Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A former museum director fears a popular heritage area in Queenstown will be forgotten about if a crucial access bridge is not restored.

This week, Queenstown Lakes District Council indefinitely closed the country’s highest suspension bridge, Skippers Bridge, due to safety risks.

The bridge is the only access route from Queenstown to Skippers Canyon, where several tourism operators offer four-wheel-drive tours.

The council said inspections revealed issues with the bridge’s suspension cables, and it could not safely assess what load the bridge was currently able to support or its integrity.

Now, the future of the bridge was in the hands of councillors, who would be deciding whether to invest in remediating the bridge during their annual planning process.

David Clarke, a former director of the Lakes District Museum for 34 years, was worried that fixing the bridge would not be a priority.

“It’s the old catchcry that money should only be spent on essential items, and sometimes heritage falls into the area of not being essential, and so you get a decline in heritage buildings and structures.

“That’s a great shame because the proof is in the pudding. Thousands go up there every year to see the gold mining heritage and to cross that bridge.”

He hoped that if driving over the bridge in a vehicle was no longer possible, people might be able to walk or cycle over the bridge.

“I’m hoping they’ll quickly find some money and do the remedial work to open it at least to pedestrians.

“It’s still a bit of a haul to walk from the bridge to the old Skippers Point Township ruins, but at least that would be something and allow people to get through to the backcountry, where there’s some other amazing heritage relics like the old Bullendale powerhouse and the remains of the Bullendale township up the left branch of Skippers Creek.

“There’s also a lot to see at Skippers Point: the cemetery, the old school house, some of the ruins, and it’s just spectacular.”

Clarke said Skippers Bridge, which first opened in 1901, was also a “major feat of engineering”.

“When you consider how remote it is, to get the materials in there, let alone sling the giant cables across the gorge, without helicopters, it’s amazing.”

Clarke hoped council could find money – or use some of the tourist tax to fix it.

“There are other heritage items around the district that are under threat as well. Yes, we need roads, and infrastructure, and sewerage, and water, and all of those things, but once these heritage features are gone, they’re gone forever.

“It’s nice to be able to protect these remnants of the past.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

It could become more expensive to build a house this year.

Cotality, formerly known as Corelogic, has released its latest Cordell Construction Cost Index, which shows residential building costs increased by 0.9 percent in the three months to December.

The index is made up of 50 percent materials, 40 percent wage costs and 10 percent other expenses such as professional fees and consenting.

The annual pace of increase rose to 2.3 percent, but is still below its long-term average of 4.1 percent since 2012.

Cotality chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said the pace of growth was constrained.

“We are certainly not seeing the extreme inflation experienced in the post-Covid phase, when the [index] annual growth rate peaked at more than 10 percent in late 2022.

“During that period, there were supply chain issues for key materials such as plasterboard and rising wages also drove up costs significantly.

“However, although they’re not rising to any huge degree at present, costs haven’t seen significant falls either. Following the previous growth phase, the overall level of cost to build a new dwelling remains elevated even though the growth rate has cooled,” he said.

He said confidence was returning to the construction sector.

The number of dwelling consents has started to rise again, and reached 35,500 on a 12-month basis in October.

Davidson said that was a turnaround after a period of stagnation.

“After peaking at more than 51,000 in the 12 months to May 2022, the number of new dwellings consented dropped to a low point between 33,500 and 34,000. We are now seeing a recovery that aligns with anecdotal evidence that builders are becoming busier again.”

Activity would probably pick up with interest rates down, and rules such as loan-to-value ratios and debt-to-income rules making new builds more appealing.

“I don’t think we’ll necessarily see a big rise [in costs] because wages, the labour market is still relatively softer than it was a couple of years ago.

“You wouldn’t think there’d be large wage increases for the builders, but there might be a wee bit more pressure coming through there. And then materials as well, a wee bit more pressure, but again, not that returning post-Covid.”

He said activity could generally trend higher this year and cost pressures could return to normal.

Brighter outlook for construction firms

Things were looking up for construction firms, he said.

“There’s always going to be individual experiences and distributional effects in here, but what I hear on the ground and from people I talk to in the construction industry, there is a bit more confidence coming through.

