Stories by Phil Pennington

A guide to public officials, published last year, suggested a number of uses in policy development and for doing 'high-volume, low-value tasks' in public services.

The committees were made mandatory years ago, and FENZ has now been taken to task over lack of progress on emergency planning.

Some licensed companies have been doing such a poor job, the Ministry of Education is looking at tighter controls.

The government says more toll roads are likely but the three existing ones charge a relatively low fare.

It is one of many schools struggling to overcome mounting paperwork and rising costs as it tries to finish a building.

A college principal says she is horrified at what has happened to her school's building project - even though it is supposedly a top priority.

Jake Ginders and Floyd Harris died during an illegal commute. Now their families' five-year fight for accountability has hit a brick wall.

WorkSafe is cutting funding to safety programmes worth almost $15 million a year, skittling a "really valuable" one in the high-risk forestry industry.

The levy on vehicle, house and other property insurance is set to rise by 12.8 percent in July - the first rise in seven years.

An apology to a school from the Secretary of Education says the ministry was too slow to flag rising costs.

The country's largest medical imaging business is looking at adding a shareholder model that it up till recently was deploring as bad for patients.

The agency's head ordered the only line about a partnership with Māori removed from a message about relegating the name.

The nurse's union says mistakes robbing nurses of tens of thousands of dollars are being made by the health systems pay back system.

KiwiRail says it is now looking at buying second-hand ships for the Cook Strait ferry service, and is asking what to do about the terminals.

MPs have questioned KiwiRail executives and the board chair about why it had got this bad.

In one example, a woman was stabbed to death by a partner who overheard her making a 111 call.

The Labour Opposition is walking back its openness to joining one wing of the AUKUS military pact. Video

A provider of advanced medical scanning says it is now becoming viable commercially to put in more of the multimillion-dollar machines.

ACC funds about 40 percent of privately-done scans in the country and has been trying to rein in costs.

The government says it is in the final stages of a plan to build more school classrooms more efficiently. Audio

More than 100 new classroom builds are in doubt in a cost-cutting exercise that's already forced the Secretary of Education to apologise, following the Minister's intervention.

A man was forced to go to Australia for an urgent scan, because NZ's only producer of radioactive medical material had shut down for two weeks.

The Department of Conservation has not had any input into reports on Transmission Gully motorway's environmental impacts or what to do about them.

The government is being warned 'tight' electricity supply situations could become more frequent, especially on cold winter mornings and evenings.

Officials have stressed the importance of protecting critical infrastructure, in their overarching briefing to the Minister for National Security and Intelligence.