Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Assessing the latest lockdown, two arrested after threats to Christchurch mosques, and tsunami warning system holds up well. Plus – some thoughts down the page on reaching an anniversary.

As with any major government decision made in a potential emergency situation, questions will inevitably be asked about the call. The fourth Covid-19 lockdown ended on schedule, with Auckland coming out of level three, and the rest of the country coming out of level two over the weekend. But it hasn’t gone smoothly, so will the approach to lockdowns change as a result of these last few weeks?

You can cut the government some slack because of that aforementioned emergency, but aspects of their handling of these cases was decidedly messy. As Newsroom’s Marc Daalder writes, they got a bit unlucky in the first place with this outbreak, reversing some previous runs of good luck. But the decision to leave the first lockdown in hindsight didn’t work out. Elsewhere, the communications about the rules did not get through to people. The Detail got into that, questioning whether the messaging system that served the country so well last year is still up to the job. Stuff’s Luke Malpass argued that “the whole Covid playbook probably needs to be rewritten a bit. The longer the pandemic goes on, the more fatigue sets in and the more difficult it gets.”  And on the NZ Herald (paywalled) columnist Matthew Hooton suggested the PM would be privately furious with her officials for having little choice but to put the country back into lockdown. In the news this morning, ministers have rejected calls from the opposition to hold an inquiry into the latest outbreak.

None of this is to suggest that the lockdown was the wrong decision – the counterfactual scenario of an outbreak getting a community foothold is clearly worth avoiding. For an example of that, consider New Caledonia, which has just been plunged into a snap two-week lockdown, after a school headmaster may have been infectious since a month ago. A year of a relatively relaxed approach there has also seen a high case and death rate per capita.

This particular period of the pandemic in New Zealand may not be over either, because we got news of another new case in the community last night. Our live updates covered the news of an Air NZ crew member who has tested positive, after previously going to the Auckland Airport Countdown on 3 March. Auckland was at level three at the time of the visit, so the risk is lowered, but the supermarket is still considered a location of interest, with instructions for people who were in the store on that day to monitor their symptoms. The person returned to New Zealand at the end of February, and was using the app assiduously.

Aside from this incident, the week at level three finished with every indicator suggesting there aren’t any unseen chains of transmission. So attention this week will therefore turn to what comes next. The most important aspect of that will be the outline of how and when the vaccine programme will be delivered. We’re expecting a plan on that this week. You might recall Justin Giovannetti’s piece from last week about how the plan is still basically a secret. Over the weekend, Stuff’s Andrea Vance also got stuck in, arguing that despite the positive press releases, the rollout is actually going very slowly relative to other comparable countries. One thing was teased over the weekend which seems likely – Covid-19 minister Chris Hipkins told Q+A that some form of “vaccine passport” is being considered for those who’ve had the jab.

One thread that came up over the week –  the government has rejected calls to pay workers their full wage directly to self-isolate, reports Radio NZ. The idea was put forward by National, with leader Judith Collins saying it would “make it easier for people to do the right thing and recognising that a lot of New Zealanders are living week-to-week off their wages and they don’t really have any spare cash to get them through.” The thinking was that any money paid out through such a scheme would be much less than the cost of an avoided lockdown. The Greens also backed it, but Covid-19 minister Chris Hipkins was clear it is currently off the table.

Finally, on a somewhat tangential note, the surprise lockdowns have had a serious impact on sport. Of course, that’s a field that has to be a lower priority in an emergency, but many codes would desperately like a bit more leeway on holding the events that keep them in business. Newstalk ZB’s Elliot Smith has discussed whether it is time to start staggering crowd sizes a bit more, to allow for events to go ahead in a socially distanced manner at level two, and it’s a thought-provoking argument. Like I say, it’s not the highest priority, but it does seem symbolic of finding safe ways to manage outbreaks without the bluntness of a lockdown – something that will be an increasing consideration especially as the vaccine gets rolled out.

Two people have been arrested, and one charged with threatening to kill, after threats were made online against two Christchurch mosques, reports Newsroom. The person who allegedly made the threats was indirectly reported to police by the group Paparoa, which tracks extremist behaviour. At this stage, police are treating it as a criminal matter, rather than a case of terrorism. In response to the threats, the Islamic Women’s Council released a statement thanking the person who alerted police. “There can be no tolerance for direct threats to people or buildings, whether these are made online or offline. We ask the public to be vigilant in reporting any such threats to authorities.”

