Academic warns over using AI to reduce costs of Regulatory Standards Bill
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RNZ News
7 hours ago
- RNZ News
Space, spies, stalking, and extra sittings
National MP Judith Collins speaking during the initial Privileges Committee debate regarding the Te Pāti Māori protest haka. Photo: VNP/Phil Smith The House took urgency on Tuesday evening which extended Tuesday's sitting until lunchtime Wednesday, then it returned on Thursday morning - that time as an extended sitting. As a result, most select committees are not meeting this week. Some have had to cancel their plans or squeeze some work in at lunchtime. With a few exceptions - and excepting bills that committees are given special permission to consider outside normal rules - Select Committees and the House cannot sit at the same time. Spare a thought for submitters and those who schedule them, who have had their plans upended again by urgency. The opposition did ask the Leader of the House last Thursday whether there would be urgency this week but was told to "wait and see". Last minute reveals of urgency are not unusual. Extended sittings (like Thursday morning) are signposted a week or two in advance, but usually little warning is given for urgency. Tuesday's urgency was aimed at two bills - one relating to space and the other about international crime cooperation. The Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Amendment Bill isn't so much about space as it is about the ground bases for satellites or other extra-terrestrial objects. The Minister for Space, Judith Collins was the bill's sponsor. "This bill introduces a new authorisation regime for ground-based space infrastructure. Until now, these activities have not been subject to a dedicated regulatory framework." The reason for the bill, revealed in the second reading debate, upped the interest. "During the past five years, there have been several deceptive efforts by foreign actors to establish and/or use ground-based space infrastructure in New Zealand to harm our national security. They have deliberately disguised their affiliations to foreign militaries and misrepresented their intentions. To date, these risks have been managed through non-regulatory measures, including relying on the goodwill of ground-based infrastructure operators. These measures are no longer enough." That sounds like the pitch for a thriller just begging to be written. This was a bill that the parties largely agreed on. They even agreed that urgency was reasonable, but opposition speakers complained about the push-push pace of urgency after the Committee Stage, as governing-party MPs worked to abbreviate what Labour's Rachel Brooking called "very civil, thoughtful debates." The pace really started to drag once the Budapest Convention and Related Matters Legislation Amendment Bill was the focus. Its sponsor, Minister of Justice, Paul Goldsmith said the bill "aligns New Zealand's laws with the requirements of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, also known as the Budapest Convention. The Budapest Convention is the first binding international treaty on cyber-crime, and it aligns members' national laws relating to computer-related offences, improves investigative techniques, and streamlines evidence sharing." Labour supported the bill but played hardball in the Committee Stage, concerned about the possibility of the convention leading to New Zealand accidentally helping countries that don't share our values control their citizens. Duncan Webb put it like this. "We need to be vigilant that we are not being unwittingly used to further either political ends or to allow a foreign state to pursue a proceeding against something that might be a crime in a foreign nation, but it certainly isn't a crime in New Zealand and shouldn't be something for which criminal sanction follows." The opposition made the Committee Stage of the Budapest bill last through most of the rest of Wednesday. The government's original plan was to pass it through all remaining stages, but late on Wednesday evening, they abandoned it after the Committee Stage and moved on to their other priorities. The Budapest Convention Bill was left with just a third reading to complete. Those were not the only interesting bills under discussion this week. Three other bills are of particular interest, relating to Health, Secondary Legislation, and Stalking. Tuesday saw the first reading of the Healthy Futures (Pae Ora) Amendment Bill which will now be considered by the Health Select Committee. Among its measures, that bill enacts health targets, and also alters or removes Māori consultation and obligations from the health administration. The Minister of Health, Simeon Brown described his bill succinctly. "This bill is about cutting through bureaucracy, restoring accountability, and most importantly, putting patients first." Opposition MPs had numerous gripes including this one from Dr. Tracey McLellan, regarding bringing Health New Zealand under the public service obligation for staff neutrality. "That is a chilling thing to do. Frontline health workers who have a professional obligation, an ethical and a legal obligation to call out things that they see in their professional practice. It is not political, it is professional, and they should not, in any way, shape, or form, have this hanging over them, this concept of-the misuse of-public service neutrality." Also on Tuesday, the Legislation Amendment Bill had a first reading and now heads to the Justice Committee for public feedback. The Legislation Amendment Bill has been in development for a few years, and among its aims are making secondary legislation (e.g. regulations) more easily accessible and more likely to be pruned once obsolete. Secondary legislation includes all of the various kinds of laws that don't come directly from a piece of legislation but from power that legislation delegates to ministers, ministries, agencies, councils etc. There is much more secondary legislation than primary legislation but it isn't as easy to search or access. Primary legislation is all stored on a legislation website managed by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO); currently secondary legislation is not. In debate, Labour's Camilla Belich observed that, "the main big change will be the single point of access that it will allow to secondary legislation. The point of the work that we do is to try and make sure that when either primary legislation or secondary legislation has an impact on people's lives, they have access to that. It shouldn't be something which is hidden away and it shouldn't be something which is difficult to find." Don't confuse the Legislation Amendment Bill with ACT's Regulatory Standards Bill which is also going through parliament and which appears to be trying to do something rather different. The Regulatory Standards Bill has influenced the shape of the Legislation Amendment Bill though, which Opposition MPs were unhappy with in debate, despite supporting the wider effort. The Crimes Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill had its second reading late on Wednesday. It creates a new offence specific to stalking and harassment and the myriad forms that these can take. It includes indirect harassment like undermining reputation, opportunities or relationships. The bill itself is a fascinating read as an example of how much cleverness is required to effectively draft law for crime that is, by definition, quite nebulous. Policy