u/OddityModdity

David Seymour is ordering a review of the installation process, saying he wants to make New Zealand the easiest place in the world to switch to solar.

He said just 3%-4% of New Zealand households used solar, despite average power savings of about $1000 a year.

"Solar installation in New Zealand is a red tape nightmare. Just getting it approved can take months," he said.

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Alan Brent, professor and chairperson in Sustainable Energy Systems at Victoria University of Wellington, said upfront cost was the biggest barrier for most households considering solar - not the installation time.

"It's not a technical issue in terms of how long it takes. I mean, I have a solar and a battery system in my house, and they came and installed it within a day. We have all the regulations in place... all the technology is there," he said.

"It is quite a significant investment up front. And it's quite complicated for people to think about what the long-term savings will be."

The sale of fireworks to the general public could be banned if a parliamentary committee’s recommendation is adopted - and New Zealand First is promising to push Cabinet toward a ban.

The petitions committee considered three petitions in tandem regarding a ban of fireworks sales. The three petitions, each with slightly different wording, garnered 96,389 signatures in total.

The committee considered evidence concerning animal welfare, human injury, environmental and property damage and changing public attitudes.

“Given the evidence we received, we find it difficult to do anything other than recommend a ban on the public sale and private use of fireworks,” the committee’s final report concluded.

Most Kiwis have little or no confidence in the Government’s ability to manage the fuel crisis effectively, according to new polling by Horizon Research released exclusively to Newsroom.

In a survey of 1037 adults across the country, 24 percent said they had no confidence at all in the Government to respond well and another 32 percent said they had not very much confidence. Just 12 percent said they had “a great deal” of confidence.

Teachers specialising in music, physical education, science, technology and history have slammed draft curriculums covering their subjects.

Submissions provided to RNZ say the music curriculum was unteachable, science was over-crowded and in some cases even silly, while PE needed a total rewrite.

They say combining dance and drama in the arts curriculum was problematic, and technology was confusing and unusable.

Consultation on the six drafts for Years 0-10 closed at the end of last week.

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The drafts would replace a curriculum many said was too vague with documents that set out more clearly what teachers must teach at each year level, from the start of primary school through to the first two years of secondary school.

The government wants to finalise the curriculums later this year, with schools using the new science, social sciences, and health and physical education curriculums next year, and the arts, technology and learning languages from the start of 2028.

Workers at the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter have voted to take industrial action from Monday, following unsuccessful bargaining, but the smelter - owned by Rio Tinto, says it provides a competitive package.

E tū union members at New Zealand's Aluminium Smelter in Southland, owned by Rio Tinto, have been in bargaining since 2024.

E tū Director Mat Danaher told RNZ the dispute was about the basic right of working people to organise.

"We believe this failure to agree is a deliberate anti-union tactic," he said.

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Delegate and production worker Dee said workers had not asked for anything excessive.

"We're not being unreasonable. What we want is decent work. We want an agreement that recognises the job we do, the conditions we work under, and the contribution we make."

Good.

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The white supremacist terrorist who massacred 51 worshippers at two Christchurch mosques will remain in prison for the rest of his life after the Court of Appeal dismissed his attempt to overturn his convictions and sentence.

ACT leader David Seymour’s claim that TVNZ used legal pressure to suppress reporting on an alleged slur has been sharpened, with Mike Hosking revealing that his Newstalk ZB team received a legal warning while investigating the incident.

Hosking said on air on Wednesday morning that his team had been working towards a story about the allegation about TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman when producer Sam Carran sought comment from TVNZ.

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Hosking said TVNZ declined to discuss the matter, citing employment issues, and a short time later a wide-ranging legal letter from a corporate law firm was sent to his team.

Hosking indicated the tone and scope of the letter discouraged further pursuit of the story and contributed to it not being published at the time.

The government is taking a parent to court over their child's chronic absence from school as part of the truancy crackdown heralded by Associate Education Minister David Seymour.

Seymour last year promised the government would be tougher on non-attendance using "coercive power" including prosecution.

He said it was not changing rules, but ramping up enforcement.

Seymour has now told RNZ at least one prosecution was "ongoing" which he said showed he was serious about the crackdown.

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Data released last week from term one this year showed 68.6 percent of students attended school regularly, the highest figure for term one since 2020.

But it was still four points below the 2019 pre-Covid figures.

Le Quesnoy was liberated by New Zealand soldiers on November 4, 1918 after four years of occupation by Germany. No civilians were killed, and the town wasn't destroyed.

This sparked a deep gratitude from locals, which has remained to this day.

More than 100 Kiwi soldiers were killed in the wider Le Quesnoy area.

There are street signs with references to New Zealand, ferns grow next to the city's namesake oaks, New Zealand flags hang next to French flags over the Anzac period and every year locals remember what was done to help free them.

With inflation spiking once again, new figures from an Inland Revenue report estimate inflation has driven billions in additional taxes paid by Kiwis over the past 16 years.

In a briefing to Finance Minister Nicola Willis, obtained by Newsroom under the Official Information Act, officials estimated middle-income Kiwis were paying $2 billion more a year in taxes because of the slow creep of inflation, compared with tax paid when brackets were last significantly adjusted in 2010.