It turns out I spoke too soon last Friday when I said the tsunami threat had passed – further offshore earthquakes created the need for further evacuations. In the end, those evacuations were handled incredibly competently, and largely went off without a hitch. One town that had to pack up and move was Ōpōtiki, which the Bay of Plenty Times reports was emptied in the space of 45 minutes. Praise also came in for the calm work of new civil defence minister Kiri Allan – she was interviewed by Stuff about stepping up into bigger jobs.

Just on that tsunami warning as well, here’s an interesting piece about the science of them. Earthquake expert Ursula Cochran explains how over the course of the day two different kinds of threats came in, requiring differences in the response from many different levels of emergency services, and the public. And it would appear we passed the test.

We’ve been doing our utmost to bring you all the coverage you need of the Covid-19 outbreaks and lockdowns. And we can’t do it without the generous support of our members. If you want to help out our news team with this and other big stories, please sign up here.

The meal delivery company My Food Bag listed on the stock exchange at the end of last week, to underwhelming results. As Business Desk’s (paywalled) Dan Brunskill writes, the IPO listing appears to have been overvalued, and the share price duly fell over the first day of trading. And for those following the reporting in the leadup to the listing, that shouldn’t have really been too much of a surprise. Some people have won pretty big out of it all though – My Food Bag’s co-founders, who appear to have cashed out around the peak of the company’s value to date.

It’s harder than ever to get into med school at Otago, reports Critic Te Arohi. For the sixth year in a row, the cutoff grade from the Health Sciences First Year programme has gone up, though a place in med school isn’t purely dependent on getting the best academic grades. In fact, I realised reading this story that I knew very little about how to get into med school (probably wouldn’t be cut out for it) and the story gives a really interesting rundown of how difficult it is.

A hidden cost of renting you may want to check out with your landlord: Newshub’s Vita Molyneux reports some tenants are wrongly being billed for fixed water charges, which under the law are supposed to be the landlord’s responsibility. Tenants are still required to pay the cost of the water they use, if applicable. But this isn’t an unknown problem by any stretch – the Tenancy Tribunal heard 25 cases on this in 2015 and 2016, and advocates say they’re still seeing incidents of it now.

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Drop us a line at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz

Right now on The Spinoff: Doctor Carolyn Providence writes about how shaming people hesitant about the vaccine won’t work to change their minds, and outlines what might. Toby Manhire analyses what the latest round of google data shows about behaviour during the latest lockdown. Josie Adams has a buzzy explainer about ‘non-fungible tokens’ which are selling for huge values online. Chris Schulz meets the man whose job it is to highlight when journos screw up – Mediawatch host Colin Peacock. Scott Hamilton eviscerates a dreadful and historically inaccurate column by former Labour MP Michael Bassett. Danyl Mclauchlan reviews the sequel to Jordan Peterson’s breakout hit book. Richard Irvine runs down the list of the most cursed objects in New Zealand sport. And Sam Brooks goes through the field of competitors announced for the down-under season of Drag Race.

The Silver Ferns have pulled it off, winning back the Constellation Cup after almost a decade of trying. The NZ Herald’s Cheree Kinnear has a match report which describes how they had to come from behind to win the decider, after taking a 2-1 lead into the final match. Young but long-serving shooter Maia Wilson summed up how much it meant to the team to reach this new height: “It’s such a surreal moment,” she said, “We haven’t been able to bring the Constellation Cup home in a long time so we’re so proud of ourselves. That grind in the second half was something to be really proud of.

And something I was definitely wrong on: Martin Guptill has shown his doubters up over the last two weeks. 218 runs at a strike rate of 160 against Australia – including two match-winning performances – has more than proved the point. The deciding match of the five game T20 series was a comfortable walk in the end, a canny bowling performance backed up by some classy hitting.

Just quickly, a personal note from me to mark an anniversary. It’s amazing what you can learn in the space of three years, if you keep up with the news. You learn how quickly the world can change. You learn about why things you had previously discounted are actually really important. You learn to be more open-minded about whether an idea is good or not, rather than focusing on where it comes from. And if you’re lucky, you’ll learn all the time that something you believed was simple and true actually turns out to be a bit more complicated.

Today – well, Sunday really – marks three full years of doing The Bulletin. And over that time, I think what I’ve learned the most about news is that it doesn’t always satisfactorily explain what is happening in the world. The style and format that it takes means things are often just presented as happening, divorced from context. This newsletter is a weird product, in that it couldn’t exist without the primary source reporting of journalists across the country. There’s only so much reporting me and my colleagues at The Spinoff can get through. But I like to think over time The Bulletin has done something a bit different: It’s not so much about telling people what’s going on – rather, it’s more about helping people understand what’s going on, and why it matters.

That’s not always easy to do, because a lot of the time I don’t really understand what’s going on. It takes a bit of work to get a Bulletin to the point that I’m comfortable that the facts – and my interpretation of the facts – is solid enough to publish. And I’m always aware that among the readers, there will always be someone who knows a lot more about a topic than I do. That sort of feedback is always welcome and valued, but really, it’s always good to get feedback no matter what it is, even if it’s just a difference in opinion. It’s a sign that people care about something if they take the time to send a message on it, and yes, that includes the inevitable corrections people send me.

So thank you so much for reading over the last three years, whether you started on day 1 or this is your first Bulletin. I hope you’ve learned as much from reading it as I have writing it. It remains an absolute privilege to do this job, a privilege to read the work of the journalists of New Zealand every day, and a privilege to write the first thing a lot of people read in the morning. Can’t wait to do it all again tomorrow.

That’s it for The Bulletin. If you want to support the work we do at The Spinoff, please check out our membership programme

Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Cabinet to decide on lifting lockdown today, questions raised about the stability of the housing market, and people instinctively respond to tsunami threat after earthquake.

A decision will be made today on whether or not Auckland will come out of level three, and the rest of the country out of level two on Sunday morning. That decision isn’t a foregone conclusion, but at the moment a lightening of alert levels seems more likely. Our live updates reports we had another day with no new community cases yesterday, out of more than 14,000 processed tests. That includes most of the attendees of a Papatoetoe gym, which was a particularly feared site for transmission.

Speaking briefly last night about the cabinet meeting, associate health minister Peeni Henare said the signs of lockdown lifting were positive. But he told Checkpoint that “all the information” still had to be considered before the decision was made. The NZ Herald reported comments from Henare made earlier in the day, saying there was no chance of an early lift, even if it was another day of zero cases.

On Newstalk ZB this morning, the other associate health minister Ayesha Verrall ran a similar line. She said no new cases had come in overnight. She also defended the decision to go into lockdown in the first place, saying there was a “series of high risk exposures”. She also noted that the spread of cases within households showed that the virus was dangerous, even if it doesn’t appear to have spread further in the community.

There has been some suggestion that it was a mistake to put Auckland back into level three – for example, Newstalk ZB host Heather du Plessis-Allan editorialised on it last night. Because no new cases were announced in the days afterwards, the thinking goes the government might have waited and seen what happened. The counterpoint of course is that a few more days of movement may have resulted in a higher chance of spread, making the need to lock down self-fulfilling. Either way, we’ll have to wait and see what lessons the government takes from the last few weeks of rapid alert level shifts.

Questions are being raised about the stability of the housing market, as a bedrock for the nation’s financial assets. Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr has told a Waikato University forum that he’s concerned that risks are not being adequately priced into the soaring housing market, reports Stuff’s Tom Pullar-Strecker. He says that worry should particularly be taken on board by people leveraging property to buy more of it. Over on Newsroom, Jono Milne has reported on fears around deferred and interest-only mortgages, which swelled massively in volume around the start of the pandemic last year. Note – that piece was written in advance of the Waikato Uni forum.

A big quake hit off the east coast of New Zealand overnight, but the threat of a tsunami has now passed. Radio NZ reports nearly 60,000 people reported feeling the 7.1 magnitude shake, which hit at 2.27am. People still took sensible precautions just in case though – from the RNZ live blog: “A reader, who messaged in to RNZ’s Facebook page, says they’re sitting up on a hill in Gisborne and it’s packed. They say it’s awesome to see people using their common sense and just moving to higher ground.”

