Source: Radio New Zealand
Has flexible, remote work made mahi more fun and has the freedom made us happier?
The nine to five has changed a lot of recent years, with Covid forcing some business to adapt to working from a home.
But it’s not without its challenges. How do you read the room when no one is physically in it? Did that colleague’s chat message have a tone?
Barbara Plester
Supplied
An Auckland University social scientist has been exploring these questions, embedding herself in two businesses, one a tech company and the other a food manufacturer.
Associate professor Barbara Plester told Checkpoint hybrid working came with challenges, but believed people were happier when doing so.
“I believe it makes us happier, every single person that was able to do hybrid work absolutely wanted to keep it.
“They were happier doing it because of the flexibility, because of the autonomy and they felt trusted by their boss.
“That was really important to them, that combination of freedom and trust.”
She said people did sometimes feel some anxiety because of possible isolation and lack of connection.
Plester also said people understood online chats differently, which often posed as a challenge.
“Emojis can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, so it just depends on your interpretation…
“And sometimes you can send a little GIF to someone and if it’s not the right person, that can go horribly wrong for you.”
Tone was a difficult thing to navigate, she said.
“When you are in face to face communication, you have got all of these cues going on, you can spot someone’s change of expression, change of body language.
“But when it’s written and it’s with GIF’s or emojis and things like that, sometimes you’re reading a tone that’s just not there.”
She said it was a “new art of communication”, and hybrid workers needed to figure out how they communicated.
Companies should be aware of forced fun, Plester said, which was when ‘fun’ was planned and something employees had to join.
“Forced fun is not really fun.
“I always suggest to companies to have an opt out clause so that people can say ‘that ones not for me’ or ‘not today’.”
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Source: New Zealand Government
International visitors are spending more and arriving in greater numbers, driving growth in New Zealand’s tourism sector and economy, Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston says.
“Tourism is New Zealand’s second-highest export earner, and the latest data shows the sector is delivering real benefits for New Zealand,” Louise Upston says.
International Visitor Survey results released this week show that:
Between July and September, international visitors spent $2.1 billion, up 9.3 per cent on the same period in 2024.
For the year ending September 2025, total spend reached $12.3 billion, a 5.3 per cent increase.
Visitor numbers also rose to 3.43 million in the year ending September 2025, up 6.1 per cent on the previous year. Growth in spending reflects not only more visitors but also a shift toward higher-spending travellers, particularly those from the USA.
“These figures are a clear signal that tourism is powering ahead, playing a critical role in strengthening our economy and creating opportunities for communities across the country.”
International visitor numbers for the year ending September 2025 are now back to 88 per cent of 2019 pre-pandemic levels, showing strong progress in the sector.
This means more accommodation bookings, more people exploring our regions, and more jobs.
“The Government is committed to supporting the sector through the Tourism Growth Roadmap, which sets out our plan to double tourism export value by 2034.
“We want to ensure tourism continues to deliver value for New Zealand and unforgettable experiences for visitors, and these results show we’re on the right track,” Louise Upston says.
Full survey results are available on the MBIE website: teic.mbie.govt.nz/teiccategories/datareleases/ivs-annual
Source: New Zealand Government
More New Zealanders will be able to access urgent care 24/7 before Christmas, with new and expanded services opening in Dunedin and Hutt Valley, Health Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Health Minister Matt Doocey announced today.
“These changes mean more Kiwis will be able to get the urgent care they need without needing to go to the emergency department unless it’s a real emergency,” Mr Brown said.
“This is about building a system that’s easier to access, more connected, and works better for patients.”
The expanded services are part of the Government’s $164 million investment over four years to improve urgent and after-hours care, following the launch of the Urgent Care and After-Hours Framework in May. The goal is to ensure 98 per cent of New Zealanders can access urgent care within one hour of home.
New services opening soon:
All services will be available to patients eligible for publicly funded healthcare. Children under 14 will be free after 3pm, with subsidies for Community Services Card holders. Co-payments will be capped to keep costs fair and consistent.
“We’re making good progress, but we’re just getting started. More communities will benefit from improved urgent care access over the next two years.”
Next year will see:
“We’ll keep working with PHOs, providers and communities to ensure services meet local needs while delivering on our national goal of timely, accessible care,” Mr Brown says.
Mr Doocey says this will make a real difference for our rural communities.
“Health New Zealand is rolling out urgent-care improvements in six rural and remote locations. These trials will help shape the design of rural health services for up to 70 rural locations over the next two years,” Mr Doocey says.
Some improvements already delivered include:
“These changes ensure rural New Zealanders have access to timely, quality, and reliable care close to home.”
Source: New Zealand Police
Police are seeking the public’s help to identify the person pictured in these images.
We believe they may be able to assist us with our enquiries into scrap metal thefts from a commercial premises in Chapmans Road, Woolston on Thursday 27 November.
If this is you, or you know who this person is, please update us through 105 either online or over the phone.
Please use the reference number 251128/0062.
Information can also be provided anonymously through Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111.
ENDS
Issued by Police Media Centre
Source: Radio New Zealand
The Helen Clark Foundation is is calling for better laws to protect victims of sexual violence in New Zealand, including eradicating virginity testing. 123rf.com
Researchers say the practice of virginity testing is happening in New Zealand and it’s harming women.
The Helen Clark Foundation is calling for urgent law changes to better protect victims of sexual violence and reduce offending rates.
The think tank’s report, Addressing Sexual Violence in New Zealand, makes a number of recommendations, including adopting a clearer definition of consent in law, banning sexually explicit deepfake abuse, and eradicating virginity testing.
Researcher Sophia Harré said they did not know the extent of the practice in New Zealand but were concerned it is happening in some communities.
“There have been cases where medical professionals have been approached to conduct the proceedure and they’ve declined. We’ve heard talk that it might be happening by family members in community.”
She said virginity testing was when a woman or girl is subjected to a physical inspection of their hymen, while virginity policing involved checking for blood after sexual intercourse.
“These stem from myths around hymens that they will bleed or will be damaged when sexual contact occurs, these are incorrect.”
Harre said the practice was damaging, especially in cases involving sexual assault.
“It can have quite significant impacts on their position in society, it can impact their relationships, it can have consequences on their education and career opportunities later in life.”
Virginity testing is not illegal in New Zealand, and the UN has called on governments to ban the practice altogether and to carry out awareness campaigns.
The report recommends a number of steps in line with UN recommendations, including improved education for medical practitioners and legal professionals, research to inform community-led interventions, and legislation to ban virginity testing.
Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan has lodged a members’ bill which seeks to amend the Crimes Act to criminalise virginity testing.
The proposed the Crimes (Virginity Testing Practices) Amendment Bill “seeks to protect vulnerable women and girls by amending the Crimes Act 1961 to introduce new offences that criminalise virginity testing and the related practice of hymenoplasty”.
Harré said the foundation supported the Bill as long as there was education and consultation for communities that may be practising virginity testing.
“There’s a risk that if we go really hard on legislation and ban it without having proper consultation with these communities that it could be driven further underground.”
Auckland clinical nurse specialist in family violence, Kathy Lowe, was interviewed for the foundation’s report and has been educating both medical professionals and communities about virginity testing for 30 years.
“For me it’s not a women’s issue it’s human rights issue, it affects men and women. Imagine if we told men that they had virgin semen and the first time they lost it they weren’t a virgin any more and they had to go to a doctor to prove that they were still a virgin before they were allowed to be married,” she said.
“It doesn’t make sense and yet we’re still doing that to women.”
Lowe said it was not possible to tell by looking at a hymen whether somebody has had sex.
“The majority of people say the first time you have sex that bit of skin gets broken then you’re not a virgin anymore and that’s how we can tell whether somebody’s a virgin, by that piece of skin being broken,” she said.
“The hymen is not a skin, it’s not a membrane, it’s not a seal. It’s actually a collar of stretchy tissue just at the entrance of the vagina…when you’re born with a hymen, the hymen has a hole the middle of it, you are born with the hole.”
There is no data about the practice of virginity testing and Lowe said it was a taboo subject in many communities.
“I truly don’t know which cultures do this and don’t but I think every culture in New Zealand has a myth around virginity.”
She hears about the prevalence of it from nurses and doctors who are asked – and decline – to conduct such examinations.
Lowe said it was also unclear if the practice of hymenoplasty was still conducted. The last time she heard of a case was 2013.
“They get the edges of the [hymen’s] hole and they stitch it together so that when you do have sex you’re going to bleed for sure and it’s going to hurt like hell because it’s scar tissue. In their mind they think they’re making themselves a virgin again when in fact the hymen was never sealed to start with.”
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Source: NZ Department of Conservation
Date: 02 December 2025
The first chicks of the season have started hatching in the Greenstone Valley, while the recently released Rees Valley population has started laying eggs.
Department of Conservation Takahē Recovery Sites Project Lead Jason van de Wetering says these chicks and nests are another great sign for an iconic species once thought to be extinct.
“Careful management, collaboration with our partners Ngāi Tahu, the efforts of groups like Southern Lakes Sanctuary, and support from national partner Fulton Hogan, have made the longstanding goal of returning takahē to more of their natural range a reality.
