Parker Jackson-Cartwright was a big contributor in Breakers latest NBL win.Blake Armstrong/Photosport
The New Zealand Breakers have scored a second win in three games as their Australian basketball league season continues.
The Breakers eked out the victory, beating the bottom-placed Cairns Taipans in their own arena 102-96, despite a 35-point haul by local favourite Jack McVeigh.
It wasn’t a comfortable win for the Breakers, but they did lead for most of the contest, starting with a solid first quarter in which they outscored the Taipans 25-17.
Cairns closed that gap to three at halftime, but a dominant third quarter from the Breakers, which saw them pull clear by 11, enabled them to create the scoreboard pressure they’d been looking for, and close out the game.
Izaiah Brockington, Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Sam Mennenga were all outstanding for the Breakers.
In his 26 minutes on court, Brockington accumulated 22 points, 11 rebounds and four assists, to lead with way, while Mennenga also scored 22 points, while contributing eight rebounds and two assists.
Point guard Jackson-Cartwright was also his lively self, with 20 points, six assists and three steals.
The win for the Breakers has them on a five-win, ten-loss record, in seventh place in the ten-team league, while it was a fourth straight loss for Cairns who remain in last place with just three wins from their fifteen games.
They’ve been hit hard with injuries with Sam Waardenburg, Reyne Smith, Kody Stattmann and Alex Higgins-Titsha all out, while Tall Blacks guard Mojave King also not on court as much as he would have liked, after getting a head knock.
The Breakers now have a short break in the league due to an upcoming FIBA international window, with their next match on 3 December in Hamilton against the fifth-placed Sydney Kings.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
From the famous Universal Studios globe in Florida to a 2019 IKEA wall map, New Zealand has been cropping up as a glaring omission. But why does it keep happening, and what does it reveal about the way we read maps?
These are the sorts of cartographic puzzles that British comedians and geography enthusiasts Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman — better known as Map Men — delve into in their book This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters).
After years of producing punchy YouTube episodes about oddities in geography, the pair realised they needed more space to unpick the stranger corners of cartographic history: vanished Soviet cities, phantom borders, “paper towns”, and the idea that smartphone maps might be eroding our ability to navigate.
A visitor takes a selfie at Universal Studios theme park on its reopening day during the coronavirus pandemic, on 5 June, 2020, in Orlando, Florida.
AFP / Gregg Newton
Vanishing countries and areas
Foreman tells Nine to Noon part of the problem of New Zealand’s absence from maps is simply recognition.
“If you actually start typing the words ‘Is New Zealand … ‘ into Google, Google will then helpfully suggest the rest of the sentence for the thing that’s typed most often: ‘Is New Zealand part of Australia?'”
Geography plays a role too. New Zealand’s position on the far corner means it’s often cropped out, he says. Sometimes the explanation is even more mundane: Universal Studios’ globe didn’t include it because “they didn’t have a slab of metal small enough”.
Yet New Zealanders tend to take the slight with good humour. Cooper-Jones points out that even a New Zealand government 404 error page once displayed a world map missing the country entirely, with a cheeky message: “We’re sorry, something’s missing…”
But Aotearoa isn’t the only habitual victim of careless cartography.
“There is a rule that if you spot a map where New Zealand is missing nine times out of 10 something else is going to be missing as well.”
Novaya Zemlya, a large Arctic archipelago at the top of Russia, and Antarctica are often left off as well, he says.
How accurate are maps?
This video is hosted on Youtube.
The Map Men argue that we trust maps far more than we should. As well as human biases, there are also certain projections don’t accurately reflect relative proportions of countries or continents.
“The Mercator projection, which is what Google Maps uses in its projection, quite famously stretches the poles and makes the middle bits around the equator look a little bit smaller,” Cooper-Jones says.
Even in an age of satellites, maps are shaped by human choices, Foreman says. Borders, coastlines, even place names involve judgment, interpretation or, sometimes, selective editing.
