NZ Engine

Source: Radio New Zealand

Passengers on more than 50 Air New Zealand flights cancelled by high winds in the capital on Sunday are now being rebooked.

Gusts over 100km/h were recorded in Wellington on Sunday; however, winds have eased on Monday morning.

Chief operating officer Alex Marren told RNZ the airline proactively offered flexibility to customers travelling to or from Wellington on Sunday, allowing them to change their flights to another time, subject to availability.

He said due to the number of customers who need rebooking, seat availability into Wellington will be limited over the next couple of days.

MetService meteorologist Ngaire Wotherspoon told Morning Report this week was forecast to have calmer weather.

“We’ve got a couple of days of calmer weather. We do have some rain moving into the North Island on Wednesday and Thursday, but it’s looking pretty scrappy and we’re not expecting any severe weather for the coming days.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Ferry operator Bluebridge says Monday evening’s sailing of the beleaguered Connemara ferry from Wellington to Picton is scheduled to go ahead.

The Connemara’s sailing’s have been cancelled since Thursday as teams worked to repair a winch on the ship’s stern door, which saw 200 passengers https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/583726/bluebridge-cancels-all-connemara-sailings-through-to-tuesday stuck for nearly 15 hours when it seized].

A Bluebridge spokesperson said at this stage, repairs to the door were going as planned and the ship was expected to sail as scheduled at 8.30pm.

One passenger on Friday told RNZ they had to cancel their trip to the South Island as a result of the disruption.

Others were reasonably relaxed, and told RNZ the ferry company had given them places to sleep and food and drink.

Its other ship the Livia operated additional sailings on Saturday to make up some of the shortfall.

The Connemara also lost power during a sailing in September 2024 due to contaminated fuel, leaving it drifting for more than two hours and needing a rescue from tug boats.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Temperatures are set to return to normal this week after peaking around the country.

MetService meteorologist Ngaire Wotherspoon told Morning Report a number of places reached the mid-thirties over the weekend, driven by a heat wave in Australia.

Napier reached 36.3 degrees on Sunday, its second-highest January temperature since records started in 1973 – beaten only by a record of 36.9 degrees on 11 January 1979.

Strong winds battered the South and lower North Islands yesterday.

Temperatures are still on their way up, but here’s a selection of some of the highest temperatures and strongest wind gusts we’ve seen today so far ♨️ pic.twitter.com/BRP7k0p15g

— MetService NZ (@MetService) January 11, 2026

Temperatures are forecast to return to regular January temperatures this week.

Rain, wind and thunderstorms are moving up the North Island on Monday, fizzling to showers but reducing those temperatures, Wotherspoon said.

Gusts over 180km/h were recorded at Cape Turnagain, and over 100km/h in Wellington on Sunday are set to ease on Monday morning.

“It’s looking like a much calmer start to the week. That rain and wind is moving up the North Island, but it is very much fizzling out today, most places are only going to see a shower or two,” Wotherspoon said.

“Then, we’ve got a couple of days of calmer weather. We do have some rain moving into the North Island on Wednesday and Thursday, but it’s looking pretty scrappy and we’re not expecting any severe weather for the coming days.”

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Campers and hikers have been asked to evacuate the Boundary Stream Camp and Bell Rock Scenic Reserve in Hawke’s Bay because of a large fire.

The fire is in a forestry block near Waitara Road in Te Haroto, in the Hastings District.

“Please stay away from this area and follow instructions from emergency services,” the council wrote on social media on Sunday night.

Several fire crews have been battling the blaze.

Pohokura Road is closed from the Tutira end

Temperatures in Hawke’s Bay reached the high-30s on Sunday.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Warning: this story contains details that may disturb some readers.

Moeaia Tuai will be sentenced next month for enslaving a young woman who he forced to work and sexually abused. Two victims broke free from the Auckland man’s control in harrowing echoes of New Zealand’s most infamous slavery trial, but such prosecutions remain rare. Gill Bonnett reports.

