Category: Public Media

Source: Radio New Zealand

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has faced sustained heckling and had to fend off questions about a revived Treaty Principles Bill as he returned to Waitangi this year.

ACT leader David Seymour predictably attracted his own jeers, and NZ First’s Winston Peters focused on a return serve.

The opposition was not spared criticism either, with Labour accused of backstabbing, and Te Pāti Māori given a stern word to sort out their internal problems and finish the work it started at Parliament.

But Luxon was clearly the one attracting the most ire.

Even before MPs walked onto the upper Treaty Grounds, a group of 40 or so protesters led by activist Wikatana Popata gathered as he made a rousing speech beneath the flagstaff – calling the coalition “the enemy”.

“These fellas are accountable to America, they’re here on behalf of America e tātou mā. Don’t you see what my uncle Shane [Jones] is doing? My uncle Shane, he’s giving the okay to all the oil drilling and the mining because those are American companies e tātou mā. So wake up.

“We’re not quite sure who our enemy is, well let me remind us: those people that are about to walk in, that’s our enemy… we’re not scared of your arrests, we’re not scared of your jail cells or your prisons. We’ve been imprisoned… we kōrero Māori to our tamariki at home, we practise our tikanga Māori at home, so you will never imprison us.”

The group performed a haka in protest of the politicians’ presence amid the more formal haka welcoming them to the marae. A small scuffle broke out as security stopped some of the protesters – who were shouting ‘kupapa’, or ‘traitor’ – from advancing closer.

Speaking from the pae in te reo Māori on behalf of the haukāinga, Te Mutunga Rameka paid tribute to retiring Labour MP Peeni Henare and challenged Māori MPs working for the government, asking “where is your kotahitanga, where is your unity?”.

The next speaker, Eru Kapa-Kingi, acknowledged the protesters outside – saying he had challenged from outside in the past and now he was challenging from within the marae.

“Why do we continue to welcome the spider to our house,” he asked.

“This government has stabbed us in the front, but others stabbed us in the back,” he said, referring to Labour.

“Sort yourself out,” was his message to them, and to Te Pāti Māori, which in November ousted two of its MPs. Kapa-Kingi was arguably a central part of those ructions, however, having been employed by his mother Mariameno – one of those ousted MPs – and leading some of the criticism of the party’s leadership.

His criticism of Labour highlighted the departure of Henare, who he said had been – like his mother – silenced by his party.

Henare soon rose to his feet, saying according to custom those named on the marae were entitled to speak – and he spoke of humility.

“We must be very humble, extremely humble. And so that’s why I stand humbly before you… Parliament kept me safe over the years.

“We have reached a point in time where I have completed my work. And so I ask everyone to turn their thoughts to what was said this morning: the hopes, aspirations, and desires of our people.”

Henare and his soon-to-be-former boss, Labour leader Chris Hipkins, have both batted away speculation about other reasons behind his departure – not least from NZ First deputy Shane Jones.

Hipkins himself acknowledged Henare in his speech, saying “our hearts are heavy today. We know we are returning you to your whānau in the North, but you are still part of our whānau . And we know where to find you”.

He later told reporters Kapa-Kingi was talking “a lot of rubbish”, that the last Labour government did more for Māori than many others, and Labour had already admitted it got the Foreshore and Seabed legislation wrong.

Seymour was up next and spoke of liberal democratic values; dismissing complaints of colonisation as a “myopic drone”; and saying the defeat of the Treaty Principles Bill was a pyrrhic victory because – he believed – it would return and become law in future.

Defending his comments on colonisation later, he said it had been more good than bad, as “even the poorest people in New Zealand today live like Kings and Queens compared with most places in most times in history”.

Conch shells and complaints about growing sick during Seymour’s speech clearly fired up the next speaker, Winston Peters – who said he did not come to be insulted or speak about politics.

“There’s some young pup out there shouting who doesn’t know what day it is,” he said, calling for a return to the interests of “one people, one nation”.

As the shouting started, Peters repeated his line there would come a time where they wanted to speak to him long before he wanted to speak to them.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson then rose to speak from the mahau, echoing the words of the late veteran campaigner Titewhai Harawira, urging the Crown to honour the Treaty, “it is not hard”.

The party announced during the events on Thursday it would be standing candidates in three Māori seats, including list MP Huhana Lyndon, lawyer Tania Waikato, and former Te Pāti Māori candidate Heather Te Au-Skipworth – and Davidson staked out her party’s claim to those seats.

“When the giants, the rangatira of our Green Party – before the Pāti Māori was even formed – were the only party in the 2004 Foreshore hīkoi to meet the people, the masses, to uphold Te Tiriti,” she said.

With the government trampling treaty and environment while corporations benefit, she said giving land back was core.

While her speech was welcomed with applause, the government’s hecklers soon turned up the noise for the prime minister’s.

After skipping last year’s pōwhiri amid tensions over the Treaty Principles Bill, he began by saying it was a tremendous privilege to be back, someone already shouting “we’ve had enough”.

He spoke about the the meaning of the Treaty as he saw it, and the importance of discussing and debating rather than turning on one another.

“It speaks so highly of us that we can come together at times like this, but it is also relevant on Waitangi Day as we think about how we’ve grappled and wrestled with other challenging issues as well,” he said.

Shouts and jeers could be heard throughout, but he ploughed on undeterred.

“… I think we have the Treaty to thank for that, because that has enabled us to engage much better with each other and we should take immense pride in that.”

One person could be heard yelling “treason” as Luxon spoke. He later said it was “typical of what we expect at Waitangi … I enjoyed it”.

Asked if his government was honouring the Treaty, he said “yes”.

“We take it very seriously. It’s our obligation to honour the Treaty, but we work it out by actually making sure we are lifting educational outcomes for Māori kids, we work it out by making sure we are lifting health outcomes, we work it out by making sure we’re making a much more safer community.”

Luxon has been rejecting the idea of a revived Treaty Principles Bill since the day after it was voted down, but his coalition partner Seymour has been pledging its return for even longer.

The prime minister has reiterated his stance several times in the lead-up to Thursday’s pōwhiri, and did so again: “David can have his own take on that but I’m just telling you, it ain’t happening,” he said.

Ahead of the 2023 election, he had said redefining the Treaty’s principles was not his party’s policy and they did not support it, that a referendum – as the bill proposed – would be “divisive and unhelpful”, and a referendum would not be on the coalition table.

He was asked, given that, how ironclad his guarantee could be with an election campaign still to come and governing arrangements yet to be confirmed.

“We’ve been there and we killed it, so we’re done,” he said, clearly hoping for finality on the matter.

Te Tai Tokerau kaumātua and veteran broadcaster Waihoroi Shortland bookended the speeches.

Beginning with a Winston Churchill quote – that democracy is a bad form of government but the others are worse – Shortland said it was easy to remark on how divisive Māori were “when you all live in the most divisive house in the country”.

He called for Henare to be allowed to leave politics with dignity, but extended no such luxury for Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi.

“Rawiri, I cannot allow you to come away. Your work is not done. It is crushing to see and to hear what the House does kia koutou, kia tātou, ki te Māori – but we sent you there nevertheless, and that work is not done. Find a way.”

Waititi had spoken earlier, thanking Eru Kapa-Kingi for what he had said.

“I can hear the anger and I can feel the pain. And the courage to stand before the people and say what you had to say,” he said.

He said the party wanted to meet with Ngāpuhi but had been “scattered” when invited to a hui in November, and indicated an eagerness to meet.

“We are still eager to gather with you but we must make the proper arrangements before we can,” he said.

“It’s alright to have problems. But we must experience those problems in our own house. If those problems go outside, the horse will bolt.”

He said the current government was “nibbling like a sandfly” at the Treaty, and there was “only one enemy before us, and it is not ourselves”.

But that fell short of what Mariameno Kapa-Kingi had hoped for, telling reporters she initially thought an apology was coming.

She said she was disappointed Waititi did not fully address their stoush in his speeches, and she was committed to standing in Te Tai Tokerau – presumably, regardless of her party affiliation.

“I’m not going anywhere until our people tell me otherwise. I’ve got much to do.”

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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

Sewer robots are being used to patrol pipes elsewhere in the world to keep them from blocking, but what about in New Zealand?

