Category: Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A multinational cement company says local seafaring jobs will suffer if it cannot transport its product around New Zealand on a foreign-flagged ship.

Holcim said it had entered a time charter with Swiss-based NovaAlgoma Cement Carriers (NACC), which had agreed to provide a temporary ship for three years while Holcim built a replacement for its ageing vessel.

But on Wednesday, Associate Transport Minister James Meager declined NACC’s application for authorisation to operate a coastal shipping service in New Zealand waters.

“The minister’s decision has chosen road transport over coastal shipping,” Holcim said in a statement.

“This prevents a temporary coastal shipping solution while Holcim sought a purpose-built vessel as a replacement for the inefficient and costly 27-year-old MV Buffalo.”

Meager told RNZ Holcim’s bid did not meet maritime law requirements.

Coastal cargo can generally only be carried by a New Zealand ship unless authorisation to carry coastal cargo under section 198(2) of the Maritime Transport Act is given.

Meager said while foreign ships could carry coastal cargo in certain situations, he did not believe Holcim’s application met the intent of the law, aimed at protecting New Zealand coastal shipping for local commercial interests.

“Generally, those authorisations are very short, if not one-off cargo movements to fill a gap or where a vessel is not immediately available. After careful consideration, we made the decision that the application did not meet that threshold.

“I appreciate that there has been a high degree of interest in the outcome of the application. The public should have confidence that all authorisations to carry coastal cargo align with the intent of section 198 of the Act, and that has been my priority throughout this process.”

Holcim said that with the NACC unable to commit to a locally flagged vessel for the short-term charter, and no other local vessels capable of meeting the supply of cement required to keep up with demand, it had no choice but to spend millions of dollars pivoting to road transport.

“This is an undesirable, but now necessary, decision. We have to ensure the continuation of cement supply to our customers across both the North and South Islands. Approximately 15,000 additional tonnes of bulk cement must now be hauled in over 500 trucks on roads every month.

“Creating a much larger road transport supply chain will cost Holcim millions of dollars. There will come a point where the significant investment in the road network will make a return to coastal shipping unviable.

“The Minister has blocked our credible alternative, so to claim his decision protects local shipping capacity is incorrect. It reduces it. We have viable solutions, including the continued use of coastal shipping, and had hoped the Minister would be open to discussing them, but he would not meet with us.”

Meager said Holcim could work with the Transport Ministry to find a solution for transporting cement around the country.

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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 disgraced former leader of Gloriavale will be sentenced on Friday morning for sexual offending against girls and young women in the community.

Howard Temple initially denied 24 charges of sexual offending against girls and women over a period of more than 20 years.

However, three days into his trial in July, he pleaded amended charges.

The 85-year-old admitted five counts of indecent assault, five of doing an indecent act and two of common assault.

Some of the charges were representative, meaning they related to repeated offending.

Temple was the West Coast Christian community’s so-called Overseeing Shepherd from 2018 when its founder Hopeful Christian died.

He resigned in August about a fortnight after pleading guilty to the offending.

Five of the nine complainants gave evidence over the first two days of the trial, describing a culture of fierce patriarchy, where women and girls were at risk of being deemed rebellious or worldly for anything from tying the belt on their uniform incorrectly, to allowing too much hair to be visible under their headscarves.

The women said there was no way to refuse Temple, nor to report his actions to anyone, in the context of the complete control Gloriavale’s leaders wielded over members.

The women told the court they were too scared to say anything because they knew women were always blamed in similar circumstances, and risked being branded as flirts or whores, being hauled into a “servants and shepherds” meeting and berated for not following the bible, ostracised by the community, or prevented from marrying.

“He had the power to change the trajectory of your life,” one woman said.

The women described Temple taking advantage of the domestic duties they performed to touch, caress and grope them, such as during meal times, when they would be serving large, heavy jugs of non-alcoholic cider or hot drinks to tables of 50 or more. One woman said she was left without “any hands free to protect myself”.

The women said it was common practice to attempt to arrive early so they could be allocated to any table except Temple’s.

The only space to pour would be at his side at the head of the table, which allowed him to grab the young women around the waist, caressing them from their calves to their lower backs or grabbing them around their waists.

In January, Temple made a public apology to victims of historic sexual abuse at the community following the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

The apology was one of the inquiry’s recommendations, however, former members rejected it as insincere.

