Wellington councillors Sarah Free, Tony Randle, Diane Calvert, Tim Brown, Ray Chung, and Nicola Young have lodged a notice of a motion to declare a vote of no confidence in flagship transport project Let’s Get Wellington Moving with the council’s chief executive, reports Stuff. 

The notice asks the council to withdraw from the $7.4 billion transport overhaul, which is intended to deliver a range of improvements to the region’s transport, in partnership with the government and regional council. The improvements include infrastructure for light rail, pedestrianised streets, cycle lanes and a potential new tunnel under Mount Victoria which will reduce carbon emissions and make travel throughout the Wellington region faster and more efficient. The project has been criticised for delays, changes in senior leadership and disruption caused by additions like the Cobham Drive pedestrian crossing.

The project has a structure where 60% of the funding is provided by Waka Kotahi, along with 20% by each Greater Wellington and Wellington City Council. The councillors proposing a vote of no confidence say that they do not believe the governance structure has sufficient accountability or that the council can afford it. They are proposing a vote at a council meeting on June 29.

“The particular dynamics of Wellington City Council are for the council and for the mayor to manage,” said transport minister Michael Wood. “But a big transformational program like this, you’ll always expect that there’ll be some people who support positive change, and some people who don’t have the vision and the ability to lead the way through.”

Newshub has a storied history of producing exquisite short political films, such as the time Nikki Kaye said Paul Goldsmith  was Māori.

Today it’s released an unedited draft of what will surely be turned around into another thrilling piece for tonight’s 6pm news. But don’t wait until then! Because you can watch 13 minutes of National MPs being grilled on bilingual road signs right now. And it’s gripping to watch.

The bilingual road sign issue first took hold in the media last week, but has somehow managed to keep on going. 

Set in parliament’s corridors, and opening with a shot of a shocking bilingual road sign and the subtitle “what’s wrong with this sign”, we are introduced to lead character Simeon Brown. The National transport spokesperson is being questioned for his view on the signs. He says “most people understand English” and so it’s important that people driving can still understand them, before being asked whether he can read the English that will be on the bilingual signs (he says he can). And it’s also important to fix potholes, Brown says, before being reminded the signs are only being replaced in areas where they need to be replaced anyway, such as cyclone-hit Gisborne. He’s also asked whether he’s proud being the MP for Pakuranga (he says he is, and then, unprompted, says he also likes singing the national anthem in te reo Māori).

But in a shocking twist, not all National MPs agreed with Brown. Supporting character Harete Hipango says “te reo Māori is an official language” and her position differs from Simeon Brown’s. What happens next? You’ll have to watch the full video here.

Wiz Khalifa and Rae Sremmurd have been locked in as headliners for Light It Up, a new hip-hop festival coming to Auckland on September 10. Also on the bill for the one-day event at Spark Arena are Australian artists Lola Brooke, Hooligan Hefs, Youngn Lipz and DJ BeastMode.

Weed-loving rapper Khalifa, known for his Fast & Furious hit “See You Again”, was last here in 2015 for his own a headlining show, while duo Rae Sremmurd were here with Nicki Minaj for the FOMO by Night festival in 2019. Both performed in the same venue Light It Up is being held.

New Zealand is well catered for with hip-hop festivals, with Juicy Fest bringing Ashanti, T-Pain, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and, potentially, The Game, here in early 2024. Earlier this month, New York acts Wu-Tang Clan and Nas performed a joint show together during a state of emergency.

Tickets for Light It Up go on sale on June 2. A pre-sale is being held on June 1.

The government’s still hoping to meet with National, after the opposition pulled support for a bipartisan housing deal over the weekend.

It’s been reported that housing minister Megan Woods has now sent two letters to National asking to meet. And National’s Christopher Luxon and Chris Bishop have both said they’re open for a conversation, though have not responded to the letters yet.

Last week, Luxon first signalled his party’s intention to wind back support for the medium density housing rules, despite his deputy Nicola Willis being a driving force behind the policy in 2021. A few days later, the party’s new policy, which would see those rules become optional, was formally unveiled.

Luxon said the government’s offer to meet was a signal the existing policy wasn’t working. “We would love to sit down with them and do a bipartisan deal on our policy,” he said.

However, Woods said she had heard reports of housing developers pausing new projects as a result of uncertainty caused by National’s decision to retract support.

“We’re talking 400 to 500 affordable first homes that are now put on hold because the National Party has broken what we had, which was some bipartisanship,” Woods said.

Shanti Mathias explains the impetus behind her new feature on international education:

“If you ask me if I’d like to send my children abroad, I’d say yes, but if you ask me if it’s good for society I’d have to say it’s a question mark,” economist Binod Khadria told me, as I wrote this feature about how international education changes New Zealand. As Khadria indicates, it’s a question of scale: while going overseas for study is hugely expensive, especially in a country where the median income is drastically smaller than New Zealand, it’s often an economic risk that can pay off for individuals and their families.

Post-pandemic, as New Zealand is trying to fill its educational institutes with students again (with uneven results), it’s worth asking: what kind of transaction is international education, for this country and the ones that send their students here? And in this system, who is most poised to benefit? I talk to students, families, recruiters, and immigration advisers, and draw on economic and social data to take a wide-scope look at this system – while reminding myself that, in moving to New Zealand to study, I’ve participated in this story too.

Read Shanti’s full feature here

The Department of Corrections is pulling ads aimed at hiring more officers after complaints they were “racist” and “offensive”.

The Herald’s reported that the ads, which were being displayed on buses in Waikato and Bay of Plenty, asked prospective officers to “become the change for our Waikato whānau”.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive had the behind the scenes details of a “white saviour” ad campaign run by Corrections earlier in the year. Those ads, which were deemed by the Advertising Standards Authority to have contributed to “negative stereotyping of Māori and Pacifica people as criminals”, were also pulled following complaints.

The Department of Corrections deputy chief executive Māori, Topia Rameka, told the Herald that the new ads were never meant to offend, but were being removed immediately. “I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the offence caused. While ignorance is no excuse, I am confident that harm was not intended. I have also apologised directly to senior executives of Waikato-Tainui iwi,” Rameka said.

Newsroom’s David Williams has an in depth look at Stats NZ’s scurry “to rescue” the census. As Williams writes, “the official line from the census programme board meeting minutes was: ‘Overall field collection for the 2023 census is continuing to track to plan.’ Unofficially, the picture seemed chaotic and calamitous.”

Simon Mason is deputy government statistician and deputy chief executive of census and collection operations. He confirmed to Williams that it was unlikely the census would achieve several key performance indicators, including those involving response rates from Māori and Pasifika and that the first data release from the census will be moved from March next year to the end of May 2024.

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Who’d have thought that whether or not we should have bilingual road signs would be an issue that dragged on through multiple days? Well, it is an election year after all – so it’s impossible to predict what will become a talking point.

Last week at a public meeting in Birkenhead, National’s leader Christopher Luxon kicked off another round of debate over the use of te reo Māori. As I wrote at the time, it felt like an extension of comments made by NZ First’s Winston Peters during an address he made to party faithful earlier in the year. Luxon made two remarks that did the rounds on social media. Firstly, he criticised the renaming of government departments, saying it was difficult for people to “navigate”. And secondly, he said it was “dumb” to spend money on bilingual road signs instead of fixing the thousands of potholes.

In the days that followed, the bilingual road sign issue gained further traction. National’s Simeon Brown said: “Signs need to be clear. We all speak English, and they should be in English. Place names are okay, but when it comes to important signs saying things like ‘Expressway’, they should be in English, as it’s going to be confusing if you add more words.”

But then, National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said the party had no problem with it in principle: “I would put the bilingualism into the nice-to-have category rather than a must-do-immediately category.” As Newsroom’s Jo Moir pointed out on Twitter, National may need to sort out its position on issues like this rather than making “random off the cuff remarks” at public meetings.

Last night, prime minister Chris Hipkins said the party was “dog whistling” and took aim at Luxon’s attempt to trademark “kia ora” during his time at Air New Zealand. Kiri Allan, the justice minister, made similar comments, as reported by Stuff.

But speaking this morning on Newshub’s AM, the prime minister was asked who he thought the opposition was dog whistling to. He wouldn’t go so far as to say National was appealing to “racists”, but suggested there was a “racist underbelly” that National was targeting.

“I don’t think we’ve got anything to fear by having te reo Maori n street signs,” said Hipkins, adding that in an area like Tairawhiti, which is having road signs replaced following Cyclone Gabrielle, much of the population was Māori.

Bishop has raised concerns that the bilingual signs may be more difficult to read for older drivers. Hipkins wasn’t buying it. “If [Bishop] had a look at the signs, he would see the words in English are still very obvious. This isn’t on the critical safety signs like give way… they will always be the same as they’ve always been,” said Hipkins. “This is around place names, directions to amenities. One can only interpret they have some other concern they’re not being upfront about.”