NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

Wellington councillors, national industry groups and drivers are sounding the alarm over immigration settings for bus drivers, warning of a looming shortage.

A residency pathway for bus drivers, brought in in 2022, requires English language to the level of a post-graduate international student, after two years on a working visa.

Drivers have been warning the test is too hard, more than 500 presented a petition to Parliament in January urging the rules to be relaxed.

According to the capital’s bus operator Metlink, the future of about 45 Wellington bus drivers is currently unclear as they try to stay in the country.

Bus drivers applying for residency must score 6.5 in IELTS, a standard international test, or exceed equivalent scores in four other English-language exams.

That’s the same level as many universities require for post-graduate international students.

In a council meeting today, Greater Wellington regional council public transport committee chair Ros Connelly said she’s worried the settings will force drivers to leave the country.

“It’s an extremely high level that involves not only english language understanding, but also comprehension of quite difficult concepts, so this is the problem that we are in, it was misjudged how difficult it would be to get drivers across that threshold.”

Paul Tawharu, senior manager operations at Metlink, told councillors operators were “extremely confident” there was no risk to service, that they had good domestic recruitment plans, and were training people through the system well.

Tauwharu said operators are setting up schools within bus depots to help teach English, and using New Zealand drivers on long-term sick leave to help with other drivers’ language skills.

Connelly said she feared a shortage in two years’ time, when visa extensions run out.

If drivers sit the residency test now, and fail it, they can apply for a visa to stay in New Zealand for two more years, she said.

But if they fail again they’ll be gone.

“I have ongoing concerns that this just kicking the can down the road for another two years and that at the end of that period, they won’t be able to stay in New Zealand and we’ll be back to the situation we were.”

New Zealand was in the grip of a significant driver shortage in 2022 and 2023 which caused regular bus cancellations and suspensions.

In Wellington, in 2022, 59 Metlink weekday bus services were suspended due to a lack of drivers.

The Bus and Coach Association chief executive, Delaney Myers, said no one wants to return to those days.

“In Wellington that got as bad as sometimes almost half of all peak morning services being cancelled or running late, it was incredibly frustrating.

“And our concern is that if we don’t take a long term approach to how we’re going to secure drivers going forward, then we may be in that situation again.”

Myers said no one anticipated the level of difficulty the bus driver residency pathway required, when it was announced in 2022.

She said skilled bus drivers don’t need academic level English to do a good job, and she wanted the government to lower the requirements.

Auckland bus driver Ryan Jay Carumba, who’s from the Phillipines, said he tried sitting the residency test and failed, and is now on a 2-year visa extension.

Carumba said the test was difficult, requiring him to write a 300-word essay in one part of it.

He thinks the level is too high for what the job needs.

“For sure it’s too much for us, personally we do not communicate a lot with passengers, we say good morning, hi, hello, and then if the passengers have some concerns with us they just talk to us, maybe a bit.”

Carumba said seven of his Filipino colleagues have recently left Ritchies, the company he works for, because they couldn’t meet the visa-level English requirements.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said she was not considering relaxing the language settings.

She said the pathway had been established under the previous government, and bus drivers had always known it required a higher level of English.

“There is an expectation in New Zealand that people who are staying have a certain level of English, and they need to work to get that.

“I would also say there are hundreds of bus drivers who have met the English standard, who have worked hard, and who have met that standard.”

Stanford said she wasn’t worried about another bus driver shortage, because there were many bus drivers from many parts of the world who will be able to meet the English language requirements.

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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 owner of a Mount Maunganui pizzeria which has only just reopened after the deadly Mauao landslide says revenue is half what it would usually be in summer.

Michele Delaini is the owner of Rustica Italian Food pizzeria on Adams Avenue opposite Mauao which has only just re-opened this week.

He said it was like winter trading conditions at the height of summer.

“We’re lacking like all the people from the campground, the hot pools and definitely like all the people that every day come to the Mount.”

The Mount track was still closed and the streets in the area were very quiet compared to what it was usually like in the summer, he said.

Usually during summer the Mount’s population at least doubles but now the area was lacking visitors and tourists, he said.

It was more like a winter season and the cruise ships were choosing to go elsewhere because people could not explore the Mount, he said.

Neighbouring businesses were seeing the same downward trend and being forced to reduce their opening hours, he said.

“It’s just not enough business to be opened all day long, or like what we usually do.”

Delaini said he was having ongoing conversations with Tauranga City Council which was trying to support businesses in the area.

But he said he was not sure if the council alone would be able to bear the cost of helping all the businesses in the affected area.

Central government needed to provide some financial support for businesses, he said.

“For us businesses it’s very hard because summer time is where we collect all the money also for the winter, to carry us through the winter.”

With businesses being hit so hard at the height of the summer, “the government will have to understand that council alone cannot do it,” he said.

Businesses were not able to turn to their insurers to fix the situation, he said.

If the business was not directly affected by the disaster but was “closed because of a consequence” only 10 percent of their losses would be covered, he said.

It was very worrying that there was no clear indication of when or if Mount Maunganui or the hot pools would reopen, he said.

Locals were sensitive about the situation and wanted to mourn what had happened, he said.

“There is the dichotomy, so you know like there is the grief and there is the wanting to go back to normal life and it can be challenging.”

But locals are trying to support local businesses and want to see the community return to how it was, he said.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Health New Zealand has dropped plans to charge market rates for hospital car parking.

In a statement, the health agency said it had received “constructive and detailed input from staff during the consultation process”.

It thanked staff for their feedback, and assured them the focus remained on ensuring patients, visitors and staff could access safe, secure, and sufficient parking.

“Any changes to hospital parking must be considered carefully, particularly in the context of cost-of-living pressures,” it said.

“Health New Zealand’s Health New Zealand will not be progressing any changes at this time.”

The Press is reporting management of the car parks was to have been outsourced to private firms.

Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Sarah Dalton said the national consultation document had landed within the past week, and there had been a “really strong response from staff”.

“People were really fired up about it,” she said.

Parking was already a difficult issue for patients and staff for many hospitals around New Zealand, she explained.

“If you work at night, or you’re a patient with a disability or who’s got limited mobility because of your condition, it’s not always an option to use public transport – if it’s available.”

Parks reserved for doctors on-call or who needed quick access to the hospital because of the nature of their work were not always respected, she said.

New Zealand Nurses Organisation delegate and Christchurch health care assistant Al Dietschin called it an “embarrassing U-turn for Te Whatu Ora”, but said it was heartening to see they had listened to members.

“Last year there were several shocking attacks on hospital health workers forced to walk to their cars because they can’t park at or near their workplaces. This includes a Palmerston North nurse being carjacked and a Christchurch nurse being left with a concussion.

Members had provided “robust feedback”, pointing out that charging market rates would leave those unable to pay even less safe.

The government has been forced to backdown after trying to hike hospital parking fees for patients, visitors and health workers already squeezed by rising costs.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A physics professor says he does not trust the New Zealand Space Agency to make good decisions about a likely host of new space launches.

The government is raising the total number of launches allowed to 1000, as the cap set at 100 in 2017 comes close to being breached.

The US-NZ company Rocket Lab dominates the launch market from its pad at Mahia.

Space Minister Judith Collins said the 100 cap was likely to be hit this year.

“This change ensures our space and advanced aviation industries can continue to expand while operating within clear environmental boundaries.”

The environmental impact from more debris from space vehicle launches had been newly determined to be low.

The rules would have required a special marine consent for every launch over the 100 cap.

The government has been streamlining aerospace regulations under its strategy to double the industry to be worth $5 billion by 2030.

“This is yet another example of the government fixing the basics while building the future,” Collins said in a statement.