“It takes a while, and it’s been a pretty big downturn for sure, and some developers have done it pretty tough, maybe buying land at the absolute peak value and then seeing interest rates go up and demand for that product come down, prices they could eventually sell it for come down… a big squeeze on margins when you’ve paid top dollar for land, the cost to build has gone up, the eventual selling price has come down. It’s been pretty tricky.

“Some people have obviously done it pretty tough, but I guess the other thing I think you also have to acknowledge is that, yes, it’s been a big downturn, but it was coming off an incredibly high base. So, actually, in the long run context, we’re still building a decent number of properties compared to what we’ve done at the previous troughs.

“So, you know, it’s not all doom and gloom, but at the same time acknowledging that it has been tricky for a lot of builders.”

A period of slower construction cost growth was good for homeowners potentially committing to a build, he said.

“If you sign up for something off the plans and it’s not going to be ready for 12 or 18 months, at least you can kind of have a bit more confidence that it’s not going to run away in the meantime. I think that a bit more stability is probably what people have been hoping for.

“And that is kind of what we’ve seen in the past sort of year or two… I think a lot of people would probably say it’s still expensive to build a house. But the growth rate hasn’t been as fast. So, you know, things have stabilised, have plateaued. And I guess, you know, with interest rates coming down, it just does get a bit more affordable.”

There was a premium for a new build compared to existing houses, he said, but that could reflect the fact that maintenance cost should be lower and the property could be built to higher specifications.

“It stands to reason that new builds will cost a little bit more than existing properties, but then there are those benefits too.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A coroner is calling for urgent psychological support for prisoners before and after their release, following the death of a man who served almost 30 years of a life sentence for murder.

Lee Rawiri Kohiti was sentenced in 1996 for the murder of his cousin. He was released on parole in May 2025.

Two months later, Kohiti was found dead at the Hamilton parole address he had been living at.

He was 19 when he entered prison.

According to the coroner, on his release at 49 years old, he wasn’t visited by friends or family and he expressed a desire to return to the prison environment.

“His closest support had been his mother; however, her health had deteriorated, and she had recently passed away,” Coroner Bruce Hesketh said.

Kohiti’s death has been ruled a suicide.

It’s a story that’s all to familiar to University of Auckland professor Tracey McIntosh.

“We’ve a parole board that largely looks at risk, with particular focus, as we can understand, on risk to community, but perhaps far less is done in actually determining the risk for individuals, particularly around their wellbeing,” she said.

McIntosh wanted more support on the inside to prepare prisoners for re-integrating into society.

“We’re letting people down … it’s very difficult for me to understand why these people wouldn’t be the highest priority, given that they’ve been in prison for such a long time because of the reasons of what they were convicted with.

“We do need to look at community, Corrections, probation, is there emphasis, particularly in that first six months, on the right things,” she said.

It was a significant and urgent issue, McIntosh said.

“When we think about how we do reintegration, I don’t know if there’s any country that really does integration extremely well, but we certainly, we’ve got so much more work to be done at the reintegration level,” she said.

“If you’re really going to talk about community safety, then it has to be a much broader view, and there has to be a much more nuanced understanding of safety.”

Work with other agencies needed

Coroner Hesketh’s ruling on Kohiti’s death recommended the Department of Corrections work with other agencies to address systemic issues in providing services to prisoners on release.

He also suggested Corrections collaborate with relevant partners to collate and review data on suspected suicide deaths after release, within a relevant time period.

“I add a further recommendation that long-term prisoners should have their cases marked as ‘urgent’ to receive psychological services support in preparation for their release in the critical weeks and months both before and after their release,” he said.

Corrections chief mental health and addictions officer Dr Emma Gardner said there were teams that regularly assess inmates’ risk of suicide.

“If a person becomes unwell after they have left prison, they will be having, if they are on probation, regular connections with their probation officer. That probation officer would be doing wellbeing checks on an individual and if they became concerned about their mental health then they would be able to refer them to services in the community…,” she said.

Gardner said a lot of work had been done for those in prison, such as expanding the mental health services across the prison network.

“We are now starting to turn our attention to ‘what does support in the community look like, how do we ensure that the relevant agencies that are already available out in the community are connecting with our people’, but it’s early days on that work and we’ve got a lot more to do,” she said.

