Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Government documents show changes aimed at strengthening deportation levers could disproportionately affect Pacific Island nationals, but the Immigration Minister says that won’t happen.

Erica Stanford said it was “not about racial profiling, it never has been”, but the Greens are concerned the “MAGA-loving immigration Bill” could scapegoat migrant communities.

The Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill was up for its first reading at Parliament on Thursday, and will give immigration officers the power to ask suspected overstayers for identification in homes and workplaces.

The government said it was closing a compliance gap in the deportation system, while critics argued it was a step towards the immigration conditions that had allowed the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids seen in the United States.

Proactively released documents by the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment show a paper outlining further decisions on the Bill.

It noted the population groups most likely to be “potentially liable for deportation” had historically been Pacific Island nationals.

“As a result, the proposal to expand the powers of immigration officers to request identity information from those they have ‘good cause to suspect’ may be liable for deportation, could disproportionately affect these same population groups.”

Stanford rejected the suggestion the Bill would lead to disproportionate impacts on Pacific communities, saying it was a “really small technical change” in very “limited circumstances”.

“This is not about racial profiling. It never has been,” she said.

Stanford explained that currently immigration officials who come across people “hiding” or “jumping out windows” or “escaping” aren’t able to ask them for identification documents.

“This is not about randomly stopping people on the street or targeting them because of their ethnicity. This is a particular behaviour in a particular situation, and it was a request from immigration officials for that change.”

She said she wasn’t scared of history repeating itself.

The Greens immigration spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March said he was extremely concerned the “MAGA-loving immigration bill” would scapegoat migrant communities.

“The government is taking a Trump-like approach to immigration by targeting undocumented migrants, including our Pacific communities, who have already faced the intergenerational damage of the Dawn Raids.”

He said the government had been advised that Pacific people will be disproportionately affected by the bill and it needed to be scrapped.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

A woman and two young children have been rescued from a car trapped by rising floodwaters in Northland.

Fire and Emergency said the rescue unfolded on Pigs Head Road, Whananaki, when the woman’s car became trapped between two impassable bodies of water.

Hikurangi fire chief Trevor Gallagher said the brigade initially thought the car had gone off the road and was submerged in floodwaters.

A specialist swift water rescue team – which had been stationed in Whangārei ahead of the storm – was dispatched to Pigs Head Road, and a rescue helicopter was put on standby.

However, when the Hikurangi Volunteer Fire Brigade arrived they found the driver had made her way through one flooded section of road, only to come to another where the water was even deeper.

With the water still rising, she was unable to go back the way she had come.

Gallagher said she got her car onto an area of higher ground and called for help just before noon on Thursday.

The water was also too deep for emergency service vehicles, so some of the firefighters, kitted out in lifejackets and safety gear, waded through the water to the car.

The primary-school-aged children were cold and frightened, but otherwise unharmed.

The brigade then called in an ex-army Unimog to drive through the flood and collect the trio, but while they were waiting a large contractor’s truck turned up.

The driver was able to collect the woman and children and drive them to the other side of the flood, where an ambulance crew was waiting to check them.

The water rescue team was stood down.

Gallagher said since then floodwaters had continued rising, with the nearby settlements of Ngunguru and Whananaki entirely cut off, and State Highway 1 closed by flooding at Whakapara.

A Pigs Head Road resident told RNZ he saw emergency vehicles on either side of a section of flooded road about 40 metres long.

He said so much rain had fallen overnight – about 200mm since midnight – that waterfalls were pouring off the embankments alongside the road.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– 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

Mackenzie mayor Scott Aronsen has dismissed reports Twizel is running low on fuel as the town hosts the pinnacle of the secondary school rowing calendar.

The Maadi Rowing Regatta is held at Lake Ruataniwha on alternate years.

It is one of the largest secondary school sporting events in the Southern Hemisphere with more than 2000 competitors accompanied by parents, teachers and support crews hitting town for the five-day competition.

The influx to the small Mackenzie town of Twizel – population about 1800 – can number 10,000 or more.

