Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Posted on

PSA calls Ombudsman to mediation following move to disestablish jobs and outsource financial functions

Source: PSA

The PSA has called for mediation with the Office of the Ombudsman after the Office moved to disestablish jobs from its finance team and outsource their work to private accountancy firms, in breach of its collective agreement with the PSA.
The collective agreement requires the Office negotiate with the external contractor to attempt to have affected employees continue on the same or similar terms and conditions of employment.
The Office did not follow this process. Instead, it released a decision this week to disestablish eight roles, including financial leadership roles, and contract their work out to in an effort to save costs. The Office made no attempt to protect or transfer these workers’ employment when deciding to outsource their functions.
“It’s bad enough that a public sector organisation wants to hand its financial management over to a private company, creating a significant conflict of interest,” said Duane Leo, National Secretary for the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi. “It is also leaving dedicated staff out in the cold.
“These workers dedicate their skills and experience to careers serving the public, and it is vital that we keep their skills and experience wherever possible.
“We’ve asked the Office to attend urgent mediation to resolve this matter. If it refuses, the PSA will seek all avenues to stop this change, including appropriate judicial or legal scrutiny.”
In reaching its decision, the Office ignored grave concerns about the risks of outsourcing and privatisation raised by PSA members during consultation. The PSA represents 133 people working at the Office.
“This decision is a desperate attempt to work with a budget that’s been shrunk by the Government and its ideological drive to cut costs,” said Leo. “And now we see who benefits; the Government would rather line the pockets of private contractors than properly fund functioning, independent public services.”
The rationale for the Office’s decision relies heavily on a report prepared for them by KPMG, which recommended disestablishing the roles and outsourcing the financial functions. The Office’s decision this week did not include a final decision on a vendor.
“The Office of the Ombudsman has a critical role in holding the entire public service to account,” said Leo. “Effectively managing its own financial capability should be a core part of the Office’s operations.
“Chopping up public functions and contracting them out will not give New Zealanders a public sector that delivers for them.”
The Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi is Aotearoa New Zealand's largest trade union, representing and supporting more than 95,000 workers across central government, state-owned enterprises, local councils, health boards and community groups.
Posted on

Fire Safety – New fire station opens in Marlborough

Source: Fire and Emergency New Zealand

Flaxbourne Volunteer Fire Brigade will celebrate the official opening of their new fire station on Sunday.
The new building is on the site of the former Ward Fire Station, which was damaged by the Kaikōura earthquake in November 2016.
Flaxbourne’s Rural Controller Duncan Roberts describes the new station as “fantastic” and says it will enable the brigade to operate more efficiently and safely.
“Just having both the trucks parked side by side instead of one behind the other is a great improvement,” he says. “There is vehicle fume management in the appliance bay to get rid of the diesel fumes and storage for our safety equipment, as well as a training room.
“It’s a big move for us.”
Flaxbourne’s firefighters are trained and equipped to respond to structure fires and wildfires, medical events, vehicle crashes and natural disasters including storms, floods and earthquakes.
Their new station has been built to Importance Level 4 (IL4) earthquake resilience standard, with additional water storage and generator back-up power, to ensure the brigade’s ability to respond to any natural hazard event.
The Ward Volunteer Fire Brigade amalgamated with the Flaxbourne Rural Brigade in 2022. Until moving into their new station this month, they have been operating from a nearby building owned by the Flaxbourne Settlers Association.
The new station will be officially opened by Fire and Emergency Deputy National Commander Megan Stiffler on Sunday 19 April.
Posted on

Events – Governor-General’s visit to Gallipoli for Anzac Day

Source: Government House

The Governor-General, Her Excellency Rt Hon Dame Cindy Kiro, GNZM, QSO, will represent the people of New Zealand at this year’s Anzac Day commemorations in Gallipoli.
Dame Cindy and His Excellency Dr Richard Davies will travel to Türkiye on 19 April and return to New Zealand on 26 April.
On 24 April, Their Excellencies will attend the Turkish International Service, the French National Service, and the Commonwealth and Ireland Service in Gallipoli.
On Anzac Day, Dame Cindy will speak at the New Zealand and Australian Dawn Service in Anzac Cove, lay a wreath at the Australian Memorial Service at Lone Pine, and speak at the New Zealand National Service at Chunuk Bair later that morning.
During her visit, Dame Cindy will also travel to Ankara to meet His Excellency Mr Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of the Republic of Türkiye, and His Excellency Mr Numan Kurtulmuş, Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly.
Posted on

