Join us at noon today for a live chat with Geoff Cooper, economist for Auckland City.

Auckland ferry operator Sealink says trains are gobbling up too much public money, depriving the two-harbour city of superior water transport.

Auckland's Queens Wharf is too small for the new generation of bigger cruise ships and may need a $10 million top-up from ratepayers.

The report does not show, nor claim to show, that the line is viable, only that a wider view of the net costs and benefits to NZ arguably should be considered, writes Stephen Selwood.

To disguise what it is doing, the Beehive has ordered the Ministry for the Environment to abandon the five-yearly State of the Environment round-up report, writes Neville Peat.

Periodically, calls are made for a rapid expansion of the population of New Zealand - 15 million has been identified as a desirable target.

The Government has been accused of being a Christmas Scrooge and increasing petrol prices in order to protect its promise to get back into surplus in 2014-15.

Increased petrol tax and road user charges will hit consumers hard in these tough economic times, the National Association of Retail Grocers says.

The Government will increase petrol tax by three cents a litre each July 1 for the next three years, with road user charges being increased by an equivalent amount.

An Auckland freight business has been fined $50,000 after a teenage worker had his skull fractured when a large crate fell on him.

Government suspected of blocking plans to build wagons in Dunedin.

An Australian ship detained at Wellington's port this week was found to be "crawling with beetles" that had the potential to harm local insect species.

Mandatory emissions standards for new vehicles and an electrical "smart grid" are among a raft of ways New Zealand could tap into a global green economy.

A planned $60 million luxury superyacht is going on sale unfinished and at a fraction of its estimated value after it was badly damaged in a fire at an Auckland shipyard.

Pike River is a Third World scandal we thought could never happen in a modern civilised country such as ours, writes Brian Rudman.