Slavemaster Moeaia Tuai is a Samoan chief or matai, who took possession of his victims’ lives and raped one victim, who had been forced to pay him her wages for four years.

At the 63-year-old’s trial, his own diaries were used to document the hours the young woman worked, her pay and when she was punished with beatings.

“Treating a person as if they were owned” was the legal description given to the jury.

“Restricting freedom of movement – where a person can go, restricting freedom of association – who they can spend time with, restricting freedom of communication – who they can contact and talk to – using actual or threatened violence for breach of rules, retaining income and denying access to money, threatening consequences such as deportation to ensure compliance, restricting access to education to maintain control.”

Only one of those elements was needed, but the prosecution said Tuai had done the lot.

He put them to work, restricted their movements and communication, and controlled their money, paying them very little for their work. He kept their passports, bank cards and wages, assaulted them and threatened both with deportation if they spoke out.

The young male victim dreamt of finishing school, before he was put to work for 50 to 60 hours a week. He was paid $100-150, $2 or $3 an hour.

He escaped after four years in 2020, including time in Australia. When the woman raised the alarm four years later that Tuai had raped her, police also discovered the slavery both had suffered at Tuai’s hands.

Within that time the two young victims – who cannot be identified – were starting out in life, but having to hand over their incomes to Tuai – estimated to be $78,000 or more for one victim alone.

He denied all the charges, but the jury was unanimous in finding him guilty of 19 charges: two of slavery as well as a slew of sexual offending against the female victim.

Ownership, possession, control, threats

Tuai did not allow the victims to talk to each other, even when they were eating at the same table. He did not allow them to talk to other people. He threatened to kill the female victim if she told anyone he’d sexually assaulted her, and both of them with deportation.

The jury heard the call Tuai made to Internal Affairs the day after she ran away – and his disappointment as he realised he could not carry out his threat.

The Aucklander was a matai, or Samoan chief. So too was Joseph Matamata, who in 2020 became the first New Zealander convicted of both slavery and human trafficking.

Thirteen of Matamata’s victims in Hastings – one just 12 years old – were held behind a tall wire fence and put to work.

Tuai also guarded his second victim after the first ran away – driving her to and from work at a laundrette and factory, and even refusing permission for her to attend a daytime work function.

He coerced her to make a false allegation of rape against another man who she had started to see, said the Crown.

But she took her chance to escape, contacting a relative, laying a false trail of where she had gone and then contacting police.

Rare conviction, less rare occurrence

Investigation and prosecution numbers are hard to track down, but Tuai’s slave dealing convictions are believed to be the fifth in New Zealand history.

In a 1991 case, a Thai man sold a woman to an undercover police officer as a slave for $3000. She had been working in a massage parlour and a go-go bar, and the evidence suggested he had brought a succession of girls and young women from Thailand to live off their earnings.

More recently, Fijian woman Kasmeer Lata forced her underage daughter into prostitution in Auckland – the first time on her 15th birthday.

She was sentenced to more than 10 years’ imprisonment for dealing in slaves and dealing in a person under 18 for sexual exploitation, while Lata’s partner Avneesh Sehgal sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for his part in the offending.

In cases not prosecuted as slavery, debt bondage or immigration-related promises or threats have been used against workers to exploit them in slavery-like conditions.

A ministerial advisory group set up to deal with cross-border and serious crime reported that nearly four times the number of migrant exploitation complaints had been made in 2024 compared with the previous year.

“It is highly likely that serious migrant exploitation, such as people-trafficking, forced labour and sexual exploitation, is underreported and growing within New Zealand.”

University of Auckland’s Centre for Research on Modern Slavery director Christina Stringer said the small numbers of slavery prosecutions, as well as human trafficking, may suggest they are rare – but she strongly disagrees.

“Successful prosecutions often rely heavily on victim testimony, and many migrant workers may be unwilling to come forward – or may not even recognise themselves as victims.”