First Responders – Kaiteriteri gas leak – final update

Source: Fire and Emergency New Zealand

Fire and Emergency New Zealand is now scaling back its response to a gas leak near Kaiteriteri’s beachfront.
Fire and Emergency was alerted to the leak at 6.50am. 
Assistant District Commander Chris Best said one crew remains at the scene to ensure gas is completely dispersed.
“They’re expected to leave later this morning.
“Roads in the area are now reopened and people have been allowed to return to properties that were evacuated earlier today,” he says.
“I would like to thank the public for their cooperation and crews for working hard to ensure the area is safe.”
Posted on

Activist Sector – NZDF training with US should stop amidst illegal war – Peace Action Wellington

Source: Peace Action Wellington

Peace Action Wellington is calling for an immediate end to NZDF training with US forces amidst the illegal US-Israeli war against Iran. The Defence Force plans to send 50 personnel to a big aerial and ground drones exercise in the United States alongside US forces.

The US Project Convergence training exercise includes 6000+ troops from the US, Australia, UK, France, Japan and Canada. This training follows on a three month NZDF deployment of 34 infantry troops to Korea to train alongside Korean and US forces that started in March, and the participation of the NZDF in Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) competition hosted by the US Marine Corp at Camp Pendleton in California.”

“The NZDF is deeply embedded with the US military now and regularly conducts training to ensure the 'interoperability' of NZ troops into US combat operations.  This is despite the US and Israel waging an aggressive war against Iran and bombing countries without provocation,” said Valerie Morse

Aggressive war is often referred to as the “supreme international crime” because it encompasses the planning, initiation, and waging of war in violation of international law. This concept was notably established during the Nuremberg Trials, where leaders were held accountable for such actions.

“The US is deeply complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity for the funding of the genocide in Gaza over the past 2+ years. Furthermore, the current commander in chief has threatened to commit war crimes in Iran by 'bombing it back to the stone age'.”

“New Zealand should have nothing to do with war criminals and those who actively destroy international law. The NZDF should operate with countries that uphold international law and do not wage aggressive wars.” 

Peace Action Wellington has today launched a petition aimed at ending troop training with the US military. (ref. https://our.actionstation.org.nz/petitions/stop-nz-troop-training-with-us-forces )

Notes:

Posted on

Tax Reform – Local govt GST policy just more cuts by another name, says tax reform groups

Source: Tax Justice Aotearoa (TJA)

17 April 2026, 10:00 am – The hint from David Seymour about a new policy for councils to receive a portion of the GST collected on construction projects in their areas, has been criticised by tax reform groups Tax Justice Aotearoa (TJA) and the Better Taxes for a Better Future Campaign. TJA and Better Taxes say this is just an excuse to further cut government public services, without properly tackling the issue of local government funding.

“There may be some merit in sharing GST raised in an area with the local council but, according to media reports, this policy has been costed at $5b over 4 years. Unless central government raises revenue from other forms of taxation, that will just mean further cuts to our already stretched public services,” says Glenn Barclay, spokesperson for TJA and Better Taxes.

“Minister Seymour is quite explicit about that when he said that government needs to get smaller. That really means that there will be more cuts to services that New Zealanders rely on like health and housing, and further moves to private services and user pays, in the middle of a cost of living crisis.”

“We invite the Minister to review our recently launched Tax Policy Statement to see the kind of policies that could be used to offset this loss of central government revenue,” says Barclay. “If they were willing to bring New Zealand into line with the rest of the OECD by taxing capital gains, or look at a net wealth tax on the very wealthy, then policies like this might become affordable.”

TJA and Better Taxes also point out this policy appears to have been developed without consideration of the wider issue of local government funding.

“A number of interesting ideas for the funding of local government have been raised over the years and this could be one of them, but the Government needs to take a holistic look at local government revenue raising tools,” says Barclay.

“Local Government funding is constrained and rate payers are feeling the pressure of increasing rates. Councils need to be properly funded for the functions they're required to perform, no strings attached. This policy runs the risk of councils cutting corners on the enforcement of important building regulations in order to boost their revenue. We have been through the leaky buildings' disaster, so we know what cutting regulatory corners can look like.”

TJA and Better Taxes will be watching the budget closely to see whether the Government coalition partners National and NZ First have just fallen into line with yet another policy driven by ACT Party dogma, or whether there are conditions built in that will ameliorate the worst effects of it.

