Online exclusive
Right now, it feels as if we could all do with some good news given it’s the dead of winter, thousands are losing jobs, and every day another piece of infrastructure breaks – be it a power pylon in Northland or the Cook Strait ferry. But there’s cause for optimism, signs of hope, and silver linings all around us.
1. The Farmfluencers inspiring others to reforest marginal land
John and Rick Burke are farmfluencer brothers spreading the word about retiring marginal farmland into native bush and wetlands.
To reforest cheaply, the Burkes promote the Timata method that uses small, widely-spaced mānuka or kānuka seedlings. Soon, birds bring seeds that emerge as a diverse range of plants. John says a bonus of planting steep erodible land and creating wetlands is storm resilience. “Now we have sponges on our farm. When we have heavy rainfall water is more slowly released into the stream.”
During the Burkes’ Katikati field days, others see regeneration that began 25 years ago and scrutinise the numbers. “I’m from an agribusiness background,” says John. “In real terms, the total profit from our pastoral enterprise isn’t diminished and we’ve got additional benefits from carbon.
Turns out this marginal pastoral land was not adding much to the bottom line.” Instead, the native planted areas are now registered in the Emissions Trading Scheme.
2. Cell towers in space
When Cyclone Gabrielle devastated parts of the North Island, it left thousands without mobile phone access when power was cut to cell towers. A potential lifeline in future emergencies will soon be available when our three big mobile providers - 2degrees, One NZ and Spark - debut mobile-to-satellite services. They will allow text messages, and later voice calls and data transfers, to be made via satellites operated by SpaceX with its Satlink service that also delivers broadband access nationwide via satellite, and rival Lynk Global.
Vital safety and status updates could be beamed back and forth between standard mobile devices and satellites passing overhead when cell sites aren’t available. That will come into its own in a civil defence emergency, but also boost connectivity options for those in rural areas, on farms and in national parks, beyond mobile coverage zones, an area that makes up around 40% of the country. Text-via-satellite services will arrive later this year.
3. Identifying the gene for inherited stomach cancer saves thousands of lives
In 1995, a group of researchers at the University of Otago and the McLeod whānau in the Bay of Plenty (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui) united to find the gene responsible for inherited stomach cancer.
In May this year, the University of Otago’s HDGC Research Group (pictured below) was awarded the Te Pūiaki Putaiao Matua a Te Pirimia Prime Minister’s Science Prize for 2023. Working with the McLeod family, the past 28 years has seen the researchers, led by principal investigator Professor Parry Guilford, identify the CHD1 gene that causes hereditary diffuse gastric cancer (HDGC).
After characterising the new cancer syndrome, the group developed genetic testing, treatment and management strategies for the deadly disease. Their work is estimated to have saved 400-450 NZ lives and potentially many thousands more for people who carry the CDH1 gene overseas.
The prestigious award comes with a $500,000 prize, which the researchers will use to extend their work.
4. Art as wellbeing
Anyone who still believes Waikato is nothing but farming, Fieldays and footy hasn’t been paying attention. The region boasts a tight-knit, thriving arts scene, spearheaded by Creative Waikato and its charismatic chief executive, Jeremy Mayall.
Since Mayall took over in February 2020 (“Just in time for the world to collapse and the needs of the sector to ramp up in a different way,” he says), Creative Waikato has grown and adapted, under a kaupapa of championing the role of arts, culture and creativity as a driver of collective wellbeing.
In late 2023, Creative Waikato turned that philosophy into a programme, with the launch of the research-backed workplace wellness initiative Creativity Every Day. Featuring artists from around the Waikato region, Creativity Every Day is a collection of short creative activities designed to be done on a daily basis thus building creative habits into one’s daily life.
“We have a clear vision of why we should be physically active: we know it’s good for us,” Mayall says. “The same goes for creativity. We should do it every day because it’s good for us. Not because we need to be artists, but because it makes us fully functioning human beings.”
5. Innovation at Fieldays
Staying in the Waikato, there’s even more to Fieldays than, well, farming. This year, its annual Innovation Awards received a record number of entries and 62 of those were on show to demonstrate how our primary industries are finding new ways to meet present and future challenges.
Winners included Penny Ranger, a 19-year-old Cambridge student from St Peter’s, who took home the Young Innovator Award for Mark-it, a tool to streamline sheep drenching.
Auckland’s Fleecegrow won the Prototype Award for a sustainable and strong wool replacement for rockwool and peat used in greenhouse growing, and another Auckland business, WoolAid, won the Growth & Scale Award for its hyper-fine merino wool plasters. The breathable plasters biodegrade in soil after about four months.
