Category Archives: New Zealand

The Wizard of New Zealand, also known as Ian Brackenbury Channell, casts a "spell" during a television interview in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2011. His contract with the city will end in December after more than two decades. Mark Baker/Associated Press hide caption

The Wizard of New Zealand, also known as Ian Brackenbury Channell, casts a "spell" during a television interview in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2011. His contract with the city will end in December after more than two decades.

Christchurch, New Zealand, is parting ways with its official city wizard after more than two decades. His offensive remarks about women and the local government's new tourism strategy reportedly spelled his doom.

Ian Brackenbury Channell is known as The Wizard of New Zealand, apparently even on official documents like his passport. He's been on the Christchurch City Council's payroll since 1998, receiving an annual salary of $16,000 NZ (more than $11,000 in current USD) to "provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like-services as part of promotional work for the city of Christchurch," according to the New Zealand news site Stuff.

But that job title will soon become like many wizards before him a thing of legend.

"The council has met with The Wizard and sent him a letter thanking him for his services to Christchurch over the past decades, and informing him that we are bringing our formal contractual arrangement to a close," said Lynn McClelland, the council's assistant chief executive. She said the final payment will be made in December.

The decision was a difficult one, according to McClelland. She explained that Christchurch's promotional landscape is changing to "increasingly reflect our diverse communities and showcase a vibrant, diverse, modern city that is attractive to residents, domestic and international visitors, new businesses, and skilled migrant workers."

That may not have been the only reason, The Guardian reports, citing controversial comments Channell made back in April.

"I love women, I forgive them all the time, I've never struck one yet. Never strike a woman because they bruise too easily is the first thing, and they'll tell the neighbors and their friends ... and then you're in big trouble," he said at a screening of the current affairs show New Zealand Today.

Channell told Stuff that the council had waved him off because he didn't fit with the city's modern image, calling them "a bunch of bureaucrats who have no imagination" and are "not thinking of ways to promote Christchurch overseas."

Despite his disappointment, Channell promised to keep visiting Christchurch's Arts Centre to chat with tourists and locals.

"It makes no difference. I will still keep going," he said. "They will have to kill me to stop me."

Channell's life and work are actually the subject of a current exhibit at the ongoing Christchurch Heritage Festival (which is, ironically, sponsored by the city council).

The event description notes that Christchurch is the only city in the world to have had its own official wizard since 1982. By that time, it adds, Channell had already become the world's first art-gallery-appointed Living Work of Art.

"For forty years neither title and accompanying roles has been granted to anyone else anywhere in the world," organizers wrote. "He not only created his own social identity which includes living in an alchemical marriage but, as an ex-academic cultural theorist and experimentalist, he designed the existential universe he has been living in since 1972."

You can read more about the wizard in his own words on his website.

Channell was born in London in 1932, according to a biography from the Christchurch City Council Libraries. Before getting into wizardry, he spent time as a Royal Air Force navigator, studied psychology and sociality, traveled in the Middle East and taught in both Tehran and Australia.

He was appointed "Wizard of the University of New South Wales" by the school's vice chancellor and students' union in 1969.

He moved to Christchurch in 1974 and soon became a recognizable performer and public speaker in the city's Cathedral Square, where he would stand atop a ladder dressed in a long cloak and pointed hat.

New Zealand's government calls Channell notable for "reviving the ancient art of rhetoric" and says he was "most often seen in The Square in Christchurch synthesising the ideas of famous philosophers."

The police tried to arrest him at one point, according to the BBC, but members of the public protested and the square was ultimately designated an area for public speaking. The wizard became recognized as a tourist attraction, and his accolades grew from there.

He was appointed the official Archwizard of Canterbury in 1980, and designated a living work of art by the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors Association in 1982.

In 1990, then-Prime Minister Mike Moore appointed him the Wizard of New Zealand. A photo on Channell's website shows a letter from the prime minister, urging him to consider taking up such a role.

"It occurs to me that you are currently the Wizard of Christchurch exclusively," Moore wrote. "As a loyal Christchurch MP I am pleased about that, but as Prime Minister I am concerned that your wizardry is not officially at the disposal of the entire nation."

He noted that this would likely carry implications "in the area of spells, blessings, curses and other supernatural matters that are beyond the competence of mere Prime Minister."

Some of the career highlights chronicled on the wizard's website include: performing rain dances in New Zealand and Australia during droughts, participating in protests against the demolition of heritage buildings after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes and famously battling the company Telecom over the changing color of the city's telephone boxes in 1988.

He went around repainting the new blue boxes to their original red, according to one biography, in a battle that "raged for twelve days" and at one point even involved the city council.

The ongoing exhibition about his life says it includes major sections on"his miraculous rain dances, ingenious avoidance of the Census, the hilarious war with Telecom over the change of colour of their phone boxes, the spells cast for the Canterbury Crusaders, the unusual candidates who between 1972 and 1990, stood for the Imperial British Conservative Party in Australia and NZ, the Wizard's part in the narrowly won battle to save the earthquake damaged Cathedral from being bulldozed, the mythical implications of the Queens Service Medal awarded to a Wizard."