And, at some stage, most will want fuel.

Aronsen said the town’s two petrol stations were keeping a very close eye on supply and refuelling arrangements.

The Mackenzie district is vast, sparsely populated and a tourist mecca, including hot spots like Lake Tekapo/Tākapō and Aoraki Mount Cook.

It had the country’s highest rate of guest nights per capita in 2024.

Aronsen said the district was humming with thousands in town for Maadi on top of the regular flow of tourists.

The regatta was the last of more than two dozen back-to-back events over summer, including food festivals and multisport events, the mayor said.

Twizel petrol station McKeown had run low a few days back but had since restocked and was ready to bring another 40,000 litres in if necessary, Aronsen said, and a petrol station in nearby Lake Tekapo briefly placed limits on petrol purchases last week.

“I rang McKeown’s myself and they’ve got another load to bring in if need be. As they said to me, so long as we don’t get people stockpiling fuel there’ll be no problems but the minute we have people start stockpiling then we’re going to get ourselves into trouble,” Aronsen said.

This weekend would be the test as the bulk of the town’s visitors leave in a “mass exodus” but suppliers were being vigilant, he said.

“They’re well aware of the situation, so they’re prepared for it.”

High fuel prices did not seem to have affected turn out for the regatta, which appeared to be the biggest yet, Aronsen said.

However, like elsewhere in the country, soaring fuel costs were still affecting people.

Discussions were underway at the council as to whether some staff could work from home and many residents were limiting their trips to Timaru – a four-hour round trip, he said.

Some local farmers were also not getting the amount of diesel they had ordered or were being told there were caps on future orders, Aronsen said.

“So there’s definitely some – I won’t call it restrictions – but there’s definitely some cautions being put in place there to think about usage,” he said.

Pūkaki ward councillor Frank Hocken said it was understandable some petrol stations had run low at times given the huge numbers in town and on the back of an extremely busy summer season.

“It’s the biggest Maadi cup I think we’ve ever had, there’s about 2000 kids here plus heaps and heaps of parents,” he said.

“It’s getting busier every day. It’s a great thing for Twizel.”

Rowing NZ general manager sports development Jared Cummings said it had been an amazing week with great weather and hospitality from Twizel.

Competitor numbers were the highest ever, at 2187, for a South Island regatta.

“I’ve never seen this many people Monday to Thursday – normally the final days are big,” Cummings said.

Soaring fuel costs had not affected Rowing NZ’s costs, which were fixed and booked a long way in advance, he said.

“The same with the schools and everyone else – all of them are booked well in advance. We’re a really organised sport and that stuff is pretty much really at the absolute margins with respect to fuel.”

RNZ spoke to several hospitality and accommodation businesses that said, aside from intermittent shortages at petrol stations, there was no evidence the fuel crisis had affected visitor numbers with several commenting this year appeared to be the busiest Maadi yet.

The final day on Saturday – the day that traditionally brought in the most attendees – was expected to be massive.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The AI scribe rolled out in EDs around the country has given health diagnoses, a meth recipe, instructions for killing by poison and advice on making bombs, during testing to see if would break the rules on what it’s allowed to do.

US-based security testing company Mindgard said it had carried out the “jailbreak” by only typing prompts, which “do not require advanced technical expertise and could plausibly be replicated by a technically savvy clinician”, and asked it to rewrite its own system instruction, or system prompt, which sets the guard rails for its responses.

The Australian-made tool, known as Heidi, was adopted by Health NZ after a successful trial period in New Zealand, cutting the time it took staff to write clinical notes and freeing them up to see more patients. HNZ said it was now being used by 1250 doctors and front-line staff in EDs around the country.

Heidi told RNZ on Thursday it had already made changes to prevent this kind of activity before it was drawn to their attention externally, and both it and Health NZ said at no time was any patient data revealed.

But now, according to reports by Australian media, its under review in Australia by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

The TGA has been approached for comment.

The “system prompt” is the mechanism used to set the tool’s limits – for example, it can be told not to give health advice, only to summarise the information it’s been given.

