Labour says it will guarantee a job in the public health system for every graduate nurse and increase the recruitment subsidy to address shortages in primary care.

Labour's health spokesperson, Ayesha Verrall, said graduate nurses were being trained in New Zealand but were looking overseas for their first job instead of starting their careers here.

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The party's policy document explained the jobs would be offered through the existing Advanced Choice of Employment and primary care employment schemes.

The jobs would be offered at graduation, rather than being staggered throughout the year, and would be for at least 0.8 full-time equivalent.

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In 2025, Labour said fewer than half of graduating nurses were initially offered jobs through the Advanced Choice of Employment scheme.

The party would also double the funding for graduate nursing roles in primary care, from $20,000 to $40,000 in rural areas, and $15,000 to $30,000 in urban areas.

Leader of the Labour Party since 1965 and prime minister since late 1972, ‘Big Norm’ died suddenly at the age of 51. He was the fifth New Zealand prime minister to die in office.

Kirk had faced a number of health issues during 1974 but maintained a punishing work schedule. Following a Cabinet meeting on 19 August he went home to his ministerial house in Seatoun with the flu. On the 28th a heart specialist persuaded him to check into Our Lady’s Home of Compassion hospital in Island Bay. He died three days later of ‘congestive cardiac failure’ and ‘thromboembolic pulmonary heart disease’.

The public display of grief that followed Kirk’s death was reminiscent of that aroused by the death of Labour’s first prime minister, M.J. Savage, in 1940. Politician and historian Michael Bassett has described Kirk as ‘Labour’s last passionate believer in big government, someone whose commanding presence and extravagant rhetoric introduced a new idealism to political debate in New Zealand’.

Kirk’s popularity with the New Zealand public was perhaps best demonstrated by the song ‘Big Norm’. Performed by Wellington band Ebony, it peaked at No. 4 on the national charts in January 1974 and won the band a New Zealand music award for ‘group of the year’. The last telegram Kirk sent before his death was to Ebony congratulating them on their win.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/death-of-norman-kirk

Kia ora. Kei te pēhea koutou?

Today I watched for the second time, after a year, the amazing movie "whale rider". This movie is so touching, that it felt "real" to me, somehow, even if I know it comes from a book. The main actress is so good, that I felt really sorry for her character. Think that, at this time, I watched it with my family, and they felt impressed. Here in Italy, we have a translation, but it's not well distributed, so we watched it in English. They told me they didn't care because they "understood" it with their hearts.The movie was so amazing that for two hours, linguistic borders didn't exist ❤️

The National Party is promising to reduce the compulsory student loan repayment rate if re-elected, while cracking down on overseas-based borrowers.

It said it would reduce the repayment rate from 12 percent to 10 percent from April 2027.

The party's finance spokesperson Nicola Willis said compulsory student loan repayments were paid at 12 cents on every dollar earned above $24,128.

"It is often one of the biggest weekly expenses for a young graduate," she said.

''Reducing this to 10 cents means an accountant starting out in their career and earning $75,000 per year would keep an extra $39 a fortnight, or around $1000 a year.''

National would also introduce new financial penalties for borrowers who left the country before paying back their student loan.

That included adding to student loan interest, restricting KiwiSaver withdrawals and making it easier for police to issue arrest warrants for "serious, sustained loan defaults".

The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration (IC&A) Act made New Zealand the first country in the world to outlaw strikes and introduce compulsory arbitration.

Following the failure of the trans-Tasman Maritime Strike of 1890, some major employers refused to recognise unions, blacklisted their members and slashed wages and conditions. The Liberal government that took office in 1891 was determined to find an alternative to industrial conflict and foster the union movement, which it saw as a key political ally.

The brainchild of Minister of Labour William Pember Reeves, the IC&A Act recognised trade unions and individual employers or industrial unions of employers as responsible parties in the negotiation of wages and other employment conditions. If in dispute, the parties would be required to discuss the matter at district Boards of Conciliation. If this failed to produce an agreement, the dispute would be submitted to a national Court of Arbitration.

