Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

One of Corrections’ most senior staff is under investigation over allegations of bullying.

RNZ can reveal that Corrections commissioner of custodial services Leigh Marsh is facing an employment investigation.

In response to questions about the inquiry into Marsh, Corrections chief executive Jeremy Lightfoot told RNZ he expected “high standards of all our staff and take any allegations raised about their conduct extremely seriously”.

“Corrections can confirm that concerns have been raised about one senior leader that will be investigated by an external independent investigator.

“The concerns raised relate to alleged conduct around management processes and bullying within the employment relationship.”

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

The staff member who raised the concerns with Lightfoot was “being supported while this employment matter is ongoing”.

“As an employer, Corrections must ensure any employment investigation follows the requirements of the Employment Relations Act 2000 and that it upholds procedural integrity. We do not want to compromise this process in any way.

“It is also important our staff feel confident raising any concerns, and as an employer I have a duty of care to ensure the ongoing privacy and wellbeing of those involved.”

Lightfoot said it would not be appropriate for Corrections to provide further details about the employment matter at this time.

“I acknowledge the public interest in the conduct of our senior leaders and Corrections is committed to being transparent about the findings of this investigation at the appropriate time and in line with our obligations under the Official Information Act and Privacy Act.”

He also confirmed three operational deputy chief executives would be undertaking six-month secondments into different DCE roles within Corrections.

“I had already been considering moving the operational DCEs into each other’s areas later this year. This is because I believe these secondments will allow each operational DCE to deepen their understanding of each other’s respective areas so we can continue building a coherent, cohesive organisation. Their employment agreements were developed to allow such secondments to take place.

“The decision to do this now was brought forward to ensure that a thorough and fair employment process for both parties in relation to the above complaint can be carried out.”

He said Corrections had worked hard to “create a culture where people feel comfortable to speak up”.

“Anyone with concerns is encouraged to raise them with me, our Integrity team, or another staff member they trust so we can ensure that appropriate action is taken.”

The secondment sees Marsh move to DCE of Pae Ora.

Shortly before the statement was released to RNZ, Lightfoot sent an email to staff about the secondments and telling them he had been considering the changes for some time.

“However, the decision to do this now has been brought forward following concerns raised with me about one of our senior leaders. I expect high standards of all our staff and take any concerns seriously.”

He said staff would likely see reporting of this in the media.

Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell told RNZ any allegations of this nature were an employment matter for Corrections.

“I have confidence that they will manage them in an appropriate way.”

According to the Department of Corrections website, Marsh became Acting National Commissioner in late 2022 and in 2024 was appointed as Commissioner Custodial Services.

“Custodial Services focuses on the safe, fair, and humane management of those in prison. As Commissioner Custodial Services, Leigh is responsible for ensuring the effective oversight and operational delivery of the Custodial Services national network.”

Marsh became a Corrections officer at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison in 2005.

“During his time in the custodial environment, he has held management positions and oversaw the delivery of rehabilitation programmes across multiple prison sites.

“Since then, Leigh has held roles advising on prison practice, risk management, prison safety and criminal justice system innovation. He has also held responsibility for operational teams delivering electronic monitoring, community and custodial frontline services, and incident management.”

Corrections said Marsh was “passionate about delivering a safe and effective prison system and equitable access to justice for all New Zealanders”.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

In the early afternoon of 19 March, 2025, a small group of the country’s most powerful ministers joined an online meeting to discuss the future of 180,000 New Zealand workers.

Forty-five minutes later, they logged off having made decisions that would impact women’s earnings for years to come.

Those choices formed the backbone of the government’s overhaul of the once “world-leading” Equal Pay Act – retrospectively stripping nurses, teachers, carers and other female-dominated workforces of the right to pursue pay equity claims under the existing law.

Within five weeks of that meeting, Parliament had passed the Equal Pay Amendment Act under urgency – a move the people’s select committee last month described as “a flagrant and significant abuse of power”.

The legislation was announced then passed all stages of Parliament within three days in May, meaning the public had no opportunity to make submissions through the usual select committee process.

Dozens of in-train claims were stopped. The rules governing future claims were significantly tightened. And $12.8 billion originally earmarked to fix decades of systemic gender discrimination was instead returned to the Crown’s Budget allowances.

The changes severely curtailed the ability of workers in predominantly female industries to prove their work had been historically undervalued. In some sectors, unions said the new law may make future claims almost impossible.

