Latest news with #RadioNZ
Kiwiblog
5 days ago
- Health
- Kiwiblog
So much wrong in one article
Radio NZ reports: More than 80,000 Kiwis must quit smoking before the end of the year to meet the goal of Smokefree 2025, which was launched 14 years ago. But Professor of Public Health Chris Bullen tells The Detail that it is unlikely to happen – 'I don't believe so, sadly. 'The evidence suggests we are not heading in the right direction fast enough,' says Bullen, who is also the director of the National Institute for Health Innovation. 'We have got more work to do in 2026 and beyond.' The smokefree goal aims to have less than 5 percent of the population smoking by December, but the latest data reveals there are still about 300,000 daily smokers across the country. The daily smoking rate has dropped from 16.4% to 6.9% since 2011, which is a huge reduction. It is correct that it is unlikely to drop 1.9% in one year, as those remaining are a small but persistent hardcore. Bullen says part of the issue is, last year, the coalition government repealed three areas of the Smokefree law, most importantly the denicotinisation of tobacco products (where the nicotine is basically taken out of cigarettes) and banning the sale of tobacco products to those born after 1 January 2009. 'I think we could have gotten to the goal under the previous legislation, but that was repealed by the current government. This is just nonsense, and we know it is because look at when these provisions were to come into force. The ban (which would not have worked) to those born after 1 January 2009 would not take effect until 2027, so claiming it would help you make a 2025 target is embarrassing. A tobacco industry-funded report has just revealed that 25 percent of cigarettes sold in New Zealand are from the black market, smuggled into the country, largely from China and South Korea, and available on Facebook Marketplace, at construction sites, and in some dairies. Black market cigarettes are about half the price of legal packets, which can cost up to $45. But Bullen is not convinced the percentage of illegal sales is as high as reported. He says it is more likely around the 10-15 percent mark. He believes the tobacco industry inflates the number – and the problem – to 'encourage the government to ease up on being tough on their product'. Here Professor Bullen has an opinion that the black market is not as high as as reported, but with not any proof or data to back his view. One source of data is government excise revenue on tobacco. For the year to March 2025 it was $1.49b and in March 2023 it was $1.81b. So it has dropped 18% despite the rate going up and no reported change in smoking rates in this period. New research, which overlays vape stores on school locations, shows 44 percent of schools have a vape store within a one-kilometre radius This old chestnut. There is almost no area in urban New Zealand that is not within a 1 kms radius of a school. That is a 314 hectare circle. We have 2,500 schools. Since 2020, it has been illegal to sell vapes to people under 18, but students as young as 10 and 11 are vaping across New Zealand today. Yet he is convinced prohibition works!
Kiwiblog
23-05-2025
- Business
- Kiwiblog
Media funding
Radio NZ reports: At the same time, RNZ will have its budget cut by $18m over four years – $4.6m a year – around 7 percent of its current $67m allocation. This means they will still be getting $62 million a year. In 2017 they got $35 million. Any other media organisation would love to have revenues in 2025 that are 77% higher than in 2017. Even if you take inflation into account, Radio NZ funding next year will be 38% higher than in 2017. Budget 2025 includes $6.4 million over four years to hire journalists in heartland New Zealand for reporting on councils and courts. Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith said the funding will help communities stay informed and hold decision-makers to account. 'It will get funding into regional newsrooms so that more local frontline journalists can report on the things that matter to their audiences.' The money will expand two existing programmes – Local Democracy Reporting and Open Justice – which the minister said had an emphasis on 'reporting, rather than opinion'. These two areas are the rare areas of media worth funding centrally. As Goldsmith says they are old fashioned reporting, not opinion. But they are also vital parts of New Zealand that need sunlight. We want media reports of court cases, and decisions by Councils.
Perth Now
22-05-2025
- Business
- Perth Now
NZ posts $14 billion budget deficit, no path to surplus
In her second budget, Finance Minister Nicola Willis has posted a $14.7 billion deficit, even as she banks more than $5 billion in savings. There's no clear path back to surplus, with four future smaller deficits in the forward estimates. And there's no change to the government's debt trajectory, which is tipped to peak in 2027 at 46.5 per cent of GDP - just as it was forecast in 2024. The government has also badged this set of books as "the growth budget", but Treasury has downgraded growth forecasts. That's mainly due to lower-than-expected economic activity offshore - including the US-started trade war - which is critical to New Zealand's export-oriented economy. Unemployment, currently at five per cent, is expected to peak at 5.4 per cent in the next year, while there is relief in sight for homeowners after backsliding house prices, which Treasury sees jumping by an average six per cent a year in the forward estimates. MAJOR CHANGES Women-dominated workforces to miss out on $2.9b in foregone pay equity claims Investment Boost $1.7b tax break to instantly write off capital investments Employee and employer superannuation contributions to rise from three to four per cent - but government payments halved, saving $580m BUDGET TIDBITS Young people ineligible for unemployment benefits until age 20, saving $84m Funding to Reserve Bank cut by $36m Co-investment in natural gas fields worth $50m Radio NZ's budget to be cut by $4.6m - equivalent to seven per cent Tax evaders to be targeted by $35m worth of compliance chasers A major redevelopment of Nelson hospital, a new emergency department in Wellington Expansion of Christchurch Men's prison by 240 beds Emergency housing funding reduced by $200m Food banks get another year's support of $15m Year-long medicine prescriptions, costing $23m Predator Free 2050 initiative targeting pest mammals axed, saving $2.6m Climate finance to drop by $150m this year Smaller payments to new mothers of $50m (All figures in annual terms and in NZ dollars, $A1 = $NZ1.09)
Scoop
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
The Aratere And The New Zealand Main Trunk Line
Government-owned Kiwirail is supposed to be presiding over the New Zealand Main Trunk (Railway) Line, from Auckland to Invercargill. As such it runs a ferry service (The Interislander) between New Zealand's North and South Islands. We are being told by Kiwirail (and see today's report on Radio NZ) that the only rail-enabled roll-on roll-off ferry – the Aratere – will cease operations in August this year, five years before its putative successor ferries will commence operations. At the same time, rail is being revitalised in the South Island, with the Hillside workshops redevelopment. (And see the following on Scoop last Friday: New Hillside Workshops Officially Opened and Rail Workers Celebrate Hillside Workshops Rebirth.) How can this be: simultaneous expansion and contraction of New Zealand's trunk railway under the governance of the same government? There is a simple conceptual solution, which covers both the short run and the long-run. Kiwirail could relocate the Interislander's South Island terminus to Lyttelton, the rail-accessible port of Christchurch. Indeed this should have become policy after the dramatic 2016 Kaikoura earthquake which destroyed both railway and highway around Kaikoura, halfway between Wellington and Christchurch; both road and rail main trunk. Not only is the present route precarious, but also it is so much 'greener' for both road and rail traffic between the North Island and the southern 85% of the South Island (by population) to travel by sea between Wellington and Christchurch. That is, the bulk of interisland vehicle travel undertaken directly by sea is more sustainable than a journey by sea between Wellington and Picton followed by a long 340km Picton to Christchurch land journey. The suggested solution is that The Interislander should operate out of Lyttelton from about 2030, leaving Bluebridge to service the Wellington Picton route. If that were to happen, then the Aratere could stay in service until 2030; because the new facilities suited to the new ships – at least the South Island facilities – would not have to be on the same site as Picton's present rail-ship facilities. Last year I wrote to MPs from all five parties, before it was too late to cancel the shipping order for the cancelled iRex project, including the Labour MP for Lyttelton. Only the Green Party bothered to reply to me. And even they were unenthusiastic about the idea of the Interislander shifting to Lyttelton; their lack of interest came across as more a matter of political priority than as an argument about economics or sustainability. Maybe I am stupid, and I simply cannot see the obvious reasons why a shift back to Lyttelton cannot happen. But I really think we should have a national conversation about the restoration of ferry services between Wellington and Lyttelton; and with the current consciousness about the future of rail being a very important stimulus to that conversation. After all, for over 100 years, before 1960, Wellington to Lyttelton was the essential 'main trunk' link between the two islands. The change-around happened around 1960 because the previous Wellington to Picton service had become so run-down that something had to be done about it. And that there just happened to be a relatively new railhead at Picton. After 1960, the Lyttelton service was doomed to fail when it became a one-ship service in 1968, after the tragic demise of the then state-of-the-art Wahine. Why don't we have national conversations anymore? Everything seems to happen as a fait accompli, narratives driven by unimaginative back-office accountants with short time horizons. And mainstream academics and media simply accept this under-democratic state of affairs. We are still suffering from the infrastructure backlog that escalated in the early 1990s when Finance Minister Ruth Richardson forced many of New Zealand's unemployed and underemployed to emigrate, especially to Australia; all in the name of 'fiscal responsibility'. Some of those people who left for Australia just as its banking crisis was unfolding – especially their children – are drifting back to New Zealand in the 2010s and 2020s as '501' deportees (see Product of Australia, Stuff December 2019, and noting in a chart that more than half of the 501s deported to New Zealand from 2015 to 2019 were aged 26 to 40). Those young (mainly) men could have been building New Zealand; instead, too many became criminals in Australia. And the New Zealand economy regressed for the best part of ten years (from 1985), while the rest of the world was progressing. That period is the source of the now-entrenched Australia New Zealand differential in living standards. 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.