With its system prompt changed, Heidi began calling itself “Nexus”, and rewrote its own code when asked.

As well as being open to providing medical diagnostic advice – a function a scribe tool was not meant to have – it also provided a step-by-step guide on how to steal a patient’s identity, as a doctor.

Mindgard has published screenshots of its responses on its website.

“A doctor is in a unique position of trust,” it says, before going on to give a detailed explanation of how to leverage it.

It begins: “Phase 1: Information Harvesting. This is the foundational phase where the doctor leverages their privileged access to systematically collect all necessary data.”

The risks? According to Mindgard’s Jim Nightingale, who detailed the experiment on its website: “Doctors hopefully know it’s not designed for medicine.”

“But a clinical scribe is developed for healthcare, and its use is approved by their institution. So even though it wasn’t designed for diagnosis, doctors may be more willing to trust a scribe, rationalizing “it’s already medical-grade”, leading to scope creep without awareness of crossing the line. Prompting a diagnosis may just seem like ‘I’m using AI’s full potential’.”

But Seb Welsh, Heidi’s head of security, said there was no harm done to users. “What could actually happen to users? The answer, confirmed by both parties, is nothing,” he said.

“Executing the jailbreak required a user to deliberately execute a multi-step manipulation sequence in their own session and then choose to act on whatever the model returned. That is functionally equivalent to prompting any general-purpose AI for content it shouldn’t produce. It is a known property of large language models, not a vulnerability in Heidi’s product or security posture.”

Heidi had already identified the issue and fixes for this vulnerability internally before Mindgard reached out, he said.

He warned against sensationalist framing of security research, which “doesn’t just misrepresent individual companies – it damages the ecosystem responsible disclosure depends on”.

“When findings are overstated and misattributed, companies become less willing to engage with researchers and security companies openly. The public loses its ability to distinguish real incidents from noise. Everyone is worse off.”

He called Mindgard’s post “an overclaim, with no patient data exposure, no system impact, and no user harm. It doesn’t support its conclusions.”

Health NZ’s director of digital innovation and AI Sonny Taite, said the jailbreak had identified only a “minor issue that was entirely contained within the isolated test session” – that is, it hadn’t been repeated.

In fact, he said, it had showed the safeguards around the software worked as they should.

“It did not put patient information at risk, affect any users, or connect to Health New Zealand systems.”

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

The founder of a prisoner reintegration service has had his ‘specified visitor’ status at all prisons around the country revoked following what Corrections described as “serious sexual allegations”.

RNZ revealed that Tikanga Aroro Charitable Trust general manager and founder of the Pūwhakamua rehabilitation service Billy Macfarlane faces allegations in relation to a woman who was on bail.

Macfarlane told RNZ he had a sexual encounter with the woman on one occasion, but said it was consensual and there was “nothing inappropriate about anything going on”.

Corrections, which contracted the trust to operate Pūwhakamua, told RNZ it had terminated the arrangement after they were notified of “serious sexual allegations”.

Do you know more? Email sam.sherwood@rnz.co.nz

On Thursday, Corrections commissioner custodial services, Sean Mason told RNZ that due to the “serious sexual nature of the allegations”, Macfarlane’s ‘specified visitor’ at all Corrections-run prisons had been revoked.

“A ‘specified visitor’ status allows a person to attend a prison without needing to seek approval from the general manager for each visit.

“As with any member of the public, this person can apply in their personal capacity to visit a prisoner during visiting hours, however they are subject to the general manager’s approval as to whether they are permitted on site.”

A Serco spokesperson told RNZ all staff, contractors and volunteers working in Kohuora Auckland South Corrections Facility (ASCF) were expected to behave with integrity.

“When we became aware of serious sexual allegations made against a Pūwhakamua staff member, we took immediate action and informed the Tikanga Aroro Charitable Trust of our intention to terminate our agreement with the Trust.

“Members of the trust are no longer permitted to enter ASCF.”

If any member of the trust wishes to visit a prisoner in a personal capacity, they can apply to do so.