NPR reported last August that the Wizard of New Zealand was retiring and searching for a successor, though it's unclear what came of that effort.

Sightings of the wizard have become more rare in recent years, according to The Guardian, which he says is because the council has "made him invisible" and ignored his suggestions for improving tourism.

When asked by the newspaper whether he would curse the council over its decision, the wizard said he preferred blessings:

"I give children happy dreams, general good health, and I want to make bureaucrats become more human."

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Christchurch takes the official 'Wizard Of New Zealand' off its payroll - NPR

One of my earliest memories is racing up a flight of hollow stairs in Kaweraus town hall as Tiwi, my first friend, counts down from 20. Ready or not, here I come he roars from the stage. I slide through the doorway to the makeup room, carving a two-lane highway into the dusty floors. The lighted mirrors paint the room in yellow and gold. I wriggle my tiny body into one of the cubby holes for bags and belongings. The doorknob turns. The door creeps open. Found me, I yell at Tiwi. After a three-second delay he yells back but where, still searching behind the velvet curtains on stage.

Dads boxing gym is hidden below that stage. The heavy bags, the leather pads, the medicine balls, and the sparring gloves wash the stage in the smell of rubber and sweat. Tiwi and I tutu (fidget) with the flood lighting most weeks, waiting for the boxers to finish their cardio session on stage and head for sparring and pad work downstairs. Dad screams at that perfect decibel level where the soundwaves crash against your ear but the background violence scrambles the electrical signal to your brain. Is he saying right, left, right or left, right, left? For most of Kawerau in the 1990s the town hall was a boxing gym with cosmetic facilities. For Tiwi and I, it was our playground.

Kawerau now competes with Murupara for the lowest vaccination rate in New Zealand. This is partly a function of ethnicity. The district is one of the few in New Zealand with a Mori majority, and the Mori vaccination rate lags behind the national vaccination rate. Its also an issue of access. When one Kawerau district councillor rang the vaccination hotline he was told to book an appointment in Whakatne, an almost thirty-minute drive east. For most New Zealanders this wouldnt amount to a major problem, but in Kawerau where almost one in four people are out of work this is a practical barrier. Not everyone can access a vehicle, and small towns struggle to sustain public transport of any kind, let alone an intra-regional network.

Over 130,000 thousand New Zealanders made their way to a vaccination centre over the weekend, smashing the governments goal and lifting Aucklands vaccination rate to just shy of 90%. But underneath that success, shocking inequities remain. The vaccination rate for Pacific peoples still lags the rate for Pkeh, or European New Zealanders, and the Mori rate lags further still. Only 63% of Mori have had their first shot. For Pkeh, its 84%. This is partly due to geography. If you inspect the governments vaccination map, a national register laying out every vaccine centre in New Zealand, you might notice something startling: there are barely any vaccine centres in rural Mori communities. This essay asks why.

In Kaweraus prime, from the early 1950s to the late 1980s, when the Tasman pulp and paper mill was responsible for producing 20% of New Zealands exports, the hall was home to travelling plays, a picture theatre screening the latest foreign films, and concerts classic and popular. This is where the countrys chief crooner, Sir John Rowles, who would go on to a concert residency in Las Vegas, picked up his craft performing for the American mill managers, who made their mansions on Knob Hill.

Kawerau was a town like few others. The population of only 8,000 also had access to a full-service supermarket a consumer luxury in the mid-20th century a department store (quite the posh amenity), a video game parlour, and even competing cosmopolitan clubs.

Underpinning this prosperity was a government guarantee: import controls, industrial subsidies, and competition policy would ensure the Tasman Mill maintained an effective domestic monopoly. With that lucrative corner of the pulp and paper market the towns residents would enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. But in return for this generosity the local hap (sub-tribe) had to make three agreements. First, that they would sell the land above their ancient geothermal fields, providing the industrial zone where the mill sits, and the electricity to power it. Second, they would consent to the mill accessing the crystal clear Tarawera river. Pulp and paper productions requires fresh water by the tonnage. And third, that they would help provide the manpower to fell and process the timber from the Kaingaroa pine kingdoms.

I was born to a family with five living generations. My sisters and I knew our great-great-grandmother. This breeds a healthy respect for whakapapa ancestry and it nurtures a good knowledge of history, and how quickly things change. Nana Olga, my great-great-grandmother, was born before the Great War, into a political and economic world we can scarcely imagine. She was in work before turning thirteen while her brother was packed off to Europe to fight in the Mori battalion in the second world war. Nana Jean, my great-grandmother, was born between these upheavals the first and second world wars and the sacrifices from that time still shape her habits and preferences today. Nothing goes to waste at Nana Jeans.