Gardner said the Corrections executive have commissioned a piece of work looking at community support.

She said there was always room for improvement, but that Corrections had done a lot of work over the last four to improve internal services for inmates.

Gardner believed the systemic issues mentioned by the coroner were being addressed.

“We really do take every death in custody very, very seriously, and obviously every death for people on community sentences is an absolute tragedy, and we are really, really focused on doing everything we can to improve the support we offer those people and their whānau.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

An estimated 160,000 recreational boaties launch into the waters in and around Waikato each year.

With numbers particularly high over summer time, the Waikato region bolsters its harbourmaster team through Operation Neptune, enabling daily patrols on the lakes, rivers, and coasts of the region.

To staff Operation Neptune, the regular harbourmaster team of nine swelled to up to 27, with volunteers like Nicki Wilson joining the team for a few weeks.

In her regular job, Wilson is a hydrogeologist for the regional council.

This was her second summer working on Operation Neptune.

“The maritime team asked for additional volunteers over the summer period and I thought, oh this sounds like fun,” she said.

Together, deputy regional harbourmaster Shane Miles and Wilson cruise around, survey boaties for Maritime New Zealand, stop people who are breaking the rules, and hand out jellybeans and water safety information.

During lunchtime while the sun sparkled off the waters of Waikato River, RNZ jumped onboard.

Starting at Lake Karāpiro, the boat cruised up river and it didn’t take long for Miles to spot a jet ski towing a sea biscuit with both riders on the ski not wearing life jackets.

Miles hailed them, told them what was wrong and asked if they knew that in Waikato jet ski riders must wear life jackets.

“I did, I was just silly,” said the jet ski driver who lived locally.

Miles said there were a few common issues they were looking out for during Operation Neptune.

“Definitely we are looking for people to be wearing life jackets, we are looking for them operating at a safe speed when they are close to shore or by a person in the water, and we are looking that they have got an observer or a third person on board watching when they are towing,” he said.

The local jet skiers were likely to receive a $200 fine for breaching the life jacket rule, but they did have an observer and the kids on the sea biscuit were all wearing life jackets.

“Are the kids on the back allowed jellybeans since they are wearing life jackets?” asked Miles.

Continuing down the river near Horahora domain, they pull up alongside another jet ski to check in with the driver.

“How old are you guys?” asked Wilson of the two young people on the ski.

There is no national safe practice standard for water skiing and boating in New Zealand. Instead, the rules are set region by region by local council bylaws.

In Waikato, 15 is the legal age to drive a jet ski and these young people got a packet of jellybeans each for knowing and following the rules.

While idling, a boat approached and told the harbourmaster a vessel was in trouble around the bend.

Miles and Wilson cruised over to check it out.

“Everyone happy?” asked Miles as they approach a couple with three young children aboard the drifting boat.

The skipper explained that after a couple of happy hours on the water, the boat engine suddenly stopped responding.

A tow rope was attached and the harbourmaster vessel took the boat back to shore.

The family were all wearing life jackets and three packets of jellybeans were thrown over to the children, putting smiles back on their faces.

With the family safely returned to shore the harbourmaster turned around and headed back up the river to Karāpiro domain to drop RNZ off.

They pass the earlier jet ski near Keeley’s Landing – the mates were still out enjoying the water, and Miles noted everyone was now wearing life jackets.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

• Dual New Zealand nationals will need to get a British passport
• Thousands of travellers are affected
• Changes come in next month – Brits can no longer use an electronic travel authorisation (ETA)

Dual British-New Zealand citizens are angry and bemused after discovering they have to pay hundreds of dollars to return to their country of birth.

Travel agents are warning that many passengers are unaware of the change, which will come into effect for expat British and Irish dual citizens from next month.

While other visitors can pay $37 for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), New Zealand passport holders born in Britain will have to travel on a UK passport – and some say it is not straightforward to get one.

Vince and Diane, who live on Auckland’s North Shore, moved from England in 1966.

They were shocked to find they could no longer visit British family and friends without first applying for a UK passport; the last time they used one was 50 years ago. From the end of February, they cannot use their New Zealand passport, as UK citizens will no longer be eligible for ETAs.

