Radio New Zealand (RNZ)

Radio New Zealand Limited (RNZ), known by its bilingual name Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa, is the country’s principal public radio and digital news broadcaster, established under the Radio New Zealand Act 1995 as a Crown-owned company. The broadcaster operates three nationwide radio networks, RNZ National, RNZ Concert and the AM Network (which relays parliamentary proceedings), alongside its international shortwave and digital service RNZ Pacific (formerly Radio New Zealand International, RNZI). RNZ is headquartered in Wellington with bureaux across the country, and employs approximately 350 staff before the 2025/26 redundancy programme described below.

Media assets

Radio: RNZ National, RNZ Concert, the AM Network (Parliament relay)

International: RNZ Pacific (shortwave and digital, formerly RNZI)

Ownership and governance

RNZ is a Crown-owned company established under the Radio New Zealand Act 1995, with its shares held by the shareholding Ministers (the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Media and Communications, currently Paul Goldsmith of the National Party in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon since November 2023). The RNZ Board is appointed by the shareholding Ministers for fixed terms of up to three years under the appointment provisions of the RNZ Act.

As of March to June 2026, the Board comprised Dr Jim Mather (Chair, term ending 30 June 2026), Irene Gardiner (term ending 30 June 2026), Brent Impey (term 1 September 2024 to 31 August 2027), Gracie MacKinlay (term ending 31 August 2027), Mads Moller (term ending 31 August 2027), Andrew Szusterman (appointed 1 October 2025, term to 30 September 2028), and Jane Wrightson (term ending 30 June 2026). Brent Impey, already an RNZ director, was announced as Dr Mather’s successor and is expected to take up the role of Chair on 1 July 2026, at the end of Mather’s eight-year tenure. Impey is a former Mediaworks chief executive and serves concurrently as Chair of Fiji Drua, Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting (Pasifika TV) and several private-sector boards; on his appointment, he identified three immediate priorities, namely enhancing audience trust, lifting RNZ National’s radio ratings, and continuing the broadcaster’s digital audience growth.

The Board changes occur against a backdrop of explicit ministerial criticism. Deputy Prime Minister and ACT party leader David Seymour, a shareholding Minister in RNZ, stated publicly in May 2026 that “it’s really critical that we are ensuring that we get better people on the board, and those people will change the management” of RNZ. Outgoing Board Chair Mather subsequently rejected the framing publicly. The comments demonstrated intensified political pressure on the broadcaster’s governance and management, but no confirmed evidence was identified that Ministers directed programme content or editorial decisions.

At management level, Paul Thompson has served as Chief Executive and Editor-in-Chief since September 2013. On 22 May 2026, RNZ announced that Thompson had informed the Board in December 2025 of his decision to leave the role at the end of 2026, concluding a 13-year tenure. The Board has indicated that recruitment for a new Chief Executive will commence once the new Chair and Board members are confirmed. Chair Mather characterised the decision as Thompson’s alone; the announcement was brought forward by several months in response to what Mather described as “unhelpful external commentary” about Thompson’s future.

The TVNZ-RNZ merger proposal, advanced by the previous Labour government as Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM), was shelved in February 2023 under the Hipkins administration and has not been revived under the current coalition. In a March 2025 letter of expectations issued to TVNZ Chair Carruthers, with a parallel instruction to RNZ, Minister Goldsmith directed both broadcasters to “identify opportunities to work with [each other], where feasible, to enhance audience reach and delivery of local content, as well as to minimise duplication of investment, including in digital infrastructure”, a softer cooperation framework rather than a structural merger.

Source of funding and budget

RNZ is overwhelmingly Crown-funded, with the substantial majority of its revenue derived from annual Crown appropriations channelled principally through NZ On Air and a small share from commercial activity (programme syndication, content licensing and sponsorship of selected events). The broadcaster received a significant baseline funding increase of approximately NZ$25.7 million per year in 2023 under the previous Labour government, on top of a previous NZ$7.3 million per year increase in 2020, taking the operating base to approximately NZ$67 million in annual Crown funding.