UPDATE: 9.00am: As can sometimes happen with these things, further quakes have hit, and evacuations ordered. For all the latest news, keep up with our live updates.

We’ve been doing our utmost to bring you all the coverage you need of the Covid-19 outbreaks and lockdowns. And we can’t do it without the generous support of our members. If you want to help out our news team with this and other big stories, please sign up here.

An interpreter who worked with New Zealand forces in Afghanistan is now facing death, after his residency application was declined, reports the NZ Herald’s (paywalled) Kurt Baker. Nowroz Ali has recently faced death threats from the Taliban, and said if they are carried out the NZ government will have his blood on their hands. He assisted New Zealand’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamiyan province, and the work was unpaid.

The waka-jumping law could soon be cast overboard, with Labour considering their position on a members bill that would repeal it, reports Stuff’s Henry Cooke. The legislation passed last term on the insistence of kingmaker Winston Peters, with some Labour figures expressing distaste, and the Greens expressing outright hostility (they voted for it anyway.) Now National MP Nick Smith is trying to take it out, and he’s hopeful Labour will use their parliamentary majority in his favour.

A ridiculous morning of journalism for Stuff’s Thomas Coughlan, who had two exceptional pieces on the Dominion Post’s front page yesterday. The first piece looks at how money from a central government for a water infrastructure bailout fund has been cut back. And the second piece takes a deep dive through the government’s plans around March and April 2020 for what might be necessary if the absolute worst-case Covid scenarios came to pass. Notably, both stories involved use of the Official Information Act, to bring the documents to light.

A story about a cutting-edge supermarket promotion that has really left a mark on some consumers: Radio NZ’s Hamish Cardwell has reported on the sharp uptick in injuries sustained by aspiring chefs using Smeg Knives – given away over the last few months by New World. More experienced chefs suggest that part of the problem is people not having good technique when using knives, or by not being used to having properly sharp blades.

Got some feedback about The Bulletin, or anything in the news? Drop us a line at thebulletin@thespinoff.co.nz

Right now on The Spinoff: Charlotte Muru-Lanning reports on a MAFS contestant who was booted for outstanding domestic violence charges, and is now facing opposition to his plans to open a central Auckland bar. Adam Currie argues that the Climate Change Commission’s targets are too far off and lack ambition. Gareth Shute looks at the feasibility of current targets around electric vehicles. Business is Boring spoke to a local entrepreneur about inventing the sewer-safe wet wipe alternative BDÉT. Briar Grace Smith writes about what her library means to her, after a lifetime spent in them. Justin Latif meets the South Auckland women behind a healthy food revolution. Sam Brooks asks arts practitioners how the latest lockdowns have disrupted their work. And Alice Webb-Liddall ranks every type of bean she can think of.

For a feature today, a piece about the low-waged workers who are putting themselves on the line to stop Covid getting into the country. The NZ Herald’s Michael Neilson has spoken to several people working on the frontlines, as cleaners and hotel workers, about what their lives are like. Many are currently on minimum wage – in my opinion you could triple that and it still wouldn’t match up to the value they’re giving the nation. Here’s an excerpt:

She is regularly tested for Covid-19 and each night when she returns home she puts her clothes in a plastic bag, washing them separately. She showers before seeing her three children who live in the same property, but in a separate building to reduce the risk of contamination. But despite all the caution, each day she goes to work is another filled with fear and anxiety.

And despite all of this extra burden, the cleaner of nearly 20 years’ experience earns barely more than the minimum wage of $18.90. In fact, she earns less than when the pandemic began – her hours have been cut from 40 to 30 a week, meaning her pay cheque hardly covers the mortgage. She has a 10-year-old daughter at home, and two adult children who support with mortgage repayments and household bills.

“In the long run I am scared we might lose the house, lose the ability to live in the area with family nearby. I want my children, when I die, to have somewhere to stay.”

You may have seen the video of some guy running out into the middle of a racetrack, and coming close to being hit by the horses. As Checkpoint reports, he will face a life ban from every track in the country. The piece points out that his disruptive behaviour started before the actual sprint onto the field. He will also have to do some community service.

That’s it for The Bulletin. If you want to support the work we do at The Spinoff, please check out our membership programme