My great-great-great-grandparents were told that these sacrifices dispatching their young women to work and their young men to war were, in Sir pirana Ngatas words, the highest demonstration of citizenship. The losses of the second world war would ensure Pkeh respect. It was a neat recruitment tool, and true enough in parts. One of the first Labour governments principal achievements was removing discrimination in the welfare state, ensuring post 1945 that Mori had access to benefits paid at the same rates as Pkeh. Yet hidden underneath this technical equality was discrimination in its application. Few Mori in the early 20th century had birth certificates, for example, meaning that only a small number were ever able to qualify for the old age pension.

In regional New Zealand discrimination was more enthusiastic, as opposed to the lazy discrimination in Wellington. In Gisborne, loan officers would turn down Mori for no other reason than they were Mori. In parts of the Waikato, Mori were barred from cinemas and refused service in high-end stores. In Tauranga, some public restrooms were off limits to Mori women and children. It took a decade after the war and in some places longer to tear down formal and informal discrimination.

And Kawerau was, in its own small way, part of this project to bring discrimination crashing down. The land the government acquired to build Tasman was sold on the promise, made by Sir James Fletcher, the great 20th-century industrialist, to the local hap, that the mill would offers jobs to their children and grandchildren.

For the thirty years between 1954 and 1984 this promise held. The mills put thousands of hap members to work. For some, it made modern living standards possible, from hot water to ovens and microwaves. But underneath this prosperity were rigid inequalities. Those same hap members were more often than not the mills manual labour. When the thousands of Kawerau men punched in each morning Mori would form one line to the sawmill, to the manual professions while Pkeh would form another to the better paid paper mills, to management, to engineering. My ancestors who made the decision to sell were possibly told that the wealth would trickle down. In 2021 we know better. The proper direction of wealth is that it bubbles up.

The worst violence is structural, because its necessarily inescapable. The mad genius of a boxing ring is it reproduces this. When an ordinary person is hit their first instinct is flight. But the boxing ring, its four corners roping opponents in, removes that choice. What separates the ordinary person from a boxer is that the latters purest impulse is to hit back. This is why boxing attracts the cast of characters that it does. Fitness freaks, naturally. But just as often men who are out of work, resentful. Gang members, traumatised. I remember one of Dads best boxers, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist, whose later life came crashing down as the accumulated stress of joblessness and homelessness chipped away at his sense of worth and personhood.

In Kawerau its not unusual for people to go one of two ways. Of Dads boxers, most went on to good, secure work, prosperous families, and the peculiar dignity that comes from pummelling and getting pummelled. But others took the second way, falling into gang traps and poverty cycles. Before the 1960s New Zealands street gangs were more or less unheard of. But when the borstal boys came of age in the late 60s and early 70s that is, the young men who were taken into state care in the 1950s the Mongrel Mob, Black Power, the Filthy Few, and the bikie gangs became national boogeymen. Gangs exist where the state fails, and it was left to communities like Kawerau to pick up the pieces.

I grew up mostly with the sons and daughters of those people who took the second path, and we spent our childhoods in the ghost of Kaweraus past. When we were growing up in the 1990s the Tasman mills workforce was cut in half, falling to fewer than 1,000 employees from a high of over 2,000. Roger Douglass callous decision to remove the government guarantee import controls, industrial subsidies, and competition policy meant the mills, with their well-paid workforce, were uncompetitive in international markets. Hundreds of hap members were out of work. This was, in micro, what New Zealand was undergoing in macro. According to economist Brian Easton between 1989 and 1992 up to half of the New Zealand workforce went through a period of joblessness.

This was tough enough, breaking hundreds of families, but Ruth Richardsons social reforms would break hundreds more still. In 1991 the National party finance minister made cruel cuts to the welfare state, removing the universal family benefit, slashing the unemployment and sickness benefits, and introducing a user pays system in hospitals and other public facilities. After the job cuts at Tasman, the Kawerau population went into decline and the men who were out of work often Mori found only the bones of a social support system. For those who were keen to retrain, they found an education system that they had to pay for out of their own pocket.

In the space of a decade Kawerau went from perhaps the countrys most prosperous town to its poorest. Small business owners shut up shop and in their place government departments would open. Work and Income in the mall and the probation office in the business centre. The major development I remember in 1990s was the new police station. In 1996 more people were employed in community and social work 17% of the workforce than the wholesale and retail sectors 16%. From the 1950s to the 1980s the governments role was to guarantee Kaweraus prosperity. But from the 1990s onward its role was to supervise the towns dysfunction.

Mori, including Mori in Kawerau, maintain good reasons for distrusting the Crown and its successive governments. These are, after all, the same governments who broke their promises to the world war generations and the Mori battalions. These are the same governments who broke their promises to the local hap, throwing thousands out of work for reasons of national policy. These are, of course, the same governments responsible for consistent Treaty of Waitangi breaches over the same decades too. With these histories in mind, Mori in Kawerau are probably rather sensible to interrogate the vaccine message.