“For a long time, the only place takahē could be found in the wild was the remote Murchison Mountains in Fiordland, with most takahē otherwise living in predator free sanctuaries and offshore islands. Now, more than half of all takahē live across four wild sites.
“While it’s still too early to say whether takahē will establish here for the long term, to have takahē nesting at these new wild sites is a strong sign the habitat is supporting them well.”
The Greenstone population, released onto Ngāi Tahu tribal property Greenstone Station in 2023, successfully raised chicks that summer, but not in 2024.
The Rees Valley takahē are younger and less experienced, so may not be as successful at raising chicks this year. However, the presence of fertile eggs so soon after their release is an exciting first step towards a self-sustaining population, Jason says.
“Takahē are far from secure in the wild and it takes patience and perseverance to establish these wild sites for the long-term. It is thanks to the hard work of Southern Lakes Sanctuary and their effort to suppress predators that we can have takahē in the Rees Valley. Success is never guaranteed. For now, all eyes will be on the nests over the coming weeks and months to see how things progress.”
Southern Lakes Sanctuary’s Paul Kavanagh says this nesting shows what’s possible when sustained conservation efforts and good science come together with genuine partnership.
“The land custodians, our partner group Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust, and our team have worked hard for years to give taonga like takahē a fighting chance, so to witness them settling and nesting, is incredibly special for our team and our community.”
As takahē become more established in these locations, sightings are likely to increase. Jason says the recovery programme’s goal of having people see a once-thought extinct bird in the wild is happening, with plenty of reported sightings along the Rees-Dart track.
“As the population grows, they will start popping up in all sorts of places. If you’re lucky enough to see one while out naturing or in your backyard, give it space, keep any dogs away, and admire the return of one of Aotearoa’s iconic species to their former natural range.”
If you see a banded takahē, take a photo or make a note of the coloured leg bands. People can report sightings to takaherecovery@doc.govt.nz
Takahē are considered a taonga species by Ngāi Tahu. This special relationship is recognised in the Ngāi Tahu Settlement Claims Act 1998.
DOC’s Takahē Recovery Programme, in partnership with Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, Fulton Hogan, Southern Lakes Sanctuary, and with support from the New Zealand Nature Fund, Heli Glenorchy, and Routeburn Dart Wildlife Trust, is working to restore takahē to whenua they likely inhabited centuries ago.
Nature isn’t scenery. Nature is a society that we rely on for everything, every day. It’s behind our identity and our way of life.
For media enquiries contact:
Email: media@doc.govt.nz
Source: Radio New Zealand
The Fabergé locket was worth more than $33,500. SCREENSHOT
A man has been charged for allegedly swallowing a Fabergé locket worth more than $33,500 during a theft at a store in Auckland.
Police were called at 3.30pm last Friday to the store in the central city.
The 32-year-old man was accused of picking up a Fabergé James Bond Octopussy Egg pendant and swallowing it.
Court documents reveal the pendant was worth $33,585.
Do you know more? Email finn.blackwell@rnz.co.nz
An online listing for the locket said it had been crafted from 18ct yellow gold and set with 60 white diamonds and 15 blue sapphires.
A golden octopus inside the locket was set with two black diamonds for eyes.
Officers from the Auckland City Beat team were on the scene minutes later, and arrested the man, police confirmed.
He had been charged with theft, and was remanded in custody when he appeared in Auckland District Court last week, he was expected to reappear next Monday.
Police told RNZ the pendant had not yet been recovered.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Source: Radio New Zealand
The consequences of chronic methamphetamine use are already visible in hospital wards, and it’s about to get worse, an emergency department doctor says.
Dr Paul Quigley told a symposium on reducing drug harm on Monday the country was facing an impending health crisis on par with smoking-related lung disease.
“We are seeing the chronic effects of drug use, that’s often in terms of mental health – so people developing ongoing forms of schizophrenia – [but] we are now seeing the hard effects of long-term methamphetamine use.
“We’re seeing people with cardiomyopathies, heart failure.” Dr Paul Quigley.
RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Quigley told RNZ methamphetamine was particularly “cardio-toxic”, affecting the heart in two key ways through accelerated ageing and exhaustion.
He said the ageing heart meant heart disease was showing up 10 to 15 years earlier than expected.
“So we’re seeing people in their mid-40s who are regular methamphetamine users having heart attacks as if they’d be in their 60s.”
He said meth also increased people’s heart rate and blood pressure, and sustained use literally “exhausts the heart” resulting in cardiomyopathy (a type of heart failure) and in extreme cases, heart transplants.
Quigley said those most at risk of heart disease weren’t “your weekend warriors”, but almost daily methamphetamine users who’d been using for more than a decade.