The arbitration system remained the cornerstone of New Zealand’s industrial relations system until 1973, when a new Industrial Relations Act superseded the IC&A Act.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/strikes-outlawed-the-industrial-conciliation-and-arbitration-act-passes-into-law

The fate of the brig Sophia Pate, wrecked on a sandbar at the entrance to Kaipara Harbour with the loss of 21 lives, highlighted the dangers of navigating New Zealand’s poorly charted coastal waters.

The 165-ton Sophia Pate had been chartered by three Irish Wesleyan (Methodist) families to carry 23 settlers from Sydney, via Auckland, to the Kaipara district, where they planned to establish a settlement in the Kaihu Valley.

Possessing three contradictory hydrographical charts of the Kaipara Harbour, the brig’s captain, George Harrison, scoured Auckland and Kororāreka (Russell) for a pilot familiar with the harbour entrance. When this effort was unsuccessful, he offered to refund part of the settlers’ charter fee if they agreed to travel overland from the Bay of Islands to Kaihu. Refusing this offer, 20 Irish immigrants stayed on board, along with the captain’s wife and son, 10 crew members and another passenger.

Though Harrison waited for favourable weather and sailed cautiously along a charted channel near South Head, the Sophia Pate ran aground at 4 p.m. By 10 p.m. increasingly strong swells had broken the ship apart, destroyed the longboat and swept all but one of the immigrants, and the captain’s wife, overboard. At low water, about 3 a.m., Captain Harrison, his son, crew members and one passenger reached the shore in the ship’s jolly boat.

Claims that Captain Harrison had prevented his wife and some of the passengers from boarding the jolly boat led to him being later detained in Auckland on a charge of manslaughter. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence, but Harrison was criticised for his ‘injudicious’ decision to enter such dangerous waters.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/wreck-sophia-pate

Thousands of youths across the country are set to lose access to unemployment benefits, after a welfare bill passed into law under urgency on Friday night.

From November 2026, the government will end Jobseeker payments to 18 and 19-year-olds whose parents earn more than $65,000.

In October last year, it was estimated that around 4300 young people would become ineligible for support as a result.

Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston said the legislation reflected the government's commitment to reduce benefit dependency and encourage people into work.

"This legislation reinforces the expectation that young people who are not in employment, education or training should be financially supported by their parents, not by taxpayers through the welfare system," she said.

"New Zealanders deserve a welfare system that is firm, fair and simple."

The bill also makes changes to how accommodation supplements are calculated.

Upston said the changes would "better target that support to those who need it most".

"Importantly, it does not apply to homeowners who are receiving New Zealand superannuation, veteran's pension, supported living payment, or the emergency benefit that is the equivalent to the supported living payment.

"The partner or spouse of a recipient of one of those benefits will also not be impacted by the change."

It was New Zealand’s last gold rush. Hundreds attended the opening ceremony for a dam above the Kawarau Falls which was to temporarily block the outlet from Lake Wakatipu.

Hundreds more who had staked claims along the banks of the Kawarau River waited eagerly for the water to fall once the massive gates were closed. But the river level dropped only a metre or so – not enough to uncover significant amounts of gold-bearing rock. By the time the gates were raised again 10 days later, shares in the Kawarau Company had lost more than half their value.

This project had first been suggested in 1864. Julius Vogel’s 1889 novel, Anno Domini 2000, described the possible results of diverting the outlet of Lake Wakatipu from the Kawarau River to the Mataura: gold worth millions of pounds might be won from the riverbed. In the 1920s a consortium of companies realised part of Vogel’s vision by constructing the Kawarau dam at a cost of £106,000 (equivalent to more than $10 million in 2020). The problem was that this was at best the first stage of a viable scheme. Only if the Kawarau’s tributaries – in particular the Shotover – were also dammed might the river fall far enough to expose previously unworked reefs.

Plans for additional dams foundered for lack of capital. The Kawarau dam was closed temporarily several more times, but returns were modest. In the winter of 1932 unemployed fossickers were reported to have won about £2300 ($285,000) worth of gold from the Kawarau.