Wellington Water has suggested the main outfall pipe into the Cook Strait was blocked, causing a back-up into the Moa Pt treatment plant, but it did not know how.

“Catastrophic” flooding has damaged perhaps 80 percent of the plant’s equipment and may take months to fix, chief executive Pat Doughtery told Midday Report on Thursday.

It was “as bad as we feared”, he said.

RNZ asked the agency if it used robots in sewers or had looked into using them.

A spokesperson responded, “No. Would it work?That’s probably not an approach we are considering at the moment.”

The pipe has not been inspected internally since its construction almost 30 years ago in 1998.

Dougherty told both RNZ and the Herald they suspected the cause but were checking.

“We have got a TV camera on the site and we will be getting that to have a look at the outfall pipeline to try to understand what went wrong that caused a backup into the building,” Doughterty told Midday Report.

Earlier, he told the Herald, “The outfall wasn’t able to cope with that volume and backed up into our worksite.”

It was inspected annually by divers, but it is hard to get into a pipe that was carrying high volumes of wastewater every day, Dougherty said.

“So I don’t think we have … any regular inspections of that pipe,” he said.

Dougherty agreed that it was a problem.

The agency later on Friday told RNZ it was still working through what happened and there needed to be a thorough investigation.

“It would be inappropriate at this stage to speculate. The outfall pipe is just one of several areas under investigation – ultrasonic cameras and divers are being deployed over the weekend,” it said.

“The long outfall pipeline is only one part of the overall investigation.”

Ultrasonic cameras were being deployed with divers.

Inspection robots

The sewer robot industry has been expanding rapidly.

While using them in an ocean outfall, like in Cook Strait, might be complicated, the robots have been used widely in cities overseas.

Arlington in the US in 2021 completed a survey of 80km of land-based big sewers in 2021 using robots with cameras, laser and sonar.

China has floating robots to both spot damage and others to do repairs.

In London, experts in December held an online forum about using AI to boost robot inspections of the Thames Tideway super-sewer.

“The pipe inspection robot market will expand rapidly between 2025 and 2035 owing to the increasing demand from oil and gas, water and wastewater, sewage and industrial manufacturing industries,” said Future Market Insights.

It could grow to five times the current global size of $8 billion in a decade.

Online promos for one robot said the data was collected and stored on-board for a “fast and objective profile of 900mm to 3,000mm pipes, and information about corrosion, debris under the flow line and surface damage on top of the standard systems deliverables, without the need for anyone to enter”.

Aside from adverts like this, though, a scientific review in December said both that “research on sewer defect detection has grown significantly” and that “research on robotic systems for sewer pipe inspection is still limited”.

It only looked at robots using CCTV – not much use in an outfall – and said they had obvious limitations but also that some of these AI models demonstrated “outstanding performance” for speed and accuracy.

Very highly crictical assets

Wellington Water said it last inspected the outfall in March last year, 11 months ago.

“This is an external inspection for structural integrity (visual) of the exposed portions of the outfall pipe, condition of the diffuser ports, and assessed for erosion or scour around the exposed sections of the pipe,” said a spokesperson.

There was an annual assessment of the rust protection system.

“It is not our standard practice to internally inspect a pipe of this type and age.”

While it regularly used floating cameras to inspect sewer lines elswhere, this was a “different scenario” to an outfall.

These sewer lines were “more prone to blockages” from debris and fat/scum especially in smaller or low-flow pipes. But the outfall discharge came after the treatment processes that removed such debris, scum, and fats.

The agency, which is about to morph into a new government-mandated entity, already had huge stresses on its finances from having to do big fixes to avert more crises, before the biggest one ever hit on Wednesday at Moa Pt.

However, it had recently undertaken what it called a successful if partial assessment of “failure modes” of critical assets.

“The focus of this project meant that all potential ‘showstoppers’ were identified and assessed,” said an internal report.

“By tailoring asset management approaches towards assets that are most critical, Wellington Water is aiming to avoid large scale disruption to communities and environmental damage.”

Another “potential showstopper”, the Seaview outfall, runs from the Hutt to Eastbourne and on to Pencarrow.