Vince, who asked that his surname not be published, did not believe it when he first heard the news.

“I said, no, that’s a load of absolute rubbish. There’s no way they would do that. There’s no way they would penalise me just because I am British. So then I did some research and it is definite that on the 25th of February if you’re a dual citizen and you’re born in Britain, then you have to have a British passport.

“If you as a Kiwi [born in NZ] wanted to go to Britain, no problem at all – just use your Kiwi passport.”

It put British citizens in a worse position in their own country than visa-waiver travellers – such as New Zealand-born citizens using ETAs, he said.

His shock at the cost was matched by his outrage at the bureaucracy involved – including finding a UK passport holder to confirm his identity, form-filling, the possibility of an in-person interview at the embassy in Wellington, and having to post his New Zealand passport.

“If you don’t want to send the passport, which I didn’t, you have to send a photocopy of every page. And they make the point that even if the pages are blank, you’ve got to send a photocopy. So I sent 42 pages, 41 of which were blank. Isn’t that fantastic? So, yeah, this is bureaucracy gone mad.”

Vince considered whether he could get around the rule by hoping authorities assumed he was New Zealand-born – but then realised his NZ passport reveals he was born in the English city of Coventry.

The wait for a new British passport would be worrying for people with travel already booked or who had an emergency, he said.

A new passport seemed a better option than an alternative the UK government is offering – a ‘certificate of entitlement’ costing £589/NZ$1373 compared to £94.50/$220 for an adult passport – but it is still much more than an ETA (£16/$37 for two years), and a lot more work.

“Up until now, it’s cost me around about $600, copious amounts of form filling in, and now we’re still waiting to see what else they want. It has to go by special delivery – there is only one way the post office will accept old passports and that costs $121. Absolutely ridiculous. And we’re in our 80s, we’ll probably only ever go [to England] one more time.”

‘Absolute chaos’

Another Briton – who asked only to be identified as Jane for privacy reasons – said her dual-citizen husband had lived in New Zealand for about 18 years. He was able to travel back with an ETA last time he went, and found out through social media he needs a passport the next time he returns.

They are worried that others who are making urgent trips to see old or dying relatives will find out too late about the rule change, costs and potential timeframes. Hundreds of thousands of people would be affected among Commonwealth countries and elsewhere, said Jane.

“This is what’s happening to so many expats, not just in New Zealand, but all over the world. They’re basically being forced into this because essentially, they’re not going to be able to go back to the country of their birth. And I just think it’s really, really wrong the way it’s been done.

“When you’ve got parents that are older, you have to go back. So we’re fortunate that his [her husband’s] mum is well enough that she can actually come out here, but if God forbid anything happens to her, she’s 80, he needs to be able to get back.”

Their children are NZ citizens by birth so only need a ETA. “So my son has just literally gone on his New Zealand passport,” she said.

“But my husband’s had to go to Warehouse Stationery and get all 40 pages of his New Zealand passport printed out in colour. And then he’s having to post that back along with his expired British passport. And now New Zealand Post are basically charging 120 bucks because they’re insisting it’s got to go registered [post]. So there’s just all this money being made.

“And are you telling me there’s going to be people in the British passport office that are going to sit there leafing through each individual page? I think they’ve really underestimated the volume of work that this is going to actually generate and the mounds of paper.”

She suspected it was a revenue-making exercise, though others feared it was more of a data-grab.

“I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who’s a travel agent, and she’s in the same situation, she’s got elderly relatives. And she said it’s going to be absolute chaos at the airports in February when this happens, because the people that are aware of it, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

“I think there’s so many people that are going to get caught out and not being able to board those flights. It’s going to be a nightmare. She said, ‘I don’t ask every customer what passport they’ve got’. There’s people that don’t even use travel agents. So many people nowadays just book the flights themselves.”

No passport, no fly

She recalled the ‘sheer panic’ of realising she needed a US transit visa to get back to New Zealand some years ago.

“It was most stressful few hours of my life,” she said. “And this is what people are going to [go through] when they get to the airport at the end of next month and they’re not going to be allowed to board the plane. And it’ll be the first they’ve heard of it.

“I haven’t got an issue with ETAs because even New Zealand has an ETA now and the US do the whole transit visa. It’s just the fact is they’re forcing people to get these British passports and the rigmarole you have to go through to actually do it.”

