Gwen McClure

Auckland

Video and Print Journalist at Freelance

Journalist in Auckland, NZ. Currently @TheDetailNZ, formerly @TheProjectNZ

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Articles

What NZ could be looking at in a global recession

1 month ago | newsroom.co.nz | Gwen McClure

After weeks of turmoil in the global markets, economists and commentators have used words like ‘bloodbath’ and ‘carnage’ to describe the world’s financial situation. And while New Zealand often feels relatively cushioned, what happens in the US is inextricably linked to the rest of the world. “It will impact us to some extent, there’s no doubt,” says the chief economist at the BNZ, Mike Jones. “We don’t trade with the US as much as some other countries, but it’s 25 percent of the global economy.
Sell-out crowd expected at Wellington's Fraud Film Festival

2 months ago | rnz.co.nz | Gwen McClure

The Wellington Fraud Film Festival will showcase a collection of documentaries covering all types of deceptions. It is a topic that's become increasingly relatable for New Zealanders. Next Monday in Wellington, some 150 people will fill the Roxy Cinema for a niche documentary film festival. But they will not be the usual film festival crowd of movie buffs - they'll be lawyers, police officers, bankers, and anyone else whose work deals with scams or fraud.
Wikipedia, a surprising repository of fact

Mar 7, 2025 | rnz.co.nz | Gwen McClure

The fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia should mean it's rife with disinformation. But editors say it's the reason the online encyclopedia works so well. Every second, more than 8000 people read Wikipedia. Every minute, there are about 350 edits to the site. It's the most-read reference ever. This, of course, is according to Wikipedia - a sentence that would have been unlikely to appear in an article even a few years ago.
Sovereign citizens challenge NZ courts with fringe legal claims

Feb 26, 2025 | nzherald.co.nz | Gwen McClure

By Gwen Mcclure of RNZSovereign citizens believe they are exempt from the laws of New Zealand. But that doesn’t stop the law from coming after them. Another hiccup for New Zealand’s court processes – and this one’s a strange one. In early February, a couple in Raglan was fined $20,000 for unconsented works to their house, following a long court case in which they claimed to be exempt from council rules.
SovCits are fighting the law, but the law's winning

Feb 26, 2025 | rnz.co.nz | Gwen McClure

Sovereign citizens believe they are exempt the laws of New Zealand. But that doesn't stop the law from coming after them. Another hiccup for New Zealand's court processes - and this one's a strange one. In early February, a couple in Raglan was fined $20,000 for unconsented works to their house, following a long court case in which they claimed to be exempt from council rules.
Geopolitical games in the South Pacific

Feb 12, 2025 | rnz.co.nz | Gwen McClure

Over the past few weeks, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has had public tiffs with the leaders of both the Cook Islands and Kiribati. The issues: first Peters put foreign aid to Kiribati under review after President Taneti Maamau cancelled a meeting with him. Then this week, Peters accused Cook Islands PM Mark Brown of 'blindsiding' both New Zealand and his own people with a trip to Beijing.
The mammoth job of managing stranded whales

Feb 4, 2025 | rnz.co.nz | Gwen McClure

It takes a day for Hori Parata (Ngātiwai) to dissect a whale. His tipuna have been doing this work for some 15 generations, and now his son does it too. "We're doing it because it's a retrieval of important resources from the whale," he says. "It's whale oil and bone that we're using as a remedy for kauri dieback."But well before Parata turns up, there's likely to be a crowd on the beach. The process of saving a whale, whether in a single stranding or a mass stranding, is a mammoth effort.
New Zealand 101 for those seeking refuge

Dec 10, 2024 | newsroom.co.nz | Gwen McClure

Aqela Barati and her husband, Mohammad Kazim, are waiting for news about their new home in Palmerston North, which they hope to move into by Christmas. The house hasn’t been found yet – there’s a team working on that – but they have a general idea of what it will look like.
The long, expensive road to surrogacy

Dec 8, 2024 | newsroom.co.nz | Gwen McClure

Reproductive science has come far in the past 50 years, but when it comes to surrogacy, our laws have not kept up. In New Zealand, surrogacy is legislated under the Adoption Act 1955. “At the moment surrogacy is governed by the adoption laws which were set up obviously when surrogacy was like something out of a science fiction movie,” says Kellie Addison, who has been a surrogate twice.
How rough sex and strangulation entered the nation's conversations, and bedrooms

Nov 26, 2024 | newsroom.co.nz | Gwen McClure

On Friday, experts from fields across medical, justice and psychology will meet in Wellington to discuss a rising concern: the normalisation of strangulation and rough sex in New Zealand. “Rough sex seems to be experiencing a bit of a cultural moment,” says Dr Samantha Keene, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington.