Phil Pennington

Controversy continues to dog how hospitals get permission to operate on patients.

The guidelines have now been strengthened - a little bit - but women's health advocates say they are still too weak.

Transport officials planned to ask residents near the Auckland Harbour Bridge if their properties could be tested for heavy metals, without telling them contamination had already been found nearby.

… Audio

Several key security and intelligence agencies failed to do their counter-terrorism job very well, or at all.

There remains no way of holding them to account.

Those are two crucial findings of the… Audio

An Australian counter-terrorism specialist says bosses of NZ's national security services should lose their jobs over the mosque attacks.

Joe Siracusa who is a professor of Human Security at Curtin… Audio

High-tech investigative tools being imported by the police here are attracting controversy overseas.

Many of these are capable of facial recognition, though police say they are not using this on the… Audio

Workplace safety investigators into a Desert Road double-fatality smash failed to record, months later, that a baby boy died alongside his preschool brother.

WorkSafe closed the file four days after… Audio

A big user of industrial-size plastic bags has found a way to re-use them, helping stem the dumping of thousands of bags each year into landfills.

Bureaucracy at the wharf is standing in the way of… Audio

A Canterbury family is demanding to know why there was no health and safety investigation into the truck crash that killed their daughter.

The police did ask questions about driver fatigue and… Audio

A dioxin alert has put a Waikato grandmother off having her grandchildren or pregnant daughter-in-law over to visit.

Authorities have advised pregnant and breastfeeding women to temporarily shift… Audio

A man who became gravely ill while working near the Auckland Harbour Bridge is speaking out after revelations the land was contaminated with heavy metals.

Ralph Morgan says his employer, Auckland… Audio

The workplace safety watchdog chose not to investigate the Ruapehu fatal bus crash under health and safety laws even though there was no one else who could do the job.

The crash happened at a time… Audio

Landslides are a 'high' to 'extreme' threat at the $900 million stretch of motorway being built between Puhoi and Warkworth.

Because of the Covid-19 lockdown, slopes and cuts from earthworks near the… Audio

A stocktake triggered by a controversial trial of facial recognition technology has revealed what police are adding to their digital armoury.

It details more than a dozen investigative tech tools… Audio

A long-burning, foul-smelling fire at a Waikato rubbish dump has forced the creation of a rare multi-agency group to try to put it out.

But the hopes of locals at Pukemiro for an end to months of… Audio

Medical specialists say there is little sign the one-off financial boost to fight Covid-19 will fix underfunded public health units.

They say the units need proper permanent resourcing but their… Audio

The location of some road crashes has been shifted hundreds of metres away from where they actually happened.

Waka Kotahi - the NZ Transport Agency says these are unintentional mistakes.

But a road… Audio

The Ministry of Education went against expert advice at a quake-damaged Christchurch school, hit spiralling costs, and was obstructive and misleading, documents show.

The ministry criticised the… Audio

Briefings to the Government say a key department had not identified critical services or tested staff ability to work from home as Covid-19 caused havoc earlier this year.

The briefings also say… Audio

Complaints of physical and verbal abuse, neglect and intimidation of residents and staff are being investigated at a Lower Hutt rest home.

The District Health Board is looking into five complaints at… Audio

The Government has done a deal over facial recognition technology that throws access to it wide open.

The Internal Affairs Department has signed a master agreement with a leading global biometrics… Audio