Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

The lack of a full and proper tally of how many schools are testing positive for asbestos from coloured play sand has stunned principals and a teachers union.

Initially, RNZ was told by the Ministry of Education that no count was being kept.

It was later able to provide what it said were incomplete figures after its minister, Erica Stanford, said a tally was being kept by the ministry.

Nine schools or early learning services have so far returned positive asbestos tests, while 39 have returned negative results.

Results for another 129 are either not known, or still being waited on.

The Ministry of Education cautioned the figures were based on voluntary reporting and therefore “should not be taken as a full picture”.

“Schools and early learning services are not required to report testing or share results with the ministry, as their immediate priority is keeping students, children and staff safe,” operations and integration leader Sean Teddy said.

But others said a complete picture was exactly what was needed and that there should be a full and official tally.

“This is shocking, it really confounds me that the ministry has not got more of a handle on this situation,” Principals’ Federation president Leanne Otene said.

“The guidance has been ambiguous and it has made it really difficult for schools to respond consistently and confidently,” she said.

She said principals have acted with appropriate caution and prioritised health and safety when commissioning testing at their own cost.

“But that has not been alongside clear, consistent messaging from the Ministry of Education,” Otene said.

“I am absolutely blown away that we have not been given more direct guidance on ensuring that we keep adequate records of when we have sent any product in to be tested, and the results of those tests, and we have not been asked to write incident reports that can be then presented to the ministry, to be put into our school boards’ meetings so that in 30 years, in 20 years, in 10 years there’s a record of action that that school took in relation to the advice and guidance and the results of those tests.

“I’m really concerned that there is no advice around that,” Otene said.

Trying to find how many schools have tested positive

RNZ asked ministries and the agency involved in the ongoing play sand recalls for overall numbers on how many schools and early learning centres had got tests.

It also asked for how many positive results had been returned.

WorkSafe said it did not hold information on test results in educational facilities.

“The Ministry of Education is best placed to advise how many schools or early childhood centres are responding or actions taken,” it said.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment had a similar response.

“This responsibility would sit with Ministry of Education,” it said.

The Ministry of Education initially said no count was being kept.

“We are not keeping a register of the number of tests commissioned by schools or early learning services, nor have we requested to be advised of the results of the tests they may commission,” it said.

RNZ then asked Education Minister Erica Stanford about her ministry not keeping a record of positive results.

“My expectation is that’s exactly what the ministry is doing. They have been out in the regions with all of their regional managers contacting every single school and I have been getting daily updates on which schools have it, which ones are open, which ones are closed, which ones need cleaning, so we have all that data and it is my expectation that the ministry is holding it and tracking it,” she said.

When RNZ said the ministry had said there was no register, the minister said, “Well, I’ve got that information so I’ll be happy to give it to you.”

Stanford’s office then referred RNZ back to the Ministry of Education, which earlier said there was no central register.

It was then that it was able to provide the figures on the information it had, warning it was incomplete and not a full picture because it was based on voluntary reporting.

Why is a count of positive tests important?

Terri-Ann Berry is an associate professor at AUT and also board chairperson of the Mesothelioma Support and Asbestos Awareness Trust.

She said having a central register was important, and the lack of one was very concerning.

“We can’t undo what has already happened unfortunately, but what we can do now is we can start looking at providing good evidence so that if anything in the future does happen, if anybody does develop any symptoms, that we can actually have good notes and reporting to be able to get ACC funding to help with any treatment,” she said.

Berry said there was no understanding at the moment of how likely it was that children have inhaled the fibres.

“I really think it’s important that we do actually find a way to bring a list together, there really should be some action plan to my mind where we’ve got systematic testing so that we actually know what the situation is and it doesn’t just rely necessarily on the voluntary test,” she said.

“All that tells you is that nine schools have got a positive result, and those parents are probably understandably worried, but what about all the other schools? Just because there is no result doesn’t mean that there isn’t a contamination, so no I don’t think the voluntary system is enough in this circumstance.”

Stephanie Mills, the NZEI national secretary, was also critical of a voluntary approach to reporting.

“It is a failure of regulatory systems, and so it is not good enough to take a voluntary approach when we are dealing with asbestos which is a banned substance, which causes long term illness to people, to which we’re now exposing children and teachers and other educators,” she said.

“I don’t think we have seen a responsible enough approach from government centrally, and what we now need is to know more but we also need to put in place steps so that this does not happen again.”

Coloured sand recalls now at five

Another children’s sand product was recalled on Thursday, the MIKI Sand Art Set, of which 570 were sold in 2023 between July and December.

According to MBIE, it is supplied by Australia-based Sax International.

The ministry said testing had found unidentified mineral fibres that were consistent with asbestos.

The other products with recalls were the Rainbow Sand Art Toy, the 380g Craft Sand, the 14-piece Sand Castle Building Set and Blue, Green and Pink Magic Sand from Kmart, and Rainbow Sand and Creatistics products.

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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

New Zealand was once a world leader in getting people to give up cigarettes, but we seem to have pulled up the brakes

In 34 days we hit the deadline for our world-leading ambitions to get our smoking rate down to less than five percent of the population.

To reach that Smokefree 2025 target we need 120,000 people to quit smoking pretty much immediately.

“That’s about 63,000 Māori, 21,000 Pasifika, 35,000 Europeans needed to quit,” says Chris Bullen, Auckland University public health professor and a leading researcher in the smokefree Aotearoa sector.

We’re not going to make it, but have we failed?

It depends on who you are, says Bullen.

“It’s come down and spectacularly so for certain populations,” he says.

Pākehā women living in high income suburbs have already reached the goal – that demographic is well below five percent.

For Māori it is three times the five percent target, Pasifika smokers are double the desired number.

Today, The Detail looks at why we missed the goal, the impact of this government’s removal of smokefree protections introduced by the previous Labour government under the Smokefree Action Plan, and what is next in the tobacco control battle.

When Smokefree 2025 was launched around 2011/2012 after a recommendation from the Māori Affairs Selection Committee, around 16.4 percent of adult New Zealanders smoked.

The latest figures from the annual NZ Health Survey show that figure is now 6.8 percent, similar to the previous year but down from 11.9 percent in 2019/20.

Some say we should celebrate what we’ve achieved, and they rubbish the latest rankings in the Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index, which has seen us plummet from second to 53rd place.

But dig into the numbers and they reveal deep inequities with Māori smoking rates at 15 percent and Pasifika at 10.3 percent.

“It’s an absolute failure and I think the present government’s been particularly bad in doing it,” says Anaru Waa, associate professor at Otago University based in Wellington. His research focuses on how we can eliminate tobacco-related harm among whānau Māori.

He’d like to see our Smokefree aim shifted out to 2030, and for it to be not just smoke-free but nicotine-free, because of all the new nicotine products on the market.

Bullen says the launch of Smokefree 2025 around 13 years ago was a breakthrough.

“It was an important lesson for me was that setting goals and targets can be very powerful,” says Bullen. “But it was also a lesson in that it seemed so far away, that for politicians on a three-year electoral cycle it was somebody else’s issue to grapple with.”

“So I guess they thought they’d just get a free ride because smoking was going out of fashion and by 2025 it would be a thing of the past. Of course it’s not.”

Bullen says there’s been cross party support for the idea and ongoing tobacco tax increases and regulations such as smokefree cars and indoor spaces all add up to incremental changes.

“But it was not until Ayesha Verrell (former Labour Health Minister) took up the cause and said 2025 is almost upon us, we need to do something. And that’s where the action plan was promoted and became law, very briefly, until it was repealed when the coalition government took power.”

Labour’s Smokefree 2025 Action Plan included three key measures; banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 2009, slashing the number of tobacco retailers and cutting 95 percent of the nicotine from cigarettes.

But before the measures came into force the legislation supporting them was repealed by the Coalition Government.

Bullen says the policy was supported by the majority of New Zealanders in polling and by the vast majority of healthcare professionals. The repeal mobilised protestors with placards to the streets.

He says the repeal cannot entirely be blamed for the failure to hit the Smokefree target across the population but it sent a subtle message to smokers, “to say, you know our foot’s gone off the accelerator pedal, maybe it’s not so bad”.

The removal of targets for GPs and hospitals to give brief advice and support to people to quit smoking, also had an impact.

“Different governments do these things for various other reasons but that has had a measurable decline in the number of referrals coming to smoking cessation services from GPs.

“The whole system has to work together and I don’t think we’ve had a co ordinated, focussed system that’s really messaged loudly that we have got a goal as a nation and it’s something we can do collectively to support each other to get to that goal. That voice hasn’t been shouted loudly enough.”

The associate health minister Casey Costello has defended the government’s policies and called the Smokefree target ‘ambitious’. She has pointed to the latest figures that show that smoking among young people is below 3.2 percent as the best news.

“That’s exactly what we wanted our young people to see. We wanted our young people not to start,” she has said.

But Anaru Waa says New Zealand’s policies are not keeping up with the new products that are constantly being developed by the tobacco industry designed to hook young people.

“Nicotine drinks, nicotine gummy bears, you name it, just shove nicotine in it and you’ve got a hooked population.

“These aren’t nicotine replacement therapies with low nicotine ….. nicotine is a very highly addictive drug and the industries are awfully good at making it palatable and easy to get addicted to very quickly, then you tend to have the addiction for life.”

He says to achieve the Smokefree goal the measures that were scrapped by this government need to be returned but he also wants strict policies to extend further to products including vapes, with the ultimate aim of shutting out the tobacco industry.

“For some people who can’t quit it (vaping) might be an alternative but we also know that most of the people taking up vapes are youth and young adults and a lot of them have never smoked at all.

“These are the new generation of people using nicotine products and I’m thinking in 20 or 30 years time they’ll wonder why they were thrown under the bus at a time we could have prevented that.”

Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Mental health and public health nurses, allied health workers and policy staff will strike from 1pm to 5pm
• Hospitals and mental health units remain open, but some clinics and home visits cancelled
• PSA accuses Health NZ and the government of failing to deal with under-staffing and under-resourcing
• Health Minister calls on management to improve recruitment timeframes for frontline clinical roles

About 17,000 healthworkers are striking today for the second time in a month after mediation failed between the Public Service Association and Health NZ.

Meanwhile, nurses and senior doctors remain locked in their own long-running disputes, as the upheaval in the health sector appears set to continue to be a giant headache for the government heading into election year.

PSA national secretary Fleur Fitzsimons said the government needed to “enable Health NZ to come to the table with a fair pay offer” for members, including allied health staff, policy specialists, mental health and public health nurses and healthcare assistants.

“So far all of the offers are taking us backwards and don’t represent the safe staffing levels that we know hospitals need,” she said.

“This strike represents a frustration with the inability of the government and Health NZ to properly staff our hospitals and offer a pay increase that keeps pace with the cost of living.

“These workers are striking reluctantly in support of the public health system they want for New Zealanders.”

Patient safety the priority – Health NZ

Health NZ executive national director, people & culture and health & safety, Robyn Shearer, said she could reassure the public that plans were in place to ensure the continued delivery of hospital and community health services during the strike.

“Patient safety will remain our priority throughout the strike.”

Hospitals, emergency departments, crisis and acute mental health services and most community services would remain open, but some “routine” clinics and home visits would be cancelled.

Anyone with a hospital or community appointment should attend unless they were contacted directly to reschedule.

“Looking forward we believe further bargaining is the best way forward to resolve outstanding issues.”

Health minister wants HNZ to cut red tape – while unions appeal to PM

Meanwhile, Health Minister Simeon Brown has called on Health NZ to “rapidly devolve decision-making” to its four regions and 20 districts.

In his publicly released [https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/2025-11/health-nz-letter-of-expectations-27-11-2025.pdf

letter of expectations] to Health NZ, he said that included “removing unnecessary bureaucracy and improving recruitment timeframes for frontline clinical roles”.

However, all the major health sector unions – including the PSA, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and the Nurses Organisation – have signed a joint letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon urging him to help resolve impasses with their respective collective bargaining.

Together with public sector unions representing teachers, principals, firefighters, home support workers and 111 emergency dispatchers, they said workers were frustrated with the lack of progress at a time when the demand on their frontline services was increasing.

NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said there was “a concerning common approach to bargaining from the coalition government”.

“For this reason, we believe it is appropriate for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to step in and meet with workforce representatives to explore ways forward and settlement options.”

More than 100,000 essential workers held strikes throughout the country last month.

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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 world-first study of New Zealand’s aquifers reveals that some wells contain groundwater that is 40,000 years old with scientists warning they’ll be put at risk if too much water is taken.

Earth Sciences New Zealand has developed a series of maps and models identifying the source and flow patterns of our aquifers and large river catchments, as part of a six-year research programme.

It’s found that groundwater provides 40 percent of our drinking water, and has discovered that more than 80 percent of the water flowing through our rivers, streams and wetlands when it’s not raining, is from aquifers.

“That is far, far more than we previously thought and underlines the importance of the inter-connected management of groundwater and surface water if we want to ensure our streams continue,” said Principal Scientist Catherine Moore.

Earth Sciences New Zealand developed the innovative National Groundwater Age Map from more than 1000 groundwater samples to give an overview of groundwater age and groundwater/surface water interaction across the country.

It found that most wells contain water between one and 100 years old.

However, some deep wells in the Taranaki and Marlborough regions hold water that’s over 40,000 years old because it takes so long for surface moisture to seep down into the aquifer.

“The danger is if it takes a long time to replenish we are at risk of taking too much water too quickly. Where water is very old we need to take less water and also look for where water is younger and take water from those areas,” said Moore.

Areas such as the Wairau, which had the youngest groundwater – taking only two weeks to move through the aquifer system. However the scientists warned that this also presented a challenge as younger systems could be vulnerable to contamination from live pathogens and nitrate loads, whereas older water presented a challenge with nitrate contamination potentially taking decades to work its way through the aquifer.

“Knowledge of water age and flow rates is important for managing potential contamination of drinking water. We’ve created a drinking water protection zone guideline to help protect wells

from pathogens in the fast-flowing groundwater found in some of our aquifer systems, such as the Heretaunga Plains,” said programme co-lead and principal scientist Uwe Morgenstern.

