Political changes threaten NZ infrastructure
THE FACTS
The problem with large-scale government-procured infrastructure is that elections get in the way.
Over the past 10 years, big projects have been cancelled every time the Government has changed.
The Roads of National Significance was trimmed in 2017; the Auckland light rail was cancelled in 2023 and now,
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The Spinoff
14 hours ago
- The Spinoff
What we saw at Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival: week one
A Palme d'Or winner, the Jacinda Ardern documentary, cage fighting in Kaikohe and more – reviewed. It Was Just an Accident The Civic was buzzing on opening night of the New Zealand International Film Festival and few films could've justified the packed house like It Was Just an Accident. Hailed by festival director Paolo Bertolin as the first truly deserving Palme d'Or winner in years, the Iranian drama delivers a taut and affecting meditation on justice, memory, and the price of survival. When a group of former political prisoners encounter the man who once tortured them, the film becomes a quiet reckoning – not just with the past, but with the uncertain line between forgiveness and vengeance. Director Jafar Panahi, long a master of subversive Iranian cinema, handles the material with precision and grace. The cinematography is luminous, but never distracts from the film's emotional core, which is often laced with unexpected moments of humour – the kind that briefly disarms before plunging deeper. Though rooted in Iran's political landscape, It Was Just an Accident speaks to universal dilemmas of power and reconciliation. It's a film of rare weight and restraint – one that lingers long after the credits roll. / Liam Rātana Prime Minister I assume no other film festival film has started 30 minutes late because a protest outside and beefed up security meant a very slow entry into the Civic for 2,400 viewers. A documentary about Jacinda Ardern, even two years after she's resigned as prime minister and left the country, will do that. Once it got started, my heart sank – an opening shot both 'observational' but clearly orchestrated of Ardern dropping Neve to the school bus in Chicago before strolling peacefully to Harvard. Would this be a long wellness ad for working at Harvard? Thankfully, it quickly jumped back to 2017, with Ardern about to become Labour leader. There's familiar footage of press conferences and newslines intersected with genuinely enthralling snippets of Ardern's phone calls at the time with the Alexander Turnbull Oral History Project, which are not supposed to be released until after Ardern's death. They're incredibly candid – more candid even than Ardern was in her own book – and give the film that extra emotional weight. It's very hard to properly review a film that covers events most New Zealanders experienced, through one very powerful person's perspective. But if I watched something like this about any other world leader, that had this much access and candour, I would love it. Clarke Gayford has a cinematography credit as the person who filmed a lot of the more intimate moments (Ardern drafting her resignation press release in bed; stressfully reading updates on the mosque shootings). If I left with one impression it's that I can't believe she didn't break up with him through all of that. / Madeleine Chapman Fiume o Morte! The footnotes of history often make the best documentary subjects, and this is very much the case for this documentary by Igor Bezinović, who trains a lens on his hometown, Rijeka in Croatia, and the 18-month period when it was ruled by a proto-fascist Italian aristocrat, army general (and poet!) Gabriele D'Annunzio, and called Fiume. Bezinović's enlisting of the citizens to reenact historical events is a genius format; doing more than just humanising and placing the history in a present context, each brings their own memories, cultural identity and role in the community to the character. D'Annunzio, fuelled by hubris and cocaine, is played by numerous bald men, including a dustman and someone in a punk band. Taking over the city was farcical (though not without very real pain and loss of life) and there's a level of absurdism to the retelling – his loyal, strapping foot soldiers must know how to fight and jump over things but also dance and sing – and it all happens