The government will allow a 'Parent Boost' visa from September.

It will grant parents of citizens multi-entry access for five years, with the opportunity for renewal once - meaning they could hold the visa for 10 years.

Applicants will also need to meet specific health, income, and insurance requirements.

NZ Immigration Principal Consultant Katy Armstrong says New Zealand's not always just a skip across the ditch. For some people its a 24-hour journey or more, so the visa's a significant move.

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Steve Price and Mike Hosking discuss the impacts of Scott Morrison’s COVID policies and support for Australian citizens.

Morrison provided relief money for countless Australians during COVID to keep families afloat during the pandemic. A move he now says has led Australians to lean on the government.

Price also discussed the use of Amazon to order machetes and large knives into Australia, and if the machete ban will work as the government intended.

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There are plenty of questions after an Australian naval ship accidentally blocked internet and radio services across parts of the country.

It's understood the radar of the HMAS Canberra accidentally interfered with one of the shared spectrum bands that anyone can use free of charge.

Intelligence expert Paul Buchanan saysoperational security was lacking.

He wants to know why the Canberra was on a commercial band, given it's the most important ship in the Australian navy

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Large-scale protests have erupted in Los Angeles in response to ICE deportations set up by President Trump to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The National Guard has now been deployed to LA by The President to assist the local police and riot squads in stopping the protests.

A third of the people living in Los Angeles were born outside of the USA, with many hailing from Central and South America.

President Trump has insisted that these deportation raids only target “hardened criminals.”

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Little guidance around how money is spent on principals' wellbeing, is being seen as a key cause for excessive state-school spending.

A report from the Office of the Auditor-General - as reported in the Post - has discovered 54 schools were questioned for “sensitive” spending with no apparent educational benefit.

In 2022, the Ministry of Education paid $6.3 million dollars to 524 schools, with principals able to access up to $6,000 dollars each for wellbeing.

PPTA President Chris Abercrombie told Mike Hosking that there was little guidance on the money, which he says gave principals freedom to do as they see fit.

He says there weren't many rules about how the money should be used at the start.

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Mike Hoskings and Prime Minister Chris Luxon sat down in the studio this morning for a discussion on electricity and gas in New Zealand.

“The oil and gas ban was one of the dumbest, most insanest moves I’ve seen happen.” said the PM this morning.

According to Luxon, New Zealand must steer back away from coal in favour of gas as a source of energy. “We’re the only country I’m aware of in the world that’s actually transitioning from gas to coal.” Which Luxon said is “twice as bad as gas.”

The PM says his plan for future-proofing New Zealand’s energy grid is essential for supporting planned datacenters and other high-energy usage projects.

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The polling industry, whose only answer to fairly obvious questions seems to be “this is just a snapshot in time”, may have trouble explaining the past week of polling in this country.

There was one on Tuesday night and one on Wednesday morning. They have completely different results.

One has Luxon as the most popular leader.

One has Hipkins as the most popular leader.

One has National leading Labour.

One has Labour leading National.

One has the current Government as the current Government.

One has a new Government, with the current Government out.

It doesn’t get a lot more contrasting than that.

Even if you accept a lot of the numbers are tightish, some of the numbers aren't even within the margin of error.

It's almost as though the polls aren't accurate.

It's almost as though you could ring up 1000 people and get one answer, then ring up another set of 1000 people and get a completely different answer.

If you can do that, why would you pay money to people who will tell you these things mean anything?

At least TVNZ use commercial money to pay for this stuff.

Radio New Zealand, who seem to have taken over from TV3, use our money. And given they have just had a budget cut and given they are losing their audience at a rate of knots, I'm not sure this can be classed as quality expenditure.

I went to their website yesterday. The headline was "What the polls are telling us in 7 charts".

And there they were. There was lots of colour, lots of lines up and down, and squiggles.

But I already knew, given I had seen the charts from the night before, that either their charts meant nothing, or if they did mean something, then the other guy's charts weren't up to much.

Or quite possibly if we did this charade for a third time, they would both be exposed as having shonky numbers.

But remember: "they are only a snapshot in time". Except given they were done at the same time, they aren't, are they?

So what are they, other than a very large waste of time and money?

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