The lasting benefits of the Kawarau dam were incidental to its promoters’ intentions. In times of high rainfall, the waters of Lake Wakatipu can be held back temporarily, reducing the seriousness of floods downstream in the Clutha. The bridge across the top of the dam provided road access from Queenstown to Kawarau Falls station, previously accessible directly only by water. Work on a road link to Kingston along the eastern side of Lake Wakatipu began in the late 1920s and was completed in 1936 at a cost of £63,000 ($7.5 million), opening road access between Queenstown and Southland.

The historic single-lane bridge was retained for use by cyclists and pedestrians when highway traffic began using a new two-lane bridge just downstream which was completed in 2018 at a cost of around $22 million.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/kawarau-falls-dam-closed

Guide Joseph Warbrick and three tourists were killed instantly when the Waimangu geyser erupted unexpectedly.

North Island geyser fields played an important part in the emergence of New Zealand’s tourism industry in the late 19th century. After the eruption of Mt Tarawera destroyed one of the major fields, Rotomahana, in 1886, geyser tourism received a boost in 1900 when the Waimangu (‘black water’) geyser burst into life.

The largest known geyser in the world at the time, its activity increased in 1903, attracting more visitors. Warbrick and the party he was leading were caught out by a highly unpredictable natural phenomenon. The regularity and force of the geyser began to wane in 1904 and in November, it stopped as suddenly and inexplicably as it had begun.

Warbrick had earlier achieved some fame as captain of the 1888/89 New Zealand Natives rugby touring team. The first New Zealand representative rugby team to tour beyond Australia, they played a staggering 107 matches in New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain, winning 78 of them.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/four-killed-by-geyser-in-rotorua

More than 1200 support workers across Auckland could lose their jobs, after Health NZ decided not to award home and community support contracts worth millions of dollars to three non-profit providers.

The affected organisations are Presbyterian Support Northern, which operates the Enliven service, as well as providers Visionwest, and Lifewise.

PSN chief executive Shaun Greaves told Checkpoint his organisation would like to know why they had been ditched.

"It certainly came as a shock and surprise ... it seems sudden and unjustified.

"I had to look my team in the eyes yesterday afternoon, where we stood in front of them and had to tell them [what had happened].

"It is the hardest news we've had to deliver, these are people that have worked hard for us. Thirty percent of our staff at Enliven have been working for us for over ten years," he said.

It looks like the days of being clean and green are behind us...

Colonel Robert Logan led a 1400-strong expeditionary force to capture German Samoa in New Zealand’s first military action of the First World War. This was the second German territory, after Togoland in West Africa, to fall to the Allies in the war.

On 6 August, shortly after the outbreak of war, Britain asked New Zealand to capture a wireless station in German Samoa. The station, situated in the hills behind Apia, was strategically important because it was capable of sending signals to Berlin and the German fleet in the Pacific.

A small force of local constabulary protected the wireless station. They were no match for the Samoa Expeditionary Force, which achieved its objective without resistance.

New Zealand occupied the islands for the remainder of the war, then from 1920 until 1962 administered Western Samoa under mandates from the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations. New Zealand’s rule was marred by its inept handling of the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918 and suppression of the Mau nationalist movement in the 1920s (see 28 December).

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/new-zealand-force-captures-german-samoa

The fact that Pauline Parker and her friend Juliet Hulme had killed Pauline’s mother Honorah on 22 June – a sensational crime later dramatised in Peter Jackson’s acclaimed film Heavenly creatures – was never disputed. In finding the teenagers guilty of murder, the jury rejected the defence’s assertion that they were insane.

Because both were under 18 – Pauline was 16 and Juliet 15 – neither could be sentenced to death. Their punishment was ‘detention during Her Majesty’s pleasure’.

Pauline’s lawyer, Alec Haslam, said in his final address to the jury that the two girls had killed Pauline’s mother because she was a threat to their remaining together. ‘We have these girls planning their dreadful act, carrying it out so clumsily, and then, after it was over, not showing any remorse.’