staff at Justice and legal drafters at PCO may have taken to heart the idiom 'to catch a criminal, you have to think like one'. National minister Erica Stanford outlined changes made to the bill as a result of public feedback to the Select Committee. "To be convicted of the new offence, the prosecution will need to prove the person engaged in a pattern of behaviour towards their victim. The committee recommended a broader definition for the pattern of behaviour. The offence will now require two specified acts within two years, rather than three specified acts within one year. This broadens the pattern of behaviour by capturing fewer acts across a longer time frame. I agree that this change will better address strategies such as anniversary-based stalking..." "A further recommendation made by the committee was to add doxing to the list of "specified act". Doxing is the publication of personal information such as addresses or contact details, including whether a stalker claims to be their victim. It encourages third parties to contact, threaten, and intimidate the victim…" "The committee also added two further important amendments to the bill. Firstly, to allow the courts to order the destruction of intimate visual to allow a court to make restraining [orders], firearm prohibition [orders], and Harmful Digital Communications Act orders, where a defendant is discharged without convictions." There are other bills of note on the Order Paper that the government would have hoped to progress, but progress this week has been slow. Opposition MPs have taken their time working through bills in the committee of the whole House, whether they support them or not. This will likely annoy the government, but thoroughly testing bills is the job of all MPs in the House. That sluggish pace meant the second reading of the Parliament Bill also slipped down the Order Paper (along with the third reading of the Budapest Convention Bill). One bill the House may reach is worth noting. The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill would be a second espionage-related bill for the week. This one hopes to plug gaps in the law around things like treason, espionage and even incitement to mutiny. *RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk. Enjoy our articles or podcast at RNZ. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
Our Changing World: The dance of the lanternfish
Spinycheek lanternfish (Benthosema fibulatum). Photo: Scott and Jeanette Johnson / uwkwaj via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0). In World War II, naval sonar operators spotted something strange: a 'false seafloor' hundreds of metres below the surface of the water, that mysteriously moved closer to the surface at night. They named it the 'deep scattering layer'. It turned out that the scattering was due to a massive concentration of marine life. Their movement is the largest daily animal migration on earth, involving trillions of critters. Now researchers are investigating the part this commute plays in controlling the oceanic food web, and in the carbon cycle. Follow Our Changing World on Apple , Spotify , iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts It's a tough life in the ocean, says Victoria University of Wellington fish ecologist Professor Jeff Shima. "It's been described as kind of a landscape of fear. Everything's trying to eat everything else and you're trying to eat things but not be eaten yourself." Professor Jeff Shima holds up some lanternfish. Photo: Claire Concannon / RNZ His work on reef fish life cycles has led him to investigate the lanternfish family of fishes. These anchovy-sized, deep-sea fish are so-named because of their light-producing organs on their belly and sides called photophores. With about 250 species in the family, they are found in deep water across the globe, in huge abundances. They make up around 65 percent of the deep-sea fish biomass and are a main player in the deep scattering layer. To navigate the 'landscape of fear' they make a daily vertical migration. Each night they rise from the twilight zone of the ocean (200-1000 metres below) to feed near the surface on smaller prey like phytoplankton, zooplankton and tiny fish larvae. When the sun rises, they retreat to the depths, avoiding predators by matching their belly glow to the ambient light above, effectively making themselves invisible. A lanternfish in the family Myctophidae. Photo: Steven Haddock/Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute While working on reef fish life cycles, Jeff was puzzled to discover that growth rates of larval fish seemed to follow a lunar cycle. Exploring this further has led him to study lanternfish, whose migration is highly sensitive to moonlight. Passing clouds or different moon phases can influence how far lanternfish travel upward. If it's too bright, they stay deeper to avoid being seen, potentially shifting the behaviour of other species - especially the larvae of reef fish trying to return to the reef under cover of darkness. A variety of reef fish larvae and lanternfish collected in overnight nets. Photo: Alisha Gill / Niamh Smith Reef fish hatch offshore and spend their early lives in the open ocean before returning to the reefs as juveniles. These early stages are important, says Jeff. "If we can understand what's driving variation in the survival of baby fish while they're out at sea, that translates into big effects down the road in terms of the size of a fish population or the biomass of a fishery that we can harvest." He would like to figure out whether lanternfish movement and predation, determined by moonlight levels, is influencing when larvae make their return journey. To investigate this, PhD candidates Alisha Gill and Niamh Smith are conducting fieldwork in Moorea, French Polynesia. They use nets to capture and count overnight larval fish arrivals across the lunar cycle, while also keeping track of predator movement using sonar, moonlight levels using a sensor, and ocean conditions such as tides and wind. Alisha Gill and Niamh Smith in French Polynesia. Photo: Alisha Gill Because of their massive numbers, lanternfish might also play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and global climate regulation. Carbon from the atmosphere enters the ocean at the surface - including when phytoplankton photosynthesise, converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into food. By consuming carbon-rich prey at the surface and then moving downwards - where they might release waste or become prey themselves - lanternfish could help transport carbon to the ocean depths much faster than if it simply drifted downwards. Though a lot of carbon is recycled to the surface by ocean currents, if carbon-containing material reaches the seabed floor it can get buried in sediments and locked away for a long time. School of lanternfish. Photo: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP) However, there's a lot of uncertainty about this process. Lanternfish are fragile and hard to keep alive in labs, making direct study difficult, says Jeff. Instead, the team is analysing the fish's ear bones (otoliths), which store daily chemical records, offering clues about their movements and metabolism. From predator-prey dynamics to climate science, the researchers hope their work will lead to better understanding of how these tiny fish are shaping our oceans. Sign up to the Our Changing World monthly newsletter for episode backstories, science analysis and more.
