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Air India crash: No fuel switch checks ordered for New Zealand Boeing 787s
Air India crash: No fuel switch checks ordered for New Zealand Boeing 787s

NZ Herald

time15-07-2025

  • Business
  • NZ Herald

Air India crash: No fuel switch checks ordered for New Zealand Boeing 787s

Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa both told Reuters they had made new checks since last weekend's preliminary report. However, NZ's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has told the Herald no such checks were needed. 'Currently there is no airworthiness directive requiring inspections of the fuel cutoff switches on Boeing 787s from the state of design ... from the US, where the aircraft was originally designed.' The authority said it was in frequent contact with the FAA. 'At this stage there are no mandatory inspection requirements associated with the Air India accident, or the preliminary report issued by India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation.' The CAA said Dreamliner and 737 operators should follow FAA recommendations and airworthiness directives. Air NZ, operator of 14 Dreamliners, has been approached for comment. According to Reuters, the FAA this week said the fuel control switch design, including the locking feature, was similar on various Boeing models, and not unsafe. The crash has prompted speculation which Air India's NZ-born chief executive reportedly sought to address this week. Campbell Wilson told staff the crash probe was 'far from over,' according to an internal memo The Wall Street Journal cited. Campbell Wilson, chief executive officer of Air India. Photo / Lionel Ng, Bloomberg via Getty Images 'Over the past 30 days, we've seen an ongoing cycle of theories, allegations, rumours and sensational headlines, many of which have later been disproven,' Wilson said in the memo. Airline Pilots' Association of India president Sam Thomas told the Press Trust of India the preliminary report seemed to focus on 'one sentence which is misleading'. He was referring to the cockpit voice recording about fuel supply. Thomas said the report had elementary mistakes. 'We are not happy with the investigation. And it is going in the direction of blaming the pilots before even the inquiry is completed.' Meanwhile, auditors from the International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao) are undertaking a full safety audit of New Zealand's aviation system this month. The audit, unrelated to the Air India crash, was announced in February. The CAA said Icao was conducting detailed interviews with the CAA, Ministry of Transport, Transport Accident Investigation Commission, and other organisations. The previous full safety audit in NZ was in 2006. John Weekes is a business journalist mostly covering aviation and courts. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.

Reporting International Migration: Less Than The Truth
Reporting International Migration: Less Than The Truth

Scoop

time14-07-2025

  • Politics
  • Scoop

Reporting International Migration: Less Than The Truth

Yesterday I listened to RNZ's political commentators. The principal topic was an aspect of the recently released May 2025 international migration. Kathryn Ryan starts by reminding us of the "old saying, would the last person to leave New Zealand please turn out the lights" (a saying which has been used in places other than Godzone). The latest figure for net immigration was an inflow of 14,800; a net gain. But you wouldn't have realised this. Ryan went on to say there's a big migration outflow underway right now. And she's correct if you only count New Zealand citizens. (Non-NZ citizens are people too; indeed, in that timeframe, 53,400 non-NZ citizens emigrated!) Kathryn Ryan said there was a net loss of 30,000. There was actually a (provisional) net loss of 46,300 NZ citizens. (Possibly she – or her producer – had subtracted the all-migrant net inflow from the net loss of New Zealand citizens, having interpreted the overall 14,800 net inflow as a net inflow of non-NZ citizens.) In fact, this 46,300 net loss of NZ citizens was offset by a net gain of 61,100 non-NZ citizens. (We should also note that total arrivals – not just people classified as 'immigrants' – in the year to May 2025 exceeded total departures by 3,797; less than the 14,800 ascribed to net international migration. The sum of total net arrivals in the six years to May 2025 was 244,000; an average of 40,000 per year.) The total number of people who featured (in the period from June 2024 to May 2025) as either immigrants or emigrants was 264,000; that is, a number of people equivalent to five percent of New Zealand's total population featured as either a permanent arrival or a permanent departure. This 264,000 includes 114,500 "migrant arrivals of non-NZ citizens". Half of the 114,500 estimated permanent arrivals of non-NZ citizens were citizens of either India, China, Philippines or Sri Lanka. In addition to getting the numbers wrong, a key problem with the framing of the RNZ migration discussion is that it rendered invisible these citizens of Asian countries; as people of Asian birth have been largely invisible in our intense discussions in recent years on binationalism. This gaze aversion by the political class is a kind of passive or casual racism. It is ethnicism to simply ignore the new New Zealanders who provide so much of our labour, and who generally perform their labour roles with professionalism and competence. An important aspect of this problem is to ignore the 'mammoth in the room', that there is in Aotearoa New Zealand a substantial substitution of New Zealand born residents for non-New Zealand born residents; white citizens are leaving, brown denizens are arriving. In these latest statistics, for the year to May, there were 61,100 more new New Zealanders and 46,300 fewer old New Zealanders; 61,100 minus -46,300 equals 107,400. 100,000 is two percent of five million. So, if 70% of New Zealand residents were NZ-born in May 2024, then about 68% of New Zealand residents will have been NZ-born in May 2025. (Just under 30 percent of New Zealanders were born overseas in March 2023, according to Statistics New Zealand.) The rate of 'replacement' is probably not quite that great, in that some of the citizens leaving permanently will have been naturalised rather than born in Aotearoa New Zealand. Another complicating factor is natural population growth – the excess of births over deaths – which was just over 20,000 in 2024. It would appear that about one-third of births in New Zealand (maybe more) are to mothers not themselves born in New Zealand. Population 'Replacement' is a sensitive subject. The 'far right' in much of the Eurocentric world indulges in 'replacement theory', a conspiracy theory that there is a liberal "elite" (sometimes "Jewish") agenda to replace 'whites' with 'non-whites'. (There used to be a comparable case on the 'far-left', whereby 'globalisation' was interpreted as an agenda rather than a description.) The descriptive reality of today's world is that there are disproportionately more – and substantially so – 'brown' and 'black' young people than their proportion among older age cohorts. White people are diminishing, and non-white people are increasing in numbers. That's not a problem. But it is perceived as a problem by many white people, especially disadvantaged white people in the economically polarised Euro world. If we tip-toe around this issue of changing global ethnic proportions, we leave the field to 'replacement theory' conspiracy theorists. We need to have adult conversations about the implications not just of aging populations, but also the re-culturation of our populations through demographic change. Applying this last matter to Aotearoa New Zealand, a nation state with rapid population turnover, the overall national 'personality' can be largely retained so long as immigrants come from a wide range of other countries. When I was in Sydney last year, I heard a story about the emergence of India's 'caste system' in Australia. This is the kind of cultural change that we do not want in New Zealand; such cultural colonisation can be averted by avoiding too much immigration from a single country. And through a process of cultural fusion, rather than either assimilation or the emergence of cultural silos. Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Keith Rankin Political Economist, Scoop Columnist Keith Rankin taught economics at Unitec in Mt Albert since 1999. An economic historian by training, his research has included an analysis of labour supply in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has included estimates of New Zealand's GNP going back to the 1850s. Keith believes that many of the economic issues that beguile us cannot be understood by relying on the orthodox interpretations of our social science disciplines. Keith favours a critical approach that emphasises new perspectives rather than simply opposing those practices and policies that we don't like. Keith retired in 2020 and lives with his family in Glen Eden, Auckland.

