Category: MIL-OSI

Source: Secondary teachers question rationale for changes to relationship education guidelines

A conservation effort led by Auckland Council rangers to assist one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most treasured native birds is delivering groundbreaking results.

At least 55 rare hihi chicks have hatched in Shakespear Regional Park’s Open Sanctuary over the summer period of 2024 / 2025 – a first for the species in more than a hundred years.   

Shakespear Regional Park’s Open Sanctuary.

Auckland Council Parks Committee chair, Councillor Ken Turner, says the commitment from staff, local iwi, volunteers, and the Department of Conservation to reintroduce hihi to the Auckland mainland is a significant step to secure the future of this distinctive forest songbird.

“I’m hugely thankful for the work that our rangers and others do to build on the conservation of our region’s flora and fauna. The success of this project will give hihi the boost it needs to flourish again, and Aucklanders an opportunity to experience these little treasures in their natural environment,” Cr Turner says.

The new chicks have emerged following a carefully managed journey in June 2024 for 40 adult hihi, also known as stitchbirds, from predator-free Tiritiri Matangi Island to a new mainland home at Shakespear Regional Park.

Senior Ranger of Shakespear Open Sanctuary Matt Maitland says the council’s Regional Parks northern team, Shakespear Open Sanctuary Society (SOSSI) and Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust, who all worked together on the translocation, have been thrilled to see so many of the birds breeding.

“The number of healthy chicks to arrive has exceeded all our expectations, given it’s the first breeding season in their new home,” says Mr Maitland.  

“They are the first hihi – one of NZ’s rarest forest birds – to hatch and succeed in the area since disappearing from mainland Auckland in the 1870s.”

Mr Maitland credits an ongoing focus from partners involved in the project for its success, with translocation support provided by the Hihi Conservation Charitable Trust, the Department of Conservation Hihi Recovery Group, and Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi.

A couple of hihi were lost due to natural causes, but this is a great result compared with an unsuccessful translocation attempt in 2022, Mr Maitland says. 

The hihi is nationally threatened, with Te Hauturu-o-toi Little Barrier Island holding the only naturally-surviving population since the 1880s.

Recovery efforts have recently established small populations in pockets around the North Island, including at Tiritiri Matangi. Shakespear Open Sanctuary now brings the total number of hihi habitats to eight.

There are thought to be around 2000 hihi in the country, making it one of New Zealand’s rarest native birds.

The council and SOSSI volunteers will continue to closely monitor the new population at Shakespear Regional Park, while working with other partners to provide enhanced protection to their habitat alongside education initiatives.

SOSSI volunteer Maree Johnston and Auckland Council ranger Bruce Harrison carefully undertake the task of banding a hihi chick.

Source: Secondary teachers question rationale for changes to relationship education guidelines

If you’re out and about in the Auckland region on Friday 2 May, you may see a hive of activity around some of our community centres as our emergency responders take part in Auckland’s biggest emergency relief and welfare-focused emergency response exercise.

Auckland Emergency Management’s Head of Business and Welfare John Cavanagh says this is an ambitious exercise, designed to test our emergency relief community support functions.

“Firstly, if you see emergency responders, Auckland Emergency Management staff and even some volunteer ‘actors’ busily setting up a civil defence centre in your local area, don’t be alarmed!

“We’re putting our emergency relief and welfare plans through their paces on Friday, which includes physically setting up sites and working in collaboration with our agency partners and community organisations.

“I can’t give too much away about the scenario – the nature of an exercise means we like to keep the details as real as possible, which means delivering them to our teams in ‘real time’ – but what I can say is that it will be a severe weather event.

“It won’t come as a surprise to many why we’ve chosen weather – Auckland is experiencing more of these volatile weather events and the impacts of severe weather can be widely felt,” he says.

Do you have a plan?

Preparing your home or property and making a plan with friends, neighbours and family can go a long way to staying safe in an emergency. Some emergencies may mean you need to leave your home at short notice.

• Know your risk: visit Auckland Council’s Flood Viewer to find out if your home or property will be affected by flooding (take the link or search ‘Auckland Council flood viewer’).

• Visit aucklandemergencymanagement.govt.nz for guides on making a plan and preparing for an emergency.

• getready.govt.nz also has lots of useful information, including alternate formats like New Zealand Sign Language; audio, large print, easy read and Braille guides; and translated information.

Weather forecasts and alerts

• MetService is New Zealand’s national weather authority and Government-approved sole provider of severe weather warnings.

• Get weather alerts to your phone by downloading the MetService NZ Weather App from the App Store or Google Play. You can sign up for notifications, including Red Severe Weather Warnings.

Source: Secondary teachers question rationale for changes to relationship education guidelines

Etched into the walls of our city, street culture never grows old.

This arts season, discover some exciting and mysterious art that you might never have noticed before.

