Politics Central

The Government has just announced a new $70 million tourism package they expect will supercharge the tourism and events sectors. 

The funding includes $40 million to secure large-scale international events from next year, and a regional tourism boost campaign. 

The boost in funding will help New Zealand complete with Australia for major events. 

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Labour's education spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime has met with education minister Erica Stanford to discuss the Government's plan to scrap NCEA. 

It comes after the spokesperson refused to meet with the minister while the reform was in its planning stages. 

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New Zealand First's annual conference has just drawn to a close, and leader Winston Peters made a speech to his audience of near 1000. 

He announced New Zealand First will campaign on making KiwiSaver compulsory, and introduced 10% contributions, which would be compensated by tax cuts. 

All this on top of a potentila new candidate for next year's election - Stuart Nash. 

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Former Labour minister Stuart Nash has put his hat in the ring to be a candidate to become a New Zealand First MP at the party's AGM this weekend. 

Nash was sacked from Cabinet in 2023 after disclosing confidentiall information from a Cabinet meeting to two businessmen. 

Now, Winston Peters says he would be a 'seamless' addition. 

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The latest New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey shows 156,000 victims of serious violent crimes in the year to May. 

It's down 29,000 from when National took office in 2023, and the drop is largely made up of family violence incidents. 

However, the number of sexual assault victims has increased by 3,000 in only three months. 

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This week the Government announced an express lane to fast-track consent for supermarkets that would improve competition. 

The question now being raised, is whether the cost of groceries is a supermarket problem, or a wage problem. 

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NZ Post has suspended most shipping services to the United States and some surrounding countries as they brace for tariffs to come into effect. 

Services will stop on the 29th of August, but NZ Post says it can't give customers an exact date for when things will get going again. 

They expect the suspension to be short term, but it begs the question of what planning was being done when tariff discussions have been ongoing for months. 

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The Government has announced a $2.7 billion defence spending boost to upgrade the aircraft fleet. 

The money will be spent on five Seahawk helicopters and two Airbus aircrafts, to replace the Defence Force's "embarrassing" planes, in Judith Collins' words. 

It's part of National's pledge to boost defence spending by $9 billion over the next four years, but why now? 

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Submissions close tonight for the Online Casino Gambling Bill.

The community sports sector have banded together under the Community Sports Collective, and made a joint submission covering at least 1.67 million people. 

They're urging the Government to share the proceeds of online casino gambling with the community, in the same way they do with current grants. 

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Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin yesterday to come to an agreement over the war in Ukraine. 

The two left the meeting seemingly happy with how it went, and Trump noted it "went very well", but no deal was announced. 

Vlodymyr Zelenskyy will meet with President Trump at the White House later this week. 

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