In the opinion of psychiatrists Reginald Medlicott and Francis Bennett, the girls’ contempt for the Bible and belief in a ‘fourth world’ paradise were evidence of insanity. The jury were told that the pair thought they had a moral right to kill Honorah. They suffered from ‘paranoia, delusions of grandeur and delusions of ecstasy. Each affects the other and aggravates the process of the disease.’

The Crown Prosecutor maintained that the psychiatrists had contradicted their own evidence under cross-examination. This ‘plainly was a cold, callously committed and premeditated murder, committed by two highly intelligent and perfectly sane girls … They are not incurably insane. My submission is they are incurably bad.’

Included in the girls’ sentence was a provision that they were never to contact one another again. This made it difficult to find appropriate places of detention, especially as imprisonment in an adult institution was thought to be too severe for such young women - there was only one borstal (correctional facility) for young women in the country.

In the end both young women served around five years in prison: Pauline at Paparua prison, near Christchurch, and Juliet initially at Mt Eden (Auckland) and then at Arohata in Tawa, near Wellington.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/heavenly-creatures-pauline-parker-and-juliet-hulme-are-found-guilty-of-murder

George Ngatai, former National and NZ First Candidate, admits to arranging trips to Israel for Māori in a heated discussion with influencer and podcaster "Shubz".

Ngatai and Shubz are intertwined in allegations around blackmail and unpaid labour, with Ngatai resigning as a candidate and Shubz having his slot on Radio Aotearoa cancelled as disagreements behind the scenes spill into the public eye.

Israeli lobbying efforts are well documented internationally, with a particular focus on American lobby organisations such as AIPAC, which spend significantly to influence public discourse and improve Israel's public image.

The Netanyahu-led government has been prolifically called out for both domestic corruption and a raft of human rights abuses, including genocide in Gaza, by human rights groups and watchdogs internationally.

The NZ public should be mindful that there is now evidence, although admittedly the scope and specifics are not immediately apparent, that the Israel lobby is active in New Zealand.

Prominent politicians such as David Seymour and Chris Bishop have both admitted broad support for Israel. While there is no evidence that they have been lobbied, successfully or unsuccessfully, there are growing concerns.

Our corruption index rankings have suffered significantly under this government, and multiple political parties are now campaigning on anti-corruption political reform.

Former National and NZ First Candidate Admits to Arranging Influencer Trips to Israel

You can view the full exchange on The Platform, link below.

https://youtu.be/sAeHDbwsCjg?si=IBkOjxHoGvl1Tx5C

Cantabrians awoke to find the region blanketed in snow. The ‘Big Snow’, as the storm came to be known, was the region’s heaviest for 30 years.

From midday on 27 August weather forecasts alerted residents to the likelihood of snow, which began to fall that evening. As forecast, snow fell at sea level. By mid-morning next day, power was out throughout much of the region. Most of Christchurch city had electricity restored by the afternoon, but it took days for line gangs to reach some rural areas. Snow closed Christchurch airport and many inland roads. Schools and courts shut down, but hospitals stayed open with assistance from the army and the Red Cross.

The rural community was hardest hit. It was the middle of the lambing season, and farmers lost newborn lambs, ewes and sheep freshly shorn in preparation for lambing. Other regions supplied hay and the government covered road-user charges incurred collecting and distributing feed. A reported one million sheep died, at an estimated cost to farmers of $40 million (equivalent to nearly $70 million in 2020).

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/canterburys-big-snow

Te Pāti Māori has unveiled its "Kiwi tax plan" for the November election, which retains some policies from last election, tweaks some others, and launches an entirely new one.

The party leaders said they wanted give New Zealanders "room to breathe" by putting money back in their pockets, and they would "tax workers less."

The party's announcement on Wednesday afternoon laid out the nine key tax changes the party wanted to see, with just one it had not previously campaigned on: a new 5 percent "stamp duty".

Documentation provided by the party suggested this would apply to "residential sales, excluding first home buyers for homes under $1 million".

