NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

Several people have been rescued from Waikato River while clinging onto a tree on Wednesday evening.

Police were alerted at 7.20pm that four men had entered the water to float from the control gates down to Hipapatua Reserve.

With only basic inflatables and no life jackets, the group lost buoyancy and called for help.

A nearby tour group jumped into the river to assist the men, but also had no flotation devices.

When police had arrived, all seven were in distress and, and contacted the coastguard and harbourmaster.

They were able to rescue them using a jetboat and a jetski by 8pm.

Senior Constable of Taupō Police Barry Shepherd said the incident could have had a far more serious outcome.

“We want people to have fun and enjoy the outdoors but there’s a safe way to do it.

“While its admirable that people tried to help, we don’t want any dead heroes.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A cycling group is praising a government proposal to allow children under the age of 12 to ride their bikes on the footpath.

The idea was floated by Transport Minister Chris Bishop, along with others including allowing E-scooters in cycle lanes and requiring drivers to leave at least a one metre gap when passing cyclists.

Bike Auckland co-chairperson Karen Hormann told Morning Report, letting children ride their bikes on the footpath made sense.

“Having young kids in 50kph traffic is not the way forward. Ideally these younger kids won’t be travelling very fast and hopefully parents and caregivers are helping them to understand how to be considerate.”

Hormann acknowledged there were some concerns about pedestrian safety, but said there were already many shared paths around Auckland and cyclists and pedestrians would need to work together to make the change work.

Motorists would also need to take extra care when coming out of driveways, Hormann said.

“You’re going to have to look threes time, maybe more, just to make sure.”

Hormann also welcomed the proposed change to allow E-scooters in bike lanes, saying vehicles travelling a similar speed should be kept together.

The AA earlier said the plans to update some transport rules reflected the changing times.

Chief policy and advocacy officer Simon Douglas said the AA would consider the detail over the next month, but was supportive for the most part.

He said allowing scooters on cycleways was common sense.

The chief executive for Age Concern, Karen Billings-Hensen said while some of the proposals on rules were good, they key issue would be the impact on pedestrians.

She said there should be consideration around the speed children were cycling and whether they were riding two abreast.

It needed to be clear children need to give way to pedestrians, she said.

Consultation on the proposals would be open until March 15.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Police are making enquiries into a sudden death in Taupaki near Kumeū on Wednesday night.

At around 9pm, officers attended the incident on a shared driveway off Nixon Road.

Detective Senior Sergeant Megan Goldie, of Waitematā CIB, said a man in his 50s had been riding his motorbike before he was found dead lying beside his motorbike.

“While there are no suspicious circumstances, police will make further enquiries to establish how the man has died and whether he had been involved in a crash.”

A post mortem examination will be carried out as part of these enquiries.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

If you want to catch a tiny bird and move it to a new home, you need expert help and your car’s aircon on.

Overheating is a threat to the rifleman.

And buzzing cicadas can get in the way of finding them in the first place as a group rounding up riflemen at the Wainuiomata water catchment area found out.

Behind four locked gates and among a gazillion buzzing cicadas, 30 volunteers intent on capturing up to 40 of the country’s tiniest birds unpacked on a bush road at the weekend.

They tested their radios, gathered together tent poles to spread out their so-called ‘mist’ nets – because they have such a fine mesh – and tested the half-a-dozen calls on the phone app they would play through speakers to lure the birds in.

Jim O’Malley laid out the high stakes to the three capture teams.

O’Malley helped set up the years-long Kotukutuku Ecological Restoration Project to move 40 or so birds north to a restored forest near Paraparaumu.

“The thing with riflemen is that they’re time critical,” he told them.

“After four hours, their mortality rate from stress goes up a lot. So we’re working in a window of three and a half hours from capture to release at Kāpiti.”

Only trained people would get to handle the birds.

Greg Sherley would lead the banding team – he did his doctorate in the rifleman or tītitipounamu.

“Ornithologists will say there’s a ‘giz’ about a bird, a G-I-Z, which is talking about the essential nature of a bird,” Sherley said.

“And rifleman males are green mainly on the top, and in the light, they glow … they glow a green. If you get them in the right sunlight … [it’s] very very much like green pounamu.”

Morag Fordham had this take on the birds.

“They look like wee squeaky brussel sprouts,” Fordham laughed.

They are the country’s smallest but do not rate in the world’s top 10 tiniest, dominated by humming-birds (the smallest bee hummingbird is a third of the weight of a rifleman).

It had taken years and a 150-plus-page report to get the permits for the project – that was “the most frustrating part,” said Sherley – but now they were here.

Fordham would lead one of the three capture teams.

Another team walked in with Simon Fordham – the Fordham pair from Auckland between them have caught over a thousand of the birds (though Morag is more a kōkako specialist).

However, it was evident from the word go there was going to be a problem. The crunch of our footfalls on the gravel road was muffled by another sound.

“We’re trying to find any birds, and so we do have a problem today with cicada noise,” Fordham said.

“That not only makes it harder for us to hear where birds are, but also birds need to be closer to hear the calls that we play.”

The keen ears of Victoria University ecology students proved crucial – Ryan and Harry, who studies the North Island robin, were both on their first bird hunt but seemed especially good at hearing the super-highpitched squeak of riflemen.

A squeak heard, the team I am in set up the net, 4m high and 7m long, along the gravel road and hung the speakers in branches either side.

After an hour waiting we have had no luck and were about to move on.

“I haven’t heard any,” said Simon Fordham. “Emma has.”