“I think in 2025 a lot of us think that we’re quite literate at deconstructing biases, whether it be in like we know that statistics can lie, we know that different media outlets will have political biases and all that kind of thing,” Cooper-Jones says.
“But for some reason when we look at a map we just think it’s telling us the truth … that makes them, in a way, sort of quite dangerous, because people can manipulate that and use them to their own ends.”
This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong (and Why It Matters), by Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman.
Supplied / Harper Collins
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union embarked on what Cooper-Jones calls “one of the biggest, most organised, largest scale, most bureaucratically involved, intentional incorrect mapping exercises”.
“Actually on both sides [of the conflict] really, map censorship was a very important part of … protecting that really sensitive data, particularly the military sites and things like that.
“But the Soviets just took it to new extremes. So, they were deleting entire towns and cities off maps … and they even went further than censorship, they started to just put wrong things on their maps to essentially just confuse the enemy – should it fall into the hands of foreign spies.”
But ironically, the Americans already had satellite technology so it was pretty much a futile exercise, he says.
Why are there places that don’t exist on maps?
Just as places disappear from maps, others have appeared without ever existing.
The Mountains of Kong — a fictional mountain range — occupied maps of West Africa for a century. The cartographer who drew a “absurd single file, very, very, very long mountain range” had relied on a fleeting note from the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who had observed mountains in the distance.
The fictional range also influenced how the Europeans travelled there and “were carving up Africa for themselves”, Foreman says.
The ‘Mountains of Kong’ on John Cary’s map of Africa (1805).
Supplied / Mark Cooper-Jones and Jay Foreman, Harper Collins
Other phantom places were inserted on purpose. The township of Agloe, New York, began as a “paper town” — a fake location added by mapmakers to catch copyright infringers. But thanks to that map, it became real.
A couple building a shop in the Catskills consulted a map to find out where they were, saw Agloe, and named their new store the Agloe General Store.
“By naming it the Agloe General Store, they turned Agloe, which was a paper town, into a real town.”
To Cooper-Jones and Foreman, the worst maps are in fact the best. They’re not only funny but also reveal something about people, politics and perspective.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
The trucking industry is urging the government to grant stronger powers to impound unsafe vehicles after an Auckland operator was jailed for manslaughter.
Ashik Ali kept his truck on the road despite it being banned, and its failed brakes caused it to roll away and fatally hit a roadworker last year.
National Road Carriers Association chief executive Justin Tighe-Umbers says the system needs more teeth.
He says the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) needs the ability to impound dangerous trucks.
“They used all available levers, but there wasn’t a significant lever to get this truck off the road – therefore, it’s a system failure.
Ashik Ali.Kim Baker Wilson / RNZ
“NZTA needs the ability to impound trucks, which they don’t have at the moment. So they need more teeth.”
He said there were signs that next year the system will be strengthened by police and WorkSafe to keep out bad operators.
The case against Ali outraged the trucking industry, triggering calls for greater accountability for dodgy operators and regulators.
WorkSafe said it did not give any advice to its board or minister about the case.
The lead vocalist of US progressive rock unit Tool has apologised for performing in New Zealand with Covid at the start of the pandemic in 2020.
Speaking to a sold-out crowd at Spark Arena in Auckland on Saturday, singer Maynard James Keenan said he was “sorry about the whole Covid thing”.
Drummer Danny Carey and guitarist Adam Jones then launched into a swirling 10-minute rendition of the title track to their hypnotic 2019 album, Fear Inoculum, setting the tone of what was to follow over an enthralling but somewhat brooding two-hour show.
Rock band Tool performing live at Auckland’s Spark Arena on 22 November, 2025.
RNZ / Elliott Samuels
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
Jasmine Donaldson has been found guilty of careless driving, causing the death of her friend, Jade Richards.Kelly Makiha / Open Justice / NZME
“The word ‘sorry’ would have gone a long way,” a judge has told a woman whose driving on the way home from Rhythm and Vines caused a crash that killed her friend.
