Afternoon Edition: 20 July 2026

The Afternoon Edition of News Fix for 20 July 2026, straight from the Newstalk ZB newsroom - bringing you everything you need to know in news, politics, business, entertainment and sport.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good afternoon. I'm railing Ramsey. This is your afternoon news
fix for Monday, the twentieth of July. The government's announced
a raft of changes to its Resource Management replacement bills.
It's scraping existing council agreements with local EWE as the
bills stand, Amana Fucohorno our ROHEB agreements would have transferred

(00:24):
into the new system. Reform Minister Chris Bishop says other
changes will make it easier to produce food and fiber
and build the homes, infrastructure and renewable energy we need.
We've retained the first and first served resource allocation mechanism
and is a longer transition period to support councils and
practitioners implementing a new system. Bishop says the second readings

(00:46):
expected in the next couple of weeks, and the Prime
Minister says replacing the RAMA will make building infrastructure easier,
faster and more affordable. Because if we do want more houses,
we want better infrastructure and more affordable energy. We need
a planning system that enables us to make that happen.
The Green parties proposing a state owned power company and
making Gen Taylors sell it a portion of reliable generation.

(01:10):
Keywi Power wouldn't directly deal with consumers, but use power
supplied by the big companies and sell it to smaller
market players at an affordable price. CO leader Chloe Swarbrick
says the entity would support independent players entering the market
as well as investing in new generation. That is simply
a stopgap to get us into a place of building

(01:31):
up QUE Power's capacity to provide that stability in the market,
which is so evidently necessary government help for our fully
or our only fully integrated cement production plant. It's pledging
an immediate sixty million dollars soufflect your building's Golden Bay
cement facility keeps running in fig r A with one

(01:52):
hundred and fifty million more over the next fourteen years.
Minister Nikola Willis says it'll keep concrete pumping. Property editor
Anne Gibson says the companies performed strongly under CEO Andrew Reading.
They're about to announce a four year result on August nineteen.
So I was a bit taken aback by this. I

(02:13):
would have called it a bow out a large public
effort to help keep bird flu at bay. We still
have just two detected cases of the H five N
one strain, one in Pattoni, the other near Cartertan. MPI
says there remains no evidence of mass mortality and no
disease found in poultry. Director General Ray Smith told the

(02:35):
country the response is outstanding so far. Since this outbreak
was first announced last week, we fed around six hundred
notifications where people have observed the birds or sick birds
or something that they're concerned about. A psychologist says ballooning
numbers of kiwis on antidepressants indicate a lack of better
mental health treatments. The heralds revealed antidepressants were prescribed last

(02:59):
year to more than sixty three thousand New Zealanders aged
ten to twenty four. That's almost doubled over a decade.
Clinical psychologist Google Sutherland says people end up being medicated
because they can't see a psychologist or access other help.
That really leaves people getting what you might consider suboptimal treatment.

(03:20):
To me, it indicates that people just aren't able to
get there, so they are getting antidepressants instead. To sport
in twenty twenty five, US Open champ Michael Campbell reckons
Ryan Fox says all the weapons to win even more
majors Following his breakthrough victory at the Open in England.
Leonel Messi is leaving Football's World Cup empty handed, with

(03:42):
Spain crown champions, Spanish captain Rodery named best Player and
Achillean and Barpe scoring the Golden Boot as tournament top
goal scorer. The most capped football Fern of all time,
defender Abby Ersek has been unveiled as the player in
Auckland FC's invitational women's team to host English side Chelsea

(04:05):
in Auckland next month. That is your latest news fix.
We'll be back with the next update tomorrow morning from
the news Talk seed b newsroom