Then suddenly, we spot a bird in a tree. It flies into the net, and Fordham and a trained volunteer hurry in, then quietly and calmly get it out.

We radio in the day’s first catch to the banding station.

“Woo-hoo, that’s awesome, great work … we’ll see your rifleman soon,” they radio back.

At this point the three-and-a-half hour countdown to get the bird to Kāpiti began, from the net, to a small soft drawstring bag, to a volunteer to walk it back to the banding station on a fold-out picnic table.

Then into a wee box with a takeaway meal.

“Sometimes you’re lucky if you’re standing by the boxes, you’ll hear this ‘tu, tu, tu, tu, tu’ – it’s the wee riflemen are picking up the mealworms,” said Morag Fordham.

Paddy and Gill get the job of driving the first bird to Kāpiti, the aircon on full.

“No smoking, no talking, no stereo in the car, no phones, no slamming doors … no coffee stops,” they go through the rules.

“It was a silent, freezing trip for an hour,” Paddy said.

“It felt much longer,” Gill said.

It turns out to be the only bird caught on Saturday.

On Sunday morning, coordinator Jen Andrews updated the teams.

“I thought I would mention the bird that was caught yesterday, we heard from Peter the release went really well – he arrived safe and happy, shot out-of-the-box.

“So today we’re really hoping to catch some friends, so he’s not quite the loneliest rifleman in Kāpiti.”

As it turned out, the wee male won’t be.

Sunday was earlier, greyer and the cicadas were a little quieter. It paid off.

Nine birds were caught. I got to walk one out for banding.

Morag’s team ended up catching six of Sunday’s nine.

“Phew,” she said looking down at a juvenile female in her hands. “Hello sweetheart.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Is it time to abandon postal voting for local elections?

Several Auckland councillors think so, with voter turnout in the region continuing to decline.

Less than a third of Aucklanders voted in the 2025 local elections. Twenty-nine percent or 345,004 registered electors voted, even fewer than in the previous two elections, where 35 percent voted.

This week, the Auckland Council released data on who is voting, and who is not.

The data reflects a lot of what we already know about local elections, including that young people are less likely to vote, and that voter turnout generally increases with age.

In Auckland, the number of 18 and 19-year-olds participating in local elections dropped from 31,691 in 2019 to 20,791 in 2025, a 34 percent decrease.

Voting had increased for most age groups over 25 in that time. But there was a decline in voter turnout for those aged 61 to 75 in 2025. In 2019, 54 percent of electors in that age group voted, compared to 44 percent in 2025.

As seen in previous elections, in 2025, voter turnout was the lowest in what the council identified as socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods, particularly in southern and western Auckland.

Whau ward councillor Sarah Paterson-Hamlin said the data was “depressing but not surprising”.

“It’s really upsetting, and what’s particularly gutting about it is that the trends are getting worse, and it shows around the local board tables and council table in terms of what lived experience is being represented and what’s being discussed.”

She supported a change to in-person voting for local elections.

“Postal voting isn’t helping. Central government elections have a turnout that’s really enviable, but our local elections don’t. One of the reasons for that has to be that one is postal and one isn’t.

“The fact that it’s all done by postal vote means it takes a lot of effort to change your electoral details when you move, and if you’re renting, you’re possibly moving quite frequently. It’s another thing that increases the lack of representation from people in lower socio-economic areas.”

She suspected postal voting was also a barrier for voters with disabilities, although the council did not collect data on that demographic.

Manukau councillor Alf Filipaina agreed more should be done to increase the number of people voting in his area.

“We need to change the system and hopefully engage more people, particularly the young.”

He said several years ago, Manukau City councillors and staff would visit local schools and talk to students about issues with roaming dogs, rubbish, and wastewater and stormwater.

“I know it was taken up by most of the high schools. When we explained what the council actually does it surprised quite a few of them.

“I think that’s one way to get rangatahi engaged.”

He believed there were a lot of issues with postal voting, and that it made sense to explore other options.

His fellow Manukau councillor Lotu Fuli said voting in Auckland had reached a new low.

She described postal voting as “archaic” and she strongly supported moving away from it.

She said postal voting was also “vulnerable to tampering by those seeking to undermine democracy” as seen in Papatoetoe in the last elections.

Associate professor in politics at Victoria University of Wellington, Dr Lara Greaves, said: “It’s a concern that pretty much every local election we talk about voter turnout being a really big problem. There have been multiple reviews now saying this. But we are seeing government after government not doing very much to change anything.

“Hopefully, at some point central government does something to value local government and make it a bigger part of people’s lives, perhaps making it more efficient and investing in ways to make democracy better.

“A lot of people argue that if the Electoral Commission brought in their mandate and was funded to do so, they would run local government elections in a more efficient way than the private companies who are contracted by local councils. But there’s not a lot of information about how these companies operate in the public domain.”

She said the government needed to seriously look at whether postal voting was still suitable.

“There has been a decline in New Zealand post services across the country, and certain groups, especially lower socio-economic groups and younger people, are more likely to move house.

“Perhaps it’s time to rethink postal voting. Having more in-person voting locations is one thing that has often been promoted.”

She said people not knowing enough about candidates or the role of local government was also known to deter voters.

“Many components of local government and democracy could do better to explain what local government is.

“But the public aren’t necessarily crying out for more stories or information about local government, and therefore journalists and local government people don’t provide that. It becomes a bit circular and quite impossible to solve.”

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has been contacted for comment.

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