Earlier this month, everybody’s favourite Monster of the Week series Married at First Sight Australia toppled 1News to become the highest rating television show for New Zealand viewers aged 25-54. The controversial reality series garnered an average audience of 137,000, or 6.7% audience share from March 5 until March 11. 

Not only has Married at First Sight season 10 been chomping at the heels of rivals/replica shows like Seven Sharp since its debut earlier this year, it has also outshone previous MAFS seasons. “Average weekly audience is up 25% and commercial (25-54) audience is up 12.5% on the same point last year,” a spokesperson from Warner Bros Discovery revealed. 

“Over the course of the first 6 weeks of this season, MAFS has been watched by 1.7m people (5+), with weekly reach up 15% versus the same point last year”

With just two weeks left to go, the current season of MAFS has proven to be one of the most captivating seasons in history. With kissing scandals, tearful fights and gaslighting allegations perhaps it is no surprise that more people (aged 25-54 at least) are choosing to watch Harrison – dubbed “the worst man in the world” – than the placid likes of Simon Dallow and Dan Corbett. 

“Married At First Sight just keeps getting bigger and better,” says Juliet Peterson, senior director of content & BVOD at Warner Bros. Discovery. “It’s fantastic to see record audiences watching on ThreeNow and Three, and no doubt this will continue as we ramp up to the final episodes. The couples this season have really delivered – no wonder NZ is addicted!”

And, if you haven’t caught up with all the drama yet, the good news is that our weekly reality TV and popular culture podcast The Real Pod can get you up to speed before the final vows: 

Attempts by rainbow groups to stop an anti-trans campaigner entering the country have failed.

The High Court has dismissed a judicial review application from Gender Minorities Aotearoa, InsideOUT Kōara and Auckland Pride, aimed at the immigration minister for allowing Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull into New Zealand.

As part of the application, the groups sought an interim injunction order preventing Keen-Minshull’s arrival until after the judicial review had been heard.

A two-hour hearing today at the High Court in Wellington has seen the application fail. Keen-Minshull is expected to arrive later today ahead of a pair of rallies in Auckland and Wellington. Both events are expected to be met with significant counter-protests.

The High Court is this morning considering an interim order that would prevent an anti-trans campaigner from making it into New Zealand.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull is expected to arrive on our shores today ahead of two planned rallies in Auckland and Wellington over the weekend.

After immigration officials deemed her safe to enter the country, rainbow groups appealed, saying Keen-Minshull’s views were hateful and harmful.

Auckland Pride director Max Tweedie said New Zealand was on the precipice of anti-rainbow and anti-trans violence. “We had arson last year, vandalism, and so we are so close to violence, and we believe that this event, and her speaking, could be the precipice that takes us over that line,” he told RNZ this morning.

It’s been reported that Keen-Minshull herself won’t be represented in court, but instead the Free Speech Union had been granted leave to appear as an “intervener”.

As reported by Newsroom’s Marc Daalder this morning, correspondence released under the Official Information Act shows advice about puberty blockers was removed from the Ministry of Health website “in the hopes it creates fewer queries” from anti-trans campaigners.

The line that was removed from the site said puberty blockers “are a safe and fully reversible medicine”.

Daalder writes that the initial rationale given to media by the ministry for the removal of the line was that it didn’t want to provide specific clinical advice.

The correspondence reveals that a senior Ministry of Health advisor asked for the page to be altered, “in the hopes it creates fewer queries”.

“The statement is no doubt true, as I am sure you are aware, there are both members of the public and medical professionals who disagree,” they wrote.

When the change was first raised in September one anti-trans activist said more than 50 people had emailed the ministry to get it to remove the line.

A ministry spokesperson did not answer a question about whether it made the change because of pressure from anti-trans activists and minister of health, Ayesha Verrall, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Secondary teachers will strike again next week after an agreement on improved pay and working conditions was not reached.

The strike will take place on Wednesday, less than two weeks after thousands of educators took to the streets across the country.

“PPTA Te Wehengarua members have shown they are serious about getting a new collective agreement with salaries and conditions that will stem the worsening secondary teacher shortage throughout the motu,” said acting president Chris Abercrombie, as reported by Newshub.

And from April 24, PPTA members won’t be attending any meetings outside of school hours, said Abercrombie.

Chris Hipkins’ dump of Ardern-era policy has potentially jeopardised a major part of the government’s climate change response. In this week’s episode of When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks to climate policy expert Christina Hood from Climate Compass to find out why this month’s Emissions Trading Scheme auction failed and how she feels cabinet have destroyed confidence in the market by accident.

Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts

The head of Local Government NZ, the group representing councils across the country, has hit back at claims made by Auckland mayor Wayne Brown.

It was his casting vote that saw Auckland Council leave the representative group yesterday evening, with councillors divided on whether or not it was the right move.

Brown said LGNZ events were basically just an opportunity for elected officials to get drunk. “My band regularly plays at the conferences when they’re held in the Bay of Islands,” Brown told the council meeting yesterday. “Watching 800 members of local boards – no wonder they love them all – getting completely pissed and dancing all night long for no benefit whatsoever to ratepayers has kind of questioned my value of it.”

But speaking to RNZ this morning, Stuart Crosby, the president of LGNZ, called that remark derogatory. “We haven’t had a conference in the Bay of Islands for well over a decade, if not 15 years. It was probably last century some time,” he said.

Despite Brown’s claims, staying in LGNZ would actually have saved the council money, said Crosby. “Local Government NZ developed a programme where members would get a benefit from saving electricity in a thing called ‘dimming their streetlights’. In Auckland’s case [it] was around $1 million… in absolute savings.”

North Shore ward councillor Chris Darby earlier told RNZ that he believed LGNZ was a good way to keep Auckland Council connected with the rest of the country and said the decision to quit the group had damaged the council’s reputation.

The capital’s transport overhaul will have spent $130 million on consultant fees by the end of next year, Stuff reports. Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) expects to spend $60 million on outside experts in the coming year, after already spending $38.5m in the past three years and $35m this year.

Greater Wellington Regional councillor Simon Woolf said the figures had left him “horrified” but his colleague Thomas Nash, chair of the transport committee, said the costs were justified. “[W]ith this much money being invested in Wellington’s transport and urban development future I would hope that we are doing the absolute best due diligence we can get.”

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