On New Year’s Day last year, Jasmine May Donaldson and Jade Nicole Richards were travelling back to Rotorua from Gisborne after spending four days at the music festival.
The car Donaldson and Richards were in, with a third friend and front-seat passenger, moved out of its lane, struck a rock wall and flipped on SH30, 20km northeast of Rotorua near Ruato Bay.
Donaldson, the driver, and the front passenger were able to get out, but Richards, who had been in the back asleep, died at the scene.
Donaldson was charged with careless driving causing death, which she defended at trial, claiming she was sunstruck, and, at the same time, an oncoming vehicle frightened her.
However, Judge John Berseng found her guilty, finding there were signs of fatigue, and describing the decision to drive as “flawed” and one that led to “tragic consequences”.
This week, Donaldson appeared for sentencing in the Rotorua District Court, where, through her lawyer, Roderick Mulgan, she sought a discharge without conviction.
Jade Richards, 18, died after the vehicle she was in rolled on SH30 on New Year’s Day last year.Open Justice / NZME
Mulgan said a conviction would end her aspirations to join the Australian army, something the now 20-year-old had been working towards since she was 13.
The police opposed the application, pointing to her apparent lack of remorse.
This prompted a discussion between Judge Bergseng and Mulgan over whether Donaldson had expressed remorse or merely regret.
The judge referred to victim impact statements read by family members.
Richards’ twin brother said he had been waiting for her to return from Rhythm and Vines so he could help her unpack her bags and cook her dinner.
Instead, he was visited by police who told him his sister had been killed in a crash.
He spoke of seeing the wrecked car, his sister’s blood, and her lifeless body in the morgue, all as things that he “cannot unsee”.
Richards’ older sister said she no longer enjoyed doing the things she and her sister, whom she referred to as her best friend, used to do, and the trauma of washing blood from her sister’s clothes.
Richards’ mother gave a detailed account of the day she learned her daughter had died, her struggles to cope, and the mental image of her daughter’s “beautiful face lying dead in the morgue”.
All of Richards’ family members spoke of the grief of losing her just as she was preparing to start university.
The other theme was that Richards’ family felt Donaldson had shown little remorse and had not taken responsibility.
They all urged the judge not to grant a discharge without conviction.The judge noted that in Donaldson’s affidavit, it was clear she regretted what had happened, but he thought it needed to go further.
Richards’ father, Mark Richards, told the judge it would have helped his family to see Donaldson take ownership.
He said that while she may have written about her remorse in her affidavit, it was never verbalised or expressed directly to them.
His voice cracked as he said, “Not one of our family has ever seen a word from her”, and said it seemed to have been dragged out for “self-preservation”.
“And that’s what hurts the most … It could have been a way different outcome if we got closure two years ago. We could have sat in a room and all just grieved together.”
Jasmine Donaldson defended a charge of careless driving causing death, but was found guilty following a judge-alone trial.Kelly Makiha / Open Justice / NZME
Donaldson’s lawyer said that her pleading not guilty didn’t mean she didn’t accept she made a driving error, but she had a right to test whether that error met a criminal threshold.
When it came to sentencing, the judge said there was “no doubt that Jasmine has suffered from knowing that her driving failure caused Jade’s death”.
But other than an offer of $10,000 emotional harm reparation, there was “little that can be taken as an expression of remorse”. She hadn’t undertaken any driver training or voluntary work, for example.
The judge said Donaldson’s approach to expressing remorse was “likely a consequence of her youth and her immaturity”.
“While I can’t speak for Jade’s family, it seems to me that the word ‘sorry’ would have gone a long way towards addressing the hurt that they feel,” the judge said.
He weighed Donaldson’s culpability as a driver and the consequences of a conviction.
“This was a mistake made by an 18-year-old driver,” he said.