as modern life goes on around it. It's a darkly funny film – there were lots of laughs to be heard at The Academy – and though hyper specific to a region of complex cultures and identities, the broader story is one of the shifting identities of a city, how pasts and presents that often coexist in one place, what we decide to forget and how we chose to remember. See it if you can. / Emma Gleason Kaikohe Blood and Fire Yes this is about an MMA club in a small Far North town — a simple premise on paper — but what Simon Ogsten's documentary really delivers is a gut-punch about the community men crave and where they go to find it. We see the members of Team Alpha find a sense of brotherhood and support alongside the physical rewards (and risks) of the sport, the outsized role the club plays in Kaikohe, we get a sense of where they came from and what hole this fills for them. Ogsten captures the violence, of course, but also the desire for it. At the start of the film, one subject explains how he loves a war and wants a 'wild, mongrel fight', a shocking declaration for some viewers, but one that comes from a deep place and a long, expansive history of martial culture. What that looks like now, how we satisfy such desires and the place they're given in society, puts the sport in context. Contemporarily, violence is both frowned upon and rewarded, depending on where and who's doing it. MMA is booming, in the big leagues and small towns like Kaikohe. After watching this I 'got it', that primal why and modern need, and it makes you think. / Emma Gleason Dreams (Sex Love) A bit of a risky choice from me, knowing nothing about the trilogy(!) of films from Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud. Dreams is the final release (after Sex and Love, also showing at the festival) and follows 17-year-old Johanne as she falls head over heels in love with one of her teachers. She writes evocatively of her feelings and interactions with the teacher and eventually shows her writing to her mother and poet grandmother, who debate the ethics of the situation as well as the quality of her writing. Haugerud's greatest achievement in Dreams is accurately, and without condescension, conveying the brutality of a first love and the sense that nothing else in the world is more important or more painful. We view Johanne's relationship with her teacher first through her infatuated lens, then through her guardians' protective lens, then through a subjective, analytical lens as her teacher responds. As is often the case in life, there are no clear villains or heroes, just women of different generations trying to navigate a teenager's powerful crush. Despite a heavy use of voiceover (which is not my preferred narrative technique) I found myself engrossed in Johanne's emotional processing and maturation. Near the start of the film, Johanne describes wanting to tell her teacher how she feels. She's terrified that her teacher will either get mad or, even worse, 'laugh condescendingly, like when a child says something adorable'. It's a relatable and brutal feeling, made all the more ironic throughout the rest of the film as viewers around us laughed at her romantic despair over and over. May we all never forget the agony of a first love. / Madeleine Chapman The Ballad of Wallis Island I turned up to The Ballad of Wallis Island 15 minutes late and stressed to high heaven, scurrying into a seat in the back row as Tim Key was giving a sopping wet Tom Basden a tour of his big old house on what I knew from reading the blurb to be a remote Welsh island. Within literal seconds a smile had involuntarily spread across my face and not a minute had passed before I was full-on chuckling along with the rest of the Civic crowd, which I think tells you everything you really need to know about this film. Story wise, Key plays Charles, a lonely widower and 2x Lotto winner who basically Parent Traps his favourite folk duo, McGwyer Mortimer (Basden and Carey Mulligan), into reuniting to play a one-off gig for him on the island, unwittingly forcing them to confront the pasts they've been simultaneously stuck in and running from. A huge part of this movie's appeal lies in the chemistry: Key and Basden have been friends and comedic collaborators for years (Wallis Island started life as a short film they made together in 2007), and Mulligan slots into the dynamic seamlessly.