Built in the 1962, it had been running at half-capacity and “needs renewing or upgrading with no budget provision for physical works – expected to be around $700m,” said an asset management plan last year.

Both Moa Pt and Seaview treatment plants were “very highly critical” assets, or VHCAs.

They were built and operated under 25-year contracts that expired in 2020.

“The expected lives of many of the mechanical and electrical assets means that a significant renewals burden has arisen post termination of these contracts.

“Failure of these assets heightens the risk of consent non-compliance and unplanned discharges to the environment,” it said.

Seaview’s problems meant higher operating costs and an increase in treated discharges to Waiwhetū Stream, the latest around the same time this weak that Moa Pt failed so drastically.

Moa Pt was rated “poor” and significantly non-compliant with its discharge consents, local residents were told by the agency last December.

The 2025 plan also said “critical wastewater mains are in very poor condition”.

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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 Wellington charity supplying school stationery to families who can’t afford it may be forced to turn people away because demand is so high.

Te Awakairangi School Stationery Drive supplies children in the Hutt Valley with essentials such as exercise books, pens and backpacks.

It’s just one of several costs families face at the start of the school year on top of things like school uniforms.

Associate Education minister David Seymour described the price of some uniforms as totally “outrageous” and “unnecessary”.

Last year, Te Awakairangi School Stationery Drive delivered 220 stationery packs for the start of year, meeting every single request.

But already demand is well up and that could mean some tough decisions.

Organiser of the stationery drive Nicky Smith told Checkpoint they’ve already had just under 200 requests, and she expected the number to rise.

“Schools are back from next week and teachers and schools start to realise where gaps might be.”

However, the stationery drive had already exhausted all funds and the donations they had received this year to meet growing demand.

“We collected about $3000 through our Givealittle campaign, and we’ve also collected about $1400 worth of donations in physical items that have come through the community.

“But if we were to take these 200 requests and price them at standard store rates, that’s $9000 worth of stationery. So, if anything further does come through, we’ve got nothing really to fund it with.

“It does keep me awake at night knowing that I might have to turn some families away.”

Smith said it cost on average $50-55 per student for their stationery needs. The ‘cheapest’ school list she knew of was $26 and the most expensive was $149.

If she had to turn families away, it would be the first time she’d done so.

“I can’t imagine having to do it. I want to be optimistic that we can continue to do this good work and that the community will come through and help us meet every target.”

She said the drive had received more requests this year because of the cost of living, but it also meant that less businesses were able to donate.

“Businesses I feel have been a little bit hesitant this year. We have some supporters who have come back year on year and we’re really grateful to them. But you know we’re not picking up new sponsors.

“That sort of indicates to me that there’s some hesitancy that maybe [with] economic conditions, [it’s] not favourable for a lot of businesses right now and that’s why we’re not really seeing the support.”

Every stationery pack the drive gave out was tailored to each student, she said.

“If a student is attending a school, we will go and find the stationery list for that school and that classroom, and we’ll pack it exactly to what’s on their list because we want to make sure that the kids are arriving at school with everything they do need.

“Things like a range of books, glue sticks, scissors, pens, pencils, colouring pencils.”

This year so far, the drive has distributed 6,500 thousand items. Of those, 1700 of were books, 1500 were pencils and 850 were pens.

Smith said the drive often received messages from families who they had supported with school stationery.

“They talk about how receiving a pack has almost reduced them to tears because it has lifted a huge weight off their shoulders.”

The stationery drive was inspired by Smith feeling the financial strain herself, during the back-to-school season.

“There was a period there after the COVID years, where getting stationery for my own children was stressful and we went a couple of weeks without having stationery in class.

“Just that feeling of the kids coming home and saying, ‘hey mum, my teachers hassling me because I don’t have all the stuff that I need’. It makes you feel like you’re letting your kids down.”

The drive also received positive feedback from schools, she said.

“Being able to lift that from parents feels really good. But we also hear from schools because we know that we’re helping to reduce some of those really complex barriers to to coming back to school, like attending.”

Te Awakairangi School Stationery Drive has their own website, Givealittle page and Facebook page.

They also have donation points for physical items across all Hutt City Libraries.

