Neil Sands Labour finance spokeswoman Barbara Edmonds has railed at “unfair” and “wrong” elements of the tax system, but declined to say if she believes introducing a capital gains tax is way to address her concerns. However, Edmonds did rule out means-testing superannuation or raising the eligibility age for super from 65, saying she will instead prioritise boosting retirement savings via the KiwiSaver scheme if Labour wins next year’s election. “We don’t want to change the sup...| Law News
LawNews staff As New Zealand’s flood, erosion and landslip risks escalate, insurers and banks are driving an emerging crisis in the housing market. Led by Tower, insurance companies are quietly updating their climate models, red-lining thousands of at-risk properties in flood or inundation zones and those at most risk of erosion. As a result, some homeowners are facing sky-high premiums, ratcheted up to match what Tower considers to be their specific risk. But while their premium hikes migh...| Law News
Mahvash Ikram An Auckland lawyer found guilty on two charges of misconduct and one of negligence for failing to appear for his client at scheduled Family Court hearings is appealing to the High Court as the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal considers what penalty to impose. Meanwhile, the Lawyers Standards Committee has asked the tribunal to order a 12-month suspension for Tae Wok Kwon, an immigration lawyer, and ban him from practising on his own account, citing a lack of insigh...| Law News
Mahvash Ikram Uber Group, a small Whangārei-based broadband provider, has lost round one in its battle to block rideshare giant Uber Technologies and telco One New Zealand (formerly Vodafone) from marketing a competing internet and mobile service that, Uber Group says, infringes its trademark. Late last month, Uber Group applied to the High Court for an interim injunction, restraining Uber Technologies New Zealand (a subsidiary of US-based Uber Technologies Inc), in partnership with One New ...| Law News
Neil Sands The Waitangi Tribunal has called for changes to the way overseas-born Māori are treated under the Citizenship Act, citing evidence from Whale Rider actress Keisha Castle-Hughes that the existing process is “deeply, systemically racist”. A tribunal report says that obtaining citizenship by descent was limited to one generation, meaning the children of citizens who were themselves born overseas do not have an automatic right to become New Zealanders. It says the legislation, whi...| Law News
Samira Taghavi When a statutory regulator begins to stretch its mandate beyond what Parliament intended, it is not a minor procedural concern – it is a constitutional matter. The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has recently asserted that its jurisdiction may extend to “internet radio” and other forms of internet-delivered audio content. At first glance, this might appear to be an administrative or technological question. It is not. It is about the limits of state power, the certa...| Law News
Neil Sands The Gloriavale religious community is an industrial-scale “sweatshop”, designed to exploit the cheap labour and welfare payments of its members, the Court of Appeal has been told. The court is hearing an appeal against a 2023 Employment Court ruling that six former Gloriavale members were employees, rather than volunteers whose work was an expression of religious commitment. Barrister Brian Henry, appearing for the six women, said from an early age they worked long hours doing ...| Law News
Neil Sands New Zealand needs dozens more MPs so Parliament can do a better job, even though the public would baulk at the idea of paying for extra politicians, an influential think-tank says. The proposal to boost MP numbers to at least 170, up from 123 in the current Parliament, is contained in the New Zealand Initiative’s (NZI) review of almost 30 years of mixed member proportional elections in New Zealand. The review, written by NZI senior fellow Nick Clark, also recommends four-year par...| Law News
Roger Partridge In August 2025, the government announced the biggest reform to New Zealand’s building consent system in two decades. The problem? Councils facing massive liability for building defects have become so risk-averse that the entire consenting system has seized up. Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk cited the scale of exposure: in one Queenstown case, ratepayers faced potential liability of $160 million for weathertight defects. Had the case not been settled priv...| Law News
Neil Sands Members of the Gloriavale religious community were attempting to recreate the lifestyle of early Christians and did not expect payment for communal work. This meant they were not employees, the Court of Appeal was told on Tuesday. The court is hearing an appeal against a 2023 Employment Court ruling that six former Gloriavale members were employees, not volunteers whose work was an expression of religious commitment. Counsel for Gloriavale, Philip Skelton KC, said the religious com...| Law News
