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National travel assistance system

A Southland mother says the national travel assistance (NTA) system isn't "fit for purpose" and fails to do what it's supposed to  - financially assist Kiwis who are referred through the health system. The mother, who did not want to be named, gave birth to her son in 2019, when he was only 23 weeks and two days old. The premature baby had just a 2 percent chance of surviving. He is now three years old but has had a raft of health complications, often requiring him and his mother to se...

Drug educator:

A concern New Zealand's meth market may be becoming even more attractive to international drug manufacturers. Kiwi users pay some of the highest prices in the world with 100 milligrams costing around $100. But an increase in global supply has driven prices down around the world. Drug education company Methcon Managing Director Dale Kirk told Kate Hawkesby demand continues to outstrip supply here because we don't have many other options.Link to podcast:  Drug educator: Meth demand outst...

'We don't cope':

Mother-of-two Rose has been handed a big Working for Families bill each year for the past two years, despite having her income assessed by Inland Revenue. “I dispute it because they do a big assessment in February, then I receive a $1300 bill in March.” Rose, who did not want to be identified, says her partner works fluctuating hours through the year, so their income changes. “But I have no idea why I get such a high bill. It doesn’t make sense to get a $1300 bill if they have adjusted t...

'It feels like your child has died':

Young people involved in ramraids, car thefts and street fights have renewed public debate on youth crime and how to address it. Is our youth justice system geared to effectively tackle the problem? MARINÉ LOURENS reports. A mother whose teenage son was caught up in the youth justice system for three years says it felt like her child had died because the person she saw every day was not her son. The stress of what she had been through had been “unimaginable”, she said. “We didn’t know d...

Mātauranga Māori solution leads to

A Rotorua iwi trust has taken home the highest award for Māori biosecurity at the Ministry for Primary Industries awards night. Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei. Te Arawa Lakes Trust won the 2022 New Zealand Biosecurity Māori Award on Monday for its biosecurity plan to restore the mauri of the lakes. Biosecurity manager William Anaru (Te Arawa, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Tūwharetoa) said the award ack...

Māori have the solutions

When South African members of Parliament turned to stare at John Rangihau sitting in their gallery during the apartheid era, he was torn between fear and the urge to pūkana. Proceedings stopped until a note was passed to the speaker informing them the Tūhoe leader was a visiting welfare officer from New Zealand's Department of Māori Affairs, and he had diplomatic immunity. On the same trip he met Desmond Tutu, went to support fellow diplomatic immunity-holder Samoan All Black Bryan Willi...

Spark launches $1 million scholarship programme

As the tech sector struggles with skill shortages, a new programme aims to help more Māori, Pasifika and women find work in the industry. Qrious, Spark’s AI and data analytics team, has unveiled a talent pathway that includes $1 million of scholarships for people from minority communities. Only 4% of the technology workforce is Māori, under 3% are Pasifika and 27% are women, according to research. Qrious spokesman Evan Wilson said he is looking for people from diverse backgrounds who mi...

The whakapapa

Te kūmaranui ā-tonga literally means the great kūmara of the south, and is a whakataukī (proverb) from north Taranaki in reference to their ability to produce a kūmara crop of considerable note. Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei. But what do we know of the kūmara (Ipomoea batatas) other than the familiar stories of traditional foods and trading? Kūmara has its botanical origins in the Andean region o...

Exhaustion is creeping back

Collapsing in a heap each evening? Struggling to haul yourself out of bed in the morning? You're not alone if you feel a curious case of fatigue creeping back into your life. After pandemic-induced stress and government-sanctioned time at home away from social events, ubiquitous family gatherings and - for some - even the office, humans are struggling to recalibrate to our old way of life. But Andrew Lloyd from the University of New South Wales fatigue clinic says the cure is well within our con...

Kāinga Ora under fire for ‘broken’ promises,

Kāinga Ora is under fire again over how it manages disruptive tenants. A Christchurch woman said the housing agency broke a promise to only house tenants with unblemished records in her neighbourhood. Another Auckland housing advocate said Kāinga Ora’s own tenants are afraid to complain about disorderly neighbours.Clair McConchie bought her Glenroy St property in the Christchurch suburb of Woolston about 11 years ago and almost immediately began having problems with nearby Kāinga Ora tenant...

Motels are not social housing -

Nelson’s housing market has been notoriously tight for a long time – but with the return of international tourists, some moteliers are choosing not to host emergency accommodation or Housing First clients. The Male Room drop-in centre manager Louis Chapman said the facility had its busiest day ever last week, with 56 people through the doors. “It’s far from your typical homeless people that are struggling to get houses at the moment,” Chapman said. “It's now gone to people who are wo...

Woman in Hamilton emergency housing motel

A mother who says she's been threatened by a gang to turn to prostitution and deal drugs, claims life in emergency housing motels can be a fight for survival. She's one of two women in Hamilton who blew the whistle this week to officials about the gang allegations. "We're nothing but a game to them, they are the predators and we are the prey," she told Newshub's Karen Rutherford in an exclusive interview.Link to video and article: Woman in Hamilton emergency housing motel refuses to give in...

