency is gross debt for the year to June 30, 2024. It captures all core council activities (Watercare, Auckland Transport, etc) but excludes some commercial activities (eg Christchurch City Council's Orion lines company, Port of Lyttelton, Christchurch Airport) as these would also be included in RBNZ data. Student loan debt is from the IRD statistics to March 2025. COMING UP IN THIS SERIES Tomorrow: Gov't debt: Are higher taxes inevitable? Wednesday: Consumer debt: What are Kiwis borrowing for? Thursday: Student debt: How big? How bad? Liam Dann is Business Editor at Large for the New Zealand Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, as well as presenting and producing videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
NZ Herald
4 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Letters: Do those who manage rugby want to see a crowd? I have listened to RNZ with growing concern
What is wrong with the people responsible for such genuinely awful planning? Had they started the early fixture a bit later and ensured a wait between games of, say, just 15 minutes before a 4.35pm kickoff for the NPC game, the crowd of probably 12,000 or so people would likely have stayed and enjoyed both games. The vast majority of the significant crowd immediately left at the first game's final whistle and the remaining crowd by the time of the next kickoff, as seen on TV, was the proverbial 'two men and a dog'! This was the first time we had attended at Eden Park for many years. We won't be back. In retrospect, it was 'the smart move' to leave as soon as the schools game ended as, when I gave up in disgust and turned the telly off, Taranaki were giving Auckland a good old-fashioned thrashing. Roger Hawkins, Herne Bay. Covid inquiry I am wondering why the citizenry of New Zealand are surprised when some politicians will not attend the Royal Commission on the Covid response. We elect our leaders to act on our behalf. Normally, everything is transparent and follows due process. A pandemic is an interruption to the normal business of a country; it requires instant, sometimes repugnant outcomes for the people and makes the deliverer of the message very unpopular. Being told to isolate and how and when we may leave our homes is anathema to New Zealanders but in the instance of a pandemic of the severity of Covid, it was necessary. Decision-makers did do what they thought right at that time, with what expert information and scientific knowledge was available to them. Why is the 'rightness or wrongness' of those decisions now being queried? It was over and above the parameters of normal governance. It was a pandemic! Life-threatening. A once-in-a-lifetime event. Yes, money was spent. How much and for how long was those leaders' decision to make. It is not now the privilege of today's political cohort to question the minutiae of detail of the whys and wherefores. New Zealand did not have coffins lining the streets. Perhaps our island nation was saved by the unpopular isolation tactics returning citizens endured but they can be proud they contributed to the safety of all. Do not turn this to a dollar mentality when measuring outcomes. A democratic society pays what is necessary to house and feed its criminals; provides succour to the needy, cares for the elderly – why pillory the decision-makers for money spent saving the nation in the time of a pandemic? Robyn Tubb, Millwater. RNZ's decline As a former senior NZBC announcer, I've listened to RNZ National's decline with growing concern. Richard Sutherland's recent criticism (Media Insider, August 16) confirms what many listeners know: standards have slipped dramatically. Today's RNZ presenters gabble through scripts, mangle pronunciations ('flowan' for 'flown,' 'pardy' for 'party'), and rush through te reo Māori with obvious discomfort. This undermines both our official language's mana and RNZ's credibility as New Zealand's public broadcaster. The problem runs deeper than technical issues. RNZ has drifted toward commercial radio tactics. There is much gabbling and puerile banter, chasing ratings rather than serving its unique public mission. But public radio shouldn't sound like The Rock or ZM, it should offer something better. Excellence means clear, accurate presentation with proper pronunciation of both English and te reo Māori. It means substance over filler, cultural competence and an authentically New Zealand voice that maintains professional standards without stuffiness. The solution isn't complicated: establish clear broadcasting standards, provide ongoing professional development and create a culture valuing craft over ratings. Experienced broadcasters should mentor newcomers, passing on both technical skills and understanding of public radio's role. RNZ National should be the best of New Zealand broadcasting; thoughtful, substantial and respectful of audience intelligence. The talent exists; what's needed is leadership willing to set and maintain standards. Our public broadcaster should make us proud, not require excuses. James Gregory, Parnell.