About 600 people are believed to live at Gloriavale’s compound at Lake Haupuri, about 60 kilometres from Greymouth.

The group, which began in 1969 as the Springbank Christian Community near Rangiora, was founded by Australian evangelist Neville Cooper, who would later be known as Hopeful Christian.

Christian was himself jailed in the 1990s for sexually assaulting a young woman in the community.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Half New Zealand’s cardiology workforce nearing retirement by 2039
• NZ needs 38 percent more specialists to match Australia
• Wait times continue to increase
• More “flexibility” needed to attract and retain staff.

More than half the country’s heart specialists are over 50, and nearly one in five is older than 60, a new study has found.

The paper published in The New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday is based on a survey sent by the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand last year to all its members working in public hospitals.

Lead author Dr Selwyn Wong said of the 154 Health NZ-employed cardiologists, over half were over 50, and 35 percent were over 55 – including 18 percent who were older than 60.

“So, while it’s a blunt tool, the expectation is that some of those older ones might be leaving the profession. And we’ve seen some examples of that, people leaving the public system and going into private practice towards the end of their careers, or leaving the profession completely.”

Dr Wong, who has worked at Middlemore Hospital for 25 years himself, said the workload on cardiologists had got increasingly intense over time, with more referrals, sicker patients – but fewer resources.

“Over the years we’ve seen more resource constraints, not just in cardiology but right across the hospital.

“More and more is being squeezed out of the workforce, so you’re ending up doing more and more work, with less down time.”

The survey found 14 percent of cardiology positions were vacant.

Dr Wong said, however, that was just the “funded” positions – not an indication of the true number of specialists needed to deal with increased demand.

“We have one cardiologist per 35,000 people, while Canada and Australia have one cardiologist per 25,000 people, and I think in Sydney it’s one per 15,000.

“So if we want to match those places, we’d need to go from 154 to 213: an extra 60 cardiologists, or a 38 percent increase on what we have now.”

Furthermore, cardiologists were not evenly distributed across the country.

In the five districts with the highest proportion of Māori and Pacific peoples (who had the worst rates of heart disease) the ratios of specialists to population exceed the national average: Tairāwhiti 54,000; Counties Manukau 38,000; Lakes 61,000; Northland 52,000; Hawke’s Bay 47,000.

A separate study published in The New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday showed after half a century of heart attacks trending down, progress had stalled – with a widening ethnic disparity for Māori and Pacific people.

Dr Wong said specialist assessment referrals and the wait times for those appointments were rising, along with delays for cardiac ultrasound and cardiac catheterisation.

The shortfalls were exacerbated by demands and employment patterns during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The staffing might be acceptable if everyone is at work, but not everyone is at work because people are allowed leave or they get sick or they’re at conferences.

“We’ve calculated that in our department most of the time there are two people away out of a staff of 16 or 18.”

The survey found about 73 percent of cardiologists working in New Zealand were trained in this country.

Dr Wong said, however, other internationally-trained cardiologists and New Zealand trained specialists now working overseas could be encouraged to take up jobs here, if they had access to the kind of resources they were used to.

“Some more flexibility would help, and that would also help retain those older specialists we have in the system now, for whom being on call so often is increasingly burdensome.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Two aircraft with a combined 42 people on board came within 41 seconds of a head-on collision over Northland, a report from the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) has revealed.

TAIC put the near-miss down to failures in the way New Zealand’s airspace is managed.

The Commission found there had been no review of Whangārei airspace for more than a decade, despite increasing air traffic and a rule that airspace should be reviewed every five years.

Also alarming was the finding that no agency in New Zealand had responsibility for conducting such reviews, an omission the commission said needed to be addressed urgently.

According to the report, which was released on Friday morning, an Air New Zealand Q-300 with 40 people on board was flying south from Whangārei to Auckland on the morning of 28 August 2023.

Around the same time a flying school’s Beech Duchess, with two people on board, was heading north from Ardmore to Whangārei using the same flight path.

The report stated the air traffic controller instructed both aircraft to descend into “uncontrolled airspace” and pass each other there.

That meant responsibility for avoiding a collision passed from air traffic control to the two pilots.

That was at the time a commonly used work-around, due to air traffic control workload and the limited amount of controlled airspace available for keeping planes apart.