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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 Christchurch school where mouldy lunches were served to students says an internal investigation has found no evidence to support the Ministry for Primary Industries’ claims that contaminated meals came from the school.

New Zealand Food Safety, a business unit of MPI, is standing by its findings that “the most plausible explanation” was the accidental mixing of fresh meals with lunches meant to be served the week before.

The report by Haeata Community Campus, obtained by RNZ under the Official Information Act, said that claim was unfounded because the school only received the required number of lunches each day and did not have a facility to reheat food or store meals.

The report said questions needed to be raised with MPI and Compass Group, specifically about two different batches of meals identified at the school on Monday, 1 December, when they were prepared, by who, the dates they were distributed to schools, and why contaminated meals were found to be interspersed with uncontaminated meals.

NZ Food Safety acting deputy director-general Jenny Bishop said it received the internal investigation report from Haeata Community Campus last week and responded to the school.

“We carefully reviewed the report and note that it does not introduce any new evidence beyond what was considered in the NZFS investigation released publicly on 10 December 2025,” she said.

School investigation results

The report said when the mouldy meals were discovered on 1 December, eight Cambro boxes containing lunches were delivered to the main building Te Tai o Mahaanui at 9.16am where they were received by a member of the school lunch distribution team. Dietary-specific meals were identified and removed for distribution separately.

The report said all lunches handled by staff during distribution on 1 December were hot to touch.

Camera footage then showed eight Cambro boxes being picked up by the Compass Group delivery driver at 2.26pm.

The investigation also looked at the meals delivered and collected the previous school day, Thursday 27 November. There were no meals delivered on Friday, November 28 because it was a teacher-only day.

The report said eight Cambro boxes were delivered at 9.20am and nine were picked up at 2.26pm on 27 November, because an empty Cambro had been left on the lunch table for students to put their lunch containers in once they were finished.

Staff recount finding the mouldy meals

According to the Haeata report, a school nurse said she was walking through the main building on 1 December when she overheard other staff members talking about a “health issue”, with someone saying “we could have a bunch of sick children”, so she went to see if she could help.

“The ladies were opening all remaining lunches to check if there were more rotten ones. I suggested that there must be some processing batch number, and we should identify this rather than just opening all remaining lunches,” she said.

The nurse said a batch number was visible on the plastic lid above a time stamp, but both were difficult to read because of condensation on the inside of the containers as the meals were warm.

Staff identified two different batch numbers, separated the meals by number and then opened those labelled 25297 and found they were all in a state of decay.

“I estimate there were about a couple of dozen or so rotten meals but could not be sure. We checked several of the other batch numbers, and all meals were fine so we decided opening all of them would be unnecessary,” she said.

She checked the rubbish bin located by the tables but did not find any remnants of rotten food or containers with the bad batch number.

The report said a teacher aide was in reception at lunchtime on 1 December when she saw the meals another staff member had opened and asked what it was because it looked grey.

“Two staff members and I looked through the Cambros to see if there were any more of the mouldy meals. As we started looking we were finding more hot mouldy meals spread throughout the good ones, this was the case for all of the Cambros we went through,” she said.

“We noticed that all the mouldy meals had the same batch number, which was different from the good meals. Once we had gone through all the Cambros and taken out all of batch number #25297 we opened all of them and saw they were all grey and mouldy and smelt the putrid odour coming from them.”

The report also said an admin staff member went to get a lunch at around 1.50pm and noticed one of the meals was greyish in colour.

“It was hard to tell as all the meals had condensation on the inside of the lids. So, I opened it and saw a fermented/mouldly meal,” she said.

She said she looked for other meals in the same condition and found some, then took them to the principal. She said both were the same temperature.

Another admin staff member walked into the SLT office that day to find the principal and other staff members inspecting the meals, according to the report.

“An odour was coming from the lunches, I picked one of the lunches up to bring it to my nose to smell and nearly dry retched. It was definitely spoiled. The lunch was still warm when I picked it up. I then picked all three of the lunches up off the table and took them out to the atrium to discard them,” she said.

She later sent a message to alert whānau of the spoiled lunches.

Once learning about the mouldy meals, the staffer asked the lunch team if they were positive the meals had not been left from the prior week and accidentally handed out, the report said.