NZEI Te Riu Roa, which had spent four years working on a pay equity claim covering tens of thousands of education workers, warned the new framework effectively shut down any pathway for many education roles to ever achieve pay equity.

“For teacher aides, winning our claim was huge. Women were giving up second jobs and getting to spend time with their families – that was the most amazing thing,” said teacher aide and NZEI negotiator Ally Kingi.

“But the new law cuts out every single person who is a teacher in the country from making the same claim. Primary, secondary, early childhood, te kura, principals, everyone. And teacher aides – whose pay has already slipped backwards – won’t get a review.”

Documents obtained under the Official Information Act show that the most consequential decisions in the Equal Pay Act overhaul were made during that 45-minute March meeting. In several cases, ministers chose to implement harder thresholds than officials had proposed, tightening the law even further.

The government said the changes were necessary to ensure the pay equity system focused on genuine cases of sex-based discrimination and remained sustainable for taxpayers.

But the detail of how ministers reached their decisions – what evidence they relied on, what modelling informed the most restrictive changes, or why the final law was made harsher than officials recommended – remains hidden.

Despite repeated Official Information Act requests, the 19 March meeting remains, in large part, a black box.

How pay equity became law

To understand the impact of that March meeting, it helps to step back.

The Equal Pay Act was originally passed in 1972 and intended to eliminate gender-based wage discrimination – ensuring women were paid the same as men for doing the same job.

Over time, the issue shifted. The problem was no longer only women being paid less than men in identical roles. It was that work historically performed by women – caring, teaching, cleaning, administration – had been systematically undervalued compared to male-dominated occupations requiring comparable skill, effort and responsibility.

That broader concept is known as pay equity.

In 2014, the courts confirmed in the landmark TerraNova case that the Equal Pay Act allowed workers to argue their jobs had been historically undervalued because they were mainly performed by women, including by comparing their roles to those beyond the immediate workplace.

In response, a Joint Working Group – convened under a National government and including unions, business and officials – spent two years designing a process for assessing pay equity claims. Their recommendations formed the basis of the 2020 amendments to the Act.

The 2020 model created a structured process where a claim could proceed if it was “arguable” that the work in question was predominantly performed by women and may have been historically undervalued.

Once a claim passed that threshold, the parties would identify “comparators” – male-dominated occupations requiring similar levels of skill, responsibility and working conditions.

Comparators could be drawn from outside the employer or even the sector if necessary.

The low threshold was meant to allow claims to be investigated rather than filtered out early.

Cross-sector comparators were permitted because, in many female-dominated industries such as aged care, administration or early childhood education, there are simply no male-dominated roles within the same workplace to compare against.

If undervaluation was established, employers were required to negotiate pay adjustments.

By 2023, settlements had been reached for nurses, midwives, care and support workers and others. For many, the pay increases were life-changing.

“We had women who could finally afford to have their grandchildren for the holidays because they could buy food for them, women who could at last buy a lawnmower, or book a flight,” NZEI’s Kingi said. “All these women were able to live their lives, to relax. And that’s what is right and just.”

‘Significant concerns’ about cost

While the settlements were widely celebrated by workers, officials inside government were increasingly focused on their cost.

As early as November 2023, the Equal Pay Act, once described internationally as ‘world-leading’, was being framed internally not as a human rights mechanism correcting structural discrimination, but as a fiscal exposure problem.

Treasury and Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) briefings warned about the cost and structure of pay equity claims, including the idea the regime was “too permissive”.

In its first briefing to the incoming minister, MBIE said questions had been raised about processes for decision-making and the fiscal consequences of pay equity settlements.

Officials later argued the system provided little incentive to “negotiate hard”, pushing costs higher.

Treasury warned that pay equity costs were being treated differently from other wage pressures because of their size and uncertainty, directly affecting the Crown’s operating balance.

It expressed “significant concerns” about the comparators used in the care and support workers’ claim, suggesting they may have produced significantly higher cost outcomes.

Officials described New Zealand as “unusual” in allowing comparators from outside the workplace or sector, and questioned whether the threshold for claims was too low.

MBIE suggested other ministers may wish to discuss options to change current processes, and said it could provide further advice if required.

Pay equity specialist Amy Ross, the former head of the pay equity taskforce, said those briefings exposed what she said was a longheld, ideological view among the agencies: that pay equity was nothing but a risk to the government.