Auckland Council Head of City Centre Programmes Jenny Larking calls it a hidden collection of our art history.

“Standing in a single spot in Durham Lane West it’s possible to take in the city’s oldest existing piece of graffiti culture, a mid-1990s view of place, and a contemporary portrayal of what our feet stand on beneath the central city.

“Some of these artworks are a celebration of Te Waihorotiu stream, which flows underground, a treasured stream that’s also honoured in the name of the new station taking shape in the area,” she says.  

Here’s more about this unique urban experience:

Durham Lane West

Lane Change by John Radford 1995 – in Durham Lane West.

Artist John Radford’s Lane Change, on the wall of an underpass off Durham Lane West, remembers a slice of Auckland’s history. The artwork cements a replica façade of an 1880s building, which was in Shortland Street, into the wall.

Directly opposite Lane Change is a John Radford mural ‘…that was then, and that was then…’ completed in 1994 in this backstreet shrine to street culture.

This artwork also explores themes of buildings past. Both artworks were funded from a donation by a property development company responsible for a large development in the area at the time, part of Auckland City Council’s incentive scheme for the creation of public art and public spaces by private companies.

In ‘…that was then, and that was then…’ words and phrases overlap and intersect to represent the passage of time. The words draw from Auckland’s history and include the names of Māori pā sites, natural features, and local businesses that have been built over and around in the landscape of Tāmaki Makaurau.

In 2010 an unknown contractor inadvertently painted over the mural. The artist, John Radford, restored the work leaving some of the grey paint to add to the evolution and meaning of the artwork.

“I think it adds to the look of the work. There are now more traces of layers on the wall,” the artist told The Aucklander at the time.

Walk further into the underpass and discover the Queen Street City Beat mural created in 1986 by Opto & Dick Clique (Otis and Dick Frizzell).   

In 1986, 15-year-old Otis Frizzell recruited his well-known artist father as free labour to help him with this historic graffiti mural painted in the alleyway. Otis recalls the council of the time wanted to brighten up the inner city and he was commissioned to create the mural.   

The only real graffiti art reference available at the time was the movie Beat Street, so the artist wrote QUEEN STREET CITY BEAT. The mural depicts a characterisation of Queen Street at the time featuring recognisable buildings – the Classic Cinema, Auckland Town Hall, Keans Jeans, the neon cowboy and McDonalds. 

Otis Frizzell says: “I’m stoked to get a chance to breathe some new life into this old mural. Of course when I painted this with my Dad back in ’86 I had no idea it would last so long, and eventually become one of the oldest existing Street Art pieces in Aotearoa.”

Opposite the Frizzell work is Holly Mafaufau’s Tāmaki Makaurau completed in 2024.

Holly enjoys the conceptual, problem-solving aspect of design and takes a similar approach to the walls she paints. She says that words are weapons, and public walls are an opportunity to speak to people.

“This artwork acknowledges the historic bodies of water of the area and their importance in the provision of kai (food). It was created with the intention to soften a hard urban space while contributing to the collection of existing artworks in this space,” Holly says.   

Airedale Street  

Artist Poi Ngawati.

Exciting new artworks curated by Ross Liew for Auckland Council have transformed the Airedale Street steps, a popular pathway between Auckland University of Technology and Queen Street.

A mural has been created by artist Poi Ngawati (Waikato Tainui, Ngāti Patupo, Ngāti Whawhaki, Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine). 

Titled Te Huinga Tai – The gathering of tides, this vibrant piece of street art talks about the meeting of tides from all around the world. Depicted via a modern Māori stylised pūhoro design, the work reflects five key values; people first, pursue excellence, embrace change, act with integrity and serve our world. 

The north facing walls are painted in shades of violet purple and the south facing walls shades of teal. This colour combination speaks of day and night, light and dark, and how the waters of Te Waihorotiu continue to flow beneath the streets.

Accompanying the mural is a new collaborative light work suspended in the tree above, created by Poi Ngawati and Angus Muir to complete the transformation of this space. The design speaks to the connection between the stars, ocean, and iwi guiding our journeys and shaping our stories.

The flowing forms represent rain, linking Ranginui and Papatūānuku. By day, it moves with the environment; by night, it connects to the stars above. 

Midtown street parties

On the way to or from the next midtown street party – on the third Thursday of each month – Aucklanders are encouraged to stroll to Durham Lane West and Airedale Street to witness street art they might never have noticed before.

Midtown street parties are enabled by Auckland Council to build vibrancy and support local businesses in the newly-emerging neighbourhood around Te Waihorotiu Station, with funds from the city centre targeted rate.

Read the midtown street party schedule at OurAuckland.

Source: It’s time to fix the secondary teacher shortage

The Green Party has marked May Day with a pre-budget announcement in Tokoroa, detailing the party’s plan for a Green Jobs Guarantee.