The review late last year covered impacts from debris in the Exclusive Economic Zone on the ocean and seabed but not beyond that, and not the effects on space or the atmosphere.

Māori, maritime and fishing rights, international obligations, economic benefits and environmental sustainability were looked at.  

Professor Richard Easther of Auckland University said the new 1000 cap was good for the tech industry – albeit it was over a long period of time.

“You could easily imagine it taking two decades to get through a thousand launches.”

However, he said New Zealand had yet to match its leading launch position globally with taking some sort of lead on the related environmental issues, such as launches and what satellites and other vehicles they take up impacting the nightsky and the chemistry of the upper atmosphere.

“It certainly gives us a seat at the table that otherwise we wouldn’t have … and I would like to think that we were leading on that.”

But the country was not.

“As a country that regulates orbital launch New Zealand should be at the front of these discussions. However, the announcement is silent on this context,” Easther said on Thursday.

There appeared to still be limited opportunity for oversight of launches.

“Firstly, we need to look at whether we trust the New Zealand Space Agency to do the right thing in private.”

Widespread concerns remained the agency had not been forthcoming about a methane-measuring satellite that taxpayers put $32m into but which got lost in space last year.

“They have shown that they can overly deferential to international partners.

“It seems that they didn’t insist on transparency and clarity when they had the ability to do that.

“The question of what gets launched is different from the MethaneSAT question but it is true that it is roughly the same people who are giving advice on both things and so if we don’t have confidence in one it’s very hard to have confidence in the other.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Army training rules have been tightened since the death of special forces soldier Nicholas Kahotea, the man in charge of training says.

Kahotea fell several storeys while training to step from a hovering helicopter onto a building in May, 2019.

He died in hospital from his injuries.

Almost seven years later, a Coronial inquest into his death would examine what went wrong.

Colonel Paul Hayward, the assistant chief of army for training, was questioned on the intensity of training required of SAS soldiers.

He set out the different levels of training capability expected of soldiers.

“The three descriptors of levels of training we normally use are BLOC, DLOC and OLOC,” he said.

“BLOC first is the basic level of capability, initial entry training and some lower-level training courses, DLOC is a directed level of capability, what you would do subsequent to [BLOC] training, and DLOC is where most of the army sits at any given time.”

He explained the third level of capability, OLOC, was meant for soldiers preparing to deploy on specific operations.

“Most of the army will not be at OLOC unless they’ve been specified for a particular mission,” he said.

“The difference is the special forces always sit within OLOC, so they sit at a much higher level because of the complexity of what they’re required to.

“[They must be] ready to go, they’re basically the 111 of the military.”

Central to the inquiry was the decision to allow the soldiers to attempt the so-called “bump landing” at nighttime and while wearing heavy equipment.

The Coroner was earlier told Kahotea was carrying between 20 and 35 kilograms of equipment and was wearing night vision goggles as he stepped off the helicopter.

It was the first time the SAS troopers had attempted the manoeuvre, in which a helicopter balanced one wheel on the edge of a building and attempted to hold steady as the soldiers stepped off.

The NZDF’s “crawl, walk, run” policy requires soldiers to start with the easiest iteration of an exercise during daylight hours with minimal equipment, before moving onto gradually more difficult scenarios.

In the years since the fatal accident, Colonel Hayward said additions had been made to the army’s training rules to ensure the policy was followed.

“They specify in mandatory language some of the requirements down to the number of rehearsals required wearing various kit before an activity can be conducted, they are specified in both the training and safety manual and the mobile air training manual,” he said.

In addition, he said the NZDF performed a full assessment of the facility where the training took place, minimising tripping hazards and other potential issues.

Colonel Hayward addressed the family and admitted the Defence Force had made a mistake by allowing the training exercise to occur.

“Your loss is profound, and the NZDF deeply regrets the devastating impact that Nik’s death has had, and the irreversible consequences of this tragedy,” he said.

“NZDF acknowledges failures on our part in relation to the planning and authorising of the activity.”

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