This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including exploring the NCEA and UE results of every college around NZ, the collapse of the Du Val property empire, revealing claims a former funeral director at Tipene Funerals was swindling grieving clients and
The following are 24 of the best-read Premium articles in 2024.
How does your school rate? NCEA, UE results ranked
This story originally ran on December 2, 2024.
The Herald plotted the 2023 school leaver results for every secondary school, allowing students and parents to see how they compare and which type of schools seem to do best.
The pattern is clear when looking at NCEA Level 3 and UE achievement rates relative to a school’s Equity Index (EQI) score, which replaced the old decile system. EQI uses a combination of factors to judge student equity, such as parents‘ incomes, qualifications and ages at the birth of their first child, along with any criminal record, time spent on a benefit, social welfare interventions for their children, and the number of times the family has moved home. The higher the EQI, the more socio-economic barriers the school’s students face.
The Ministry of Education’s school leaver data looks at statistical patterns at a national level. The Herald has reported that the proportion of school leavers with NCEA dropped in 2023 to where it was about a decade ago, a trend reversal from the years leading into the Covid pandemic.
The graphic goes deeper, offering a school-by-school breakdown using information obtained under the Official Information Act.
See the interactive and read the full story here.
‘How could you do this?’: Tipene Funerals apologises after bodies of prominent Samoans ‘treated like rubbish’
This story originally ran on August 4, 2024.
Tipene Funerals, of television show The Casketeers fame, is under fire because one of its funeral directors allegedly swindled her grieving clients and put their dead relatives in plastic rubbish bags instead of the coffins they had paid for.
The bodies of several prominent Auckland Samoans were discovered to have been bagged by funeral director Fiona Bakulich, to the dismay of the families. How they found out only caused more distress.
When Cyclone Gabrielle hit last March, the public mausoleum where the bodies were interred at Auckland Council-run Waikumete Cemetery was damaged and needed repairs. The bereft families’ relatives needed to be disinterred for this to go ahead.
In mausoleums, each body is placed inside a vault. Disinterments involve removing each body from its vault and the families can be present for this.
“When the families opened up the caskets, it was just a whole other level of grief. There was just wailing and screaming,” one relative told the Herald.
“How could you do this to our loved ones? You just bagged them like a piece of rubbish.”
Cream of the crop: NZ’s 10 largest dairy farmers revealed
This story originally ran on May 2, 2024.
After dairy’s rollercoaster ride of the past decade, 10 big names have emerged as the country’s top producers.
In recent history, the sector has gone through a milk price bubble, a debt crisis, all the while facing increased competition from other land uses.
Added to that has been a big strategic shift from the country’s dairy company, Fonterra, away from volume for the sake of volume to maximising the value of New Zealand milk.
While production has come off its peak, it remains quite elevated, despite declines in the dairy herd.
The experts put that down to better genetics.
They contribute billions of dollars to New Zealand’s economy and are responsible for thousands of milking cows and farm hectares. So who are the country’s largest dairy farmers?
Jamie Gray uncovers the big players in the dairy sector.
Du Val downfall: From champagne, private jets to receivership and $250m debt
This story originally ran on September 2, 2024.
The residents of stately Victoria Ave would have been agog as they watched Kenyon and Charlotte Clarke’s House of Du Val begin to crumble. First, a humiliating, early-morning raid by officials from the Financial Markets Authority. Then police wearing bullet-proof vests arrived at their Remuera home, sidling past a late model Landrover Defender and a Range Rover parked in the driveway. The police and FMA officials left with guns and documents, a signal that the good life, as the Clarkes knew it, had come to an end.
Those raids on August 2 would have been a bombshell to the many faithful Du Val followers and believers, and a gut-wrenching shock to between 120 and 150 investors, home buyers, commercial lenders and tradespeople who are owed money.
But anyone keeping a close eye on the Du Val story would know the cracks started showing in the Clarke’s facade years ago. There were alarm bells, some loud ones, sounding long before the August dawn raids.
It was a lifestyle of flashy opulence, glamour and wealth, until the money ran out.
Jane Phare charts the downfall of the Du Val husband-and-wife property developers.
A rare and revealing interview with a slightly exasperated Sir Russell Coutts
This story originally ran on February 24, 2024.
In a rare sit-down interview over lunch, our greatest America’s Cup sailor opens up on family, business, Larry Ellison, Grant Dalton, the Blackheart campaign, NZ’s place in the world and his exasperation with red tape.
NZ’s highest-paid CEOs revealed
This story originally ran on April 3, 2024.