This is hardly an excuse for wretched anti-vaxxers, whose idiocy endangers everyone. Every Mori who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated. Instead this is a challenge to the government. There are forces beyond ethnicity and access that are impeding the vaccine effort. History is. And to overcome that requires resourcing communities to deliver their own vaccination programs. In closed-off places like Kawerau or Murupara, only people the locals trust will be able to get the job done.

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In Kawerau one thing impedes the effort to vaccinate Mori: New Zealand's history - The Guardian

Oct 16 (Reuters) - New Zealand vaccinated at least 2.5% of its people on Saturday as the government tries to accelerate inoculations and live with COVID-19, preliminary health ministry data showed.

Through an array of strategies, gimmicks and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's encouragement through the day, 124,669 shots were administered by late in the day in a country of 4.9 million.

"We set a target for ourselves, Aotearoa, you've done it, but let's keep going," Ardern said, using a Maori name for New Zealand at a vaccination site, according to the Newshub news service. "Let's go for 150 [thousand]. Let's go big or go home."

New Zealand had stayed largely virus-free for most of the pandemic until an outbreak of the Delta variant in mid-August. The government now aims to have the country live with COVID-19 through higher inoculations.

Forty-one new cases were reported on Saturday, 40 of them in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. It has been in lockdown since mid-August to stamp out the Delta outbreak. Officials plan to end the strict restrictions when full vaccination rates reach 90%.

As of Friday, 62% of New Zealand's eligible population had been fully vaccinated and 83% had received one shot.

Vaccination spots were set up on Saturday throughout the country, including at fast-food restaurants and parks, with some spots offering sweets afterwards, local media reported.

"I cannot wait to come and play a concert, I want to be sweaty and dancing and maybe not even wearing masks. Hopefully we can get there," said pop singer Lorde, according to local media.

"Protect your community, get yourself a little tart, perhaps a little cream bun," she said. "But please, please get that jab."

Final results of the mass vaccination drive are expected to be released on Sunday.

Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Rditing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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New Zealand vaccinates 2.5% of its people in a day in drive to live with COVID-19 - Reuters

New Zealands cities could be reshaped for decades to come, after the government joined forces with the opposition to announce sweeping bipartisan housing legislation that aims to counter urban sprawl and boost supply by up to 105,000 new homes in the next eight years.

In a rare display of cross-party collaboration, the housing minister Megan Woods and environment minister David Parker took the podium with the National Partys leader Judith Collins and its housing spokesperson Nicola Willis on Tuesday, to introduce a bill that will cut urban-planning red-tape and enable up to three houses, three storeys tall, to be built on most sites without requiring resource consent in the countrys major cities.

New Zealand has been in the midst of a housing crisis for over a decade. Its large cities of Wellington and Auckland have some of the least affordable property markets in the world; homeownership rates in New Zealand have been falling since the early 1990s across all age brackets, but the drop is especially pronounced for people in their 20s and 30s.

Last year, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha, visited New Zealand and called the housing situation a human rights crisis and a dark shadow that hangs over the country.

Planning law has long been criticised for being restrictive, unwieldy and slow. It is blamed in part for slowing down housing development, while creating urban sprawl, which has implications for transport, infrastructure and climate change.

The parties worked together on the new resource management bill, which they hope to pass in December. The law will allow greater housing density, to combat current city planning law that often allows for only one home of up to two storeys to be built on a site.

There will be exemptions in areas where densification is inappropriate, such as where there is a high risk of natural hazards, or a site has heritage value.

The bill is paired with a speed-up of the governments national policy statement on urban development, which aims to further reduce constraints on urban planning and development. That will come into effect to August 2023, instead of August 2024.

Modelling by Price Waterhouse Cooper predicted the new rules could result in about 48,200 to 105,500 new homes being built in the next five to eight years across New Zealands major cities.

Woods said New Zealanders want central government to take leadership on housing and lay aside political differences and noted that the policy would create more compact, efficient and affordable cities.

Having broad political consensus on these changes gives homeowners, councils, investors and developers greater certainty. We are pleased to have Nationals support in enabling New Zealanders to have access to modernising our cities in this way, Woods said.

Collins thanked the minister for accepting an invitation to work with National on the problem. There is so much more to do, to see Kiwis all across New Zealand be truly given the right to build. But today, we take the first step, by sending a bipartisan signal that both major political parties are working together.

Housing and transport advocate Isla Stewart was thrilled with the announcement, saying that the increase in gentle density had given her a lot of hope and was a big win for New Zealand.

More people living in cities will boost businesses, lower emissions and enable better transport routes, Stewart said.

The thing thats really great about even slight density adjustments like this, is that there are these massive economies of scale people living closer to where they are means buses become more feasible, and theyre more frequent, which means people are more able to use them. Instead of the whole zero sum thinking of if I have more neighbours, therell be more traffic it will break it into a better world is possible type thinking.