For those without a British passport or the option of an ETA, the final option on the table is renouncing UK citizenship, but that is a step too far for many people – and still is not free (£482/$1124 NZD).

“People don’t want to renounce their UK citizenship, but equally they don’t want to be forced into having to jump through all these hoops to travel into a country where you can legally travel into,” said Jane.

Meanwhile, Vince said he had been tempted to arrive with his NZ passport and British birth certificate and seeing whether UK officials would turn him away at the border. He decided against it, as the main obstacle seemed to be getting past through check-in at the airport.

“I’m wondering if somebody in the UK passport office will suddenly realise, ‘hey, we’ve made a huge mistake here’ – because this will affect thousands of people in so many countries,” said Vince. “I mean, Canada, NZ, Australia – it’s going to be bigger than Elvis.”

Reasons for the change

The High Commission in Wellington has been approached for comment.

A House of Commons Library’s research paper published last week said there was no specific legal requirement for British citizens to travel on a British passport, but ‘in practice, pre-departure checks for UK-bound travellers made it difficult to travel to the UK without one’. It provided the following advice and background on why the issue had arisen.

How do British citizens show they have the right to enter the UK?

All British citizens have the right of abode in the UK (meaning, the entitlement to live or work in the UK without any immigration restrictions). This makes them exempt from immigration control. They don’t need an immigration officer’s permission to enter the UK, but they must be able to demonstrate that they have the right of abode.

They are expected to do this by showing a current British passport or a certificate of entitlement of the right of abode: paragraph 12 of the immigration rules and section 3(9) of the Immigration Act 1971.

A certificate of entitlement is an official document which confirms the holder has the right of abode in the UK. The certificate is attached to the person’s foreign passport; a new one is required each time the passport is renewed. It isn’t possible to have more than one certificate at a time, or to have a certificate and a current British passport.

It is significantly more expensive to apply for a certificate of entitlement (£589) than a British passport (£94.50 for adults or £61.50 for under 16s when applying online).

Travelling to the UK without a UK passport or certificate of entitlement

British dual nationals whose other nationality is for a ‘non-visa national country’ (meaning, one which isn’t subject to a UK visit visa requirement) used to be able to travel to the UK using their foreign passport without a certificate of entitlement.

People travelling on a non-British passport demonstrate their permission to travel by using:

• their digital UK immigration permission (eVisa), if they are resident in the UK;
• their entry clearance vignette sticker or eVisa, if they are from a visa national country; or
• their electronic travel authorisation (ETA), if they are visiting the UK and are from a non-visa national country (for example, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, USA or an EU country).

A British dual national travelling on a foreign passport would not have any of those. They would be ineligible for an ETA, eVisa or immigration permission due to their British citizenship.

The Home Office has been advising British dual nationals to travel on a British passport or with a certificate of entitlement for many months. But in practice it has not been strictly enforcing the ETA requirement for non-visa nationals, to allow people time to adjust. Those transitional arrangements will end in early 2026.

From 25 February 2026, the Home Office will be fully applying the ETA requirement. The Home Office is advising British dual citizens to make sure they have a valid British passport or certificate of entitlement if they will be travelling on or after that date. If they don’t, they may not be able to board their transport to the UK.

What can people do if they have an urgent need to travel?

British dual citizens travelling on or before 24 February 2026 should be allowed to board transport to the UK if they have a valid passport for a non-visa national country, due to the transitional arrangements.

British dual citizens whose other nationality is subject to a UK visit visa requirement need to travel with a British passport or certificate of entitlement.

British nationals abroad might be able to apply for an emergency travel document if they have an urgent need to travel and can’t renew or replace their British passport in time. It might be more difficult to get an emergency travel document if the person hasn’t had a UK passport for many years.

Why can’t people prove their right of abode in other ways?

Some people question why they can not use other documents to prove their right of abode and exemption from the permission to travel requirement, such as an expired British passport or a certificate of naturalisation or registration as a British citizen.

Those documents are not listed in the Home Office’s document checking guidance for transport providers. Carriers are unlikely to deviate from the guidance because they can be penalised for bringing inadequately documented passengers to the UK.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand