Midday Report Essentials for Tuesday 3 June 2025
money media 23 minutes ago
In today's episode, there's another change for the media landscape in Aotearoa with a new marriage between Trade Me and Stuff, employers and manufacturers are describing government moves to change the focus of Worksafe as long overdue, it was the deadliest King's Birthday weekend on the roads in six years, and a petition has just been handed over at parliament calling for a ban on the public sale of fireworks - in a bid to protect pets.
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RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
New Lynn stabbing attack: Supermarket visits 'insurmountable obstacle', inquest told
Ahamed Samsudeen coming out of the New Lynn train station, on the day of the attack on September 3, 2021. Photo: Supplied Content warning: This report contains content some may consider disturbing. The inquest into the LynnMall terror attack will see further analysis of video showing how the assault unfolded, when it resumes on Thursday. Ahamed Samsudeen stabbed five people and injured two others at a Woolworths supermarket in Auckland's New Lynn, before he was shot and killed by police. Survivors at the inquest on Wednesday watched a video of Ahamed Samsudeen pausing to put on a red glove inside the supermarket . He was then seen ripping a knife from its packaging and rushing at his first victim. What happened next scarred survivors physically and emotionally. One survivor, who had name suppression, told the inquest just how much of an impact the attack had on her. "For some, the mere thought of entering a supermarket has become an insurmountable obstacle," she said. "We are no longer the individuals we used to be, and coming to terms with this reality is profoundly difficult." Samsudeen's rampage ended after he was shot 12 times by police. He had been granted refugee status in 2013, was identified by the SIS as a terrorist threat in early 2017, and was under surveillance at the time of the attack on 3 September, 2021. Detective Senior Sergeant Jason McIntosh told the inquest about the moment authorities noticed a change in his social media posting. "Recent content continues to reference Jannah, in brackets 'afterlife', and death, he's referenced literature on lone wolf terrorism" McIntosh said. "Samsudeen has begun to increasingly include his own commentary when posting, which may assist with understanding his mindset going forward." The inquest was shown footage of Samsudeen's previous trip to the supermarket - roughly a month before the attack. He could be seen walking to the knives aisle, appearing to take special notice of the items on the shelves. McIntosh was questioned by police counsel Alysha McClintock over Samsudeen's movements in the time leading up to the attack, as recorded in surveillance logs. "Once it was understood that Mr Samsudeen had visited the New Lynn Countdown previously on the 12th of August, the footage we've just seen, was there subsequently by one of your colleagues, an endeavour to go through the surveillance logs and look at the locations that might have had knifes and or other weapons that Mr Samsudeen had visited," McClintock asked. "Correct, yes" McIntosh replied. The logs revealed Samsudeen made about 119 visits to more than 60 different locations that could have had knives or other weapons. The lawyer representing the interests of Samsudeen's family, Fletcher Pilditch, asked McIntosh about the police surveillance of Samsudeen. "Was it the observations that had been made and recorded by the surveillance team that enabled you after the 3rd of September to then go and identify other places where he had been? "And I don't need to pry into where that information came from, I was just interested in the source of it," Pilditch said. "I do know that we compiled a list post investigation," McIntosh responded. The inquest was expected on Thursday to go through a frame-by-frame analysis of CCTV footage from the attack, as well as hearing technical evidence later in the day.
RNZ News
an hour ago
- RNZ News
Wellington emploment market 'pretty Hunger Games', jobseeker says
Photo: 123RF After about a year of job hunting in Wellington, communications experts Rebecca Thomson and Emily Turner have seen a lot. Sometimes they apply for a job and get no response. Other times, the job remains advertised while interviews are happening. In one case, applying for a three-month contract was to involve a full 45-minute interview, then a coffee chat - but then the advertiser decided not to fill the position. "It feels pretty Hunger Games out there, sort of far more people than jobs, across the board," Thomson said. "It can be like a really bad dating situation," Turner said. "It's like permanently being ghosted from a very bad date, or not even a date because that would be the interview … it's putting your best foot forward, doing some really good chat and banter and thinking it's all going really well, and then nothing." Turner said she had about six interviews for roles, from about 20 applications. "I've got a very clear approach of what I'm applying for, I don't do a sort of scatter gun approach, I apply for roles that I know I've got a clear go at getting." She said she had asked recruiters how many people were applying for senior communications roles and had been told that it could be 80 to 100. Thomson said she had picked up freelance work along the way. "But in terms of full-time employment it's been a year. We're both highly skilled people that have worked on an array of projects and we're not the only ones." The pair have started an informal network for Wellington job hunters, where people can get together to support each other and share tips and information about the employment market. "We set it up to get to be somewhere where people can meet and have a chat in a casual, friendly environment," Thomson said. "It's tough out there and people are mentally finding it tough ." Some people want advice on how to put mortgage payments on hold, how to cover the cost of car registration or body corporate fees without regular income, but other times the network might share details of jobs that might suit other people. Thomson said from the initial meeting with two of them, their next meeting attracted eight. Another meeting was planned for this week and more people were offering their support online. "I've had a few DMs (direct messages) from people saying 'I can't come but this is great'," Thomson said. Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at Infometrics, said it was unlikely the Wellington employment market would turn around soon . "There's certainly not any signs that any time soon the pressure from government is going to change on either employment numbers or departmental spending. "Often what we've seen in the past, if we went back to the previous National government from 2008 onwards they had a sinking lid on employment, it was not as tough but reasonably tough, but at the same time they had a bit more room fiscally so there was more consulting work going on. This time the pressure is very much on both sides." Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan. Photo: Supplied He said the public sector crackdown was having a flow-on effect on the private sector in Wellington. "It may be after 18 months we're through the worst of it but it's hard to see it turning around and employment picking up any time soon." The annual average unemployment rate in Wellington City was 4.8 percent in the year to March, up from 3.4 percent in the previous 12 months. Kiernan said Wellington had previously had unemployment well below the national average but the gap had closed. Jarrod Kerr, chief economist at Kiwibank, said he thought it could be six months before the Wellington situation improved, "but probably more like a year". "It's the harsh reality of an RBNZ(Reserve Bank)-induced recession and significant cuts in the public sector. We forecast an improvement, which keeps getting delayed, by the end of the year, and we look into 2026 with more confidence." Thomson said anyone who wanted to join the network could find them on LinkedIn. "We wanted to keep it sort of friendly and open - people don't have to join some page to be part of it … it's a space to decompress and have a coffee or tea and chat with some like-minded people." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
The Spinoff
2 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Ruth Richardson's state honour is a slap in the face for the poor
The architect of 1991's 'mother of all budgets', who was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the King's Birthday honours this week, did immense damage to the country's poorest and most vulnerable, writes Max Rashbrooke. In the early 1990s, two Porirua preschoolers burned to death when their state house was set alight by a candle their family had begun using after the power was cut off. They had been forced to this extremity by a National government that, obsessed by 'market forces', had decided to remove their housing subsidy and require them to pay market rents instead. This sharp rise in costs had left them unable to pay their power bill; hence the candle. Labour MP Graham Kelly caused an uproar in parliament when he attributed these deaths to National's policies – but even allowing for imponderable factors, like whether a candle falls over or not, he was in the broadest sense right. Policies that target the poor always have consequences in the end. And no one targeted the poor harder than Ruth Richardson, who on Monday was made a Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit. Alongside the market-rent reforms, Richardson is most notorious for the 1991 'mother of all budgets', which cut the benefits of some of the poorest and most vulnerable New Zealanders by up to one-quarter. In a move familiar throughout history, she decided that the burden of tackling New Zealand's (admittedly severe) budget deficit was to fall disproportionately on the poor, rather than those better able to bear it. The result was immediate: a doubling of the number of those living in the most extreme poverty – that is, on less than 40% of the typical income – from 4% in 1990 to 8% two years later. Most policies are much slower to show their effects; Richardson is among a select few who can claim to have doubled poverty overnight. The effects of this stark rise, quite apart from the pain and misery inflicted on families, have spread right throughout New Zealand. Food banks used to be virtually unknown in this country; in the 1990s they became commonplace. Unable to afford to heat their homes, or indeed pay the rent, multiple families began living under one roof, enduring the cold or huddling together for warmth. Mould and damp proliferated. Diseases like rheumatic fever, long since eliminated in other developed nations, flourished in these conditions, wrecking childhoods and ending lives prematurely. A sharp uptick in the hospitalisations of children for medical conditions – from 50 per 1,000 to 70 per 1,000 – began in 1992, just after Richardson's budget. While she was not, of course, the sole author of these misfortunes, she undoubtedly wrote much of the script. Child poverty leaves scars that later affluence never really erases. Children born into hardship have, in adulthood, twice the rate of heart conditions of those born into wealth. They also have far lower reading scores and educational results. Quite apart from being devastating in their own right, these deficits create colossal financial costs: the annual bill from child poverty in this country is estimated at anywhere between $12 billion and $21 billion. This is particularly ironic because Richardson's legacy on the right is one of financial rectitude: she is seen, in particular, as the author of the 1994 Fiscal Responsibility Act, which aimed to improve the transparency and long-term management of the government's accounts. But not only is this relatively small beer compared to the appalling damage poverty inflicts on people's lives, the long-term economic costs of increased hardship are an example of massive financial irresponsibility. Not that Richardson has ever been able to acknowledge as much. Interviewed by the academic Andrew Dean a decade ago, she denied her policies had resulted in any wider harm: 'Over time, was there a social cost? No, there was a social benefit.' That, then, is the person the New Zealand state decided to honour this week: someone who not only did immense damage to the country's poorest but is also quite disconnected from the realities of that harm. The puzzle is less – as some commentators suggested – that it took so long for her to be recognised, but rather that she has been recognised at all. Maybe, though, we should not be surprised. Over in the UK, a similar strategy of slashing government budgets and benefit payments took place under the Conservatives between 2010 and 2024. This austerity cut access to the social services on which ordinary people rely, reduced ambulance services, and sparked poverty-related 'deaths of despair'. All up, it is conservatively estimated by researchers to have caused 190,000 preventable deaths. The man most responsible for this social devastation, former chancellor George Osborne, nonetheless occupies a gilded position in British life, having moved smoothly into editing the Evening Standard newspaper and pontificating on global politics. Inflicting misery on the poor is, in short, socially acceptable as long as it is clothed in the classic establishment rhetoric of taking 'difficult' choices, 'balancing' the books and fiscal 'responsibility'. The poor may be, as the Christians say, always with us, but that does not guarantee that their lives will ever be accorded the proper respect.