Techday NZ
6 days ago
- Techday NZ
Sinch launches Model Context Protocol to drive AI messaging
Sinch has launched its implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing artificial intelligence agents to initiate compliant, real-time telecommunications activities across messaging, voice, email, and verification channels via standardised interfaces. The MCP is an emerging protocol intended to standardise how AI agents interact with various systems and services. Sinch's deployment of the protocol is designed to give AI agents the ability to carry out communications tasks directly through its platform. These tasks range from orchestrating marketing campaigns to client notifications, identity verification processes, and customer service handling. AI-driven communications According to Sinch, MCP is engineered to manage AI-scale communication volumes, suitable for tasks demanding rapid, automated interaction rather than the slower cadence typically associated with human-initiated communications. The implementation supports integration with AI tools, including OpenAI SDK, Claude, and Microsoft's Azure AI, and is delivered with compliance and security protocols incorporated as standard. The company states that MCP helps support a broad transition away from traditional brand-centric applications to direct communication channels between enterprises and their customers. Sinch currently manages over 900 billion customer interactions each year for 175,000 businesses in more than 60 countries, providing messaging, voice, email, and verification services, and drawing upon its local compliance and routing expertise. Global scale and expertise Sinch customers have already begun to report outcomes claimed to result from the shift towards AI-assisted engagement. For example, a global insurer has been able to autonomously process 80% of customer enquiries across 125 languages, while a retail client achieved tripled engagement by integrating conversational AI with Rich Communication Services (RCS). The company issued data from its State of Customer Communications Report suggesting that 95% of businesses are currently using or planning to utilise AI in customer communications. Research from IDC projects that the global AI platforms market will reach USD $153.0 billion by 2028. MCP implementation details Through its new MCP server, now available in developer preview with Claude, Sinch is providing a mechanism for AI agents to understand the requirements of different communication actions. The server allows agents to determine which channel should be used, how messages should be formatted for different jurisdictions, which regulatory rules apply, and how to ensure successful delivery. Sinch notes that these capabilities are accessible via a range of tools, including development environments like Cursor and frameworks such as OpenAI Agents SDK, as well as platforms like AgenticFlow and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. "AI is transforming how businesses communicate, and Sinch has the proven infrastructure to make it work at scale," said Robert Gerstmann, Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder at Sinch. "With MCP, we're codifying decades of communications expertise into protocols that AI agents can understand, teaching them the specific requirements, compliance rules, and best practices needed for each use case and region. What matters most happens behind the scenes; guaranteeing delivery, maintaining quality, navigating compliance, and preventing fraud. We've spent decades perfecting these operational fundamentals that make AI-powered communications actually work." Strategic partnerships The MCP protocol is part of Sinch's broader strategic approach to AI communications. Alongside established integrations with OpenAI and Anthropic, Sinch also provides routing systems and conversational AI functionality, intending to offer enterprises a comprehensive platform for deploying AI-assisted communication strategies. Sinch's partnerships span a variety of major technology companies. It is an Adobe Platinum Partner and has links with Salesforce Agentforce and Microsoft Dynamics Customer Insights, which the company reports strengthens its position within the enterprise AI communications landscape. "At Sinch we are pioneering the way the world communicates, and our MCP implementation represents the next evolution of that mission," said Laurinda Pang, CEO of Sinch. "Through the expansion of native AI capabilities and partnerships, we're equipping organizations with unprecedented capabilities to connect with customers anywhere, anytime, through any channel. We envision a world where every business, regardless of size or technical sophistication, can harness the power of intelligent communications to keep their customers engaged, informed, safe, and happy."