Donaldson had been tired and shouldn’t have driven, but she hadn’t been “brazen”; it was the “product of youth” and her limited driving experience.
And there had been many “what ifs”.
“Unfortunately for Jade, she was effectively in the wrong place at the wrong time because of the consequences of Jasmine’s driving.”
The judge said it was clear a conviction would be an “absolute bar” to entry into her chosen career path in the Australian military, which she was accepted into before the crash.
Judge Bergseng granted the discharge without conviction, but Donaldson received a 10-month driving disqualification, was ordered to do a defensive driving course within four months, and was ordered to pay $10,000 in emotional harm reparation.
However, the judge noted he had placed “very little weight” on the reparation offer when considering the discharge application. “Out of all of this, Jasmine, there are no winners,” he said.
“You have heard what has been said [by Jade’s family]. They would be very much helped by a very overt expression of remorse, no matter what might be the state of the relationship. I can’t force that. That is a matter I leave with you and your counsel.”
Jack Crowley of Ireland is shown a yellow card by referee Matthew Carley during the Quilter Nations Series 2025 match between Ireland and South Africa at the Aviva Stadium.Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
It was billed as the most anticipated match of the northern autumn, but no one could have anticipated the flurry of cards dished out in the Springboks’ 24-13 win over Ireland.
The home side was reduced to 12 men at one stage, as referee Matthew Carley was kept extremely busy during a wild first half. In all, five Irish players were carded, including a red to lock James Ryan for a dangerous cleanout on Springbok hooker Malcolm Marx after 19 minutes.
Earlier, Damian Willimse had put the Springboks ahead with a sweetly taken try in the third minute. It was relatively even until the cards started getting dished out, ironically Sacha Feinburg-Mngomezulu was lucky not to be binned for a no-arms tackle while Ireland were hot on attack.
Cobus Reinach continued his fine season with a try after Ryan’s red, then Ireland found themselves down to 12 after Sam Prendergast and Jack Crowley went to the bin for professional fouls.
The Springboks seemed intent to punish Ireland in a highly charged atmosphere, subjecting them to a series of scrums designed more to demoralise rather than inflate the scoreboard. Prop Andrew Porter eventually cracked and was yellow carded for collapsing after halftime, however Ireland fought back and Prendergast kicked a penalty despite the numerical disadvantage.
Feinburg-Mngomezulu then showed his class with his second try in two tests, which seemingly made the game safe, especially after Paddy McCarthy decided to get in on the act and become the fifth Irishman to be binned – a test record.
By the time the game entered its final stage, it had been going for well over two hours. However, there was one last act of drama as Ireland ended the game hot on attack. There was time for one last card, however much to the big crowd’s delight it was to Springbok replacement Grant Williams.
Ireland couldn’t turn the pressure into points and the bizarre test ended as yet another Springbok victory, their 11th of the season.
Read how the game unfolded here:
Team lists
Ireland: M Hansen, T O’Brien, G Ringrose, B Aki, J Lowe, S Prendergast, J Gibson-Park, A Porter, D Sheehan, T Furlong, J Ryan, T Beirne, R Baird, J van der Flier, C Doris (capt).
Bench: R Kelleher, P McCarthy, F Bealham, C Prendergast, J Conan, C Casey, J Crowley, T Farrell.
South Africa: D Willemse, C Moodie, J Kriel, D De Allende, C Kolbe, S Feinberg-Mngomezulu, C Reinach, B Venter, M Marx, T du Toit, E Etzebeth, R Nortje, S Kolisi (capt), PS du Toit, J Wiese.
Bench: J Grobbelaar, G Steenekamp, W Louw, RG Snyman, K Smith, A Esterhuizen, G Williams, M Libbok.
Damian Willemse of South Africa scores his team’s first try during the Quilter Nations Series 2025 match between Ireland and South Africa at the Aviva Stadium.Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
The means to that end was slashing by 80 percent the clean car standard – which incentivised sales of low- or zero-emission vehicles – by the end of the week.
$265 million in penalties would not now be charged on ‘ordinary’ cars, Bishop claimed.
On Monday, Newstalk ZB’s host Ryan Bridge pitched this as a promise of cheaper cars to come – and Bishop listed savings for selected makes and models set out in his media release.
Soon after, TVNZ’s political editor Maiki Sherman ran through those herself on 1News, even displaying the savings on the screen.
“This Corolla would see charges reduced by more than $6500,” she said, in the manner of a car yard commercial.
But on RNZ’s Morning Reportthe next day, Ingrid Hipkiss noted the minister’s figures for savings on different makes and models were only estimates.
“We’ve carefully caveated the words because it’s complex. Every vehicle importer will be in a different situation when it comes to penalties and credit so it will really depend on the particular type of car and the situation they’re in,” Bishop explained.
Bishop also said the changes would only have a minimal effect on emissions – and the main reason for changing the law now was that “the bottom’s fallen out of the EV market.”
“There just simply hasn’t been the demand there and they also haven’t been able to get the supply. It’s a double whammy.”
Among things that might affect demand – recent media reports about EV safety.
Safety fears hit headlines
Last weekThe New Zealand Herald reported a retirement village on Auckland’s North Shore – Fairview – had banned new electric vehicles.
“One resident who did not want to be named told the Herald he was pulled into a meeting with other residents where ‘management tried to scare us’ (about) the supposed fire risk electric vehicles posed,” the Herald reported.
“They’re concerned about the risk an EV fire would pose to the busy communities, residents and homes,” RNZ’s Lisa Owen explained on Checkpoint the same day.
But why, when there are no restrictions on parking or charging them anywhere else?
“As soon as there’s an EV that blows up or catches fire, it’s on the front page or it’s on the six o’ clock news. If it’s a diesel or a petrol car, you won’t hear about it,” Retirement Village Residents Association chief executive Nigel Matthews told Checkpoint.
“I’ve seen the YouTube clips where things have exploded, whether it be an e-bike or an EV of some sort that’s being charged and then just caught alight. But I’ve also seen it with cell phones. At what point do you actually stop and say we need to have a bigger holistic look at this?” he asked.
When 28 cars were set alight in Whangarei Hospital’s car park a month ago, it was dry grass on a hot exhaust that started the blaze. But plenty of online speculation suggested an overheated EV could have started it.
A day later the driver of an electric bus died after it was engulfed in flames following a collision with a petrol powered car on Tamaki Drive in Auckland.
The busy road was closed for almost a day.
“Due to the bus’s electric battery, the area could remain hazardous,” a Police statement said.
That prompted keyboard warriors to conclude batteries in the buses were not just a hazard – but could have caused the fire.
Some also cited a bus colliding with an Auckland railway station building earlier in October. Nobody was hurt in that, but smoke was seen emerging from the top of
the bus.
Alarmed by what he called ‘misinformation’ about the Tamaki Drive crash – and “bizarre anti-EV propaganda” – Auckland City Councillor Richard Hills then took to social media himself.
He pointed out that Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) had confirmed the fire started from the petrol vehicle that hit that bus on Tamaki Drive, and bus company Kinetic found the electric bus’s batteries were undamaged.
“But all I saw everywhere was: ‘Told ya, told ya – EV buses and EV batteries’,” Hills told the Newstalk ZB Drive show.
“But this cannot happen again if we have an electric bus that has a crash on Tamaki Drive. You cannot shut a road for 24 hours,” ZB host Heather du Plessis-Allan responded.
“If you thought it was because it was an electric vehicle – it was. We did some extensive looking into it for you,” she told ZB listeners.
“Once they got on the bus, what they saw was battery packs hanging through the roof and so they were worried about that.”
She also said firefighters saw gas leaking and were worried lithium batteries were starting to disintegrate.