Tuai will find out his fate in February and will be remanded in custody until then. The maximum sentence for slavery is currently 14 years, and 20 years for rape.

Where to get help:

• Need to Talk? Free call or text 1737 any time to speak to a trained counsellor, for any reason.
• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or text HELP to 4357
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 / 0508 TAUTOKO (24/7). This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.
• Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 (24/7) or text 4202
• Samaritans: 0800 726 666 (24/7)
• Youthline: 0800 376 633 (24/7) or free text 234 (8am-12am), or email talk@youthline.co.nz|
• What’s Up: free counselling for 5 to 19 years old, online chat 11am-10.30pm 7 days/week or free phone 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 9428 787 11am-11pm
• Asian Family Services: 0800 862 342 Monday to Friday 9am to 8pm or text 832 Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm. Languages spoken: Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and English.
• Rural Support Trust Helpline: 0800 787 254
• Healthline: 0800 611 116
• Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155
• OUTLine: 0800 688 5463 (6pm-9pm)

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

Whether you’re heading to work before an important morning meeting, or coming home with kids and shopping in tow, there are few things more maddening than your bus just seeming to sail on by.

Last year, Wellington bus service provider MetLink received more than 1000 complaints from people annoyed by buses that didn’t stop.

Jess Gessner filed a complaint, after she and her two young children were left on the curb, when she was unable to signal the driver.

“It was very obvious that we wanted to get picked up at a bus stop,” she said. “We were the only people there, and [the driver] just looked at us and drove past.”

The Metlink website said bus drivers would stop, if they saw someone waiting, but encouraged passengers to wave, so they could be seen by the driver.

Metlink senior operations manager Paul Tawharu said waving was helpful, but not a requirement.

“What we do ask customers is that they make themselves visible to the driver,” he said. “Passengers don’t need to wave.

“There’s some of our passengers that are visually impaired. You might have mums with babies in arms that just can’t do that, so that’s not expected.

“If the passenger is at the bus stop, then the driver is expected to stop.”

Most of the commuters who spoke to RNZ in the Wellington suburb of Newtown said they tended to wave down their buses, but nearly everyone also felt they had been passed up or had seen another passenger left at the stop.

“I have been [passed by] on a [number] four,” said Clara. “It was a very sad day.”.

“Many times,” John Nga said. “You have to be visually waving, not just raising your hands – it’s not enough.”

“I think it depends on the bus stop,” Ben Lake said. “There are definitely times when people will be waiting there and they’ll just go straight past.”

“I do wave to the driver, because they don’t often stop,” Jane said. “They’ll go past you, if you don’t flag them down.”

Environment Canterbury public transport general manager Stewart Gibbon said, last year, it received just over 550 complaints about buses not stopping – either to pick up passengers or allow them off.

He said, in the context of more than 15 million passenger trips a year, the numbers were comparatively small.

“Our drivers do a brilliant job of balancing the different demands of the role, including gauging whether people waiting at our stops want to get on board,” Gibbon said. “A clear signal from a customer is a great help to them.

“Our drivers are trained in many different scenarios, including when customers may have their hands full. In this scenario, they would instead be looking at facial expressions and general body language.

“It’s worth noting that sometimes drivers can’t stop, due to their bus being full.”

Auckland Transport service operations manager Duncan McGrory said the transport provider had signs at every bus stop, asking passengers to indicate they wanted to board with a “clear wave of their arm”.

He said Aucklanders took up to 230,000 bus trips every weekday and the growth of the network over the last 15 years made hailing the bus crucial to keeping things running smoothly.

“It’s important for people to hail the bus that they actually want,” McGrory said. “We want to make sure that people are stopping the buses that they need and that every single bus is not stopping at every single stop.”

So the message is, wherever you are in the country, when in doubt, put your arm out.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

A restored wetland on the edge of Queenstown is drawing rare native wildlife back to an area once dry and barren, but conservationists say roaming pet cats could undo years of community-led work.