Posted on

Tech – Roblox Studio is Going Agentic

Source: Roblox

Plan, Build, and Test Faster With Agentic Workflows in Roblox Studio – Today, 44% of the top 1,000 creators on Roblox use Roblox Assistant or third-party AI tools via MCP to plan, build, and test their games.1 We're levelling up Roblox Studio and Assistant with new agentic features so that creators can use AI to accelerate every step of the plan, build, test loop. We're also surfacing features to third-party tools via Studio's built-in MCP server. Creators now have more flexibility to augment their workflows with AI tools that can help them ship ambitious games faster.

Plan: Improved Planning Mode  

Game development is a multistep, multidiscipline endeavour that requires continual exploration and iteration. AI tools that intake a prompt and output a solution in one step can feel like shooting in the dark and often fail to truly capture a creator's original intent. We're introducing an improved Planning Mode to turn Assistant into a multistep, collaborative development partner that works with creators to analyse the game's code and data model, ask clarifying questions, and turn a complex prompt into a highly detailed, reviewable, editable action plan.

Creators can add context and tweak the plan to make sure it reflects their intent before any changes are made. The plan serves as a mini game design document that agents can use to execute tasks in parallel and check their work against the original vision. Assistant creates a structured manifest of tasks with context that it can reference for the remainder of the session. Soon after launch, we'll add the ability to automatically store this context so it can be referenced across sessions.

Build: New Mesh and Procedural Generation Tools

With a plan in place, it's time to build out the world. New Mesh and Procedural Model Generation features accelerate the building process and help creators turn their plans into detailed, interactive worlds. Mesh Generation allows creators to quickly add textured meshes to the game world.

We'll also soon introduce Procedural Models controlled by code. Creators will be able to generate Procedural Models with customizable attributes using text and image prompts, or they can build them from scratch. Attributes like the number of shelves in a bookcase, the number of chairs around a table, and more can be adjusted dynamically, creating smarter, editable building blocks that can be refined and reused for other purposes.

Test: New Playtesting Agent Beta

Testing and iteration are key to creating a robust game that keeps players coming back. Many creators have built sophisticated testing workflows and envisioned even more sophisticated workflows enabled by AI:

“In the future, community members could surface bugs or feature requests and my AI system could review and complete tasks overnight. When I wake up, all I have to do is check the pull requests and see what I want to integrate into the game.” – Malt, creator of Solo Hunters  

Assistant's new playtesting agent beta can help test the game against the original plan, analysing the code and data model, reading logs, and using the player character as an automated QA tester to verify behaviour.

With the new capabilities across planning, building, and testing, Assistant is better at using agentic loops to test different aspects of the game, surface suggested solutions, and then incorporate the results into future planning loops, creating a self-correcting system that becomes more accurate over time.

More Workflows, More Flexibility

AI is accelerating workflows for planning, building, and testing games, and we're committed to improving our tools so creators can close the gap between creative vision and execution.

We're working on enabling other common workflows, allowing agents to run in parallel, building long-form cloud agent workflows for complex tasks, developing more intelligent NPCs that can simulate more types of player behaviour, visualizing AI workflows with a node graph, and supporting more tools and input methods. We're also making sure creators can seamlessly use Claude, Cursor, Codex, and other third-party tools with Studio by surfacing all the context about a project via unprivileged APIs and Studio's built-in MCP server. (ref. https://devforum.roblox.com/t/assistant-updates-studio-built-in-mcp-server-and-playtest-automation/4474643 )

1Creators who used Assistant or MCP features in Roblox Studio between 3/6/2026 and 4/7/2026. Top creators ranked by Robux spent in experience over the past 28 days as of 4/7/2026.

Posted on

First Responders – Firefighters respond to gas leak in Kaiteriteri

Source: Fire and Emergency New Zealand

People are being advised to stay away from Kaiteriteri this morning while firefighters deal with a large gas leak near the town’s beachfront.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand was alerted to the leak at 6.50am. Properties in the immediate area have been evacuated, roads are closed and cordons are in place.
Assistant District Commander Chris Best said that the leak appeared to have come from external gas tanks. Work is underway to ventilate buildings and clear gas from drains, but could take several hours.
“It’s a lovely day here and many people would usually head to the beach at Kaiteriteri, but for today we are asking them to choose another destination while we make the area safe again,” Chis Best said.
Firefighters from Kaiteriteri, Motueka, Upper Moutere, Mapua and Nelson are involved in the response.
Posted on

Advocacy – Palestine Forum of New Zealand Marks Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, Calls for Justice and Accountability

Source: Palestine Forum of New Zealand

The Palestine Forum of New Zealand stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people today, April 17, in commemorating Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, a day that highlights the ongoing suffering and injustice faced by thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

For decades, Palestinian prisoners have been at the heart of the struggle for freedom and dignity. Today, over 9,000 Palestinians, including children, women, journalists, and political leaders, are detained under a system that has been widely condemned by international human rights organisations. Many are held under administrative detention, imprisoned without charge or trial, in violation of fundamental principles of justice and international law.

