NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

A person has been seriously injured after getting trapped between a rubbish truck and what RNZ understands to be a skip bin in Wellington.

Emergency services were called to Maning Lane in the central city at 4.55am.

FENZ shift manager Jill Webley said crews extracted a trapped person and they were taken to hospital.

A police spokesperson said investigators would be in the area today working to determine what happened.

They said Worksafe had been advised.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A tribunal has been told a Samoan teenager was adopted by a New Zealand resident in a ‘coerced relocation’ which led to violence and her baby being taken into care.

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) was trying to have her deported for not revealing she was in a relationship when she arrived in 2022.

Allegations of child abuse, a lack of welfare safeguards and unsafe adoptions from countries which are not signatories to Hague Convention protocols prompted a partial ban on international adoptions last September.

The immigration and protection tribunal had two cases involving adopted Samoans last year.

In the latest, the immigration and protection tribunal overturned the woman’s deportation, saying she was blameless as a then 18-year-old schoolgirl for the circumstances of her adoption and failing to tell INZ about her relationship.

“The tribunal notes that no allegations of trafficking have been made in this case, but that there have been cases where young people from Samoa have been adopted at a similar age to the appellant and trafficked to New Zealand using the Family (Dependent Child) residence category as a vehicle.

“The tribunal has heard evidence in a number of cases from these young people about the exploitation they have experienced at the hands of their “adoptive parents” in New Zealand, including being subjected to forced labour.”

The associate justice minister Nicole McKee announced in September a temporary ban on international adoptions from certain countries, and said she would introduce a bill this year to create a longterm solution.

The tribunal said that move meant the woman’s situation would not happen again.

“[She] did not know she was being adopted,” it said in its hearing notes. “To any reasonable observer, the appellant was not [her adoptive mother’s] “dependent child”. [She] was a stranger with no relationship to the appellant and her brothers.

“It is unfortunate that immigration policy at the time allowed for the appellant’s “adoption” and her coerced relocation to New Zealand. There were clearly welfare concerns in the setting she was placed, given the later involvement of Oranga Tamariki.”

The woman was six months pregnant when she arrived and had a caesarean birth, but fled the house when she was subject to violence, leaving her baby behind. Her brother had also been assaulted and she showed a phone video she had filmed of the attack to a social worker.

Oranga Tamariki took him into care and sometime later the woman’s daughter was put into foster care for about five months. Mother and child have since been reunited.

In an earlier tribunal decision from March last year, a man who was adopted as a teen described being ‘exploited and frightened by his adoptive parents who treated him like a slave’.

His aunt and uncle adopted him and forced him to work long hours in their factory. “His uncle beat him severely, on one occasion, breaking his arm. He did not receive wages for his

work and was only given $20 a week. He was not allowed a phone and could not maintain contact with his parents in Samoa.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Auckland Council has less than two weeks to respond to a letter from the government wanting the council to outline its plan for housing intensification.

But mayor Wayne Brown says the council is already spending millions on the project and the request is too costly.

In February, Minister for Housing and RMA Reform Chris Bishop announced that Cabinet agreed to reduce the city’s minimum housing capacity requirement from 2.08 million to 1.6 million.

In a letter to Brown dated 24 February, Bishop asked for an outline of the approach the mayor intended to take to review the plan, and of what areas or suburbs may be affected by the change.

Brown refused. “We’ve spent $10 million on Plan Change 78, and by Christmas we’d blown another $3 million on Plan Change 120, as well as having 50 staff reading 10,000 submissions… so this is expensive,” he told a planning committee meeting on Tuesday.

“Preparing maps requires investing significant time and money. It’s not as simple as pushing a button. In this organisation you’re lucky to get a lift by pushing a button. We’ll be telling the government what Aucklanders want, not the other way around.

“What’s important is for Auckland to lead the process from here, not producing maps to see if some ministers worried about their jobs might like them.”

A spokesperson from Chris Bishop’s office later clarified to RNZ that the minister had never asked Brown for a map.

Brown was adament that Auckland Council would not invest any more resources.

“I’m reluctant to commission a hell of a lot of expenditure, which may not meet an unknown criteria from an unknown number of Cabinet Ministers. Most of them don’t live in Auckland.

“That’s just stupid. I’m not going to do that. I’m the mayor of Auckland. If they want to be the mayor of Auckland, have a crack at me.”

Bishop asked Brown to respond to the letter by 17 March.

Councillor Shane Henderson agrees with the mayor’s approach saying the council should not provide an outline until feedback from the public had been considered, and accused the government of “political desperation in an election year”.

Councillor Sarah Paterson-Hamlin was concerned Aucklanders would have to be consulted again.

“I’m really conscious that we asked a lot of Aucklanders,” she said.

“We asked them for feedback on a really complicated thing over Christmas and they came to the party, 10,000 submissions is a lot for a process like that. I don’t know how we can go back out in good faith, and how we communicate to those 10,000-plus people that they will be heard.”

However, deputy mayor Desley Simpson did not understand why it would be too difficult.

“Respectfully it does seem pretty obvious, for me, for a layman, surely if you just up-zoned along the major transport corridors and around the stations added the city centre you’d get a number.

“Why can’t you just tell us straight away what those suburbs would look like going up and the suburbs that would look like going down? That seems like, from a layman, quite a logical thing to ask.”

Auckland Council chief of strategy Megan Tyler responded that it would be too time-consuming.

“It’s not simple. If it was a button, I would happily show you the button. You can press the button yourself. There isn’t one.”

Auckland Council will meet again on 10 March, where Bishop’s letter will be on the agenda.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Close to 50 homes in an Auckland suburb are being compulsorily bought to make way for new flood plains and uncover a buried stream.

This is in Rānui, where some homeowners are relieved to get out, while others wish they could stay.

It’s just the start of Auckland Council’s plan to reduce the risk in flood-prone areas of the region and it says there are more property acquisitions ahead.

Emily Stewart, her husband and two children moved out of their house in Rānui’s Clover Drive a few weeks ago.

It’s been bought under the Public Works Act because a piped stream is being uncovered.

“The stream is going to come through approximately through here…right through our house.”

On Sunday, the home was relocated to Waikato.

Stewart said they planned to sell the house three years ago before the storms hit – some of her neighbours had to kayak from their houses.

The Stewarts weren’t eligible for a risky-home buyout, so had repairs done, then learned their house would be acquired to daylight a stream and create a flood plain.

The family has bought and moved to another part of the city.

“It’s bittersweet because for three years we were just stuck in this limbo. Back in October all of the houses in this cresent were still standing in various states of decay,” Stewart said.

‘We need this land’ – council

Auckland Council’s head of sustainable partnerships Tom Mansell said of the almost 50 homes required for flood plains in Rānui, half were state owned.

“Some of these properties, most of them have been flooded, some of them have been partially flooded, some of them haven’t been flooded but we need this land to save other surrounding properties from flooding.”

He said it would save 100 properties and also enable future development.

The Rānui Making Space for Water project is costing $85 million, of which most – close to $50m – is for buying properties.

“It’s digging up the pipe, creating the flood plain, creating the stream, upgrading Don Buck Road bridge,” Mansell said.

“It’s transforming communities, it is disruptive, it is costly but moving forward with climate change and increased rainfall it is a new era in managing stormwater.”

Mansell said negotiating with homeowners was a sensitive process.

“Some homeowners are relieved it is a way out, a fresh start for them and some not so much, it’s really quite hard hitting. Some of them have been there 30 to 40 years and it’s their home, there’s a reluctance to leave.”

He said there will be more homes acquired to make way for flood plains in coming years as the council confirms other projects.

“Overall, it creates more greenspace, creates resilient communities and it’s the way of the future for managing stormwater.”

Reluctant to leave

Another Clover Drive homeowner, Wayne Macdonald, didn’t want to leave but accepted a Public Works Act buyout.

“I was hoping to stay,” he said.

“I was disappointed, I like my house. I like its location, I like how it’s close to everything and I didn’t really look forward to looking for a new house and I’m struggling to find something.”

He was aware the acquisition was compulsory and said the financial incentives for accepting a buyout within certain timeframes made it more attractive.

Macdonald said the plans to create a bigger stream and flood plain included walking paths and reserve areas.

“What they’re doing is actually really nice and for a lot of neighbourhoods around, it’s going to give them options. They’re going to be able to walk away from the streets and pollution of the cars, kids are going to have areas to go play.”

Further along the road, Donna Mather’s home is not in a flood zone.

There are already many vacant plots from houses that were too risky to live in and she said having more homes go with compulsory acquisitions will change the neighbourhood.

“A lady friend up on Universal Drive, she will be moving because she was bought out. Apparently her place is going to be a pond.”

Under the Public Works Act, councils or agencies buying properties can only inform property owners – not tenants.

Stewart said this created problems on her street, because some neighbours were only recently informed by their landlords who have to give 90 days notice to end a tenancy.

“They were completely rug-pulled, like what’s going on, what’s happening I’m getting conflicting information.”

She said that needed to change.

“What I’m seeing is that we are prioritising homeowners over people who are renting and that’s not how this society should be supporting each other,” Stewart said.

“The fact that I’ve been told that they are having to look at work-arounds means there’s something wrong with the law. There is an oversight with the laws that they are bound by,” she said.

“The way we can make change for the better for people is to say ‘this isn’t working’.”

Mansell said the council strongly encouraged landlords to inform tenants if their house was being bought out – and tenants have access to financial support during the process.

“We encourage them strongly to talk to their tenants and we have a community advisory group which meets every two weeks…so we try and keep as much information about what we’re doing, the overall layout of the project is out in the community,” Mansell said.

“That’s one way the information gets out but unfortunately we cannot contact the tenants directly, we have to go through the landlord.”

The compulsory buyouts come as the region is under pressure to intensify housing and build more homes and the council was preparing plans to accommodate up to 2 million homes in coming decades.

However last month, Cabinet agreed to lower the maximum number of houses in Auckland from 2 million to at least 1.6 million.

Mansell said houses needed to be built in safe areas.

“The last thing we want to do is more development with houses in the wrong place in a danger zone so we are watching and working with this plan change. We don’t want to create more issues moving forward.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand