Stories by Phil Pennington

A Masterton trucker is pulling half a dozen rigs off the road at a cost of $10,000 a day to comply with a new and urgent safety alert.

A safety alert has gone out requiring urgent checks on the towing connections of almost 500 heavy vehicles, including truck-trailers.

The multinational company at one of the sites of firefighting chemical contamination in south Taranaki is refusing to release test results.

Oil company Shell has contaminated groundwater in New Plymouth using a firefighting foam banned in New Zealand 12 years ago.

Firefighting foam contaminants have been found at "elevated levels" in eels in two south Taranaki streams and in groundwater at five other sites.

Analysis - A reality TV show offers clues to what's wrong with New Zealand's building industry, writes Phil Pennington.

The Environmental Protection Authority says it is not aware of any firefighting foams containing banned chemicals that are still being used anywhere in the country.

The level of firefighting foam contamination in eels in south Taranaki is up to 80 times the proposed trigger level in an official food safety report.

A Hutt Valley grandmother says an Oranga Tamariki safety report recommends her grand-daughter should be in her care full-time, but she's not.

The Ministry of Education is being blamed for a badly leaking Auckland high school and for changing contracts so that builders can wait up to twice as long as usual to get paid.

A construction industry survey suggests a third of builders are not holding money in trusts for subcontractors even though it is against the law not to do so.

The grandmother of a teenage girl in the Hutt Valley says she fears her granddaughter will end up on meth, following months without intervention by social workers.

A major supplier of aluminium composite panels for high-rise buildings has pulled out of the government's troubled CodeMark scheme.

Tests for firefighting foam contamination are spreading outwards to encompass properties neighbouring Whenuapai airbase in west Auckland.

A couple in Australia have complained that higher fees for foreign tourists to tramp New Zealand's Great Walks amounts to unlawful discrimination.

An investigation into truck safety problems has revealed the auto-brakes failed on a fully-loaded trailer that came loose on a highway.

Building owners and designers are struggling to deal with the suspension of key approval certificates for aluminium panels similar to those that burned on London's Grenfell Tower.

A mother whose baby has tainted blood and a man whose business is being wrecked have spoken out at an Australian inquiry into firefighting foam contamination.

The number of hospital buildings that are earthquake-prone is rising as new assessments come in, reversing a downward trend.

The government and a key agency are at odds over what's being called a "broken" and "failing" building products assurance scheme.

A review has found the government's gold-standard scheme to approve building products, CodeMark, is seriously flawed.

A New Zealand mother-of-six shown in an online video being restrained on the ground at a Sydney immigration detention centre says guards used excessive force against her.

Computer systems serving the northern region's public hospitals came within minutes of losing power last year, according to an internal health board report.

A 17-year-old New Zealand boy held for four months in detention in Australia has been released.

South Auckland health chiefs were warned 18 years ago that an earthquake-prone building should not have patients in it, but it still does.