“Actually it was an aircon problem, but again, they were treating it differently because it was an electric vehicle,” she said.
But those details were not in any news story published by Newstalk ZB or its stablemates at the Herald at the time. Or any other media outlet for that matter.
There’s been no official FENZ incident report about the incident made public yet. FENZ has not yet responded to Mediawatch’s request for further information.
The risks and the reality
Firefighters at the scene of a fatal collision between a petrol powered car and an electric bus, on Tamaki Drive in Auckland, on 22 October.RNZ / Marika Khabazi
It is true that fires involving electric vehicles can be harder to suppress and take longer to make safe.
On [https://www.nzherald.co.nz/video/herald-now/auckland-bus-fire-should-we-be-worried-about-lithium-batteries/OGYBS4PTGQJCANRCBPAVSVWZTQ/ the
Herald Now show] AUT professor of electronic engineering Adnan Al-Anbuky explained the reaction known as ‘thermal runaway’ – heat can excite a lithium battery cell causing ignition or even explosion in neighbouring cells in extreme circumstances.
But it still wasn’t clear how likely that is to happen on the road – or in a garage.
Ten days after the Tamaki Drive crash, another Auckland Transport electric bus caught fire when it struck an overpass.
There were no passengers and the driver got out safely that time, but dramatic images of the flames in the underpass were widely viewed on social media, sparking more speculation about the fire risk of electric buses.
That prompted an explainer from Stuff the next day: ‘[https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360874741/no-electric-buses-arent-catching-fire-because-their-batteries No. Electric buses aren’t catching fire because of their batteries.’
Australian fire safety expert Emma Sutcliffe – who researches battery fires for Australia’s Department of Defence – told Stuff there had been only eight such fires in
Australia in three years to 2024, at a time when there were more than 180,000 EVs in use there.
While Auckland has had three events in a row, they are unconnected, she said.
“It’s just unfortunate that they’ve happened in a bit of a cluster,” she told Stuff.
“You should be far more concerned about the cheap lithium-ion batteries in your house than the ones powering your bus to work,” Emma Sutcliffe added.
But sometimes, the media give people the wrong idea.
Last year RNZ reported a Wellington man’s claim that his neighbour’s Tesla burst into flames in the garage next door. Eventually, FENZ ruled out electric vehicles or lithium-ion batteries as the cause. RNZ updated the story accordingly.
Earlier this year a fire destroyed a boarding house in a Sydney suburb. The Sydney Morning Herald said it was not clear if the blaze began as an electrical fire, but lithium ion e-bike batteries “had contributed to the fire’s rapid spread and intensity.”
Channel 7’s TV news report also suggested batteries as the cause of the fire, but one of the distressed residents could be heard off-camera telling the reporter: “I had a candle going. Maybe it was the candle.”
Call for context and ‘pre-bunking’
Co-president of the New Zealand Association of Scientists – Dr Troy Baisden – was alarmed by how recent news reports described the risks of EVs and the possibility of ‘thermal runaway.’
Dr Troy BaisdenWaikato University
Dr Baisden took to social media himself to point out that none of the recent vehicle fires were caused by EVs or their batteries.
But if the risk is real – albeit remote in normal circumstances – how should media report incidents like the ones in Auckland recently?
“We know there’s a risk of EV myths and misinformation spread. The most interesting thing about these stories is that there were stories about EV fires that contained … no EV fire,” Dr Baisden told Mediawatch.
He cited New Zealand Herald and RNZ’s Checkpoint coverage of the Fairview community’s dilemma as failing to make clear that EVs pose a much lower fire risk than combustion engine vehicles.
A recent peer-reviewed study of four nations found more people believed misinformation about EVs than disagreed with it – including vehicles being more likely to catch fire.
But if it was reports of the recent bus fires that prompted the Fairview residents and management to discuss the issue, news editors can not ignore that context?