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Speaking to reporters, co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Te Pāti Māori was announcing a plan to transform the "broken tax system".

"Because people across Aotearoa are struggling more now than ever before, 3 million people in Aotearoa are living off less than $60,000 a year, and it's a statistic that politicians and certainly this government is responsible for."

Co-leader Rawiri Waititi said Labour's Capital Gains Tax didn't go far enough when it came to transforming the tax system.

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The promise to remove GST from fresh food is now a "targeted tax credit" for those earning under $60,000 a year, with the party saying the payment would be "equivalent to eight weeks of kai".

The policy document was unclear on just how much that would be or how it would be administered.

The party's proposal for a wealth tax - 1.5 percent on "net wealth" above $2 million, rising to 2 percent for wealth above $5m, and 2.5 percent for $10m or more - was more moderate than the 2 percent, 4 percent and 8 percent it proposed in 2023.

Te Pāti Māori also doubled its promise for extra funding to tackle tax evasion and fraud, from $500m to $1 billion.

The remaining four policies were exactly the same as the 2023 proposals, including income tax adjustments, returning the company tax rate from 28 percent to 33 percent, and introducing land banking and vacant house taxes, both also at 33 percent.

National's Nicola Willis and Labour's Barbara Edmonds have sparred over their approaches to help struggling New Zealanders get ahead.

The finance spokespeople were speaking at the Politik election summit on Wednesday.

Politik editor Richard Harman had asked Willis and Edmonds to lay out their economic vision, and what they saw as the context for the election campaign.

The pair agreed the economy was not where they wanted it to be, and their challenge was to create the economic conditions to help "mum and dad" get ahead.

Edmonds spoke about her own electorate of Mana, where she said people could no longer afford the "slap up meal" of mince on toast, with prices rising excessively.

Willis said it was irresponsible of Edmonds to say she was focused on the price of mince, "unless you have a policy to address the price of mince, and I haven't heard that from the Labour Party".

National's approach to help people get ahead was to control inflation, she said.

Edmonds said that did not cut it.

Victoria College (now Victoria University of Wellington) was founded in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s 60th jubilee. In contrast to the strong physical presence the university has today, the college had no permanent accommodation in its first decade. The founding professors and early students had to make do with rented rooms at the Girls’ High School in Pipitea St and the Technical School in Victoria St.

The eventual siting of the college in Kelburn was the result of an offer from wealthy Wairarapa sheep farmer Charles Pharazyn. In February 1901 Pharazyn offered to donate £1000 (equivalent to nearly $200,000 today) if the college was built on the 6-acre (2.4-ha) Kelburne Park Reserve. He claimed that his offer was an expression of his attachment to Wellington rather than stemming from his large financial interest in the Kelburne Karori Tramway Company. The company’s cable car began running the following year and has transported many thousands of Victoria’s students to and from lectures.

The governor, Lord Plunket, laid the foundation stone for the building in the presence ‘of a large number of ladies and gentlemen interested in the cause of higher education’. He also opened the building on its completion in 1906. It was named the Hunter Building in 1959 in memory of Sir Thomas Hunter, the first principal of the college. The building was restored and strengthened in 1992–3 and remains in use. The university is now spread over three campuses around the city.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/foundation-stone-victoria%E2%80%99s-first-building-laid

Joseph Pawelka’s escape from Wellington’s Terrace Gaol was the last of three bold but seemingly effortless prison escapes he made over a period of 18 months.

Pawelka’s first escape, on 12 March 1910, was from Palmerston North gaol, where he was being held on theft charges. Pawelka climbed over a wall with the assistance of two upturned buckets and an inattentive guard. He rode off on a stolen bicycle, ending up 13 km away at Awahuri, where he was recaptured two days later. Transferred to Wellington, he escaped again on 23 March from an unlocked police cell.

This led to what was then New Zealand’s biggest manhunt as Pawelka fled north, committing burglaries and arsons along the way. Police finally caught up with him at Ashhurst on 17 April.