Housing and environment advocacy groups like City for People which Stewart helped establish Generation Zero and Renters United have long pushed for densification.

This new cross-partisan reform is to be celebrated. It is a vital step to tackling our housing crisis by ensuring peoples right to a quality home is paramount. The real character of our cities are people and thriving communities, the groups said.

But they would like to see other levers pulled: generous rental subsidies, accessible housing, support for papakinga [Mori housing] developments, and investments in sustainable water, open space and transport infrastructure.

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Sweeping housing legislation could reshape New Zealand cities for decades to come - The Guardian

Billionaire Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies, during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Nov. 18, 2019.

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Peter Thiel's proposed luxury lodge on New Zealand's South Island has been criticized by a local environmental group who believe it is "inappropriate" for the natural landscape.

The PayPal and Palantir co-founder, who profited from an early investment in Facebook, wants to build the lodge and a private residential building on a 193-hectare (477-acre) estate that he owns on the shores of Lake Wanaka, near Queenstown.

Thiel bought the estate in 2015 for a reported $13.5 million through an Auckland-headquartered company he owns called Second Star Limited.

Details of the development, designed by Tokyo Olympic Stadium architect Kengo Kuma and Associates, emerged in a planning application in August.

They show several buildings that are designed to blend into the landscape. There's a private home built into a hillside as well as a larger luxury lodge with enough space for 24 people. There's also a separate meditation pod, several water features and a yet-to-be-designed back-of-house building.

But in a six-page letter to Queenstown Lakes District Council this month, the Upper Clutha Environmental Society said it opposed the application in its entirety.

"The Society believes the applicant has not meaningfully avoided, remedied or mitigated adverse effects," the letter reads, before going on to say that "the proposed development is inappropriate."

The environmental group argues that the buildings will be an eyesore on the natural landscape and that the development is "extremely unlikely" to meet the "reasonably difficult to see test" set by the local council.

A representative for Thiel did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Kengo Kuma and Associates said its objective was to "design an organic architecture that fuses into the landscape" and respects the indigenous nature. Elsewhere, Jo Fyfe, senior planner at John Edmonds and Associates, who carried out an assessment of the environmental effects of the complex, said the placement of the buildings into the landscape was "thoughtful."

The so-called "owner's cabin" has a spa, pool, theater lounge, office and three bedrooms, while the guest cabin has its own spa and pool, as well as a library, and 10 guest bedrooms with uninterrupted north-facing views toward Lake Wanaka and the Southern Alps.

To highlight the visual impact of the development, the campaign group opposed to the development noted that "the row of buildings proposed extend across a wide visual catchment of the subject site; the buildings stretch for 330m."

"The associated car parking, access roads and paths will further detract from views of outstanding natural landscape; no less than 7.4ha [hectares] of the site is proposed to be dug up in earthworks of 36,800 m3," it continues.

Aspects of the development will be visible from Lake Wanaka and a number of public tracks in the area, the group said. "People driving, riding, walking, paddling or boating in these highly frequented public locations will be assailed by a large number of buildings spread laterally across the subject site," it argued.

The lavish lodge would feature 10 bedrooms.

The society, however, said it was impressed by the "ecological and biodiversity enhancements" described in the planning application.

It also admitted that the development could result in potential economic gains for the area if the proposed tourist unit buildings are used in the manner described in the application.

But the positive effects "will not meaningfully mitigate" the adverse effects of the proposed development, it added.

Located in relative isolation from the largest population centers of the world, New Zealand has become a popular destination with high net worth individuals in recent years. Billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page was granted residency at the start of the year.

Home to around 5 million people, the country has become linked with "preppers" those who try to prepare for catastrophic events that may pose a threat to humanity.

Reports had suggested that Thiel was planning to build some sort of apocalypse-proof bunker on his estate. While some of the buildings appear to be built into hillsides, it's unclear if any of them are intended to serve as a bunker.

The prepper craze was first put under the spotlight in Jan. 2017, when an article in The New Yorker titled "Doomsday prep for the super-rich" revealed how New Zealand is essentially like a mecca for wealthy preppers. It's remote, geopolitically stable, and sparsely populated. Importantly, it could also become completely self-sufficient in terms of water, food, and energy if it ever needed to.

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Peter Thiel's luxury New Zealand lodge opposed by environmental group - CNBC

A nasty stoush has unfolded around Team New Zealand in a bid to keep the America's Cup on home waters. NZ Herald Focus Sport's Cheree Kinnear explains why. Video / NZ Herald

The Kiwi Home Defence campaign has doubled its financial proposal to keep the next America's Cup in Auckland but Team New Zealand remain unmoved by the renewed bid.

In a media release, the Kiwi Home Defence confirmed it has sent a written proposal to the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and the trustees of the Team New Zealand Trust to increase its firm commitment to help fund a home defence in Auckland from $20 million to $40 million.

The campaign, led by Kiwi rich-lister Mark Dunphy, believes the additional commitment will be sufficient funding to stage a fully-funded and competitive defence of the America's Cup in Auckland.

"We have reviewed the publicly available financial information from the staging of our tremendous Cup defence earlier this year along with the summary information provided to us by Team New Zealand representatives," Dunphy said in a statement.

"It is our understanding from this review that the actual shortfall for a home defence is $40 million, not the $80 million which had been advised, and our proposal today fully bridges the shortfall.

"Kiwi Home Defence considers that the defence of the America's Cup in 2024 can, should and must be held here at home in Tmaki Makaurau. Our letter demonstrates that the required funding is available to support the Cup defence at home."

Dunphy, who is chairman of Greymouth Petroleum, said the increased proposal provides the funding required to keep the Cup in New Zealand, based on previous discussions with Team NZ.

"Team NZ advised at our first meeting that $120 Million is the funding required for the team ... Team NZ has said it is committed to funding $80 million from commercial sponsorships and private donors. This leaves a balance of $40 million to be committed to fully fund Team New Zealand. Today, we are making a firm commitment to provide the additional $40 million for the team.

"Our updated funding proposal assumes that the Crown and Auckland Council will be invited back to the table to support the staging of the event, and that their offer of cash (NZ$31 million) and in-kind support (NZ$68 million) stands.

"Time is of the essence for the smooth planning of, and preparation for, the AC37 defence in March 2024. Through the Trustees, and with the involvement of the RNZYS, Kiwi Home Defence now seeks a meeting as early as possible with TNZ for the parties to expedite matters and make arrangements for the defence to proceed in Auckland."

However, Team NZ have responded saying they will not entertain the bid, following their past dealings with the Kiwi Home Defence and Dunphy.

"Just to repeat our position from our statement of 22nd September: 'Emirates Team New Zealand and RNZYS have decided to cease all correspondence and any dealings with Mr Dunphy based on clear evidence of his and his associate Dr. Hamish Ross's conflicted actions that they have refused to come clean on'," a Team NZ spokesperson said in a statement to the Herald.

Last month, the RNZYS and Team NZ announced that the hosting decision for the next America's Cup, which was set to be made on September 17, would be delayed to allow more time to find the right venue, including a last-ditch bid to keep the Cup in Auckland.

Three international candidates Cork in Ireland, Barcelona in Spain and Jedda In Saudi Arabia are also reportedly being considered as hosts.

However, hopes of an Auckland defence took a hit after Team NZ boss Grant Dalton said he had ceased all correspondence with Dunphy in September.

Dalton claimed Dunphy refused to answer questions the syndicate put to him regarding his campaign for the 37th Cup to be hosted in New Zealand.

It followed a public back-and-forth between the two parties over a possible home defence, including claims from Team NZ that Swiss billionaire and Alinghi boss Ernesto Bertarelli was involved with a possible New York Supreme Court action and the Kiwi Home Defence campaign, which Dunphy has denied.

Dalton said he was "disappointed" by Dunphy's "underhanded and deceitful attempts to undermine the RNZYS, ETNZ and the RYS with his despicable actions".

"We gave him every opportunity to tell us himself, but he chose not to and as far as we are concerned this puts an end to a regrettable chapter in AC37."

Dunphy said on Thursday that keeping the 2024 defence in New Zealand will "maximise the return on the significant investment" made by Kiwis.

"The 2024 America's Cup defence provides a magnificent opportunity to announce our country is back and open for business as the Covid 19 pandemic recedes. This superb event, with its huge global audience, would be very beneficial for re-establishing New Zealand's international linkages and visibility. It will also maximise the return on the significant investment New Zealand taxpayers and Auckland Council have made in the legacy infrastructure built for AC36.

"We have been working tirelessly to ensure a successful home defence can be staged since the Commodore of the RNZYS asked on 1 June that we seek to arrange funding. We have been successful in that mission and we now invite Team New Zealand and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron to consider our proposals in the positive and constructive way they are made. We are passionate supporters of Team New Zealand and its sailors, designers, boat builders and shore crew."

Dalton has yet to close the door on a possible Auckland defence but has said that Dunphy will play no part in it.

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America's Cup: Team New Zealand refuse to entertain new $40m bid from Kiwi Home Defence to keep event in Auckland - New Zealand Herald

When English settlers first arrived in New Zealand, they brought with them pests, diseases and Englands common law. Indigenous Mori already had legal customs in the form of tikanga, a set of rules and principles which governed daily life. But the settlers dismissed Mori as savages and tikanga as primitive. As their power grew, so did the common laws. Eventually, though many Mori still followed tikanga, it was pushed to the legal margins.

That is starting to change. In 2020 New Zealands supreme court allowed a dead mans appeal to continue, apparently on the basis that his mana (the Mori concept of status) continues to fluctuate after death. This year the court quashed a mining companys appeal over a resource consent application partly on the basis that it was inconsistent with tikanga.

What were seeing now is a Cambrian explosion of activity where the superior courts are in several contexts affirming tikanga Mori, says high court judge Christian Whata. Its a shift which could profoundly alter the way New Zealand law is applied in areas as diverse as defamation and trust law. Ultimately, it represents the indigenisation of a legal system which has been dominated by English thinking since its inception.

Whata is uniquely placed to speak about tikangas role. One of the few Mori serving in New Zealands higher courts, he has recently been appointed to the Law Commission (a government thinktank charged with guiding legal reform) to define and chart the future relationship between tikanga and state law.

He characterises the embrace of tikanga in law as the culmination of a long process. In the late 1980s, he says, New Zealand had this little explosion of ideas regarding legal recognition of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealands founding document. That produced a momentum of its own [But] what we didnt see then was a recognition in a true sense of tikanga Mori.

It took four decades, but that recognition is now occurring in spectacular fashion. Importantly, its relative speed leaves a number of questions open for debate. Individual aspects of it could occupy a doctoral thesis, chuckles Whata. What is tikanga? Im not an expert on that. Its a massive topic in itself. How can tikanga be used in a state law context? Thats its own topic. Should [we even] use tikanga in a state law context? Despite the immensity of these questions and the courts usual preference for more incremental change, to some extent they have little choice but to keep up.

Natalie Coates is a prominent Mori lawyer who worked on both of the recent supreme court cases which engaged in this discussion of tikanga. According to her, it is tikangas resurgence in society outside courtrooms which is driving its recognition within them. Coates pointed to the respected use of rhui (prohibitions on access or use) following the 2019 eruption of Whakaari/White Island as an example. All the iwi (tribes) along the East Coast placed a rhui to respect the fact that a number of people had died and there were bodies in the water We were in the middle of summer. But nobody was in the water. It was overwhelmingly respected by the community. Whata agrees: Law is a reflection of society.

That doesnt mean New Zealand laws embrace of tikanga is uncontroversial. Some oppose tikangas use altogether, with one prominent lawyer recently describing it as a morass of unknown custom. Others are worried the state will selectively or incorrectly use tikanga. Some point to the example of the Native Land Court, which was created in partnership with some Mori in the mid-19th century to settle disputes over property ownership, but was ultimately instrumental in the widespread expropriation of Mori land.

Its an issue Whata is keenly aware of. We obviously need to be careful that we dont, via a process like this, engage in the assimilation of ideas, of tikanga values I will be looking and taking a very cautious approach to that issue.

Regardless of what he finds, it is noteworthy that these questions are being asked at all. Until relatively recently, it would have been difficult to imagine a sitting judge being tasked with planning whether and how tikanga and state law should interact.

Asked about the significance of his appointment, Whata laughs. Have you heard the phrase, the kumara doesnt talk about how sweet he is? Instead, he says: Its a recognition of the importance of tikanga We want to avoid the mistakes of the past and we want to put it on a much better footing We want to lay the foundations as best as we can for addressing how we might recognise tikanga Mori and the values and laws of tikanga Mori in the state justice system.

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Explosion of ideas: how Mori concepts are being incorporated into New Zealand law - The Guardian

Feature

Being in a group full of Asian oppositions could prove a test if the pitches are slow and low

Big picture

While Williamson has already indicated that conditions will decide New Zealand's XI, facing India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh - if they qualify for the tournament proper - will be a tricky proposition.

Recent form

Batting

Bowling

New Zealand don't have a specialist offspinner although Phillips is open to doing the job against left-handers. Santner was the only New Zealander who didn't get a game in this IPL, but head coach Gary Stead believes he will be able to shake off the rust during the warm-up games.

Kyle Jamieson had impressed with his change-ups in Chennai during the first leg of the IPL, but his T20 form has tapered off since. In his last seven T20s, he has managed just a solitary wicket at an economy rate of 10.09.

Player to watch

Key question(s)

Do New Zealand have enough depth in their squad? They've picked only one reserve player in Milne, and left out compelling T20 options in Colin Munro and Finn Allen. If the ball doesn't swing or seam around, how effective will Boult or Southee be in the UAE?

Likely XI

1 Martin Guptill, 2 Tim Seifert (wk), 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Devon Conway, 5 Glenn Phillips, 6 Jimmy Neesham, 7 Mitchell Santner, 8 Kyle Jamieson/Daryl Mitchell, 9 Lockie Ferguson, 10 Ish Sodhi, 11 Trent Boult/Tim Southee

Deivarayan Muthu is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo

Original post:

Adapting to UAE conditions key as New Zealand eye second world title in 2021 - ESPNcricinfo

Green channel flights from the South Island across the Tasman will be delayed for the foreseeable future because of the Australian Governments Covid-19 quarantine requirements affecting Air New Zealand crew.

Last week the Australian government announced quarantine-free travel from New Zealand's South Island would resume from October 20 for double vaccinated people who had not been in the North Island for two weeks.

However, Air New Zealand tells Newsroom most of its crew are based out of Auckland, which means the Australian government's crew quarantine requirement is not viable for the airline.