Neil Sands Labour will take a 28% capital gains tax to next year’s election, saying the “targeted” measure is needed to reform a tax system that rewards property speculation over economic growth. Labour rushed out the flagship policy announcement on Tuesday morning when details were leaked to media, after previously saying it would be unveiled later this year or in early 2026. Under the policy, capital gains made after 1 July 2027 on a commercial property or residential property (exclud...| Law News
The official news platform for The Law Association delivers the latest news, case summaries, legislation and legal updates from around New Zealand 24/7.| Law News
Neil Sands Plans to ban demonstrations outside residential homes are too broad, badly drafted and include the ‘draconian’ prospect of a jail term for simply exercising the democratic right to protest, TLANZ’s Public & Administrative Law Committee has warned. The issue of protests outside politicians’ homes was highlighted last week by a demonstration at NZ First Leader Winston Peters’ home in Auckland, when a man allegedly smashed a window with a crowbar, showering Peters’ dog Kob...| Law News
Warren Pyke The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA), whose latest addition is Sir William Young, is composed of a panel of five judges, comprising the chief justice, three permanent judges and one non-permanent judge, who may be either from Hong Kong or overseas. The inclusion of overseas non-permanent judges was intended to sustain confidence in the territory’s legal system and its commitment to the common law tradition. The non-permanent judges fly into Hong Kong to hear specific cases,...| Law News
Neil Sands Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts have highlighted the tension lawyers face between adopting the era-defining technology and the obligation to protect sensitive data uploaded to AI servers. The dilemma was discussed at TLANZ’s Burning Issues conference last week, when Chantal McNaught from the TLANZ Technology & Law Committee hosted a panel on generative AI at work. McNaught described AI as “amazing, astounding, terrifying technology” that raises important questions of acc...| Law News
Jenni McManus Significant changes over the past 25 years in the way employment litigation is conducted have created long delays in the Employment Relations Authority and Employment Court and a massive blowout in costs to both employers and employees. That was the key message from Christina Inglis, Chief Judge of the Employment Court, to attendees at The Law Association’s Burning Issues conference in Auckland on Thursday. But “we can learn a lot from that”, Chief Judge Inglis said, in a ...| Law News
Graham G Dodds President Donald Trump set the tone for his second term by issuing 26 executive orders, four proclamations and 12 memorandums on his first day back in office. The barrage of unilateral presidential actions has not yet let up. These have included Trump’s efforts to remove thousands of government workers and fire several prominent officials, such as members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the chair of the Commission on Civil Rights. He has also attempted to ...| Law News
Rick Sarre & Ben Livings The Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions, who has carriage of the Erin Patterson murder case, has chosen to appeal against what he considers to be an overly lenient sentence. This comes on the back of news that the convicted murderer has instructed her lawyers to institute an appeal against her conviction. These appeals could extend the life of the high profile case, or it could all quickly fizzle out. Here’s what’s happening now and what comes next. Fr...| Law News
Georgina Bond New Zealand law firms are increasingly being targeted by cybercriminals and experts warn that too many are still playing catch-up. They say the professional services sector sits in the sweet spot for cyber attackers, holding significant sums of money in trust accounts, managing highly sensitive client data that can be sold or used for extortion and depending on trust-based reputations that can be destroyed by a single breach. Cybercrime industry The biggest development is the...| Law News
Neil Sands A disgraced lawyer has been jailed for three years after fraudulently claiming $375,000 from a government-funded legal support scheme, in a case the Serious Fraud Office says involved an abuse of the trust placed in members of the legal profession. Paulette Main, who practised in the Bay of Plenty, pleaded guilty in April to one representative charge of obtaining by deception and one representative charge of obstructing the SFO’s investigation. She was sentenced in Tauranga Distr...| Law News
Neil Sands Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden has acknowledged long-standing concerns about unregulated employment advocates but says her reform agenda is already too busy to act on the issue. “This is something that I hear about quite consistently. It doesn’t matter which city I’m travelling to, people have concerns about employee advocates,” van Velden told TLANZ’s Burning Issues in Employment Law conference in Auckland on Thursday. Lay advocates are allowed to carry o...| Law News