The Q-300 was flying in cloud at 6000 feet when the Beech descended to the same altitude in front of it.

Over the Brynderwyn Hills the Q-300 crew received an alert from the plane’s airborne collision avoidance system (ACAS), described in the report as a “last line of defence”.

Moments later an alert also showed up on the air controller’s radar and the Q-300 was given clearance to climb to 8000 feet, above the approaching Beech.

The Beech did not have, and was not required to have, an ACAS system.

At the closest point the aircraft were 8km from each other – or just 41 seconds apart at their 700km/h closing speed.

“Closing speed” describes how fast two objects are approaching each other.

TAIC chief commissioner David Clarke said no one was hurt and no damage resulted, but it was too close.

“It happened because the controller or flight service officer hadn’t provided sufficiently timely traffic information after sending both flights into uncontrolled airspace,” he said.

“This left each crew flying in cloud, unable to see the other plane, unaware of the immediacy of potential conflicts, and the crew of the Beech poorly placed to coordinate their own avoidance actions.”

Clarke said the 42 crew and passengers ended up in that risky situation due to long-standing weaknesses in the design of the Whangārei area airspace.

“Despite recurring concerns raised by pilots, controllers and the aerodrome operator, the North Sector airspace hasn’t had a comprehensive review since 2014, even though reviews are required every five years.”

Nor was the problem limited to Whangārei.

“It’s a nationwide issue because New Zealand needs clear responsibility for conducting comprehensive airspace reviews,” Clarke said.

The Commission made a number of urgent recommendations as a result of the near-miss.

They included that the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) carry out a full review of lower-level airspace around Whangārei and act on the findings.

The Commission also called on the Ministry of Transport to clarify which agency was responsible for ongoing nationwide airspace reviews, and ensure that agency identified any emerging risks before they led to more serious events.

In its response to the Commission, the CAA said it was working with Whangārei airspace stakeholders on safety improvements.

There had also been initial engagement with Kerikeri airspace users.

Throughout 2026 the CAA would carry out reviews of uncontrolled airspace at Timaru, Hokitika, Whakatāne and Kāpiti Coast aerodromes.

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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 19-month-old Canterbury boy who was strangled by loose strapping hanging from slats under an unsafe bed sold by The Warehouse died in a preventable accident, a coroner has ruled.

Coroner Ruth Thomas said the boy’s death in May 2021 was a “tragic illustration of a latent hazard”.

In findings released on Friday, the coroner said the boy’s slat bed from The Warehouse was not inherently safe, nor is the updated model of the Living & Co bed currently for sale.

The boy’s grandmother bought the pine wood single slat bed from The Warehouse in January 2021, which was the same bed she had previously bought for the boy’s older brother.

About two weeks before his death, the boy’s bed was moved from a shared bedroom with his brother to his own room.

In the May accident, he was found unresponsive under his bed with a strap from the slats wrapped tightly around his neck and could not be revived.

Coroner Thomas ruled the boy died from ligature strangulation after a loose strap from the bed caught around his neck when he crawled underneath.

She described his death as a tragic accident.

“[He] was in his own bedroom, the room which should have been the safest room in the house for him to sleep, and to play,” she said.

“There is no evidence about what time of the night or morning [he] got under his bed.

“There is no evidence about whether his death may or may not have been prevented if [he] had been checked on earlier that morning. It is unknown whether he got caught in the loose strapping during the night, the early hours of that morning, or in the minutes before he was discovered at 10am.”

The 19-month-old was described by his father as an “energetic and curious little boy who liked to run around a lot”.

A police inspection found the packaging box and instruction manual that came with the slat bed in 2021 did not include warning labels about the fabric straps or the risk of strangulation and diagrams in the manual did not show the fabric straps at all.

After The Warehouse was notified of the boy’s death the company removed the bed from sale in its stores and online.

The coroner said the product was then updated and put back on the market.

“Since being notified of [the boy’s] death in 2021, the Warehouse Group have improved the bed assembly manual to instruct the strapping is oriented on the topside of the slats, included a red warning sticker, and increased the number of staples attaching the straps to the slats. These changes have improved the amount of weight the strapping could withstand before failing,” she said.

Thomas was not persuaded that the changes were sufficient.