‘They forgot about us’:

A family of 13 has been living in two one-bedroom motel units for more than a year after a fire at their Kāinga Ora home, highlighting New Zealand’s emergency housing crisis with 26,000 people on the waitlist and a nearly seven-fold increase in occupancy lengths. Twelve months after their six-bedroom West Auckland home caught fire, the mum and 10 of her 12 children still remain at the same cramped emergency housing motel complex in Takapuna. She told the Herald said has been given l...

Santa is getting ready to send more letters in te reo Māori

Santa is catching up with the rest of Aotearoa - he's going bilingual. The white bearded one will reply to letters from tamariki in English and te reo Māori. NZ Post and Hana Kōkō (Santa) understand the importance of using more te reo Māori in our everyday lives. This generation of Kiwis are part of the groundswell revival of our indigenous language. For the fourth year running, NZ Post are offering Kiwi kids the chance to write to Santa and receive his reply - in both te reo Māori and Engl...

Māori voices left out

American aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab launched the first New Zealand-built satellite into space in August 2020. Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei. But as the nation’s space sector grows, there are concerns Māori voices are being left behind. Public consultation on the Government’s Aerospace Strategy and Space Policy Review concluded on Monday, October 31, and has faced criticis...

Tikanga tutors:

It takes a village to raise a child. But when it comes to tikanga Māori in schools, a few Māori teachers and students are often expected to raise a village.  My experience of being Māori at school was impacted heavily by the death of our Māori teacher when I was in year 10. Before that, the Māori department was thriving. Our Te Reo teacher would have done anything to engage us. We were learning tikanga; things were getting done correctly. Māori wasn’t a mess-around free period. She ...

Mapping changes in Auckland’s

Many people aged in their 20s and 30s are leaving home, entering and/or completing education, are at the beginning of their working lives, and possibly starting families. Changes in where people in this age group choose to live are interesting because many of these life events mean ‘youngish adults’ are finding new places to live, and are thus relatively sensitive to local housing prices and quality (either for renting or buying). In economist-speak, many people in this age group are ‘on t...

Kiwa Digital takes Māori Excellence in Export prize

Māori cultural creative agency Kiwa Digital walked away with the He Kai Kei Aku Ringa Award for Māori Excellence in Export at the 2022 International Business Awards. Kiwa Digital is the creator of the audio production tool Voice Q, which allows it to cover a soundtrack's original language with another language to make it accessible to a wider audience in a process known as dubbing. The company was responsible for dubbing the South Korean Netflix series Squid Game - which Netflix has named as i...

Hijab head coverings

This year I had a rather unpleasant encounter in a public car park. I backed my car into a four wheel drive. Luckily, the impact didn't feel strong enough to cause any damage, but the startled driver definitely needed an apology. He wasn't in the mood though, shouting expletives he told me to get lost. And I happily obliged. His frustration was justified after all. But then I heard these words: "Maybe if you took that thing off your head you'd be able to see". I froze in my tracks. I wear the hi...

Department of Corrections Ara Poutama Aotearoa

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Te Urewera huts:

The Federated Mountain Clubs says people should be excited, not anxious, about Ngāi Tūhoe's plans for new huts in Te Uruwera. The Tūhoe settlement entity, Te Uru Taumatua, is dismantling and replacing 48 derelict huts - leading to protest from hapū, trampers, hunters and conservationists. Te Uru Taumatua is the operational entity of iwi Ngāi Tūhoe, which took over the day-to-day management of Te Urewera from the Department of Conservation in 2014. A protest at Tāneatua this week...

A doco revival

A recent revival of local prime-time TV documentaries has highlighted some thorny social issues and raised awkward questions about justice and equality. Among them was a revealing investigation this week showing the cost of white-collar crime dwarfs that of welfare fraud, but draws lighter punishments and gets a lot less scrutiny in the media than the kind of crimes that play out in public. For years, the heyday of New Zealand TV documentary and current affairs seemed to be in the past.&nbs...

Tiny Dannevirke kura

The kura kaupapa movement was born out of a fear that te reo Māori would become extinct, a fear which drove whānau in Dannevirke to form their own kura with no resources and only a few students. Thirty years later, the community have gathered to take stock and to celebrate their little kura, Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Tamaki-Nui-a-Rua. More than 400 manuhiri, including former students and staff, were welcomed onto Makirikiri marae on the outskirts of Dannevirke, to celebrate the kura and the str...

Ngāi Tahu leader who helped

Dr Terry Ryan was the secretary of Rehua Marae and the kawai kaitiaki of Ngāi Tahu whakapapa and authority on the southern iwi's genealogy. "He was able to showcase his uncanny ability to recite whakapapa files and draw connections between whānau members based simply on appearance and individual nature," Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu kaiwhakahaere Lisa Tumahai said in a statement. "Whānau from across the motu reached out for his knowledge and he was always happy to give of his time."Link to ar...

Tamariki are taught te reo Māori

An Australian school is showing New Zealand how it incorporates te reo Māori into its students' learning. St Thomas Aquinas primary school in Geelong, Australia, is teaching the Māori language to all its students as part of its curriculum. The idea started in 2018 to teach te reo Māori as a subject because of the number of Māori children there and it has grown to even hosting a pōwhiri for Defence Minister Peeni Henare during a recent visit to Australia. Geelong, southwest of Melbourne, is ...