“These prisoners are not just numbers; they are sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers whose lives have been disrupted by a system of occupation and control. Their continued detention reflects a broader pattern of systemic injustice that must not be ignored.”

— Maher Nazzal, Palestine Forum of New Zealand

Reports from organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented widespread concerns, including ill-treatment, denial of medical care, and the use of solitary confinement. The Forum is particularly alarmed by the treatment of Palestinian children in detention, many of whom are subjected to military courts and denied basic legal protections.

Calls on the New Zealand Government

On this day, the Palestine Forum of New Zealand calls on the New Zealand Government to:

         Publicly advocate for the immediate release of all Palestinians held under administrative detention

         Demand adherence to international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention

         Support international accountability mechanisms addressing violations against Palestinian prisoners

The Forum also calls on civil society, human rights groups, and individuals across Aotearoa New Zealand to raise awareness, speak out, and stand in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners and their families.

“Silence is complicity. We must continue to raise our voices until justice is achieved and freedom is realised for all Palestinians.”

— Maher Nazzal, Palestine Forum of New Zealand

Posted on

Te Whau Pathway recognised for connecting Auckland communities to nature

Source: Herenga ā Nuku – the Outdoor Access Commission

Te Whau Pathway Environment Trust – which is promoting the construction of a landmark walking and cycling route following the Whau River – will receive an Outdoor Access Champion award. The award celebrates the Trust’s role in connecting West Auckland communities with their local environment and creating safe, accessible spaces for people of all ages.
Te Whau Pathway Project is delivered as a partnership with Auckland Council, Auckland Transport, Henderson-Massey and Whau Local Boards, Te Kawerau a Maki, and Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei,
The Outdoor Access Champion Award, presented by the Outdoor Access Commission, Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, will be awarded at 3.00pm on Thursday, 24 April at Te Ipu Kura a Maki – Henderson Civic Chamber, Level 2, 1 Smythe Road, Henderson.
Once completed, Te Whau Pathway will link neighbourhoods from Te Atatū Peninsula to Green Bay, creating Auckland’s only off-road route connecting the Waitematā and Manukau harbours. As sections open, the pathway is already becoming part of daily life for local whānau – a place to walk, cycle, wheel, learn about the environment, and spend time alongside the awa.
Outdoor Access Commission chief executive Dan Wildy says the pathway stands out for the way it puts communities and accessibility at the centre.
“Te Whau Pathway shows what’s possible when communities design their own access to their local environment,” says Dan Wildy.
“It’s a project that opens up the Whau River for people who live nearby – including kids – in ways that are safe, inclusive and connected to homes and communities.”
A key focus of Te Whau Pathway Environment Trust has been working with local schools and tamariki, helping young people build the pathway and strengthen their connection to the river. The pathway provides safe, off-road options for walking and cycling and opportunities for learning about waterways, ecosystems and kaitiakitanga.
Chair of Te Whau Pathway Environment Trust, Tony Miguel, says the project is as much about people as it is about infrastructure.
“Te Whau Pathway is being built with the communities it runs through,” says Tony Miguel.
“We work with schools and tamariki to build the pathway. It’s not just about transport, it connects them with the Whau, so they can understand their local river, and know that this pathway belongs to them.”
Designed as a shared pathway for walkers, cyclists and wheelchair users, Te Whau Pathway improves access to neighbourhood parks, bird habitats and green spaces, while supporting low-carbon, everyday travel. Its staged construction approach allows people to start using sections as they open, while environmentally sensitive design helps protect the river and surrounding ecosystems.
Several on land sections are already open, with the first major boardwalk section was opened in March this year. As more of the pathway opens, it will continue to strengthen connections between suburbs such as Te Atatū, Glendene, Kelston and Avondale – linking people to schools, shops, parks and the waterfront.
The Outdoor Access Champion Award presentation will celebrate the collective mahi of community members, partners and supporters who have helped bring Te Whau Pathway to life.