Budget 2025, delivered by Minister of Finance Nicola Willis on 22 May 2025, reduced RNZ’s Crown funding by approximately NZ$18 million over four years, equivalent to NZ$4.6 million per year, or approximately 7 per cent of the broadcaster’s NZ$67 million annual Crown operating budget. Media Minister Paul Goldsmith framed the reduction as a “savings initiative” recognising that “government-funded media must deliver the same efficiency and value-for-money as the rest of the public sector”, and signalled an expectation that RNZ “improve audience reach, trust and transparency” while operating under tightened fiscal constraint. The cut was announced alongside a separate allocation of NZ$6.4 million over four years for regional council, community and court reporting through NZ On Air’s Local Democracy Reporting and Open Justice programmes.

In response, RNZ opened a voluntary redundancy scheme on 17 June 2025, followed later in the cycle by compulsory redundancies. The Public Service Association (PSA) Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi reported in October 2025 that the compulsory redundancies included the axing of the entire TAHI podcast team, comprising young Māori and Pasifika journalists, which the union argued was particularly concerning given the broadcaster’s diversity mandate.

Audience and performance metrics have come under acute scrutiny across the cycle. RNZ National and Morning Report have lost substantial linear-radio audience since 2020, while the broadcaster argues that its multi-platform reach has grown strongly across digital, app, podcast and content-sharing partner distribution. An external review delivered in August 2025 at a cost of approximately NZ$30,000 concluded that RNZ was in decline and required a “major reset” particularly in its live audio strategy. The first 2026 ratings survey recorded RNZ National falling from the country’s third-largest radio station to sixth. Notwithstanding the audience-reach pressures, RNZ ranked top in the 2025 JMAD survey on trust in news media, which the Conversation argued complicates the “scathing” external review’s narrative.

Editorial independence

RNZ’s editorial independence is statutorily entrenched through the Radio New Zealand Act 1995, the RNZ Charter (a schedule to the Act that specifies the broadcaster’s editorial obligations and standards), and its adherence to the Broadcasting Standards Authority code framework and the New Zealand Media Council principles for broadcast and online content respectively. Section 8 of the RNZ Act and the Charter together prohibit shareholding Ministers from directing the broadcaster on programme content or editorial decisions. Audience complaints about RNZ content are first directed to the broadcaster’s internal complaints procedure, with unresolved broadcast matters escalable to the Broadcasting Standards Authority and online-content matters to the New Zealand Media Council; specific categories such as privacy breaches may be referred directly to the BSA without internal exhaustion.

The political environment for the broadcaster has tightened materially during the cycle, with explicit ministerial criticism of management and Board, but no confirmed evidence of direct ministerial direction on programme content or editorial decisions during the 2025/26 review period was identified in the SMM review.

AI and digital policy

RNZ maintains a digital presence centred on rnz.co.nz, with the RNZ app, an extensive podcast catalogue, and a content-sharing partner network as its principal multi-platform reach mechanisms, alongside social-media accounts on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. RNZ has publicly indicated, alongside TVNZ, the New Zealand Herald and Stuff, that it does not generate editorial video or images with AI and would disclose such use; no separate published RNZ commitment to formal content-provenance standards such as C2PA or equivalent was identified in this review. At national level, New Zealand has no dedicated AI legislation; the National AI Strategy launched in July 2025, the Public Service AI Framework (January 2025) and the Responsible AI Guidance for the Public Service: GenAI (February 2025) provide the principal cross-sectoral reference points, alongside New Zealand’s June 2024 adoption of the revised OECD AI Principles.

The 2025/26 cycle brought sharper political pressure on RNZ governance and management, funding cuts, redundancies and Board turnover, but no structural change to ownership, funding model or editorial-independence protections that would warrant reclassification. The ISFM classification therefore continues to apply.

June 2026