Albanese re-elected as PM in historic win as Dutton loses seat
Albanese re-elected as PM in historic win as Dutton loses seat

1News

time03-05-2025

  • Politics
  • 1News

Albanese re-elected as PM in historic win as Dutton loses seat

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has won re-election, leading his centre-left Labor Party to a second term in government. In a stunning twist, opposition leader Peter Dutton not only failed to unseat Albanese, but also lost his own seat of Dickson in Brisbane, a result unprecedented in Australian federal politics. No federal opposition leader has ever been defeated in their home electorate during an Australian general election until now. The upset leaves the conservative Liberal-National coalition in disarray and temporarily leaderless, marking a dramatic rebuke of Dutton's campaign and leadership. Albanese's victory makes him the first Australian prime minister to win re-election since John Howard in 2004. 'Tonight the Australian people have voted for stability,' Albanese told supporters. Meanwhile, Dutton's ouster in Dickson ends the veteran Queensland MP's two-decade parliamentary career. Having held the seat for 20 years, Dutton conceded defeat to Labor candidate Ali France. Former PM John Howard called Dutton's defeat 'a harsh lesson' for the Liberal Party. Coalition figures have already begun speculating on a leadership successor, with Nationals senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price remarking that 'everything has to be considered going forward.' Political analysts say the election outcome reflects voters' desire for continuity amid years of turmoil in Australian politics. Melissa Clarke, a veteran ABC News political reporter, said Australians 'have endorsed the prime minister's steady approach' after a long period of instability. 'This is a prime minister being re-elected after election after election of Australia either changing government or parties themselves changing their leaders,' Clarke said. 'He has been criticised for not being adventurous enough, for not taking big enough steps in reform, but his belief has always been that Australians are looking for a steady hand.' This year's election featured a unique development in the Australian electorate: a surge of New Zealand-born voters. For the first time, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders living in Australia were eligible to vote in a federal election, thanks to a recent citizenship pathway reform. An estimated one million NZ-born residents (around 4% of the eligible vote) made use of a new fast-track to Australian citizenship. The reform, implemented by the Albanese government in 2023 with support from former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, reversed decades-old restrictions. Albanese hailed the move as strengthening the bond between the two countries. Albanese told 1News Kiwi voter participation 'enriches our democracy and reflects the close ties between our countries.' Albanese's triumph and Dutton's defeat will reshape Australia's political landscape. For Albanese, the win provides a personal mandate to solidify his agenda. He signalled that 'steady and serious leadership' will continue to define his approach. The Liberal Party, meanwhile, faces a moment of reckoning. Dutton's resignation triggers a leadership contest, with contenders like Sussan Ley, Josh Frydenberg, and David Littleproud mentioned. The next leader will need to modernise the party's image and policies to regain urban voters' trust. As the dust settles, Australians have made history. 'Strength and stability,' Albanese said in his victory speech, 'that's what we promised, and that's what we will deliver.'

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