RNZ News
15 hours ago
- RNZ News
Labour asks Auditor-General to investigate electoral roll complaints
Labour's Duncan Webb wants the Auditor-General to investigate reports of enrolment issues at the Electoral Commission. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone Labour MP Duncan Webb has asked the Auditor-General to investigate reports of enrolment issues] at the Electoral Commission. Last week, RNZ spoke to voters who reported they had been moved off the Māori roll, or could not find themselves on any electoral roll. The Electoral Commission has responded, saying it was likely those who could not find their details online were on the "dormant role". The dormant role lists voters who have lost touch with the commission and need to update their address before their record shows up on Chief Electoral Officer Karl Le Quesne has been adamant the commission is not changing people's enrolment details without their consent. But prospective voters, such as former journalist Taryn Utiger, have told RNZ she updated her details as recently as a month ago and still could not find her record. When RNZ approached the Electoral Commission about Utiger's case, it said it could not comment on an individual's enrolment record. Webb wrote to the Office of the Auditor-General on Monday afternoon, asking for an investigation to "resolve any doubt on the matter one way or the other". He said he had received reports of enrolment issues himself that he could not dismiss on the basis of the comment provided by the commission. "It appears that there are two possibilities as to how this is occurring. First, there have been people inappropriately placed on the dormant roll. "Second, the information technology system adopted by the Commission has a poor human interface that makes it error prone or unusable," the letter reads. On the dormant roll, Webb said he wanted the Auditor-General to check the commission was only placing people on this role when it needed to. "I am concerned that the steps that the Commission is taking under s 89G(2) are not sufficiently rigorous to ensure that people are not being placed on the dormant roll inappropriately. "While the Commission notes that "we will try to contact you by email or text to ask you to update your details" it is not clear how this is done, or what efforts are used to ensure that the best contact details are used. I also note that in the current era an email or text with a "click on this link" message is unlikely to be responded to," the letter reads. On the technology system, Webb said it was unreasonable to expect people to locate their electoral record online by using their exact name and address. "I am concerned that this is a practical hurdle that inappropriately obstructs people seeking to update or confirm their enrolment. In particular, address information is now auto-populated in an accepted format in almost all applications. "If the Commission is using software which cannot recognise that Avenue and Ave are the same, or that Saint Albans and St Albans are the same suburb, this is a very significant flaw in the system, "For the Commission to expect electors to remember how they spelt such words, or whether they included a suburb or only their city/town in the address, is an example of an unworkable and outdated human interface of the technology." Webb said it was clear the enrolment system was not working as expected and a detailed inquiry was required to establish exactly what issues, if any, there were. "The integrity of the electoral system is fundamental to our democracy. Your inquiry will ensure continued confidence in the system." The Commission said it was taking people's concerns seriously and anyone with questions about their enrolment could call freephone 0800 36 76 56 or email enquiries@ "We continue to monitor our systems and they are running as they should be. In the week to Sunday 3 August we received 38,435 enrolments and updates and 91 percent of these were online." "It's good that people are checking their enrolment details, and we understand the frustration when you can't find your record. We have heard the feedback and will look at how we can improve the experience for people. "The search on our website to find your enrolment record is strict to maintain voter privacy and ensure that a person can only see the record we hold for them." The Office of the Auditor-General confirmed it was considering whether or not it would carry out any inquiry work, including whether the issues raised by Webb fell within its mandate. "We cannot comment further while this process is under way," a spokesperson said. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
NZ Herald
16 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Watch live: Education Minister Erica Stanford fronts press conference after mammoth NCEA announcement
Education Minister Erica Stanford will field questions from the site of her old high school following the Government's decision to radically overhaul New Zealand's main secondary school qualification. The press conference at Auckland's Rangitoto College will be live-streamed from the top of this article around 11.30am. Yesterday, the Government announced the decades-old NCEA scheme would be abolished completely and replaced with two new qualifications at Year 12 and 13. Under the new system, Year 11 students will face what is being called a 'Foundational Skills Award' with a focus on literacy and numeracy. English and mathematics will be required subjects for students at this year level. Year 12 and 13 students will seek to attain the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE) respectively. Under the proposal, students currently doing NCEA continue. Students who are Year 8 today will be the first affected by the changes which begin in 2028. Students would do a mix of internal and external exams that add up to a mark out of 100, replacing the current achieved, merit and excellence rankings. That figure aligns to a letter grade such as A, B or C. For example, a student who received 85/100 in English would get an A while 50/100 in History would get them a C. Opposing political parties have been critical, saying the Government is rushing through the radical changes. Labour's education spokeswoman, Willow-Jean Prime, said 'rushing changes through now for political expediency isn't the answer'. She said schools and parents told her they were concerned about 'how hasty' the proposed changes were. 'Previous rushed overhauls have led to students being the guinea pigs for failed change – like national standards – so we must get this right." The Green Party's education spokesman, Lawrence Xu-Nan, said NCEA was not perfect but it recognised learning took place in different ways. 'Today's announcement is another classic case of the Government favouring one-size-fits-all approaches. Our education system is too important to be reduced to a single, rigid framework that will leave many behind. 'We haven't seen any clear case for the scrapping of NCEA - the Government has not made it. We remain entirely unconvinced this is what our school system needs. In fact, it risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.'