“They never thought about it for what it really was – an evidence-based market correction that had massive downstream benefits for communities – money flowing into households, services improving and the country retaining workers,” Ross said. “They only ever talked about the ‘cost’ of pay equity. But the ‘cost’ is women subsidising labour. It’s actually a cost to women.”

Enter Brooke van Velden

The agencies’ briefings clearly resonated with the new minister for workplace relations. In the first week of December 2023, Brooke van Velden, an ACT MP, sought a briefing on what she called “pay parity”.

Officials responded with a screenshot from MBIE’s website explaining that pay parity and pay equity were two different things, and both were legislated requirements in the Equal Pay Act.

Van Velden’s advisory followed up with questions wanting to know the broader “consequences” of the interaction between pay parity and pay equity.

On 29 January, 2024 van Velden wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon questioning the pay equity framework and signalling her interest in reform.

At that point she was yet to have a full briefing on pay equity.

The letter was not released under OIA, but van Velden said she had written that she was concerned about the “robustness and reliability” of comparing remuneration between different professions in a bargaining framework, and that the pay equity bargaining system had resulted in “significant labour market distortions and high costs to the Crown”.

Critics noted the letter’s framing – painting comparators as distortive, bargaining as unreliable – echoed longstanding BusinessNZ concerns and earlier National Party proposals from 2017, which had included a tighter hierarchy of comparators and a higher threshold for claims.

In March, van Velden received her first full briefing on the issue – a MBIE PowerPoint presentation titled “Pay equity: a short history”.

This briefing was highly critical of the system, pointing to the 2020 amendments by the previous government as the problem. It also framed New Zealand as an international “outlier” for allowing cross-sector comparators; and casted doubt on the validity of current claims, particularly the low threshold for entry to the system; and the way comparators were chosen.

In response to follow-up questions about the comparators from van Velden’s advisor, officials noted anecdotal examples of fisheries officers, corrections officers and customs officers being used repeatedly as benchmarks.

These anecdotes that would later become central National and Act Party talking points after the pay equity reform was announced, were held up as an example of a “wasteful” system that had gone too far.

Fuel on the fire

If ideology lit the fire for reform, the fiscal implications provided the fuel.

Soon after the 2023 election, Finance Minister Nicola Willis also began receiving detailed briefings from Treasury, focused on the scale of potential pay equity liabilities.

The largest claims, particularly teachers and care and support workers, were expected to cost the government – as employer – billions of dollars, Treasury said.

Officials assumed pay increases of roughly 20 percent based on earlier settlements.

Throughout 2024, Willis sought increasingly detailed information about the potential fiscal exposure: how much funding had been set aside, how claims might evolve and how New Zealand’s system compared internationally.

Treasury estimated that $3.193 billion from the public-sector pay equity contingency alone could be returned to Budget allowances if the system was changed.

Across the public and funded sectors combined, as much as $12.8 billion could be freed up, significantly boosting the government’s books.

By the end of 2024, Willis had made the case to Cabinet that changes were needed. Cabinet’s Strategy Committee then directed officials from MBIE, Treasury, the Public Service Commission and Crown Law to develop options.

In late February 2025, ministers were presented with several approaches – ranging from pausing the system to redesigning it entirely.

But a full redesign was expected to take more than a year. Instead, ministers chose speed.

By 4 March, officials had been directed to prepare amendments for Cabinet approval by the end of the month, just in time for Budget 2025.

A draft Cabinet paper was circulated on 14 March. Five days later, ministers met to finalise the policy settings.

19 March

Attendance records show six ministers and a group of senior officials joined the 2pm online meeting on 19 March.

Those invited included Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden, Finance Minister Nicola Willis, Public Service Minister Judith Collins, Health Minister Simeon Brown and Women’s Minister Nicola Grigg. Education Minister Erica Stanford was overseas but sent a staff member.

Officials attending included MBIE chief executive Carolyn Tremain and deputy secretary Nic Blakeley, Treasury Secretary Iain Rennie and official Struan Little, Public Service Commissioner Sir Brian Roche, associate commissioner Arati Waldgrave and Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) chief executive Ben King.

Together they reviewed the policy options outlined in the draft Cabinet paper.

That draft already proposed significantly tightening the pay equity regime – including raising the threshold for work to qualify as “predominantly female” from 60 percent to 66 percent, introducing a stricter hierarchy of comparators, and limiting the re-raising of claims.