“I asked two of the administration team to check what was for lunch and if there was any possibility there could have been a mix up. They were absolutely sure that there were no lunches here before they arrived that morning and there was no way the lunches were leftovers as they were hot and condensation from the heat was still seen on plastic film,” she said.

Haeata Community Campus principal Dr Peggy Burrows said no food provided by the Compass Group on 27 November had been left behind for three days.

“I highlighted to investigators that one Cambro containing rubbish, not meals, was left temporarily on site on Wednesday 26 November 2025 but was properly collected the following day by the property staff and was uplifted and returned to the the Compass Group distribution facility by the delivery driver the next day,” she said.

“Haeata’s records, supported by property staff checks of the campus on Thursday 27 November, confirm no Cambros remained on site.”

Haeata Community Campus has been approached for comment.

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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 man who rescued a family from the water in Kai Iwi Lakes in Northland says he’s not a hero and he would do it for anyone.

Haruru man Aaron Stott was walking along the beach last month with his family when they saw two kids in the water, and something “didn’t look right”.

He watched as their mother ran into the water, screaming, and dropped under the surface.

Stott pulled the mother and child out of the water before hearing screaming and shouting from the shore.

“Someone said to me ‘no, there’s two more’,” he told RNZ.

Stott turned around but was unable see anyone else, so he dived down and found a father and child at the bottom of the lake.

“One boy was just sitting there and the father was trying to get back up, but it was like he was moving in slow motion,” he said.

“I managed to dive down and grab them and bring both of them back up.”

When he and others got the pair back to shore, the boy was blue, Stott said.

” got him up on the beach, and put him in the recovery position and whacked his back a bit, and he wasn’t really responding,” he said.

The child suddenly took a deep breath and started breathing again.

“Ten seconds either way, they wouldn’t have made it,” Stott said.

Stott said he was comfortable in the water and had spent his younger days surfing.

“It’s a bit hard when you’re trying to take two people out of the water,” he said.

Stott said after the rescue, he was thinking of all the things in his day that had led him to that moment.

“It was a pretty strange feeling really.”

He said he wasn’t worried for his own safety; he just had to get them out of the water.

“I just knew I had to get them up, I didn’t even think about it really.”

Police Senior Sergeant Dave Wilkinson described Stott as a hero, but that was not how he saw himself.

“I would do it for anyone, you know, I’d do it for anyone that was in trouble or anyone that needed help, I would help them,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a hero, I guess I just don’t want to see people suffering at the end of the day.”

He hoped his story would encourage others to be safe around water.

“If it stops anyone else going in the water, I’d be grateful,” Stott said.

Working as a chef, Stott said this evening, he was preparing dinner for the Prime Minister.

Water Safety NZ’s Gavin Walker said the rescue was incredible, but he wanted people to know how risky it can be.

“When you have a situation like this and your first instinct is to react, just take a few seconds to scan the situation,” he said.

“The safest way to help people is to try and do it from land or from something else like a boat.”

Walker suggests throwing a boogie board, throwing a rope or getting someone in a boat to help out in a situation like that.

“If you make the call that you have to go in, none of those options are there, make sure you have a quick look at the conditions to make sure that you’re not putting yourself into a situation that you might not be able to cope for,” he said.

“Super important if you’re going in the water, make sure you take some form of floatation with you, so that could be somebody’s chilly bin from nearby, a chilly bin lid, a ball, a boogie board, a life jacket. Actually having something with you that’ll help you float when you try and help this other person out can make the difference between life and death in these situations.”

Walker hoped those people getting out in the water over the long weekend would be mindful of the dangers.

“Tragically, we’ve seen 16 New Zealanders already lose their lives in the water since the start of the year, and this weekend looks like it’s going to be an amazing long weekend,” he said.

“So as Kiwis go out and make the most of their time in the water, make sure they’re thinking and acting safely so that everybody comes home after the long weekend.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Shredded muscles, chiselled jawlines, tanned and clear skin – idealised human bodies bombard people’s daily lives on billboards, televisions and phones.

Now, social media’s driving a boom in the use of untested and potentially harmful drugs that claim to help achieve these Hollywood good looks.

