Hipkins off to UK in first major overseas jaunt

He's in London for the coronation, and to put some friendly pressure on PM Rishi Sunak over our free trade agreement.

Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Tuesday, May 2 by Catherine McGregor. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.

In today’s edition: Invercargill councillor accused of sexual harassment; who’s donating big bucks to political parties this election year; changes to clean car discount scheme coming in July. But first, with meetings with the King and the British PM coming up, and a call with Zelensky last night, it’s a big week on the world stage for Chris Hipkins.

Off to see the King, and his fellow PM

It can be hard to believe it’s already been more than seven months since the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, until you remember that Jacinda Ardern – still months away from announcing her resignation as prime minister – was New Zealand’s representative at Westminster Abbey. Now it’s Chris Hipkins who is on his way to the coronation of King Charles III on Saturday, accompanied by a delegation including opposition leader Christopher Luxon. Speaking to media before his departure last night, Hipkins said he would be pledging his allegiance to the King despite his personal view that New Zealand should separate itself from the monarchy. “I’m on record as being a republican… But I've also indicated it's not a priority for me. It's not something I intend to push.” While in London, Hipkins will meet with British prime minister Rishi Sunak, with a focus on speeding up the legal commencement date for the New Zealand-UK free trade agreement (FTA) signed last year. Under the FTA, the UK will eliminate all tariffs on New Zealand exports, and give duty-free quota access for NZ beef, lamb, butter and cheese.

Increased NZ support for Ukraine’s defence on the cards

As part of his UK trip, Hipkins will visit New Zealand Defence Force personnel who are giving infantry training to new members of the Ukrainian military, most of whom are civilian volunteers. Hipkins plans to make an announcement there about further support for the Ukrainian defence effort, having spoken with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky last night. Political scientist Robert Patman tells RNZ it’s “absolutely critical” that New Zealand steps up its support for Ukraine. “If you contrast New Zealand's contribution with that of Australia and Canada… even taking into account we're a much smaller country than either, [ours] is still much smaller than they've contributed." The NZ announcement will come at a critical moment for the Ukraine war effort. “After blunting a Russian push over the winter, the Ukrainian military is on the cusp of launching a counteroffensive against occupying forces,” Time magazine reports, in a story on the race to arm Ukraine with the weapons it needs. 

Will Chris meet Joe in PNG?

One international meeting Hipkins could not confirm yesterday was with Joe Biden. The US president will be in Papua New Guinea on May 22, and PNG’s Post Courier newspaper has claimed Hipkins will be one of 18 Pacific Island Forum leaders to meet with him in Port Moresby. Hipkins says that is still speculation. “That event has not yet been confirmed and therefore no invitation has been received,” he told reporters yesterday. However, should an invitation be issued, he said he’d accept it if it fitted with his schedule. Biden’s visit to PNG is a sign of the “heightened geo-strategic competition between Washington and Beijing” across the Asia-Pacific region, writes the NZ Herald. “While the US has repeatedly insisted its renewed interest is driven by a desire to help Pacific Island nations tackle serious threats such as climate change and illegal fishing, the reality is the jockeying with China is an underlying driving force.”

In the high court, another royal saga plays out

As Charles prepares for his coronation this Saturday, his son is preparing for battle. Prince Harry has launched legal proceedings against Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, publisher of the Sun and the Times, alleging “the company targeted him with widespread illegal activity for much of his life, including hacking his voicemails and illegally obtaining personal information in the name of journalism”, the Guardian reports. Many of Harry’s allegations relate to claims of illegal behaviour at the Sun, which News UK has always said was not involved in the phone hacking scandal that forced the closure of its News of the World paper in 2011. Before the trial can proceed, a judge must decide whether Harry can bring the case at all – News UK’s lawyers claim he waited too long to launch proceedings. That hearing is scheduled for later today. 

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Invercargill councillor accused of sexual harassment by an 18-year-old former employee

Sitting Invercargill councillor Nigel Skelt was given a formal warning over alleged sexual harassment of a teenager just weeks before stepping down as general manager of the city’s stadium, Stewart Sowman-Lund reports. According to documents released to The Spinoff under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, an 18-year-old employee at Stadium Southland alleged Skelt had sexually harassed her during a work shift. “[Skelt’s] comments and actions left the employee in tears and made her feel unsafe returning to work,” Sowman-Lund reports, and she subsequently resigned. According to the Southland Times, details of the complaint and its resolution, brokered by Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark at the behest of the stadium trust chairman Alan Dennis, were kept from the public and Skelt’s fellow councillors. “The stadium board is now undertaking an external independent review of how the matter was handled, and Dennis is ‘voluntarily standing aside’’ in the meantime,” Michael Fallow reports.