But during the meeting ministers chose to go further.

They lifted the threshold to 70 percent. They also initially discussed a 20-year ban on workers re-raising settled claims, a figure eventually changed to 10 years in the final Bill. And they removed the final tier of cross-sector comparators entirely – meaning workers must now find comparisons within their own sector.

Officials noted the risk that some workforces might not be able to identify an appropriate comparator at all. The change was left anyway.

At the same time, ministers killed all 33 existing claims mid-process, some of which had been in progress for years. Those claims collectively covered around 180,000 workers across sectors including education, health, social services and the public sector.

Pay equity specialist Amy Ross said the changes went further than any framework previously proposed.

“If you cut off cross-sector comparators, you’re effectively comparing historically underpaid work with other historically underpaid work,” she said. “You embed undervaluation.”

By raising the threshold of “predominantly female” from 66 to 70 percent, the government effectively legislated several professions out of contention including librarians, probation officers and – the largest group – teachers, which have a 68 percent female workforce.

NZEI believes that was deliberate. “Why else would you pick that number? I can’t see any other reason for that shifting and they can’t provide any other reason as to why it’s 70 percent,” said Kingi.

Marilyn Waring, the chair of the People’s Select Committee which investigated the change, agreed.

“They would have known the exact percentage at which they lost another claimant group,” Waring said. “I think they were greedy. Those ministers just had dollar signs in their eyes.”

Taken together, the changes fundamentally reshaped how pay equity claims could be brought in New Zealand.

A black box

Documents show what happened immediately after the meeting. Within hours, officials were rewriting the Cabinet paper to “better reflect the Minister’s feedback overnight” and scrambling to gather examples to support the changes.

Emails marked “SENSITIVE” show agencies being asked urgently to confirm that they were comfortable with claims that comparators such as fisheries or corrections officers had been used inappropriately, and to provide examples of “broadly scoped claims” and review clauses that went beyond sex-based undervaluation.

The DPMC’s Policy Advisory Group was heavily involved in the process, and the Prime Minister was briefed repeatedly on progress.

A DPMC official who attended the meeting wrote to MBIE afterwards saying ministers had been “universally impressed” with the “clear answers and direction” provided by officials.

Yet, when RNZ filed Official Information Act requests for the records of the discussion, the paper trail was limited.

Treasury, the Public Service Commission, and the offices of Willis, Brown, and Grigg all claimed they had no contemporaneous minutes, records or notes. Collins and Stanford’s offices refused to release their records. MBIE confirmed an official took handwritten notes but also refused to release them under the Official Information Act’s “free and frank” provision.

Requests for modelling underpinning key decisions – including raising the threshold to 70 percent – produced nothing. RNZ has been unable to confirm if this information exists and is being withheld, or if no such modelling of the far-reaching, late change was considered by ministers before making their decision.

Officials have already acknowledged no Regulatory Impact Statement was prepared for the reforms. The policy was developed within a “severely compressed timeframe”, with limited opportunity to assess evidence or test assumptions, MBIE said.

A spokesman for Willis said the absence of detailed minutes from the meeting was “not unusual for meetings where decisions are recorded via papers”. The papers prepared for the meeting and capturing the decisions taken at it were released and are publicly available online.

In its report released this month, the People’s Select Committee was scathing of the policy development process. As part of its investigation it examined what little material was made public, and found it severely lacking. “No minister was ever fully briefed on the measure’s human rights consequences,” the report said.

“Every piece of information is bite-sized, simplistic and undeveloped – a slide show. No one is ever required to read anything meaningful or comprehensive.”

The committee said the process left serious questions about how ministers were able to assess the impact of the reforms before the law was passed.

“My belief is they don’t want the information to be public because they know they don’t have a leg to stand on because their analysis was so poor,” Waring told RNZ this week. “But of course we should be able to see the evidence.”

A group of unions is taking a High Court case to argue the law change breached the Bill of Rights Act, which Waring believed would flush out further information on the process.

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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 coronial inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks has been paused because of other court action.

Deputy Chief Coroner Brigitte Windley last week adjourned the second-phase inquiry, which is examining how white supremacist terrorist Brenton Tarrant came to obtain the guns used in the March 2019 massacres at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre.

“I emphasise that I do not take this step lightly; I am acutely conscious of the impact of further delays both on Interested Parties and in optimising the preventative potential of this Inquiry,” her decision said.