They’re types of synthetic peptides and people with no expertise or supervision are injecting them directly into their bodies.

Despite being unapproved by Medsafe, they can be bought online “for research purposes”.

It follows an expert warning the use of these drugs is dangerous and many are sold based on unproven claims.

Synthetic peptides can be found in some therapeutic drugs, some that might sound familiar are weight-loss drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic.

The drugs are designed to mimic naturally occurring peptides in the human body.

Some can be prescribed by a doctor to fight conditions such as type-two diabetes and sleep apnea. But there’s a growing online market for unregulated peptides that are being used as performance enhancing drugs.

*Bill, a 25-year-old Southland man, first discovered he could buy peptides about six months ago.

“I managed to source a local supplier in New Zealand; from there I managed to source a few different suppliers in China that actually have third part testing along with what you’re buying.

“I’m not going to say it’s 100 percent the safest way to do it, obviously it’s not a chemist.”

Bill said he used a mixture of anabolic steroids in combination with a specific peptide to try and make his muscles look more defined.

He acknowledged that taking unregulated substances came with risks.

“99 percent of peptides out there, you don’t actually know the full effects of what they do in humans, maybe animals if you’re lucky.”

Other peptides on the market claim to enhance melanin and collagen production.

Kai, a 23-year-old man from Auckland, said peptide use was openly talked about at his local gym.

“There’s a trend and everyone’s saying peptides are good for you, take this one for better muscle mass, take that one for better skin, take this one to burn fat.”

Advertising unapproved or prescription-only drugs… including on social media in New Zealand and Australia is illegal.

But Kai said his social media feeds were filled with influencers talking about using peptides.

“You look at one gym clip and then you get like five within the next 10 slides and then it just evolves from there, the more interactions you have.

“At the moment mine is just mostly influencers that are on substances.”

‘There are far too many risks’

Emeritus professor in sports medicine Dr David Gerrard from the University of Otago said using unapproved drugs was dangerous.

“Don’t go there, there are far too many risks without medical supervision and determining what your body is normally producing anyway.

“To supplement that with a synthetic form of the same chemical messenger carries a significant risk.”

“”They are dangerous.”

Dr Gerrard said many peptides talked about on social media didn’t mention the negative consequences.

“I think it’s been trivialised by the people who are in the process and in the marketplace for distributing these drugs and claiming that they will give you new vigour, better complexion and you’ll feel less stressed.

“I think there definitely needs to be a crackdown on the promotion through social media of these unqualified statements, that have come from people who [want] a financial and pecuniary gain from distributing these things.”

Dr Gerrard said athletes in the past have tried to use types of peptides to increase their red-blood cells, but the consequences were life threatening.

“The more red-blood cells you have, the sticker your blood becomes and these athletes, in an unsupervised way were using these drugs.

“They ended up having strokes and heart attacks and problems associated with circulation to brain and heart.”

Many peptides are also on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list, he said.

“They are tested for and they could mean that a young athlete could commit an anti-doping rule violation and lose their ability to compete in their sport. “

Gaps in drug checking

Casey Spearin from drug checking clinic Know Your Stuff said they were seeing an increasing amount of performance enhancing drugs, including peptides.

“We heard about these kinds of substances, maybe five, six times in the course of a year. Now we’re getting several inquiries into our inbox per week, asking ‘can you check peptides and where can I go to get these checked?”

But Know Your Stuff’s clinics don’t have the technology to be able to check these kinds of drugs. Spearin said if people buy drugs online, they couldn’t be sure of what’s actually in them.

“I’ve talked to people that are interested in importing and distributing these types of things and they are seeking ‘can I actually get testing on these; can I know that the product I’m offering is safe”.

“It’s a really big gap, especially as we see these getting more and more popular.”

The New Zealand Drug Foundation said it had also seen a sharp rise in the number of people asking them to test peptide drugs.

Since December last year, many peptides in New Zealand have been classified as prescription medicines. That means it’s illegal to sell them for therapeutic purposes.

Medsafe’s manager compliance manager Derek Fitzgerald said many new peptides were experimental, so there was little known about any benefits or potential harm.

Peptides imported without a prescription are seized and destroyed at the border.

*Name changed to protect identity

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