“New Zealanders should be in control of our economy, our jobs and our future. We don’t need to leave our fate to be decided by international shareholders,” says Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. 

“From the West Coast of the South Island, to Ohakune, to Tokoroa, in the last year alone, we’ve heard the same devastation driven by the same political decisions to let offshore companies decide the fate of regional communities.

“No more.

“Today, we launch our Green Jobs Guarantee, which will directly create at least 40,000 jobs across this country to rebuild our infrastructure, plant native trees and restore biodiversity, build homes and an economy that we, New Zealanders, own – and can genuinely be proud of.

“We’ve done it before and we can do it again. Before politicians took their hands off the wheel of the economy 40 years ago and sold off the assets we all used to own, we had a Ministry of Works. Our Ministry of Green Works builds on that proud tradition but is future fit for the climate transition.

“Our Future Workforce Agency, Mahi Anamata, will actively plan for the skills we need. We’ll revitalise and supercharge the roaring success of Jobs for Nature, and we’ll ensure everyone in this country who wants a good, decent, living-wage paying job will get one.

“In a time of global volatility, after a forty-year economic experiment that’s failed regular people and is currently seeing record numbers leave the country, it’s time to take back control and build our resilience.

“A better world is possible, and this is how we build it,” says Chlöe Swarbrick.

Source:

Te Pāti Māori stands firmly against any moves to downsize or close UCOL Whanganui. With over 30% of students identifying as Māori, the campus is a vital lifeline for education, upskilling, and community transformation in Te Tai Hauāuru.

“Matapihi ki te Ao is more than a name, it’s a promise. A window to the world for our rangatahi and whānau,” says Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

“We won’t sit back while this Government shuts the door on Māori futures. Our commitment is clear—we would invest more in regional tertiary education, not less.”

Te Pāti Māori would strengthen funding for adult and rangatahi learners, expand access to kaupapa Māori support services, and ensure local iwi shape the future of learning in their own rohe.

“This Government’s attack on vocational training is short-sighted and regressive. Job cuts don’t just mean fewer roles, they mean the loss of experienced and passionate kaimahi who genuinely care for their students. It devalues the people who have held up our communities through education.

“We’re here to protect what matters: our right to learn, to lead, and to live well in our own communities. We say, keep the window open,” concluded Ngarewa-Packer.

Source: Exercise NZ

The first Saturday of May — May 3rd — marks International Pilates Day. Pilates is officially one of the fastest-growing fitness trends in the world, with the global industry forecast to grow by over 10.8% in the next 10 years. Alongside global trends in core conditioning and functional training, Pilates is gaining momentum in New Zealand, with 64% of Gen Z gym members doing reformer Pilates classes and 55% taking part in mat-based Pilates.

As momentum builds, ExerciseNZ, in association with Pilates Aotearoa, is encouraging Kiwis to celebrate International Pilates Day and experience first-hand why this dynamic, research-backed form of movement — developed by Joseph Pilates during World War I — is transforming lives everywhere.

“In a world where wellbeing and vitality have never been more important, the Pilates method offers a holistic, sustainable approach to thriving — supporting not just physical wellness but emotional resilience and mindful movement. More than just a fitness fad, the practice of various forms of Pilates has earned its place as a powerful tool for building strength, enhancing mobility, and boosting mental wellbeing,”
— Stephanie Hadley, Chair, Pilates Aotearoa

As Pilates continues to grow in popularity, International Pilates Day offers a timely opportunity to explore the evidence behind this global trend. Studies show that regular Pilates practice can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression by up to 30%, while improving balance, flexibility, and core strength — critical factors in preventing falls and supporting healthy ageing.

Research from the University of Sydney found that Pilates delivers mental health benefits comparable to other major forms of exercise therapy. Clinical research published in Physiotherapy shows that participating in Pilates twice a week can reduce fall risk by up to 40% among older adults, significantly improving functional strength and stability. Findings published in The Open Public Health Journal also show that after just eight weeks, participants experience higher body confidence, improved mood, and reduced stress.

Whether you’re a newbie, a regular participant, or a seasoned pro, there’s a place for everyone on the mat. ExerciseNZ, in partnership with Pilates Aotearoa, invites all New Zealanders to celebrate International Pilates Day — no matter your age, fitness level, or experience.

Why Pilates Works: Evidence-Based Benefits

Pilates can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression by up to 30%.
Practising Pilates twice a week can lower fall risk by up to 40% in older adults.
After eight weeks, Pilates can significantly improve mood, reduce stress, and increase body confidence.
Research shows Pilates offers mental health benefits on par with other major exercise therapies.

This International Pilates Day, take a moment for yourself, connect with your community, and be part of a global movement towards better health and vitality through Pilates.

Pilates Aotearoa will also be hosting events for their members to celebrate the classical method on Saturday, May 3rd.