“At the same time, the circumstances demand that I make every effort to ensure the integrity of the criminal appeal proceedings is not undermined by the work of this Inquiry. I continue to be committed to ensuring the timely progression of the Inquiry and will revisit this decision once the [judicial review] appeal has been determined.”

Windley had sought to call Brenton Tarrant as a witness in the second-phase inquest into the deaths of the 51 people killed 15 March 2019 terror attack.

However, some victims’ families were fighting that decision – first unsuccessfully to the High Court and now in the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal was now weighing that appeal as well as a separate appeal by the terrorist against his convictions and sentence.

The 35-year-old Australian terrorist was serving a life sentence without parole but now wanted the Court of Appeal to overturn his convictions and sentence.

The terrorist claimed he was “forced” to plead guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one of terrorism because he was irrational as a result of torturous and inhumane prison conditions.

Coroner Windley said the second-phase inquiry might create a risk of prejudice to the terrorist.

“Having regard to the risk of prejudice to Mr Tarrant and other jurisdictional challenges raised in the JR appeal in my view the interests of justice require, at least for now, the adjournment of the Second Phase of the Inquiry and inquest,” the coroner’s decision said.

The Court of Appeal heard submissions about the possibility of judicial review earlier this month.

Survivors and victims’ families made their objections to the terrorist being called as a witness heard throughout the second-phase inquest and sought judicial review at the High Court following the coroner’s ultimate decision to call him to face cross-examination.

Justice Jonathan Eaton dismissed the application in October.

Some of the victims’ families then appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal.

The notice of appeal claimed Justice Eaton had made several mistakes in dismissing the application for judicial review.

“The High Court erred in finding community abhorrence and the second respondent’s convictions were not proper considerations for a coroner when determining whether to call him as a witness for cross-examination at an inquest into the deaths of 51 people in relation to the 15 March 2019 Christchurch Masjidain Attack,” the notice said.

The victims’ families were appealing Justice Eaton’s entire decision.

The Court of Appeal heard the terrorist was a witness “like no other” and should not be allowed to give oral evidence at an inquest into his victims’ deaths.

Last month the court also heard the terrorist’s attempt to overturn his sentence and conviction.

The white supremacist left 51 people dead or dying in little over 15 minutes after taking an arsenal of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and incendiary devices to the mosques as worshippers marked Jumu’ah – the most significant prayer of the Muslim week – and opening fire.

The terrorist initially pleaded not guilty in June 2019 to 51 counts of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one of committing terrorism.

The Court of Appeal heard he wavered in late July 2019 and prepared to plead guilty before again changing his mind only days later.

In March 2020 he formally pleaded guilty to all charges and was jailed for life without the possibility of parole in August 2020.

The terrorist had 20 working days to file an appeal against his conviction or sentence but the “out of time” application came years later.

The Court of Appeal was now considering if it would allow the terrorist’s appeal to proceed.

Both decisions have been reserved by the Court of Appeal.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Small-town Bay of Plenty is about to be home to a Southern Hemisphere first with big benefits in the fight against potent greenhouse gases.

A new multi-million dollar plant officially opens in Kawerau on Friday to safely destroy harmful synthetic refrigerants.

The Trust for the Destruction of Synthetic Refrigerants, which put $10 million into the plant, said it will significantly reduce that harm.

But it also means the refrigerants won’t have to be shipped offshore.

“The trust has been around since 1993, set up by the industry to deal with CFCs, the old ozone depleting gases,” chairperson Richard Lauder said.

“So we collected them, shipped them to Australia and destroyed them so that we could address the hole in the ozone layer.

“And we’ve since migrated to dealing with their replacement gases, the hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs, which are very high global warming gases.”

Lauder said the Kawerau plant was built to take the risks that come with shipping.

It also means the gases will no longer have to be stockpiled

“Next month we’ll turn the plasma torch on at this plant, it runs at 5000 degrees Celsius – the same temperature as the sun – and we’ll be able to deal with our own waste fluorinated gases here domestically in New Zealand,” he said.

“Some of these gases are 4000 times more potent than CO2, so to put that into perspective if you release 1 kilogram of gas from your heat pump at home, it might be like driving your car for two years in terms of climate impact.

“So we really need to deal with them appropriately and our Trust believed that setting up a plant on shore was the right thing to do.”

Kawerau was picked because of its industrial past.