Kiwiblog
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Kiwiblog
Will Parliament uphold standards?
Radio NZ had a terrible article on the Privileges Committee report. The Office of the Clerk provides ~$200k of taxpayer funding each year for RNZ's 'The House' to deliver regular insights into Parliament. After the PIJF controversies, you'd think a basic funding condition would be to avoid overt political commentary. This doesn't look like that. — Charted Daily (@Charteddaily) May 18, 2025 As you can see above, an incredibly biased emotive article – and one funded by taxpayers! Richard Harman also gets it wrong saying: Peters also will have voted for the 21-day suspension at the Privileges Committee, where voting was clearly along party lines and the coalition votes as one. It is quite wrong to imply it was a coalition decision. National MPs on the Privileges Committee do not go to their caucus and get approval or instructions on how they vote. They decide for themselves. A good take on this is from Liam Hehir who makes the point: The use of tikanga to justify interference with parliamentary democracy is not a defence of culture. It is the exploitation of it. It is an attempt to elevate a partisan stunt into an untouchable act, shielded from criticism by the sacred. Here is what it really is: the use of cultural identity as a weapon against the functioning of representative government. It is the deliberate dragging of that very culture into disrepute by setting it up in opposition to rights that belong to everyone. It does not honour a culture to frame it as incompatible with the principles of democratic participation. And this is not the first time it has happened. Democracy is not some Western construct. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that 'the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government' including when 'expressed through elected representatives.' A Parliament's voting process is the very heart of that expression. It is not decorative. It is not optional. It cannot be paused or polluted for performance. To attempt to disrupt it—and then justify that disruption on the basis that cultural identity overrides the rules of Parliament—is to suggest that culture and democracy are mutually exclusive. That is an insult both to democracy and culture. Ngarewa-Packer's 'finger gun' gesture cannot be dismissed as cultural expression. Performed during a vote and directed at political opponents. It goes without saying that, had an ACT MP performed a similar gesture towards Te Pāti Māori MPs, the condemnation would have been swift and unequivocal. Standards must be applied consistently. Two former Speakers have unusually come out and said the recommended punishments don't actually go far enough. NewstalkZB reported: A former Speaker believes suggested punishments for three Te Pāti Māori MPs falls short. Parliament's Privileges Committee has recommended suspensions for the three – for their protest haka during voting on the Treaty Principles Bill. Parliament will vote next Tuesday on whether to suspend the co-leaders for 21 days, and MP Hana Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke for seven. David Carter says the haka was 'intimidating' and 'unacceptable'. 'And then to refuse to appear before the Privileges Committee – again, it's yet another contempt of the rules of Parliament.' And also Lockwood Smith: A former Speaker of the House is reminding MPs the rules of the House must be followed. The Privileges Committee have suggested three Te Pati Māori MPs be temporarily suspended from Parliament, ranging up to 21 days, for their role in a haka over the Treaty Principles Bill. Te Pati Māori says these suspensions are the longest in Parliament's history. Sir Lockwood Smith told Ryan Bridge members need to think before they ignore the rules. He says the three-week suspension and missing part of the budget debate will hopefully make people take notice. Lockwood is generally regarded as the best and fairest speaker under MMP. You have two former Speakers saying enough is enough. Also Thomas Coughlan points out: The attendance of Te Pāti Māori MPs is an embarrassment to Parliament and an offence to the taxpayer (Peters quite fairly pointed out that it was rich for the opposition to care so much about the three MPs' attendance during the Budget debate next week, when they skipped it last year). The Speaker and the Greens have quietly offered to help Te Pāti Māori with basic House procedure, including getting MPs' questions into order. Those offers have been rebuffed. As a result, in their fifth year as MPs, Ngarewa-Packer and Waititi still struggle at question time, Waititi particularly so. The party's voters deserve better – and frankly, so do taxpayers. There are few jobs paying $168,000 a year that would let you get away with refusing to learn the basics and would tolerate that level of regular rulebreaking. So the co-leaders have been there five years, and they still can't competently ask questions in the House. This is reflected is their favourability ratings with the public. When we polled on the co-leaders in February 2025, their net favourability or approval for Waititi: All voters: -28% National voters: -39% Labour voters: -16% Undecided voters: -63% Women: -19% Men: -39% Under 40s: -12% 40 to 59: -31% Over 60s: -44% If Labour want to spend the two sitting days before the Budget arguing in the House that Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer should just be getting a wet bus ticket slap for their behaviour, instead of talking about the economy, then all power to them.