The Heretaunga Plains were used as a case study for the modelling, as the Paritua Stream at Bridge Pa in Hawke’s Bay dried up in 2021. Community spokesperson Robert Turner said the stream levels had been declining for years and it’s made it harder for iwi to collect mahinga kai.

“We lost a lot of our kokopu. Eels were stuck in holes. If you look at it in Māori eyes, our river is calling for help,” said Turner.

To understand why it ran dry, the project team gathered historical evidence, including inforamtion around the 1931 Napier earthquake, land clearances, gravel extraction, surface water diversions adn irrigation.

And what they found was a surpirse, as the strongest influence on the flow of Paritua Stream was actually rainfall – not groundwater from the nearby Ngaruroro River as previously thought.

Catherine Moore said that’s given scientists ideas for how to help the stream.

“A wetland restoration engineered a certain way, or directly putting water into the stream, would be sufficient to get that stream to flow if the rate at which that was done was high enough,” she said.

The newly created National Groundwater Model was expected to cut costs for councils, by giving them quicker access to data that could inform decisions around how much water can safely be taken, and from where.

The interactive map includes data such as geology and soil characteristics, climate, surface water hydrology, groundwater levels, and groundwater age. It can zoom in from national to regional to local scales and can be used to test different scenarios.

“These tools allow decision-makers to build models more cost-effectively, so that they can answer environmental management questions more quickly, wherever they are needed,” said Moore.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The daughter of one of the victims of the Erebus disaster is disgusted that a memorial will be built in Christchurch.

It has been 46 years since the Air New Zealand scenic flight crashed into Mt Erebus in Antarctica, killing 237 passengers and 20 crew.

After decades of back and forth, the government has announced a memorial would be erected at Cracroft Reserve in Christchurch.

Simone Bennett, whose father David was one of the crash victims, lives in Auckland and is furious that the memorial will be so far away.

However, the Air Line Pilots’ Association (NZALPA) is thrilled the memorial is finally being built, and in Christchurch.

The preferred site for the memorial is Cracroft Reserve, but the Avon riverbank is being held as an alternative option.

Andrew McKeen, a 787 pilot and president of the association, said the long-awaited memorial would finally honour victims of New Zealand’s worst aviation disaster.

“Christchurch serves as New Zealand’s gateway to Antarctica and was the intended stopover point for TE901’s return to Auckland,” he said in a statement.

“Since the tragedy many of our members have retired or passed on. Others still remember the turbulent months that followed that day in 1979 and the efforts NZALPA made to defend the professional reputations of their colleagues from unfair conjecture and blame.”

McKeen reiterated that Captain Jim Collins and First Officer Greg Cassin had been cleared by a Royal Commission of any suggestion that negligence contributed to the disaster.

“We will now have a permanent national memorial. Erebus will forever be remembered by our industry and especially our members.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The transport network between Wellington and the Kāpiti Coast will be under some pressure this weekend with State Highway 1 Transmission Gully closed to southbound traffic, and Metlink trains being replaced by buses.

NZTA would close the southbound side of Transmission Gully after it postponed its closure last week while it revised its roadworks and traffic plan.

The revision came after an earlier closure on Transmission Gully caused significant congestion and delays.

NZTA said the southbound closure would be in place from 10am on Friday until 4.30am on Monday, weather permitting.

Southbound traffic would need to detour via State Highway 59 while the closure was in place.

It said there would also be a northbound lane closure on the motorway, which was expected to cause delays for northbound traffic.

Mark Owen, regional manager for lower North Island/top of the South, said people needed to prepare for long queues and travel delays, and should try to avoid the peak congestion times expected on Sunday afternoon.

“These are major works on a key part of our state highway network. An impact on traffic is unavoidable, and it is essential that drivers are prepared for it.”

He said NZTA had identified problems, such as pinch points on the SH59 detour route, and taken steps to address them.

“We will have extra staff on duty to manage traffic, and we will close off the SH59 Link Road, which we saw added to congestion for traffic trying to use the detour route,” he said.

But he said now was the best time for them to do the roadworks.

“This must be done during the warmer summer weather. It cannot be done during winter, as the repairs would not work. We also want to get the drainage work completed so the motorway can be open to traffic during the busier Christmas/New Year holiday period.”

Metlink senior manager of operations, Paul Tawharu said buses replacing Metlink train services on the Kāpiti Line this weekend were due to KiwiRail making “vital improvements” to the rail network.

He said as NZTA was also carrying out maintenance on Transmission Gully this weekend, buses replacing trains during this maintenance would be detoured with all other traffic.

“We strongly encourage Metlink passengers to plan ahead and expect delays this weekend. They can keep up to date with service changes on the Metlink website or app.”

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