Critique of the NZLS's reform proposals highlights risks to justice, confidentiality, and oversight. Samira Taghavi argues key changes may harm both lawyers and the public interest.| Law News
Neil Sands An interim injunction preventing media from publishing some aspects of the Tom Phillips case has been extended for another month at an hearing of the High Court in Wellington. Justice Helen Cull first imposed the gag order on September 8, the same day Phillips was shot dead in a confrontation with police in Waitomo, ending four years on the run after he disappeared into dense Waikato bush with his three children. Cull granted the injunction in response to an urgent application from...| Law News
Tama Potaka says the Conservation Act 19 law is outdated, ambiguous and unfit for purpose. He is proposing a new, streamlined framework for approving economic activity on conservation land and faster processing of applications.| Law News
Neil Sands New Zealand’s covid-19 response became “wobbly” in the latter stages of the pandemic and future responses should rely less on lockdown and vaccine mandates, the head of a royal commission into the coronavirus strategy says. Epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely presented the findings of phase one of the Royal Commission into Covid-19 Lessons Learned to the government today, outlining the findings of almost two years’ work. Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden immediately rele...| Law News
Neil Sands The covid-19 royal commission says it has no knowledge of a suppression order that would prevent Labour leader Chris Hipkins from appearing at a public hearing to detail his decision-making during the pandemic. Plans for a public hearing were scrapped last month after Hipkins, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, her deputy Grant Robertson and ex-health minister Ayesha Verrall all declined to appear and answer questions in public. Hipkins, who was Minister for Covid-19 Response, ...| Law News
Neil Sands New Zealand’s online protection laws are so fragmented, outdated and ineffective that authorities have been powerless to block access to a pro-suicide web forum linked by a coroner to the deaths of five New Zealanders, Parliament has been told. In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into the harm young New Zealanders are encountering online, The Law Association of New Zealand’s (TLANZ) Technology & Law Committee has called for urgent action to deal with emerging digital thr...| Law News
The National Party unveiled a bill on Tuesday to ban under-16s from social media social but immediately ran into criticism from coalition partner the ACT Party, which described it as “not workable”. National announced the move as a private members bill under the name of Tukituki MP Catherine Wedd, who appeared alongside Prime Minister Christopher […]| Law News
Neil Sands Tech experts have warned that banning children from social media is a quick fix destined to fail, and such restrictions may actually exacerbate the dangers young people face online by driving their activities underground. An inquiry by Parliament’s Education & Workforce Select Committee into the online harm that children encounter online heard evidence this week from a range of legal professionals who focus on technology. Many questioned the effectiveness of blanket restrictions,...| Law News
Jenni McManus For the first time, a major political party says it will make compulsory KiwiSaver part of its pitch to voters at next year’s election. NZ First leader Winston Peters told the party faithful at their annual convention in Palmerston North on Sunday that the compulsory contribution level would rise for both employers and employees – first to 8% and then to 10% of gross salary – and both KiwiSaver members and employers would receive tax cuts to cover the increase. Peter did n...| Law News
Mahvash Ikram Five unions are expected to file a claim in the High Court today, accusing the government of Bill of Rights Act violations arising from changes to pay equity law that has aborted 33 live claims, affecting 180,000 workers. Represented by Rodney Harrison KC and Peter Cranney, the five plaintiffs are the Nurses Union, PSA, PPTA, NZEI and the Tertiary Education Union. Collectively, the group had lodged 24 of the 33 now-terminated pay equity claims. Harrison and Cranney also acted fo...| Law News
Neil Sands Outgoing Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier says New Zealand’s reputation as a world leader in transparency is slipping as officials increasingly seek legislative “carve-outs” from the Official Information Act (OIA) that hamper public scrutiny of government actions. In an interview with LawNews, Boshier also offered scathing assessments of Health New Zealand’s “disgraceful” attitude to OIA compliance and the Corrections Department’s “glacial” response to urgently nee...| Law News
