BROADCASTS.com

A Māngere primary school has made masks "non-negotiable" for all its students and staff, despite official advice still saying that they're not necessary.
The stance comes as some schools in South Auckland reported attendance of just a third of their students as the region enjoyed its first day out of level 3 lockdown yesterday.
Health Minister Chris Hipkins this morning told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking the Government realised there would be some concerns for families about children returning to school.
He said while there was uncertainty about children not turning up to class, it was too early for attendant services to chase up families who were keeping pupils home.
"It is safe to send your kids back to school," said Hipkins.
"We want kids back in school and we encourage parents to send their kids back to school," he said.
Individual schools would be following up over the absenteeism and if there was a persistent problem then families could be referred to authorities.
"I think it's a bit early to be talking about doing that sort of thing yet but ultimately we do have attendant services who can follow those sorts of things up," he said.
Hipkins said he could understand the degree of hesitance felt by many parents.
"But we wouldn't be reopening schools if we thought we were increasing the risk by doing that," he said.

He said yesterday that it was "not okay" to keep children away from school.


"Their futures depend on this."
Hipkins told Hosking this morning that an advertising botch - which saw some 700,000 people thinking they needed a test across West and South Auckland - should not be repeated. All advertising on Covid will now come past the Government.
Explaining what went wrong in the whole of government social media testing advertisement, Hipkins said: "It appears that wires got crossed there. We've had a very good look at the systems behind the authorisation for those ads before they go up, bearing in mind that none of them came past anyone in the Beehive so we didn't see them before they went up, so we're making sure that system is fixed so that that sort of thing doesn't happen again."
Hipkins today encouraged all those skilled workers who had returned to New Zealand since the international Covid outbreak to get into workforce and bolster the economy.