“I think from the paper industry in particular we’ve got all sorts of skills and capabilities, it’s also adjacent to new geothermal plants so we can use renewable energy to power out plant, I think it’s a great place to put this thing,” Lauder said.

It will permanently get rid of CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs from synthetic refrigerants.

According to the Ministry for the Environment, it is HFCs or hydrofluorocarbons that make up 94 percent of so-called F-gas emissions.

There are measures in place such as limits on bulk HFC imports and pricing schemes under the Emissions Trading Scheme and a Synthetic Greehouse Gas Levy, it said.

The Trust for the Destruction of Synthetic Refrigerants said the new plant will manage gases at the end of their life.

These are found in heat pumps, commercial refrigeration and air condition systems across the country, it said.

It said while there is a place for recycling and claiming the gases, that extended to fully address climate change, ultimately they need to be safely destroyed.

“The 5000 degrees is required because these F-gases are really stable,” Lauder said.

“So the 5000 degrees breaks them down into individual atoms, we inject steam, we add calcium carbonate, and the chemicals that come out the end are actually just water, CO2 that goes to the atmosphere and calcium fluoride salt which is an inert salt which is in fact what’s in your toothpaste, and we can just dump that to landfill until we can find an alternative use hopefully.”

Laura Revell, an atmospheric chemistry professor from University of Canterbury, said there were benefits to no longer having to ship the gases offshore.

“It has high costs associated with it and it creates a lot of greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide and so on, so by being able to dispose of these gases here in New Zealand means that we are reducing our shipping emissions and contribution to climate change in that way,” she said.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Benefit rates are set to rise on 1 April, but there are concerns that they won’t be enough to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of living.

JobSeeker for a single person over 25 will increase from $361.32 to $372.55 a week after tax.

Sole parent support lifts from $505.80 to $521.52.

Supported living for a couple with children increases from $734.12 to $756.94.

NZ Super increases from $1076 for a single person living alone per fortnight to $1110.30.

Benefits are adjusted based on the consumer price index (CPI), which lifted 3.11 percent last year.

NZ Super and Veteran’s Pension rates are adjusted based on changes in net average wages and the CPI.

Isaac Gunson, spokesperson for Child Poverty Action Group, said the increase would only cover the inflation that happened last year.

“Not the specific inflation around food, electricity, other big ticket essential items that families can’t go without, and yet those have all been rising higher than average inflation.”

He said any additional support from the government to help with the current crisis would need to take into consideration the pressures households had already been feeling.

Cost of living pressure had been a problem for many households for years, he said, and things such as food were frequently rising faster in price than other goods.

“It’s a big problem to calculate benefit rates by the average inflation because so many critical essentials that families and especially children need to grow up and live long, healthy lives are the things that are inflating even faster.

“We have called for benefit rates to be tied to wage growth to even out the picture of what sort of support that people need. But even then, bearing in mind that in the last couple of years or so, even wage growth has been quite low.

“There’s a lot of work needed from the government to lift wage growth, to keep families in a position where they’re not having to make cuts at home. And then once wage growth is in a strong place, to be able to index benefit increases to that.”

He said many families’ savings had been eroded over recent years, so a lot of households did not have a buffer to fall back on.

Green Party spokesperson Ricardo Menendez March said benefit levels were not keeping up with the increasing cost of rent, petrol and many food items like vegetables or mince.

“Benefit indexation changes are automatic and do not make up for the fact families are already behind on essential costs.

“Every time there is a crisis people already experiencing poverty disproportionately pay the price … the government needs to protect people experiencing hardship from the current fuel and cost of living crisis by lifting core benefit levels in this budget.”

Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernna said it was the way the system was set up.

“There’s always going to be a lag – if inflation is running quite hot and it’s stuff that people can’t avoid buying it’s going to cause problems.”

A spokesperson for Finance Minister Nicola Willis said she acknowledged increasing pressure on household budgets and said government was exploring options to provide support to those most affected who had no way of avoiding increasing fuel costs, but did not have the power to mitigate all the consequences of a international conflict.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

New figures from the Ministry of Justice show fewer people are becoming victims of crime.

The latest results from the annual Crime and Victims Survey showed 28 percent of adults – or 1.2 million people – were victims of crime during the 12 months to October 2025.

Ministry of Justice general manager sector insights Rebecca Parish said it was the lowest figure since the survey began in 2018.

“What’s behind that is we’ve seen decreases in a number of types of crime including violent crime which has come down, and also fraud, like those online scams,” she said.