He said data showed acute meth use in New Zealand was on the rise and the major concern was the impending burden on the healthcare system and society – a cost already seen in countries where meth use was high.
befunky.com
“You should look at this like smoking. People smoked in the 40s and 50s … then later we had this terrible burden of lung disease from the effects of smoking. And it’s going to be the same.
“If we have increased meth use now, we should be looking at, ‘Well, what’s going to happen in 10 to 15 years time?’
“We’re going to have this much larger population of patients with these heart conditions … and it’s affecting parts of our society that are already struggling,” he said.
“We’ve just got through the smoking crisis – in terms of lung disease is decreasing – but it’s just going to be replaced by this new disease.”
The Reducing Drug Harm in Aotearoa Symposium – hosted by the Public Health and Forensic Science Institute – featured a range of experts from the frontline of festival drug checking and wastewater analysis, to the police’s drug intelligence office and international experts on early warning systems for new and harmful drugs.
National Drug Intelligence Bureau analyst Kylie Collins spoke to current and emerging drug trends in New Zealand, highlighting a spike in meth consumption in July 2024 that almost doubled methamphetamine use nationally – and has continued.
Collins said the vast majority of New Zealand’s supply came from overseas and the increased use had coincided with a drop in price for the drug.
She said alongside increasing seizures of the drug, meth-related hospitalisations had also been on the rise.
“However, many hospitalisations stem from chronic or very heavy use. So with the recent increases in meth consumption we expect to see even bigger increases in hospitalisations in years to come.”
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Source: New Zealand Government
A total of 38 appointments and reappointments have been made to the 12 community trusts around New Zealand that serve their regions, Associate Finance Minister Shane Jones says.
“These trusts, and the communities they serve from the Far North to the deep south, will benefit from the rich experience, knowledge, and relationships the appointees bring.
“These people collectively bring expertise in education, business, healthcare, community services, marketing, sports, governance, law, environmental protection, grant allocation, and community development to the trusts.
“The 12 community trusts of New Zealand are the custodians of more than $3.5 billion of investments and together grant around $100 million into thousands of organisations throughout the country each year,” Mr Jones says.
“The work done by the trusts helps build strong and empowered communities. Strong communities are good for the regions, and good for New Zealand. These people appointed and reappointed to the various boards are the kaitiaki of their communities. I thank them for accepting the challenge and offering their wisdom and expertise.
“I also express my gratitude to those trustees who have ended their terms on the community trusts of New Zealand.”
The following appointments have been made:
Editors’ note
Terms for appointees are for up to four years. Community trusts are governed by the Community Trusts Act 1999. They manage large investment portfolios and distribute grants for charitable, cultural, philanthropic and recreational purposes within their respective boundaries.
Source: Radio New Zealand
Storm clouds over Queen Elizabeth Park in Kāpiti after a thunderstorm. Supplied/ Dan Bailey
The hot start to summer is expected to take a turn, with thunderstorms, hail and even a chance of tornados for the North Island.
MetService said an active low pressure system is expected to move onto central and northern New Zealand during Wednesday and move to the east of the country on Thursday. The system is expected to bring heavy rain with thunderstorms and strong winds.
MetService Meteorologist Devlin Lynden said there is a moderate risk for thunderstorms in the North Island bringing heavy rain, small hail and even a chance of small tornadoes.
Lynden said the conditions were the “right set-up” for small tornados, with tornadoes more likely to form in coastal areas of the North Island.
A look ahead to Wednesday shows several Severe Weather Watches and Warnings in place as a large low pressure system crosses the North Island
Heavy Rain, Strong Winds, and thunderstorms with downpours and hail are all likely for the North Island️ ⛈️ pic.twitter.com/7WiaZhLl3M
— MetService NZ (@MetService) December 1, 2025
MetService has issued several weather warning and watches across the North Island.
Bay of Plenty has been issued an orange heavy rain warning for most of Wednesday, with up to 120mm of rain expected.
A heavy rain watch has been issued for Auckland, Waikato, central North Island, Taranaki, Wairarapa and Wellington for Wednesday.
A strong wind watch has been issued for Northland, Auckland, Wellington, Wairarapa, Taranaki, eastern areas of the Tararua District and Hawke’s Bay for Wednesday.
While the North Island may be in for the brunt of it, the South Island gets its share of rainy weather too.
The upper parts of the South Island may also see a period of heavier rain on Wednesday associated with the low to the north.
The low gradually moves off to the southeast on Wednesday night, and conditions will ease behind it, before starting to clear through Thursday morning, with many places seeing drier weather and some sunshine return.
However, strong to gale southwesterly winds will persist, particularly for Wellington, Wairarapa, Northland and Auckland; they will keep the temperatures capped towards the end of the week.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand