The Front Page

The skylines of our cities are starting to change. Slowly but surely, new high-rise housing developments are cropping up all over Auckland.  From built-to-rent schemes, to luxury hotels, to developer-iwi partnerships, there’s a wide variety of projects underway, all with different markets in mind.  Something they all have in common, though, is that they signal a move away from suburban sprawl, to...

Parliament has not even returned for 2024 yet, but we’ve already got our first political scandal of the year.  Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman has quit Parliament after multiple allegations of shoplifting surfaced over the last few weeks.  Citing mental health concerns in her statement, it has once again raised questions about the stress placed on MPs and their suitability to serve, while the Gree...

Auckland Light Rail is finally dead.  The National-led Government has killed off the scheme first proposed by Labour on the 2017 campaign trail. Millions were spent on the project, which went through multiple iterations but never quite managed to get on track.  The failure of the project has raised questions about how our Government’s approach to infrastructure will work, and why these schemes are...

Shark sightings have dominated Kiwi headlines this summer, with Surf Life Saving New Zealand recording several dozen reports over the holiday period.   While some may view this as summer hysteria, the sightings did prompt water evacuations at certain beaches, and one woman suffered significant injuries to her leg after being attacked by a shark while walking through an estuary.   So is global warm...

While we’re on our summer break, The Front Page has been taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top-rated episodes from the podcast this year. Back in April, two record drug busts within Aotearoa’s borders prompted us to take a look at why more and more drugs were passing through our borders.  In the months since, more stories have landed in the NZ Herald newsroom of record hau...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we are shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the NZ Herald network over the last year.   For years, Kiwis have pondered the identity of the ‘prominent businessman’, who, after several eventful court cases, was found guilty of sexually assaulting three men over a number of years.  In 2023, he was unmasked as James W...

While we’re on our summer break, The Front Page is looking back at some of the biggest news stories and top rated episodes from the podcast this year.   One of the big talking points in Aotearoa for years has been the state of our education.   Concerns over falling test results, and dropping numeracy and literacy rates have worried parents, educators and politicians for some time – and this all be...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we are shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.   Cold cases are relatively few and far between in Aotearoa. And that’s what makes the case of Donald Fraser stand out. 90 years after Fraser was shot dead in his bed at the Racecourse Hotel in Christchurch, questions li...

While we’re on our summer break, The Front Page is taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top rated episodes from the podcast this year.   No family ever expects to find themselves in court – but for thousands in Aotearoa, that is the reality they find themselves in.  In August, the NZ Herald ran a series on the Family Court , poring through the case files and talking to those...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we are shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the NZ Herald network over the last year.   It’s a new year, and many of us will be looking for ways to improve our lives as we try to keep up with our new year resolutions.   In the Herald podcast series, The Little Things , hosts Francesca Rudkin and Louise Ayrey are t...

While we’re on our summer break, The Front Page is taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top rated episodes from the podcast this year.   For decades, Waiwera Thermal Resort was one of the go-to places for Kiwis looking to cool off on a hot summer’s day.   This year though marked the final nail in the coffin for the once popular destination.   For six years, the complex has sa...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we will be shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.   In February 2015, Goy Thongsi went on a diving expedition in Christchurch with four men she hardly knew. Within a few hours of setting out onto the water, Goy was dead and missing, and a cloud of suspicion surround...

While we’re on our summer break, we’re taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top rated episodes from the podcast this year.  Debt is one of those talking points we hear about from politicians constantly. How much should the nation’s finances go into arrears in order to pay for the things we need?  And on a personal level, private debt is also increasing at a time when the larg...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we are shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the NZ Herald network over the last year. In the last year, Journalist and legal columnist Sasha Borissenko embarked on a mission to investigate the truth - and debunks the myths - about weight in Aotearoa. She teamed up with the NZ Herald for Chewing the Facts , a podca...

While we’re on our summer break, The Front Page is taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top-rated episodes from the podcast this year.   New Year’s Day, 2024 will mark 26 years since Ben Smart and Olivia Hope disappeared.  In the early hours of New Year’s Day, 1998, the two accepted an offer to stay aboard a man’s yacht while staying in the Marlborough Sounds. They were never...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we will be shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.   In 2023, the New Zealand Herald partnered with broadcaster Sonia Gray for a new podcast called No Such Thing as Normal .  Based on Gray’s experiences as a parent of a neurodivergent child, and living with her own n...

While we’re on our summer break, we’re taking a look back at some of the biggest news stories and top rated episodes from the podcast this year.   In a year of big changes for New Zealand’s media industry, one moment stood out from the rest.  Talk radio station Today FM came to a dramatic, expletive-laden end back in March. After only a year on air, Mediaworks made the shock decision to close it –...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we will be shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.   This year marks 70 years since the Tangiwai rail disaster. 151 people died after the Wellington to Auckland express derailed, due to a lahar washing out the rail bridge over the Whangaehu river.   The tragedy is re...

While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we will be shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts and news events from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.   Growing up in Australia with a Danish father and a Māori-Pakeha mother, Myjanne Jensen always had this sense of not feeling Māori "enough". After moving back to the Far North in 2021, she started her journey of com...

Despite headline-grabbing ram raids becoming less common, crime was clearly still on many New Zealander's minds and a key part of many political parties’ election campaigns in 2023. Today on The Front Page, we present some of the biggest crime stories we’ve covered this year including the Auckland CBD construction site mass shooting, and an exploration of how meth kingpin Xavier Valent became only...

2023 was a year dominated by extreme weather.   In late January, some heavy rain in Auckland quickly turned into a city-wide disaster that caught everyone by surprise.  It was pegged as a once in a century event – but barely a fortnight later, Cyclone Gabrielle swept down the upper North Island. While much of Auckland withstood the onslaught, the East Coast was devastated.   Nearly a year has pass...

One of the year’s biggest shocks came only a few weeks into the new year. Back in January, Jacinda Ardern stunned the world when she used her first press conference of 2023 to announce her resignation as Prime Minister.   It brought to an end the five year tenure of the reluctant premier, a politician who never sought the country’s highest office, yet found herself at the coal face for one of the...

What a year. In 2023  there seemed to be no end to turmoil and conflict around the world. Wars, coups and disasters – natural or otherwise sprang up seemly without a break.  On The Front Page we’ve done our best to make sense of what’s been happening around the globe, and our place in all this turmoil.   Today we revisit some of the interviews that have helped expand our understanding of a planet...

The early weeks of 2023 were dominated by an ugly family feud on a global scale.   Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, gave an unprecedented glimpse at the inner-workings of the Royal Family and laid bare the tensions between Harry and Meghan and the rest of the family.     This set the tone for a year that was meant to be a celebration that King Charles had waited his whole life to enjoy.   By the time...

Where to begin with 2023?   The year started in a big way, with the resignation of Jacinda Ardern and two once-in-a-century weather events in a row. And it didn’t slow down from there.  Ministerial car crashes.  An exploding submarine. World Cup highs and lows. The threat of AI. An active shooter at rush hour. A radio station that got effed live on air. Crime, the economy, trans rights, global con...