“They could have said the risk of EVs catching fire is about 60 times less than an equivalent petrol or diesel vehicle. Adjusted for the mileage, it’s maybe 20 times less,” Dr Baisden told Mediawatch.
“There’s other information that you could think about. Anything that can move you hundreds of kilometres in two tonnes of metal is going to have a lot of energy stored in it, so it can create a fire.”
“I feel like the retirement village residents – and the decisions that were going on there – were really let down by our information ecosystem.”
Is that sufficient ‘pre-bunking’ – informing people of facts before they’re exposed to contrary opinions, misinformation or fringe views?
“Probably not. I still don’t think that’s the most relevant thing – which is risk reduction. Fires are scary and historically vehicle fires used to be much more common than they are now. The other issue is: are we ready to deal with EV fires? That’s actually a more important issue.”
“It’s important where there are a lot of EVs – or particularly really big batteries like the bus batteries – that those firefighting methods are known and ready to respond.”
“It also points out we’re not great at working through risk – and the information to support journalists reporting these risks in New Zealand isn’t great.”
“Consumer magazine in New Zealand is a great trusted source. But where news organisations responding to headlines and trying to come up with an angle and a story, need to make sure journalists or the editors can find those.”
“This is a classic gap. We’re talking about something that actually hasn’t happened. There’s been no EV fire that’s been caused by an EV in New Zealand as yet.”
But we know that this is not a ‘zero risk’ technology. When fires occur, batteries can become a specific fire hazard which needs special treatment.
“Everybody’s home has a number of risks. The risks associated with a barbecue. Storing that in a garage with a car and other things that can catch on fire is a problem. Maybe take it from a scientist who’s run large laboratories with a lot of dangerous things in them: Don’t put the dangerous things that can catch on fire together.”
Baisden is an environmental scientist who researches carbon emissions and is in favour of low and zero-emission technologies. Does he have a bias which might prompt him to minimise the risk associated with them?
“I am keen to see the uptake of electric cars. I’ve had one for a number of years. I don’t have any vested interest in it. But here we’re talking about … at least 20 times less risk associated with EVs than conventional cars. It’s difficult to say that I’d be causing more bias than that.”
“I really don’t want to be a regular performer on the radio talking about EV fires again – and there’s still been no EV fires.”
Cars towing boats travel across the city on Saturday morning.Jessica Hopkins / RNZ
Seafood New Zealand says claims from commercial fishing is allowed in two of 12 new High Protection Areas (HPAs) is misleading.
A convoy of recreational fishers travelled across Auckland in a rally on Saturday morning, towing boats. The One Ocean protest, co-organised by fishing enthusiast Ben Chissell, targeted aspects of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Protection Act and other proposed fishing reforms.
Seafood New Zealand chief executive Lisa Futschek said one exception was made for five small-scale ring-net fishers who provide kaimoana to local communities and marae.
She said claims from protesters that commercial fishing was allowed in two of 12 reserves was misleading.
“[Five small-scale ring-net fishers] have been given a just transition. They are able to fish within a very small section of two of the HPAs, but it’s a grandfathered provision – so that means when all of those individual fishers exit, they can’t be replaced. They can’t pass on that exception.”
Seafood NZ assured One Ocean protesters the government was not planning to add any species to the quota management system.
She said what was being proposed was if marlin or some reef fish were caught as by-catch, they would be able to be kept and sold.
“What is on the table are two proposals which would see certain species, marlin and some reef fish, able to be sold commercially when they are caught as bycatch by commercial fishers. So that’s a very, very different thing.”
Despite concerns of traffic congestion, by 10am Saturday, the hundreds of people driving in part of the convoy had mostly passed over the Harbour Bridge with minimal disruption.
Fisheries Minister Shane Jones previously said it was “a bit late” to protest, as recreational fishing lobby group LegaSea had “signed up to this policy some years ago”. LegaSea denied this. Chissell said the One Ocean Protest was a separate entity.