The Early-Stage Award was claimed by Christchurch’s KiwiFibre for a regenerative composite textile made from Harakeke (flax) fibre. This textile can replace or complement conventional carbon fibre and fibreglass materials in high-performance applications.
Fieldays’ visitors got to see just what that looks like when Hyundai and KiwiFibre revealed NZ rally driver Hayden Paddon’s brand-new electric rally car, using KiwiFibre for the front and rear bumpers and roof.
6. Going batty
Forest and Bird’s Te Hoiere Bat Recovery Project completed its sixth bat monitoring season during January and February 2024 in Pelorus Bridge and Rai Valley, Marlborough, yielding 14 new roost trees, 246 overall captures, and 86 individual bats. In Ronga Recreational Reserve, the Project planted 10,200 native trees in May and June 2024. Another 10,200 trees are to be planted this spring.
7. Our high-tech workforce
We know we need to diversify the economy away from agriculture. The late Sir Paul Callaghan urged us to “get off the grass” and embrace the weightless economy made up of software and digital services, and high-tech equipment. We’ve done so, and our top 200 tech companies amassed offshore revenue of $13 billion last year, up 66% on 2018 figures. The tech sector employs 122,000 people in jobs that pay well. The average salary is about $100,000 in the sector, 8.5% above the average workforce salary.
But to excel in tech, we need a highly skilled workforce. We’ve leaned heavily on migrants to meet our workforce needs and our tertiary sector has struggled to meet the changing skills needs of tech companies. A bigger focus on upskilling, offering more workplace micro-credentials and digital apprenticeships will be needed to build the pipeline of local talent needed to support the industry’s growth, which averages around 10% each year.
8. Activating Healthtech
Thanks to an additional $1 million in the Budget annually, the Healthtech Activator can now support more innovative Kiwi healthtech startups like Alimetry, The Insides Company and Kitea Health to enter competitive global markets like the US.
9. Braille surtitles
“Braille is my reading medium and so it was awesome to read the surtitles in real time on my Braille reading device,” says Paul Brown. Thanks to NZ Opera’s development of world-first technology, Paul and other blind opera fans were able to read Braille surtitles during recent performances of NZ Opera’s Le Compte Ory.
“The sighted audience was laughing at the surtitles, and I was able to laugh with them because I was reading them at the same time. It was magic.”
Opera companies use surtitles – where lyrics or scripts are translated into other languages and published on screens during a live performance – to give audiences a deeper understanding of what is being said or sung on stage, in real time. Until now, the main option for vision-impaired operagoers to understand the opera text has been through audio descriptions, which can interfere with the music.
NZ Opera’s general director Brad Cohen developed the technology alongside his company contexts.live. It sends braille surtitles to a user’s personal braille-reading machine at the same time as the sighted audience is reading the translations on screen.
10. Carving out new futures in prison
“Out of all the things I’ve done in prison, the arts helped me the most. The arts rehabilitated me. They gave me a future,” says Mark Lang, carver and owner of the Tika Pono Toi Gallery and Studio in Dargaville.
Lang, who learned the art of carving in the Māori Focus Unit at Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison, talks about his journey into a positive future in Carving out a better future with Mark Lang, an episode of the Art Inside podcast series produced by Arts Access Aotearoa. The arts and creativity are recognised as a powerful tool in rehabilitating prisoners and re-integrating them back into communities.
11. A childhood plagued by asthma inspired a career in research
Pharmacist and researcher Amy Chan has been striving to bring a breath of fresh air to NZers with asthma, which she also suffers from. Being so unwell with asthma as a child inspired her to “find a cure” for the condition.
In 2022, she had a major review study published that showed digital technology can halve the risk of asthma attacks. She then received funding to run a clinical trial in NZ to gather the data necessary to develop an asthma attack prediction tool.
Based at the University of Auckland, last year Chan also set up the first pollen-monitoring project in more than 30 years, which has already identified that our pollen seasons are longer, “probably due to climate change”, she says.
Chan also researches vaccine hesitancy, reducing unnecessary antibiotic usage, pharmacist-led mental health interventions for people with long-term health conditions and work in global health policy.
12. Giving the world a rocket
When newly knighted Sir Peter Beck oversaw Rocket Lab’s 50th successful rocket launch in June, the engineer celebrated a milestone his rivals could only dream of achieving. Now US-owned, Nasdaq-listed, and with a large presence in Auckland and a launchpad on the Mahia Peninsula, Rocket Lab remains the only company other than SpaceX to frequently launch satellites into orbit.
That’s a testament to the innovative nature of the Electron rocket Beck pioneered. But Rocket Lab has also helped spawn a collection of start-ups that are building satellite and rocket components, as well as gliders, drones and the software to control them. The government plans to develop additional testing zones for aerospace prototypes and streamline civil aviation rules as it positions New Zealand as a global test bed for aerospace technology.
13. AI goes shopping
More clever Kiwi AI innovators like Hiplee are coming up with creative applications using AI models to offer consumers new products and services. Sometimes called the “Shazam of clothing”, the Hiplee smartphone app uses an AI model to recognise and remember clothes from a shopper’s photographs to offer personalised recommendations and alternative options.
14. SOUNZ: Music from the inside out
Unless you compose, perform or research music, you may not have come across SOUNZ. Even then you might be oblivious, since SOUNZ, the centre for New Zealand music, doesn’t touch the popular stuff, focusing instead on jazz, sonic art, Māori music and instruments (the podcast series He Reo Tawhito: Conversations about Mōteatea is fascinating), music of the Pacific and, particularly, classical.
Every composer is painstakingly archived, each piece they’ve written itemised in detail, down to the configuration of the instruments in an orchestral work. There are video clips and radio interviews, audio samples and scores. There’s even information about every time a piece has been performed, where and by whom.
SOUNZ relies heavily on government bodies like Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Music Commission for funding, so in the current climate, you fear for its future. But SOUNZ is a national taonga, guardian of an alternative history of Aotearoa. And it’s all there online, for anyone to uncover.
15. Getting clean
The recently released New Zealand Cleantech Mission Report 2024 suggests this growing sector has the potential to become a significant export earner. The cleantech startup community is already making progress towards its capital raising target. Decarbonising concrete startup Neocrete recently announced it had successfully raised $US4 million ($NZ6.5m) in a funding round led by Singapore-based VC firm Wavemaker Partners. More innovative cleantech ventures are rumoured to soon be making similar announcements.
16. The continuing rise and rise of Farmers’ Markets
They seem fancy and modern, but Farmers’ Markets are the oldest form of food commerce, says Jonathan Walker of Farmers’ Markets New Zealand. “Overseas, they’ve been going for hundreds or thousands of years. Italy has 2000.” Here there are 30, the first starting in 1998.
They allow small-scale producers to do what they love and have the means to sell it, says Walker. “More of the profit goes to the producer. That can make the difference between make a living and it being a hobby.” They also promote food resiliency because they sell food that’s grown in a defined local region and sold by producers rather than on-sellers. “Farmers’ Markets don’t run out because they can’t ship 100,000 heads of broccoli from Gisborne to Auckland.”
But the prices? When comparing like-for-like, repeated surveys show they’re cheaper than supermarkets. Walker wishes there were 500 markets. “That would really make a difference to the food economy.”
17. Cultivating repair culture
Quietly, usefully and exponentially, 75 Repair Cafes have sprung up around Aotearoa. These pop-up events bring together volunteer repairers – of appliances, cycles, clothing, furniture and jewellery – with people who need items to be fixed. Money is not exchanged, but skills and conversations are.
“It brings people together in the spirit of caring for their belongings and the environment,” says Brigitte Sistig, co-founder of Repair Cafe Aotearoa.
In six months last year, the events, many of which are held monthly, prevented nearly 9000kg of landfill waste. People volunteer to repair items for the sense of purpose and community it brings, says Sistig.
“These skills are often held with the older generation. But young people are very interested in learning them. With climate change and the cost of living, what will the future be like? Repairing makes us feel we can do something. It stimulates creativity and collaborative thinking.”
18. The New Zealand Maritime Museum: Telling tales of the sea
The New Zealand Maritime Museum Hui Te Ananui a Tangaroa, on Auckland’s Viaduct, overflows with fantastical stories, compellingly told.
It views oceans not as barriers that separate us, but as connective, splashy highways that bring us together. It treats the migration of the great Polynesian navigators with the same wonder it treats the 10-Pound Poms who came here looking for new lives for themselves and their families. It turns the America’s Cup – which I hitherto considered a rich-boy version of playing with boats in the bath – into a heroic tale of nationhood. And the museum looks forwards, too.
The current Sentinel exhibition (until October 27) uses bleeding-edge tech to share its story about our sea birds.
19. Rapid genome sequencing for unwell babies
About 200 babies are in intensive care units every day across NZ. Up to a third of them will have a rare condition that can only be picked up by genetic sequencing.
Until last November, most of these babies had no access to DNA mapping and those who did had to wait weeks for results from Australia, at great expense. Rare conditions affect one in 2000 people and about 150,000 Kiwi children have rare conditions. Less than half are diagnosed in the first year of life and some can wait 10 years for a diagnosis.
But timely results mean doctors can make quick decisions about available treatments and interventions. Now, these sick babies can have their genome sequenced within days or even hours on new genetic sequencing machines at Auckland’s Liggins Institute. In time, testing will extend to older children and adults to confirm suspected genetic conditions.
20. Westerly pest captures
At Ark in the Park, in the Waitākere Ranges west of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 400 volunteers are protecting 2270ha of native forest from introduced predators, such as rats and possums, with 400 regular volunteers, 554 traps and 4785 bait stations. Restoring native forest at landscape-scale is a nature-based solution that can help Aotearoa become more resilient to climate change.
Meanwhile, Forest & Bird Reserve Bushy Park Tarapuruhi near Whanganui is in full swing with its revegetation project. A plant nursery was built last year and has enabled it to grow around 4000 plants to plant out inside the predator fence. Schools are actively participating in this as part of their on-site learning activities.
21. WOW is back
Dancer Rodney Bell (Ngāti Maniapoto) will weave his magic on stage when he and his wheelchair perform for the first time at the 2024 World of WearableArt show Dream Awake (opening in Wellington on September 26).
Although Bell’s performance is “under wraps”, it promises breathtaking agility, grace and technical skills as the veteran dancer and his wheelchair become one. Bell is an internationally renowned performer and his autobiographical work, Meremere, has toured throughout NZ. A founding member of the Touch Compass Dance Company in 1997, Rodney now sits on its Artistic Direction Panel, alongside dancers Lusi Faiva and Suzanne Cowan.
22. A PhD at 73
Dr Te Piere Warahi (Ngāti Maniapoto) began an academic career later in life and recently graduated with a PhD, at the age of 73, for his research on Māori caregiving.
His study was inspired by his own experience of caring for his mother for the last 10 years of her life, a role he felt privileged to perform. The research was initially focused on the absence of rights for caregivers, but it expanded into looking at caring through a cultural lens with cosmology, and the view that caring means love, not burden.
The work of interviewing caregivers led to a rediscovery of Warahi’s Māoritonga. At 71, he changed his name from Edgar TPW Wallace to the Māori name his grandfather gifted him. He is also retrieving the te reo that he only heard spoken as a boy. Warahi is considering further research as he is writing a novel.
23. Founders going global
We don’t have the scale of Silicon Valley, or the venture capital backing of Israel’s tech sector. But NZ entrepreneurs are making their mark in tech-related businesses in everything from media to climate tech.
Lanzatech last year joined Rocket Lab and All Birds as Kiwi-founded companies liked on the Nasdaq exchange. The company uses genetically modified microbes to convert waste gas from factories and landfills into industrial chemicals and ethanol for the aviation industry. Founder Sean Simpson has now returned to NZ to chair the deep tech incubator and venture capital firm Outset Ventures.
Self-driving vehicle startup Wayve raised US$1 billion in funding in May, with the aim of developing autonomous technology that “not only becomes a reality in millions of vehicles but also earns people’s trust by seamlessly integrating into their everyday lives to unlock extraordinary value.” That’s according to Wayve co-founder and chief executive, Alex Kendall, 31, a graduate of the University of Auckland and Cambridge University who founded Wayve in 2017.
In the media space, former journalist and Listener contributor Hamish McKenzie has helped transform the face of new media with Substack, the newsletter subscription platform he co-founded in San Francisco, which has allowed thousands of content creators to find an audience - and get paid for their efforts.
Letterboxd, the film discussion social media site founded in Auckland in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl von Randow had its success validated in September when Canadian firm Tiny bought a majority stake valuing the company at $US50 million ($83m).
24. Do you Give a Trap?
A venture that helps kiwis help nature reached a milestone recently, with its 500th trap given to a pest trapping group. Formed as a legacy for New Zealander Penny Wilcocks, and now run by Forest & Bird, the Give a Trap website allows users to gift cash or things like the Flipping Timmy possum trap to a specific group. From small school groups to organisations tackling entire peninsulas, each group gets the traps it needs. And individuals giving traps get to be a part of bringing back the birdsong and making Aotearoa predator-free by 2050.
25. Taking off
Aotearoa has Bird of the Year 2024 to look forward to! It’s earlier this year - only three months to go to lift off. People from all walks of life and from all over the world shared their stories about their favourite birds last years. These ranged from the heartfelt, poignant, and profound through to the funny, weird, and, frankly, unprintable.
Contributions from Richard Betts, Paulette Crowley, Andrea Graves, Peter Griffin, Arts Access Aotearoa, Callaghan Innovation and Forest & Bird.
