Morning Report

With karakia and crying a new museum commemorating Maori commitment to New Zealand in times of war has opened at Waitangi.

Built with money from the Provincial Growth Fund, its starting point dates back 80 years to a famous speech made by Sir Apirana Ngata at the one hundredth commemoration of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In the speech, the legendary Ngati Porou leader and Maori MP made the argument that serving in World War II was "the price of citizenship".

Te Aniwa Hurihanganui has been at the Dawn Service for the opening of the museum and speaks to Susie Ferguson.

Southlanders have been pitching in helping stranded tourists after flooding cut off State Highway Six, south of Queenstown. 

Laura Douglas - from the small town of Kingston at the bottom of Lake Wakatipu - says she's never seen flooding this bad.

Yesterday she used her truck to take three carloads of tourists from the waterlogged towns of Athol and Garston up to Kingston so they could get the ferry to Queenstown. 

She speaks to Corin Dann.

News from the rural and farming sector.

A brief update from the business sector.

Chinese students are worried their visas will be cancelled if they are unable to make it back to New Zealand before their term starts.

The fourteen-day travel ban, introduced on Monday, means no foreigners travelling through or from China is allowed into the country.

If the ban is extended it could have huge repercussions on Chinese university students coming here to begin their term in three weeks time.

Harry Lock reports.

Gore and Matuara residents living in low level areas have been told to evacuate.

This after hundreds of people in the Southland towns have had an anxious night after being told to prepare to leave at short notice.

Days of rain have caused the river to rage and large swathes of farmland are under water, with many roads impassable. 

The river was running at 4.5 metres above normal levels at Gore and 6.5 metres above normal just south of Mataura at 5:30 this morning.

The Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli has confirmed that Prithvi Shaw is "definitely going to start", in the first ODI against New Zealand in Hamilton today.

Gore and Mataura residents are being told to evacuate as river levels rise. The flight from coronavirus-stricken Wuhan in China has just taken off, on its way to Auckland. Susie Ferguson is live in Waitangi with all the politics from the paepae.

New Zealand has been told by the British government it will not be worse off as a result of Brexit.

The UK officially left the European Union over the weekend after 47 years.

Trade Minister David Parker told Morning Report last week he'd had assurances that this country will not be disadvantaged.

Susie Ferguson speaks to British High Commissioner Laura Clarke.

The government is being urged to do more to tackle online disinformation after viral posts linked spicy food to catching the Novel Coronavirus.

The posts, widely shared in the Pacific region, were also picked up by an iwi and a Tokelau government-funded organisation.

As Mackenzie Smith reports, they are part of a wave of Wuhan rumours.