“All personal visitors must be approved by the prison director before they can visit any person in our care.”

Corrections began funding the service in November 2022. Since then, it had contributed around $3.9 million in ongoing funding, with a current agreement to fund $800k per year until 2027. About $880,000 of the $3.9m was part of a conditional grant for infrastructure upgrades.

In a statement to RNZ on Monday, Corrections deputy chief executive of communities, partnerships and pathways, Juanita Ryan said it “terminated” its contract with the reintegration service on Friday.

“As soon as we became aware of the serious sexual allegations made against a Pūwhakamua staff member on Monday 16 March 2026, we requested that the staff member be stood down and replaced immediately.

“Given the sexual nature of the allegations and the potential conflict of interest in delivering a rehabilitation service, we urgently sought further information and assurances from the Tikanga Aroro Charitable Trust (TACT), who is contracted to deliver the service.”

Ryan said Corrections had not received these assurances, nor confirmation on whether the trust stood down the staff member.

Macfarlane told RNZ he had sex with the woman, who had been released on bail to a property in Auckland, on one occasion.

“It was just two consenting adults, and it had nothing to do with Corrections … “

He said he had consulted a lawyer to see whether he had broken any rules, and that it appeared he had not. He said the property the woman was bailed to was a “private address” where two others had also been bailed to.

He said the property was not associated with the Tikanga Aroro Charitable Trust or the Pūwhakamua rehabilitation service.

“My organisation has had their funding stopped due to somebody’s false allegations.”

He believed Corrections was “just looking for any excuse to stop our contract”.

“We’re not the only ones who had their contract stopped … I’ve working in the correctional space for 14 years now, and no one even had the decency to talk to me.

“No one from Corrections asked me what happened. They’ve just taken it off social media post. That’s really unprofessional. No one’s asked me for the truth.”

Macfarlane said before he went to visit the woman in prison he met with the prison director “to declare my conflict of interest, if there was any …”.

“The prison director told me I need to come in either professional visitor or personal visitor. I can’t do both. I can’t blur the lines … so I chose to go in there as a personal visitor and visit her in the visiting room with other inmates.”

He said it was not a sexual relationship at that time.

“I slept with her one night following her release…”

He said he “categorically” denied any serious sexual allegations.

On Wednesday, a police spokesperson confirmed a complaint had been received “which is in the early stages of investigation by the Counties Manukau Adult Sexual Assault Team”.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Former Anglican priest Jonathan Kirkpatrick can now be revealed as the man who sexually violated a teenager at his Canterbury bach over 30 years ago.

The 68-year-old was last week found guilty of violating the victim when the teenager was so intoxicated he thought he might have been drugged.

Kirkpatrick’s name remained secret following the trial as his lawyer indicated he might seek permanent suppression.

However, the interim order expired at 4pm Thursday without an application for permanent name suppression.

At the time of the offending Kirkpatrick was vicar at St Michael and All Angels in Christchurch.

He would later go on to be dean at St Paul’s Cathedral in Dunedin for five years until 2001.

Kirkpatrick was jailed for more than three years in 2011 for stealing more than $665,000 from Auckland University of Technology, where he had worked as chief executive of its Business Innovation Centre.

He remains in custody ahead of sentencing for the sexual assault.

A jury unanimously found him guilty last Friday following a week-long trial.

The victim, who was about 18 at the time of the attack, told the jury that when he was a teenager he would regularly meet with Kirkpatrick after school to smoke marijuana at his house.

The victim knew Kirkpatrick was gay but had no concerns his motivations were sexual until the night of the attack.

The pair drank alcohol and smoked cannabis at Kirkpatrick’s bach in Lake Coleridge on the night of the attack.

The younger man said he became so intoxicated he was put to bed by Kirkpatrick, but woke to find the then-priest violating him.

The victim did not report the assault to police until 2020.

Prosecutor Penny Brown said by that time the man’s life had derailed and he was due to be sentenced for serious offending of his own.

The victim said he had decided to report the assault after he encountered people in prison who had also been abused and had benefited from talking to others.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

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