A knitwear company just handed the Greens a cool $100k. Who else is opening their wallets?

The Greens just banked $100,000 from a local knitwear business – but they're still a way off matching some other parties' election year donations, writes Toby Manhire for The Spinoff. The big Greens donation came from Christchurch-based Weft Knitting Company, and co-owner Hugh Douglas says it was made “to show our support to the party best equipped to action the initiatives around climate change”. The Weft contribution draws the Greens level with Labour in declared donations so far this year, but both are dwarfed by Act which “booked just shy of a million dollars that required reporting in 2023 – more than four times the next biggest purse”. Major Act donors included Graeme Hart, Dame Jenny Gibbs and toy tycoon Nick Mowbray. “National’s biggest are Christchurch rich-lister Philip Carter and Velocity Freight, and Labour’s banked big cheques from party activist Islay Little and the Dairy Workers Union,” Manhire writes.

Jo Norris on Stuff’s bold new approach to paywalls for news

Over the weekend Stuff introduced paywalls for three of its powerhouse regional mastheads, while keeping the big Stuff platform free to all. Chief content officer Jo Norris joins The Fold to explain the thinking behind the move to Duncan Greive.

Tweaks to EV feebate scheme to change eligibility rules, discounts

Changes to the clean car discount scheme will come into effect from July 1, the government has announced. The cap for eligible vehicles’ emissions will decrease from 146g of CO2 per kilometre to 100g, meaning non-plug-in hybrid-petrol cars will no longer be covered by the discount. The rebate on new EVs and plug-in hybrids is being reduced, but will rise for used imports. Transport minister Michael Wood says the increase to used vehicle rebates is aimed at encouraging more lower and middle income New Zealanders to buy a lower emission car. Meanwhile the fees paid by buyers of high-emission cars – the so-called “ute tax” – is to increase, and the threshold for what qualifies as a high emissions vehicle will drop from 192g of CO2 per kilometre to 150g. Wood says the changes are necessary to keep the scheme sustainable, noting it’s been so successful that it’s driving a level of EV uptake not expected until 2027. “With over 100,000 rebates granted since the scheme came into effect in 2021, we currently have one of the fastest uptakes of EVs in the world,” Wood says.

Click and collect

• Williams Corporation co-owner Matthew Horncastle told his Instagram followers he likes to imagine himself as a Jewish business owner being hauled off to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany when facing criticism in the media. 

• Stats NZ has been giving away Warriors tickets and food vouchers to coax people into completing the Census as the May 3 deadline looms. 

• Surgeons are calling for lap seatbelts to be phased out after an eight-year retrospective review found they could do “catastrophic” damage to children in crashes.

• There’s been a sharp rise in borrowers going into arrears on their buy now, pay later loans, with new data showing 10% are now behind, a record high.

• The free real estate magazine Property Press is closing after 45 years in business, with its owners saying the move to online advertising has made the print publication unsustainable (NZ Herald, paywalled).

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Get in touch with me at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz.

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Right now on The Spinoff

In a new edition of The Side Eye, Toby Morris looks at how trans people become the scapegoat du jour. Better data leads to better health for disabled people, says Dr Esther Woodbury. A new documentary about notorious 90s band King Loser is crowdfunding its production – the filmmaker tells Chris Schulz why And professional chocolate judge Luke Owen Smith explains what his job entails, and how he got so lucky.

Sporting snippets

• Andy Marinos has shocked the Australian rugby community by announcing his resignation as CEO of Rugby Australia just four months out from the World Cup. 

• Former coach Yvonne Willering says Noeline Taurua should stay as Silver Ferns coach, regardless of the World Cup result. 

• The genuine, compelling rivalry of Chiefs vs Crusaders is exactly what Super Rugby needs a lot more of, writes Dylan Cleaver. 

The rise and fall of the sites that made an artform out of going viral

Ben Smith’s new book Traffic, about the super-charged digital media era of the 2010s, could hardly be more timely. It was released just as Buzzfeed News, the news organisation he founded in 2011 (he went on to launch news startup Semafor), announced it was closing – a fitting coda to Smith’s tale of how the media got hooked on the “false promise of traffic”, then found themselves flailing when Facebook turned off the spigot. 

In his excellent review for Slate, Dan Kois laments Smith’s laser focus on Gawker and Buzzfeed, but admits: “Of course no book could cover the 2000s and 2010s online media world in toto. It was simply too sprawling, a Yellowstone National Park of content with unexpected geysers and hot springs bubbling up everywhere, fueled by superheated passion that had boiled underground for our whole lives.”