Average pay increases for the country’s most powerful chief executives have levelled off amid the recession but a new record has been set for the highest-paid NZX-listed company boss.
Chief executive remuneration packages increased by an average of 3.58 per cent in the 2023 financial year, according to the Business Herald’s Executive Pay Survey which covers 52 companies listed on the stock exchange.
The increase was much less than the nearly 15 per cent recorded for 2022 when CEOs cashed in on a rising sharemarket that pushed performance pay linked to share prices higher.
The latest survey reflects a stagnant local sharemarket in 2023 with the S&P/NZX-50 index declining 0.66 per cent last year, a poor performance relative to other markets such as the S&P 500 index, which climbed 24.23 per cent.
The average chief executive pay for the top-listed companies still climbed to $2.288 million, up from $2.209m in 2022, with a record 25 CEOs receiving at least $2m in 2023.
Do Māori have rights other New Zealanders don’t have?
This story originally ran on November 26, 2024.
After the Act Party’s Treaty Principles Bill passed its first reading, the party ran an advertisement claiming that the interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi “has resulted in different rights for different groups of New Zealanders”.
So we asked a group of legal experts whether Māori have rights that other New Zealanders don’t have and if so, on what basis.
They were: former Treaty Negotiations Minister Sir Douglas Graham; former Attorney-General Chris Finlayson KC; practising lawyer Karen Feint KC; former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer KC; former Attorney-General David Parker; and Treaty specialist and academic Carwyn Jones.
The overwhelming view among those approached is that the Treaty of Waitangi has confirmed existing rights rather than created new rights.
The view was that unless those rights which existed in 1840 had been abandoned or clearly extinguished through the law, they continued to exist.
And the view that the Treaty does not create new rights is contained in advice to decision-makers in a Cabinet Office circular (number five) issued in 2019.
King Cobras defect to Comancheros as gang moves into rival Auckland turf
This story originally ran on July 28, 2024.
An international outlaw motorcycle club has pulled off an ambitious power play in the Auckland underworld by poaching key members of another gang and expanding into their rival’s territory.
Up to six members of the King Cobras have “patched over” to establish a chapter of the Comancheros in central Auckland, which has long been considered the turf of the “KCs”.
The brazen expansion by the ambitious newcomers has the potential to inflame tensions in an already volatile gang scene as the King Cobras, one of the oldest gangs in Auckland, have a reputation for not backing down.
The Comancheros are an Australian motorcycle club which established a chapter in New Zealand six years ago when a small, but influential, group were deported as “501s” by Australian authorities.
Law enforcement agencies were concerned about the gang’s connections to international organised crime groups, and their predictions soon came true.
Now there is a branch in central Auckland. In July, a photograph of more than 20 Comanchero members and associates was posted online. The image referenced a central Auckland chapter and, among other gang slogans, was captioned: “Welcome to the Brotherhood”.
Among the newly minted Comancheros, although not in the photo, is a senior King Cobra, who was arrested earlier this year on serious methamphetamine dealing charges.
It’s believed up to five other KCs have patched over with him.
Power list: NZ’s highest paid charity executives
This story originally ran on February 9, 2024.
They may not be for-profit, but the top end of the charity sector is serious business with executives of our country’s largest charities managing billions and in some cases earning as much as - or more than - Cabinet ministers.
The Herald analysed the Charities Register to find entities with both annual revenues and assets of more than $70m. Nearly three-dozen entities made the cut and this group accounts for a significant slice of the economy. The 32 charities in the survey pool recorded more than $8b in combined annual revenues, manage more than $25b in assets, and employ 51,740 people in full- and part-time employment.
The pool reflects a broad range of charitable structures, ranging from health and social service providers, Māori and iwi groupings, religious orders, most of the country’s universities, and several commercial businesses geared towards charitable ends.
Business investigations reporter Matt Nippert crunches the numbers - and compares vice-chancellors, general secretaries and chief executives - to deliver New Zealand’s first charity executive pay survey.
Melissa Chan-Green opens up on abusive relationship
This story originally ran on March 9, 2024.
The reason I asked the very probably about-to-be-made-redundant Melissa Chan-Green for an interview is because of something she said through her tears last Thursday morning on TV when she announced how it felt that Newshub was set to be axed.
The co-presenter of AM mentioned that she had worked as a broadcaster at the network for 17 years and along the way it had got her through “dark times”. I messaged her and asked if she would like to expand on that.
We met on Monday morning at her extremely white house - white walls, white lampshades, white sofa, orange dining table chairs from Nood - where she lives with her husband Caspar and their two preschool children, Busby and his sister Mabel, in a watery corner of west Auckland. She had given the interview request a lot of thought and was determined to talk publicly about those “dark times” for the first time.