“The most effective way to prevent the risk of strangulation from the straps attached to the bed slats is to design the problem out of existence,” she said.

“[The boy’s] bed was not, and the updated model of his bed currently for sale, is not inherently safe. Parents want to know the products they place in their children’s bedrooms are safe.”

The coroner recommended The Warehouse Group redesign the Living & Co slat bed to completely remove fabric strapping from the product and providing warnings with the product about the risk posed by loose fabric strapping on slat beds.

In the coroner’s report, The Warehouse Group said it did not necessarily agree with the statement that the updated model currently for sale was not inherently safe but it said it would work with its supplier to remove the strap from the bed design.

Coroner Thomas also recommended developing public safety messages for parents who might have never considered the hazard posed by loose straps under their children’s slat bed frames.

“I acknowledge that The Warehouse Group are now working to remove the strap from the bed design,” she said.

In a statement provided to RNZ, The Warehouse chief merchandise officer Carrie Fairley thanked the coroner for her report.

“Our hearts are with the family today. When this tragedy happened in 2021, our team acted immediately to enhance the bed and assembly instructions. Recently, the coroner shared further recommendations, and we’re taking these on board to make sure something like this can never happen again,” she said.

“None of us ever want these types of accidents to happen, and we encourage everyone to check that their beds are assembled correctly and strictly according to the instructions provided.”

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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 University of Auckland team has made a breakthrough in using umbilical stem cells to treat an eye condition that can lead to blindness.

Professor Trevor Sherwin and his team have been using the cells to try to treat keratoconus, a disease of the cornea, the thin, clear dome on the front of the eye.

To be successful the stem cells had to be able to integrate into existing tissue before morphing into the right kind of cell. If things went wrong, they could turn into other cells – like for hair or teeth.

Sherwin told Nine to Noon that on Wednesday his team informed him of promising results – in lab tests on a donated, diseased cornea, the cells had started to create the right type of proteins.

For many people, corneal transplant was the only option to repair the eye if they developed keratoconus. Other treatments only slowed or stopped progress.

But there was a long wait list, and the tissue had to come from a deceased donor, he said.

The team was trying to find another way.

“Some people around the world are looking at how to grow a cornea in a dish as a replacement tissue for the lack of deceased donors etcetera. We’re taking a slightly different tack in that what we would really like to do is to be able to regenerate the cornea in situ, so, in the eye, in the person who needs the treatment.

“The way we would like to do that is to deliver some stem cells into the cornea and for those stem cells to integrate into the tissue and then regenerate that tissue in the patient themselves requiring no further surgery, hopefully.”

Keratoconus caused the cornea to become very thin and the cornea to develop a cone shape that meant the eye could not work how it was supposed to.

The team was also developing potentially groundbreaking eye drops for the condition.

Sherwin said they were a combination of a growth factor and a steroid, and had shown in the lab they could force cells to create a protein not usually made after birth.

It was hoped that, when used with a special type of contact lens, the eyedrops could treat and reshape the cornea.

Again, it would mean people would not need a transplant.

The next step in the work was to go to clinical trials on people.

There were other treatments for keratoconus, but they only stopped or slowed the damage. They could not repair it.

The new methods were known as regenerative medicine.

“What we hope is by regenerative medicine we can restore the tissue and restore the function back that the patient lost as part of whatever event they suffered,” Sherwin said.

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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 home in the Wellington suburb of Karori has been heavily damaged by fire on Thursday evening.

A woman is being treated for smoke inhalation but a firefighter at the scene on Hildreth Street said all other occupants had been accounted for.

Central Fire Communications shift manager Chris Dalton said the fire was well involved when firefighters arrived and work to extinguish it was well underway.

Fire and Emergency (FENZ) responded to the fire quickly and there was a truck already in Karori at the time, he said.

Eight vehicles in total responded to the fire, he said.

RNZ understands three people were in the building when it caught fire and were alerted by locals. A neighbour said the fire grew to a huge blaze in under 10 minutes and she rushed outside fearing the flames would spread to her home.

A member of the family who lived at the address said they were trying to get in touch with other family members to find a place to spend the night but their cellphones were still in the smouldering structure. However locals in area were also checking on the family to ensure they had a place to stay.

The firefighters were beginning to leave the scene at about 6.50pm but Hildreth Street remained closed to traffic.

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