Air New Zealand chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty says as a result, only red-zone flights which require passengers to quarantine for 14 days from Auckland are flying to Australia.

READ MORE:* Home still feels far away for some Australians stranded in South Island* Covid-19: Stranded Australians baffled by lack of flights from Covid-free South Island* Air New Zealand's Australian quarantine flights sell out in three minutes

While we would love to be able to operate quarantine-free flights out of Christchurch, there are a number of operational issues for our airline. The Australian government has stated that our crew need to have been in the South Island for the preceding 14 days before quarantine-free flying. As our main crew group is based out of Auckland, this is unfortunately not viable, Geraghty says.

For our Aussie neighbours who have been stuck in Aotearoa for the past few months, we are operating two flights per week from Auckland to Sydney from November 5, and from December 1 these services will ramp up to six flights per week. Customers in the South Island are able to transit in Auckland and connect with these services.

David White/Stuff

Air New Zealand has confirmed only red-zone flights which require passengers to quarantine for 14 days from Auckland are flying to Australia due to crew quarantine requirements.

The airline says it is seeking clarification from the Australian government.

While there is a great degree of uncertainty at the moment, we look forward to gaining clarity on when we can get customers back in the air and deliver our world-renowned customer service.

But stranded Australians like LaToya Hamiora have been refreshing Air New Zealands website every day since the announcement and have had radio silence from the airline.

I was on the Air New Zealand website til like 1am because they said they were going to release some flights from the South Island to Sydney and Victoria. And nothing there was no update on the website, Hamiora says.

Debbie Jamieson/Stuff

Air New Zealand chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty (file photo).

The Melbourne-based Kiwi came to visit her family, whom she hadnt seen for three years, in Christchurch three months ago.

I'm very fortunate that my parents are here. And I just feel for all those other Australians trying to get back.

Shes paid thousands in rent and bills for her Melbourne apartment no one has lived in for the time she has been stranded in New Zealand.

Hamiora has had her flights cancelled three times and each time the price has increased, reaching about $1000 for a one-way ticket.

Kiwi Kara Hunt and her Australian husband, along with her 5-year-old and 11-year-old children, were hoping to have moved into their Brisbane apartment by now.

But the family, who sold their house in New Zealand, are living out of suitcases in Invercargill while paying rent in Brisbane for weeks due to the ongoing uncertainty of when they can migrate to Australia and get on with their lives.

I don't know the politics of it all but it's absolutely awful. You don't know where you stand. Should we put the kids into school? How long do we have to stay here?

I'm extremely anxious because the longer we wait, there's the possibility that it will be too late. We know how quickly Delta can move. It takes one case to move like wildfire. So if you don't take the opportunity to take even a few people over, I'm scared it'll be too late.

Hunt says she spends her days refreshing Air New Zealand's website every half an hour for an update.

She says others living in limbo have set up Facebook pages and are considering splurging thousands of dollars on chartered flights to Australia.

The New Zealand Government suspended quarantine-free travel with Australia in September for a further eight weeks due to the Delta outbreaks and will review this decision mid-to-late November.

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South Island-Aust bubble open but Air NZ says operation 'not viable' - Stuff.co.nz

Friday, 22 October 2021, 1:20 pmPress Release: Maritime Union of New Zealand

The union representing New Zealand seafarers is askingthe Government to provide more clarity around MIQ rules forcrews working in international waters.

Maritime UnionWellington Branch Secretary Jim King says MUNZ memberscant understand the logic of a decision to make them stayisolated on their ship.

18 New Zealand seafarersaboard the MMA Vision, managed by New Plymouth-basedKingston Offshore Services, have been on board the vessel ininternational waters.

The crew returned negativeCOVID-19 tests before spending 19 days working at sea, buthave been denied an MIQ exemption.

Mr King says thereis no obvious reason for the crew members to be isolated asthey had not been in contact with anyone else.

TheMaritime Union fully supports strong measures to protecteveryone from COVID-19, but in this case it seems the rulesneed reviewing.

He says there is some confusionabout the apparent different treatment of crew members onthe interisland ferry Aratere, which recentlyreturned from Sydney after maintenance at the drydock.

Mr King says consistency is essential.

TheMMA Vision had been undertaking survey work of thesea floor for the new Southern Cross Cable, a major projectto increase New Zealand's internet capacity.

TheMaritime Union was awaiting a response from maritimeauthorities on theissue.

Scoop Media

Become a member Find out more

Vaccinated New Zealanders will regain everyday freedoms when the country moves to a new simplified COVID-19 Protection Framework that doesnt rely on nationwide lockdowns as the main measure to stop the virus spreading. In a suite of announcements that establish a pathway out of restrictions the Government is also providing up to $940 million per fortnight to support businesses through the challenging period... More>>

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Clarification Needed On MIQ For New Zealand Crews | Scoop News - Scoop.co.nz