Just after a rare and elusive bird species was spotted at the Shotover Wetland, the Whakatipu Wildlife Trust said trail cameras detected 44 cats over three weeks.

Executive officer Anna Harding-Shaw was the first to spot the pair of marsh crakes, which are a native species so notoriously “secretive and cryptic” that their total population numbers are unknown.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been that excited to see a bird before,” she said. “I was just throwing everything down to try to get my camera out.

“They are an indicator species, which means that they only show up when the wetland is in good health, so it’s such a great example of the work that’s been done here.”

For the past decade, Shotover Primary School students have helped other groups bring the wetland back to life.

Audrey Austin, who has moved on to Wakatipu High School, remains a keen birder and regular visitor.

“I go down there, and I look at all the thriving plants and animals that are down there that call it their home now,” she said. “All the plants that we’ve planted… it’s amazing to see the difference.”

She has also spotted black-fronted terns, white-faced herons, grey teal, native bees, skinks and dragonflies, as well as the pair of marsh crake.

“After so long restoring this wetland – all these thousands of plants now that have been put in the ground, and water quality testing that we’ve done and invertebrate monitoring that we’ve done, and bird watching – to see that marsh crake have come back, that’s amazing. It’s incredible.”

Anna Harding-Shaw said pest traps had picked up mice, rats and the occasional hedgehog, but the scale of the cat presence only became apparent through the trail cameras.

“We left them out for 21 nights and there were 44 triggers for cats over that time, which is huge, which is massive, compared to all other camera monitoring around.”

Most of them appeared to be pets, she said.

“Fancy breeds, long hairs, ragdolls with collars – you could tell they were pet cats. It’s in the middle of the night, so they’re only here for one thing, if they’re here in the middle of the night, that’s to go hunting, which is a real shame.

“One of them was actually carrying a dead bird in its mouth at the time”

Queenstown cat owners needed to keep them inside at night, she said.

“Even just having them wandering through the wetland is going to be scaring the birds that we want to be nesting here.”

Austin was worried the marsh crake were only just settling in and could be particularly vulnerable.

“Like many New Zealand birds, they’ve evolved to combat avian predation from the sky, so marsh crake are perfectly camouflaged and when they feel threatened. they’ll run and hide,” she said.

“That’s great if you have, say, a falcon or harrier above you, but when the threat is coming from a land-based predator that operates by smell, they’re basically left very, very vulnerable.

“You can imagine this 15 centimetre-long bird trying to attack a cat. That’s not going to go down well for the bird, probably.”

Harding-Shaw said feral cats were already a major challenge for the region.

“In terms of feral cats, there’s thousands of them in the hills, absolutely thousands, and they roam everywhere across the Southern Alps. They’re in all ecosystems, really hardy, really smart, adaptable and can live on nearly anything, a huge problem to get on top of.”

Feral cats were recently added to Predator Free 2050s hitlist, which could unlock more funding for projects that target them.

However, pet cats roaming near towns could complicate trapping efforts, Harding-Shaw said.

Whakatipu Wildlife Trust asked Queenstown Lakes District Council to make microchipping and desexing mandatory, partly because some feral cat traps switched off, if they detected a microchipped pet cat.

It also wanted the council to consider an education campaign about keeping cats inside at night.

Queenstown Lakes District Council responded it would investigate cat management as part of its Climate and Biodiversity Plan 2025-28.

Shotover Primary School teacher Emma Watts hoped local cat owners would start keeping their felines indoors, before any chicks hatched.

“It feels like you’re facing a losing battle,” she said. “We have paradise ducks down there that are having ducklings and we’re hoping that the marsh crake is going to breed down there.

“We’ve got pukeko we hope will breed down there as well and you just think what chance are they going to have, if there are lots of cats there?

“We love cats, we love animals… but we would love to educate our community for their domesticated cats to be kept in at night.”

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