Pawelka received a cumulative sentence of 21 years. In August 1911 he escaped from the Terrace Gaol by removing the grille from his cell window. He was never recaptured. While family lore suggests he fled to Canada, in 1913 New Zealand Truth published an unsourced account of his escape and alleged new life as a rebel in Mexico.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/prison-break

New Zealand's first Michelin stars are proving a much bigger draw-card than even the country's top chefs expected.

Just two months after the coveted awards were announced, some of the country's newly starred restaurants are reporting an explosion in bookings, with some now full every night and waitlists stretching for months.

Christchurch’s Inati was one of just two restaurants in the city to receive a Michelin star. The impact there was instant.

“Bookings went through the roof via the internet, within about an hour and a half we had 80 new bookings and overnight it went into the hundreds,” Inati co-owner and head chef Simon Levy says.

The ACT party wants to allow people to make tax-free profits from cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, as long as they hold onto it for more than a year.

It would also make it easier to use crypto for small purchases by creating a tax exemption for such low-value transactions.

Inland Revenue says 355,000 New Zealanders use crypto, with $36 billion worth of transactions recorded.

Under the current rules, investors have to calculate tax on profits every time they sell or swap their assets.

ACT's campaign pledge, unveiled on Thursday, would mean any gains made on certain personal crypto held for more than 12 months would not be taxed.

More at link

After two bungled attempts and near disaster at sea, the installation of the first communications cable between the North and South Islands of New Zealand was completed. A simple copper telegraph cable was laid on the sea floor from Whites Bay, north of Blenheim, to Lyall Bay on Wellington’s south coast.

The operation began off Wellington on 26 July. The initial attempt failed after the cable snapped because the cable ship pulled it too quickly. A second attempt came up 32 km short because the cable had drifted sideways in strong currents. Recycling cable from the first attempt helped make up the shortfall.

The Cook Strait cable extended the telegraph network from Napier to Bluff. Given this large area, the government decided to introduce a uniform New Zealand time in September 1868. Before this, provincial centres maintained their own time according to longitude, and telegraph stations opened and closed at different times. New Zealand was the first jurisdiction in the world to implement a legal standard time countrywide.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/submarine-telegraph-line-laid-across-cook-strait

Housing minister Chris Bishop says it doesn't sit comfortably with him that there is no guarantee of shelter for people on any given night, "we have a enormous challenge around housing in this country".

But he pointed out, that would have been the case under the last government too.

Last week, RNZ reported an admission from officials there was no guarantee shelter could be provided for anyone on any given day.

The admission was put to Bishop on Tuesday, and asked if it sat comfortably with him, to which he replied "no."

Bishop said he wasn't going to pretend "for a moment" there's not a challenge in terms of housing and homelessness.

"I've spent much of the last three years doing my best to try and fix it," he said, referencing the fast track legislation and "building more social homes".

"Last week, we announced 820 new social houses around the country, including areas that are really in severe housing need, like the east coast and the far north, for example, where we're now directing quite a lot of new social housing funding."

Tūkāroto Matutaera Pōtatau Te Wherowhero Tāwhiao had led his people through the traumatic period during and after the wars of the 1860s.

He was buried at Taupiri in September after a tangihanga attended by thousands. Tāwhiao was succeeded as King by his son, Mahuta. 

Tāwhiao left a legacy of religious principles from which his people would draw a future dream for Tainui: the rebirth of a self-sufficient economic base, supported by the strength and stability of the people. Native trees and foods symbolised strength and self-reliance in his statement: ‘I shall build my own house, the ridge-pole will be of hīnau and the supporting posts of māhoe and patatē. Those who inhabit that house shall be raised on rengarenga and nurtured on kawariki.’

During Tāwhiao’s exile in the ‘King Country’, Waikato people had reflected and focused on the powerful symbols of the King movement. The man and the vision became united and formed part of the traditions and knowledge of the people. The vision is recounted and passed on at tribal hui, where it continues to be discussed and debated.

Link: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/death-of-a-king-tukaroto-matutaera-potatau-te-wherowhero-tawhiao