Gun-shy
OPINION: Listening to the hysterical reportage of gun law reforms being pushed through by Associate Minister of Justice Nicole McKee, your old mate wrongly asumed the Minister must be planning to hand out free AK-47s.
As many in the know predicted, the police have made a hash of the gun buy-back.
They admit that 35 people had their full details accessed, and “less than 500 people” have had their names and addresses accessed.
The breach occurred when an update to the database -- not authorised by police -- gave a group of gun dealers more access to the database than they were supposed to have.
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) advises gun owners who had used the site that they may need to increase their security.
Learning from Treasury’s abysmal handling of the Budget ‘leak’ earlier in the year, the police at least didn’t try to claim the firearms database had been hacked.
Calls for Police Minister Stuart Nash to resign will be ignored, but perhaps he should start listening more closely to the gun community, including the Feds, to avoid making the buy-back fiasco any worse.
New Zealand's diverse cheesemaking talent shone brightly last night as the New Zealand Specialist Cheesemakers Association (NZSCA) crowned the champions of the 2026 New Zealand Cheese Awards.
Tracing has indicated that the source of the first velvetleaf find of the 2025-26 crop season, in Auckland, was likely maize purchased in the Waikato region.
Fish & Game New Zealand has announced its election priorities in its Manifesto 2026.
With the forage maize harvest started in Northland and the Waikato, the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) is telling growers of later crops, or those further south, to start checking their maize crop maturity about three weeks prior to when they think they will start silage harvesting.
Irrigation NZ is warning that the government's Resource Management Act (RMA) reform risks falling short of its objectives unless water use for food production and water storage infrastructure are clearly recognised in the goals at the top of the new system.
More than five million trays, or 18,000 tonnes, of Zespri’s RubyRed Kiwifruit will soon be available for consumers across 16 markets this season.
OPINION: The good news keeps getting better for NZ dairy farmers.
OPINION: With export of livestock by sea dead in the water, opponents of the Gene Technology Bill think they can…