Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Black Caps batsman Henry Nicholls reported by match umpires for alleged ball tampering in Plunket Shield match.

Meanwhile, the Black Caps are all but into the Cricket World semi-finals, but could they beat India?

And the Warriors are taking some of their games to Christchurch. Is this a good idea?

Weekend Sport host Jason Pine spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan about these stories and more. 

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Disappointment with NZQA after major disruptions for Year 11 students sitting an online exam.

More than 20,000 tried to sit the NCEA Level 1 English exam today.

But the system buckled under the pressure after about 18-thousand pupils had logged on - and access was cut.

Avonside College Principal, Catherine Laws told Heather du Plessis-Allan a number of students were distressed.

She says those with special assessment conditions already have barriers to communicating what they want to say, so it was really tough for them.

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I don’t Karl Le Quesne the guy who runs the Electoral Commission.  

He seems like a serious sort of man who takes his job seriously which is the kind of person I quite like.  

So I have nothing against him, but he has to lose his job over the stuff ups this election.  

There have been too many stuff ups:   

The problem getting getting the Easy Vote cards out before the election.  

The computers system crashed for a while on election day.  

They lost an entire box of votes in the final count.  

15 seats ended up having wrong final counts.  

And finally, they thought it was a good idea to put a voting booth in a marae in Manurewa where the CEO of the marae was running for parliament and won the seat and is now an MP.  

If you were generous, and most of us are, you could probably excuse a few counting errors and and a computer system crashing because mistakes happen.

But this many mistakes is too many, and there is no excuse for putting the voting booth in the marae.  

Sure, Karl wasn't personally counting the votes and running the computer system so you might think it’s harsh for him to lose his job.  

But here’s why he has to: standards, and Karl should be made an example of to the rest of the public service. 

Because it is getting sloppy all over the place  

Stats NZ stuffed up two censuses in a row, the Electoral Commission stuffed up the election, Adrian Orr stuffed up inflation, Pharmac's CEO got busted writing snarky emails about a journalist cum patient advocate, and today the NZQA stuffed up the NCEA level 1 English exam when the online system couldn't handle 20,000 students and slowed down so badly 10% of them couldn't do it online. 

We have a right to expect our public servants to do their jobs to a certain standard and if they don’t there should be consequences.   

If the incoming government wants to tidy up the public service and get them operating anywhere near the same standard as businesses up and down this country they have the perfect way to send a message.   

Start by holding the boss of the Electoral Commission responsible for a job badly done. 

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Boris Johnson warned that the Tories were 'drifting to defeat' under Rishi Sunak's leadership.

The former Prime Minister claimed Sunak was offering voters 'nothing to rally behind' and that they needed a 'positive agenda for change'.

UK correspondent Enda Brady says the Opposition party is currently leading by 45 percent in the polls and they're in with a good chance ahead of next year's election.

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Tonight on The Huddle, Nick Mills from ZB's Wellington Mornings and BRG director Georgina Stylianou joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day- and more!

Winston Peters held an impromptu press conference about the ongoing coalition discussions, and claimed 'speed is of the essence'. Is Winston getting impatient? 

Labour's Helen White is under pressure to defend her campaign, after emails leaked showing her volunteers blamed Hipkins, and the Greens for her election result? What do we think of this?

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Industry experts are 'cautiously optimistic' about Fonterra's plan to reduce on-farm emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

The dairy co-op has promised to utilise new technology, changes to farming practice and existing and new vegetation to remove carbon.

The Country's Jamie Mackay says a 30 percent reduction in 7 years is unlikely, based on current projections.

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More eyes are on the Commerce Commission, as Foodstuffs seeks their approval for a merger.

The retail giant hopes to merge its North Island and South Island operations into one business, but needs the Government agency to sign off.

NZ Herald business editor at large Liam Dann says these businesses have to see some threats of legislation or disruption before they get too big.

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Fifteen voting places have been found to have data entry errors causing changes for electorate candidate results.

The Electoral Commission has just released amended official results after doing a full check of party, electorate and special votes.

Errors include one electorate where some special votes were entered incorrectly, and 620 votes in the East Coast that were included in the preliminary count but not the official count.

ZB political editor Jason Walls says this mistake adds to a worsening look for the Electoral Commission.

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Creditors of failed online grocery business Supie today voted in favour of liquidation at a watershed meeting.

A report from BusinessDesk counted 14 people in multiple meetings held about the company, despite 100 seats being laid out at PwC's Auckland office.

Neat Meat founder and former Supie creditor Simon Eriksen doesn't think there's a lot of money left over.

"The money has gone, and knowing enough about that business- there probably isn't a lot left over after you pay wages and whatnot."

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Global logistics company Mainfreight has reported a significant slump in net profit and revenue.

Their result shows profits declined 42 percent, to $124 million- after a successful 2022.

CEO Don Braid says the company managed to have two really good years, as the company took advantage of unprecedented demand.  

"We're now heading towards a more normalised trading environment, freight volumes are down dramatically from the nutty period where we had economic stimulus from Governments around the world."

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