She said: “So there was a period where I was in a very abusive relationship. Going to work was my happy place. It’s where I felt like I was thriving. And it was kind of a break away from the reality of private life.
“So yeah. Even though I’ve been an ambassador for Women’s Refuge for a time, I haven’t said that out loud before, so publicly. So it kind of feels a bit strange. But it did have and still has I guess in some ways an impact on me, and I’m so proud of what I achieved at work through that time as well. Yeah. Kept me going really.”
Ponsonby shooting inside story: Why gunman was refused entry to bar and what happened next
This story originally ran on May 9, 2024.
When a big man with oversized gold rings on his fingers and a bag slung across his chest tried to talk his way inside Ponsonby’s Chapel bar one Sunday evening, the bouncers on the door thought something wasn’t quite right.
Even though Chapel didn’t shut for about another hour, the bouncers made an excuse and said it was closing up.
The bouncers were right to be concerned.
The man was Hone Kay-Selwyn, a Killer Beez gang member with previous violence charges who was rolling around Auckland that night with a gun in his side bag.
Kay-Selwyn asked the bouncers where the nearest dairy was and they pointed him towards the Mobil service station down the end of Ponsonby Rd at the Karangahape Rd intersection.
He started walking in that direction. As he walked off, he turned, put his hand inside his bag and again asked the guards if they were all good.
He continued on then stopped about 100m down the road, by an alleyway where he waited for a few minutes, talking on his phone and constantly looking around.
After about 10 minutes, a group of men including Robert Sidney Horne walked past.
Then Kay-Selwyn pulled a gun from his bag.
The hunt for Kay-Selwyn ended with the discovery of the gunman’s body near Taupō. George Block reveals the details of the events leading up to the shooting, including what the gunman said before he began firing wildly and the bravery of bouncers who rushed to help the victim.
Giving up drinking: Sarah Frizzell on near-death and rehab
This story originally ran on June 29, 2024.
Sarah Frizzell was blind drunk and bleeding when she was admitted to Auckland Hospital’s emergency department in late December 2021.
Desperate to find the tequila her husband had hidden, she crawled underneath their house and shredded her knees on broken glass.
She found it, drank it all, and fell on top of the coffee table, cracking two of her ribs.
At her bedside, Otis gave her an ultimatum: “Quit drinking or I will leave you.”
It didn’t work. A few months later Sarah was back in A&E trying to drink herself to death.
“I’d had it – I didn’t want to live anymore and went on a three-day bender. It was devastating for Otis to see me like that. I remember feeling angry when he abandoned me and left me to die.
“I was ashamed and scared, then a moment of lucidity shook me to my senses. I decided I didn’t want to die and it was at that moment I knew I needed help.”
Two years ago, a drunken Sarah Frizzell, wife of artist Otis Frizzell, hid a ‘dirty little secret’ that nearly led her to lose everything, including her marriage. In this exclusive interview, she tells Carolyne Meng-Yee why she fell into the booze trap and how she got out of it.
Head Hunters’ new pad revealed: Gang buys North Shore industrial property
This story originally ran on January 21, 2024
They’re the cashed-up new chapter of one of Auckland’s oldest patched gangs.
And now the freshly minted North Shore chapter of the Head Hunters has snagged a piece of industrial Wairau Valley to set up a permanent base.
The upstart chapter, officially formed last year, has set up a new pad in Target Rd in a two-storey leasehold unit tucked behind several other businesses near the Wairau Road intersection.
Police say they’ve already responded to several incidents at the new pad and have made two arrests at the premises.
Property records show the unit was purchased in August last year by a holding company incorporated days before the transaction went through.
The Herald understands the purchase price was in the order of $700,000 and there is no evidence a mortgage was taken out on the leasehold property.
Rags to riches, literally: Wet & Forget firm sold in massive, life-changing deal
This story originally ran on April 23, 2024.
One of New Zealand’s best-known and biggest home-grown consumer brands has been sold in a massive, multimillion-dollar commercial deal.
Wet & Forget - famous for its range of homecare products and its “You got moss? You got mould?” radio and TV advertising jingles and other ads - has been sold by Rod Jenden and his wife Leigh to New Zealand’s largest private equity firm, Direct Capital.
Jenden - who’s spent the best part of five decades perfecting the art of homecare products, including the establishment of the Wet & Forget firm in the mid-1990s - is still processing the sale, for himself, Leigh and their staff.
It is, he says, a strange feeling - “weird” - and he and Leigh are yet to celebrate a life-changing transaction deal.
While no one is revealing any specific numbers, close observers say it’s likely to be a nine-figure deal.
Not bad for a company owner who grew up in a state house and left school at 15.
Polkinghorne offered dead wife’s shoes, handbag as gifts during $6000 trysts - sex worker
This story originally ran on September 29, 2024.
An international porn star and escort claims Philip Polkinghorne contacted her two days after his wife Pauline Hanna died.
US-based Kiwi Aubrey Black claims the now-retired Auckland eye surgeon offered her Hanna’s designer shoes, a handbag and the use of her Mercedes after one of their $3000 sessions.
Hanna, a high-ranking health administrator who had taken a lead role in distributing the Covid-19 vaccine, was found dead in the Remuera mansion she shared with Polkinghorne on Easter Monday 2021. Polkinghorne was acquitted of her murder last Monday after an eight-week trial.
Black, a 50-year-old sex worker originally from Gisborne, claimed Polkinghorne approached her Australian-based escort agency Scarlet Blue days after Hanna’s death. The pair arranged to meet at Sky City’s The Grand in Auckland on June 30 of that year, when she came to visit her family.
Black said Polkinghorne, 71, told her his wife had killed herself during their first booking
He claimed Hanna was “depressed” and cheated on him “all the time.”
“He wasn’t feeling great and started sobbing. He was carrying a green lady bag with Feta cheese [inside] which is disgusting and a bottle of Prosecco. I know he dresses weirdly, but this bag was a bit much, I later discovered it belonged to his wife,” Black said.
Black was paid $3000 for each of the two-hour liaisons, she told the Herald in an exclusive interview.
Inside the 10-year police probe to bring down Wayne Doyle and the Head Hunters
This story originally ran on August 31, 2024.
Written on the wall of the Head Hunters’ gang pad is a quote from the classic The Godfather film series that says: “Real power can’t be given. It must be taken”.
For the best part of the past two decades, the motorcycle gang had power in Auckland’s criminal underworld.
Once a rag-tag bunch of teenage misfits with humble beginnings in Glen Innes in the 1960s, the Heads forged a reputation for never taking a backwards step.
This propensity for violence allowed their members to muscle their way into the methamphetamine trade, which exploded in the early 2000s, and enjoy the ill-gotten gains of their labour.
In particular, the East chapter based at 232 Marua Rd in Mt Wellington grew in size and influence.
The Head Hunters established themselves as heavyweight contenders in the criminal underworld, and the police had no choice but to treat them as such.
Top-ranking East members were targeted by police in a series of covert investigations, and eventually convicted of running lucrative drug dealing enterprises.
There was one name missing from the list: Wayne Doyle.
Known as “the Chief”, Doyle was the founding member of the East chapter and widely considered to be the leader of the notorious gang.
While his peers were in and out of jail for serious drugs or violence offences, Doyle had managed to keep out of trouble since his release from prison in 2001 after serving his time for murder.
There wasn’t any evidence to connect Doyle to any crimes committed by the Head Hunters, but frustrated detectives were suspicious about how an unemployed gang leader could accrue millions of dollars’ worth of property.
The mystery prompted the longest, if not the most ambitious, financial investigation ever conducted by the police under the powerful (some would say draconian) criminal proceeds law.
This week, nearly 10 years after Operation Coin started, a High Court judge gave a definitive answer to the nagging question about Doyle’s unexplained wealth.
Is life better in Oz? Incomes, house prices and interest rates compared
This story originally ran on June 29, 2024.
As the cost of living crisis drags on, Kiwis are relocating to Australia in droves - about 2000 of us per month are moving there.
Ben Leahy has run the numbers, comparing New Zealand and Australian incomes, house prices, rents and expenses - and speaks to those testing their fortunes in the “Lucky Country”.
Inside a billionaire’s wedding: The venue, the dress, the star guest list
This story originally ran on August 28, 2024.
The luxurious three-day Fijian wedding of Rich Lister and Zeil founder Anna Mowbray, 41, and former All Black Ali Williams, 43, was a stunning white affair, with the after-party a flip back to the multi-coloured jet set 60s and 70s.
Dozens of family and friends made their way to Kokomo Private Island resort in Fiji to celebrate with the couple from August 16 to 19.
Former All Black team-mates Richie McCaw and Doug Howlett were in attendance, however, Dan Carter was not. Spy understands he had a family celebration the same weekend.
‘F...ed bro’: Hells Angel’s secret messages to undercover agent lift lid on gang world
This story originally ran on April 6, 2024.
The inner workings of the New Zealand gang world and drug trade have been exposed through encrypted messages between a senior member of the Hells Angels and an undercover drugs agent, according to evidence given in a United States criminal trial.
Murray Michael Matthews, a patched member of the Auckland chapter of the motorcycle gang, and Marc Patrick Johnson, one of the country’s original meth cooks, were arrested in Romania in November 2020.
Marius Lazar, president of the Bucharest chapter of the Hells Angels, was also arrested after a sting operation orchestrated by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
All three were to be extradited from Romania to stand trial in Texas, with Matthews and Johnson allegedly involved in a plot to import 400 kilograms of cocaine through the US to New Zealand.
Matthews and Johnson believed they were talking with a large-scale drug trafficker. Instead, they exchanged dozens of encrypted messages with an undercover DEA agent.
The pair are now on the run after absconding from Romania while on bail.
NZDF in crisis: Our ships can’t sail, planes can’t fly and soldiers have left in droves
This story originally ran on January 3, 2024.
Our military has ships that can’t sail, aircraft that can’t be flown and not many soldiers to do the marching with parts of the NZ Defence Force needing a decade to rebuild.
In 21 months to April last year, NZDF lost almost a third of its uniformed service personnel, including people at critical pinch-points in which their absence can upend the ability of many others to do their job.
Examples include “ship stoppers” – marine mechanics – who have left in high numbers, meaning the Royal NZ Navy can’t put to sea, and the Army’s aligning plumbers as having “strategic significance” needed for the military to achieve its mission.
Documents released through the Official Information Act have revealed the dire state of readiness of our defence force with NZDF making “retention payments” to try to stop people from leaving critical roles.
It comes at a time when it is expected our military is going to be called on more often than in the past and into more dangerous situations.
The $20m Kiwi athlete: NZ’s highest-earning sport stars revealed
This story originally ran on December 4, 2024.
For the second year, the Herald examined the earnings of New Zealand’s top 10 highest-paid sportspeople. These athletes share several traits: they have all excelled in their respective fields, they primarily compete on international stages, and – interestingly – none of them are rugby players.
However, transparency in earnings varies significantly among these top earners. While the financial details of basketball star Steven Adams’ contract are publicly accessible and the prize money for New Zealand’s leading golfers is well-documented, other sports’ earnings remain less clear. Best endeavours have been made to source all publically available information to ensure accuracy.
Killer confession: A prison yard bombshell and the jailbirds’ crusade to find a body
This story originally ran on December 5, 2024.
The shrill foreign voice bounced around the concrete tomb-like walls. Tingjun Cao was making a scene. Prison guards rushed to the one-man cell.
Like most things behind bars, nothing escaped the attention of the other inmates. And, as ever, it was them against the screws. They came to the defence of Cao who seemed to simply want a change of clothes. They started braying, yelling for the Corrections officers to back off.
“We were shouting, ‘Leave him alone’. We were all behind him,” recalls former Christchurch Men’s Prison inmate Steve*.
It was December 2023 and Cao had been arrested and charged with the murder of Christchurch real estate agent Yanfei Bao.
The mother of one had disappeared in July last year and never been seen since.
Police alleged that Cao – who had pleaded not guilty and would fight his case in court, and ultimately fail – had met her at a house she was selling in the suburb of Hornby, attacked her with a knife, and dumped her body in a shallow grave on a farm outside of the city.
Until the ruckus at the cell, Steve didn’t know who Cao was. But after that incident, he slowly got to know him.
The former inmate says Cao coughed up how he killed Yanfei Bao one day in the prison yard. It was a graphic, cold-blooded confession that prompted other inmates to try to get the shy, retiring Chinese national to reveal where he had dumped her body.
‘Sales by day and sexy selfies by night’: Manager uses OnlyFans to pay mortgage
This story originally ran on July 7, 2024.
A Kiwi model and former contestant on Australia’s The Bachelor has created an OnlyFans page to supplement her steep Auckland mortgage.
Zilda Williams told the Herald she feels lucky to be on a six-figure salary in her day-job, but it’s still been a struggle lately to pay the bills.
In her only interview, the 41-year-old accounts manager – who lives with her rescue dog Willow – said she bought her Auckland home “at the peak of the market” and her new side-hustle is intended to relieve that financial pressure.
Crime interactive: How many burglaries in your neighbourhood?
This story originally ran on July 8, 2024.
Kiwis have reported 182,379 residential burglaries to the police in the last four years.
That’s an average of one every 12 minutes.
So where is New Zealand’s most burgled neighbourhood? And how many of those burglaries have happened in yours?
Herald data editor Chris Knox has crunched the numbers.