新西兰英语 687 Cost of The Hobbit

While yesterday was an exciting time in Wellington with the premiere of The Hobbit, there was a huge cost to the New Zealand taxpayer. Listen to October 8th 2012 to hear more about this. The total is about NZ$100m. On the other hand, the Prime Minist

新西兰英语 92 Vegetable gardens

More and more people are growing their own fruit and vegetables at home with garden centres around the country reporting an increase in the sales of vegetable plants. While gardening has always been a popular pastime in New Zealand, vegetable gardens

新西兰英语 90 New Year

Tomorrow is New Years Eve. At midnight, many people celebrate the New Year with friends. Many towns and cities have a free outdoor concert. At one minute to midnight there is a count down from 60 seconds to 1 second then everyone shouts Happy New Yea

新西兰英语 672 Two years since big earthquake

Two years ago, Christchurch was hit by a major earthquake. Listen to September 4th 2010 to hear about this earthquake. Although there was damage and liquefaction, nobody was killed. It was the February 22nd 2011 earthquake which was so devastating. M

新西兰英语 671 Christchurch Writers’ Festival

Last weekend, a Writers Festival was held in Christchurch. The earthquakes of 2010 meant that the festival was cancelled that year so people have waited a long time for this event. The various sessions were held in the Geo Dome in Hagley Park and the

新西兰英语 670 Royal Commission into collapse of CTV Building

First listen to June 25th 2012 to hear about the Royal Commission and follow the other links on that page. The Royal Commission into the Canterbury Earthquakes has just finished eight weeks investigating the collapse of the CTV building. Yesterday wa

新西兰英语 669 NZ Paralympians

The London Paralympics competition is now finished and the closing ceremony is tomorrow morning New Zealand time. New Zealand sent 24 athletes to the games and received 17 medals. Four swimmers won medals: Sophie Pascoe from Christchurch won three go

新西兰英语 668 Rescue at Sea

A fishing boat with a crew of 43 people on board, caught fire early this morning. The boat, the Amaltal Columbia, was 70 km off the coast of Christchurch at the time. Fire broke out in the fish meal hold about 5.20am. The captain sent out a mayday ca

新西兰英语 667 Official Cash Rate stays the same

The Reserve Bank governor, Alan Bollard, said today that the OCR the Official Cash Rate will stay the same at 2.5%. He also talked about the state of the New Zealand economy. He said it was in a boring state which was a good thing, especially at a ti

新西兰英语 666 IceFest in Christchurch

IceFest is a festival about Antarctica. Antarctica is often called The Ice; for example Dave Dobbyn visited the Ice two years ago. IceFest is a month-long festival, from September 14th to October 14th which includes the school holidays. It is in Hagl

新西兰英语 664 Olympic Gold Medal Ceremony in Auckland

Tonight, an Olympic Gold Medal for the Womens Shot Put was presented to Valerie Adams in Auckland. She arrived back in New Zealand from overseas this morning. At the time of the shot put event in London, Valerie was placed second. However, a week lat

新西兰英语 663 Prime Minister visits Chatham Islands

The Prime Minister visited the Chatham Islands yesterday and today. This is his first visit. The Chatham Islands are part of New Zealand. They lie 800km east of Christchurch, a two-hour flight or a 4 day voyage by ship from the mainland. Only about 6

新西兰英语 658 Maori water rights

The Waitangi Tribunal met for two weeks to discuss Maori water rights. The Tribunal gave an interim report because the full report would not be available until September. The interim report asked the government to postpone the sale of Mighty River Po

新西兰英语 659 New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister at UN

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully, gave a 15 minute speech to the General Assembly at the United Nations on Saturday. He made two main points about the Security Council. The first point was about Syria. He said the UN is not doing enough t

新西兰英语 660 Illegal spying on Kim Dotcom

September 27th 2012 The Prime Minister apologized to Kim Dotcom today for the GCSB spying on him. The GCSB can only spy on foreigners who could be a threat to New Zealand but Mr Dotcom is a New Zealand resident. Most Aucklanders know this because whe

新西兰英语 661 Job losses

This has been a bad week so far for job losses. Yesterday, KiwiRail said that 158 staff will lose their jobs. Many of these people are engineering staff. Also Solid Energy, which owns coal mines, will close Spring Creek in Greymouth with a loss of 22

新西兰英语 665 Changes to schools in Christchurch

Last week, the Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, announced some very big changes to schools in Christchurch. Everyone knew some schools would have to close because families have moved since the earthquake. Also some school buildings are damaged an

新西兰英语 662 New Zealand and US navy will work together

Twenty-five years ago, in 1987, New Zealand became nuclear-free. The Nuclear-Free Act was passed by the Labour government when David Lange was the Prime Minister. The Act would not allow any ships which were nuclear powered or had nuclear weapons to

新西兰英语 755 No oil spill

A 60m squid fishing boat hit rocks early this morning near Stewart Island in rough seas. Some oil started to spill from the boat. There was concern that the oil could spread to a marine reserve not too far away. Yellow-eyed penguin live in this reser

新西兰英语 762 John Key in China

Prime Minister, John Key, is visiting China this week, along with 4 other ministers and many business leaders from New Zealand. The main purpose of the visit is to increase trade. Business leaders want to set up joint-venture companies in China and i