Data released from the survey last month showed there were 49,000 fewer victims of violent crime in the year to October 2025 than two years previously.

The survey showed from 2018 to 2025, the proportion of victims of crime dropped from 30 percent to 28 percent.

Adults with disabilities were more likely to be targeted.

“In 2025 disabled adults were still significantly more likely to experience crime despite their older age profile. While on average 28 percent of adults experienced crime, it was 36 percent for disabled adults. This rises to 46 percent once their older age distribution is accounted for,” the survey said.

Burglary was experienced by nine percent of households (184,000), down from 12 percent in 2018.

Other household offences, such as trespass and vehicle-related crimes, were also at their lowest levels since the survey began.

“That’s a trend we’ve been seeing for a number of years now, and likely relates to the fact more people are working from home, and there’s been improvements in home security, the accessibility of that and affordability,” Parish said.

However, fewer adults felt safe in 2025 compared to 2018.

In the survey, 25 percent of adults reported feeling completely safe, a slight increase from 24 percent in 2024 but still down from 30 percent in 2018.

Meanwhile, 12 percent of people said they felt unsafe, down from 13 percent in 2024 but still up from 9 percent in 2018.

“That can be influenced by a lot of things, if they’ve experienced things themselves as victims or also media reporting of crime can play a role in people’s sense of safety,” Parish said.

The proportion of adults who were victims of fraud and cybercrime had been on a downward trend since peaking in 2022, though it remained higher at 10 percent (440,000 people) in 2025 compared to eight percent in 2018.

The survey found people were generally more concerned about nationwide crime than crime in their neighbourhoods.

Over three-quarters of adults were concerned about family violence, drugs and dangerous driving at a national level. Locally, fewer than half of adults were concerned about the same issues.

The issues of greatest concern locally were dangerous driving, vehicle offences, theft and burglary.

The  proportion of adults who were victims of violent offences was lower in 2025 (three percent) than in both 2024 and 2018 (four percent). 

“While these results are positive, we are also mindful that behind each statistic is a real person, some of whom have experienced crime and victimisation, and assisted us by providing valuable insights through their responses,” Parish said.

Parish said the survey was important because it covered both reported and unreported crime.

The survey said 36 percent of victims reported at least one incident to the police, and only about a quarter of all crime was reported in 2025.

It said most adults reported having at least some trust in the law system (83 percent) and the justice system (81 percent), however levels of trust varied across groups.

In 2025, just 28 percent of Māori adults reported having high trust in the justice system compared with 44 percent for the New Zealand average and 59 percent for Asian adults.

Police said it was pleased levels of trust and confidence in police remained stable in the results at 69 percent.

Assistant Commissioner Jeanette Park said maintaining trust and confidence with communities was a constant priority for the police, and whilst it was encouraging to see several improvements, there was always more work to be done.

Police said almost three quarters (74 percent) of New Zealanders agreed that police dealt effectively with serious crime, an increase from 70 percent in 2024.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Technology entrepreneur Sir Rod Drury has been named 2026 New Zealander of the Year.

The founder of cloud-based accounting software platform, Xero, was one of seven New Zealanders recognised for their achievements.

Drury co-founded Xero in 2006 and helped develop it into a billion-dollar global company.

He moved to Queenstown in 2019 after he retired as its chief executive.

Kiwibank chief executive Steve Jurkovich said Drury had a track record for turning ambition into action.

“From transforming how small businesses operate and grow across the world, to backing the next generation of innovators and investing in the people and physical infrastructure our country needs for the future, his impact is far-reaching and deeply practical,” he said.

“What stands out most is his commitment to using his success as a platform to enable others – helping more New Zealand businesses to start, scale and succeed.”

Sir Rod’s mahi was helping build a more productive, confident and future-focused Aotearoa, Jurkovich said.

“We’re proud to celebrate him as the 2026 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Te Pou Whakarae o Aotearoa,” he said.

Others recognised for their achievements were Lucy Blakiston, the founder of a youth-focused media company, and Dr Alan and Hazel Kerr, who had saved the lives of nearly 800 children in Palestine.

Craig Piggott‘s work in global agritech innovation and Mike Casey‘s contribution to sustainable energy were also acknowledged.

Māhera Maihi was awarded Local Hero of the Year for tackling homelessness and poverty.

The Community of the Year Award went to the Safeguarding Children Initiative in Nelson.

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