Stories by Ian Telfer

There is a strong mood amongst South Dunedin voters to change the mayor, but the vote appears split among the many challengers.

The Queenstown mayoral race has raised a debate over whether the resort town should be limiting its own booming growth.

The author of a report which has sparked a raft of changes to ACC says it is a great day and the changes will make the system much fairer. Audio

A Southland council is being criticised as having failed its community over a major aluminium smelter waste stockpile.

The Invercargill mayoralty is being described as a genuine three-horse race in which Tim Shadbolt might well be toppled. Audio

A major new iwi-led health centre is being launched to bring low-cost health care to South Dunedin, one of the most deprived areas in the country.

The country's most troubled district health board says it will turnaround its fortunes by improving its services, not cutting them.

A group of shareholders of meat processor Silver Fern Farms have failed to stop the company's Chinese joint venture at a special meeting. Audio

Ngāpuhi leader Sonny Tau has been sentenced to community detention and fined $24,500 for trying to cover up shooting five kereru. Video

Thousands of people from around the world suddenly want to move to the South Otago town of Kaitangata. Ian Telfer asked four of them why.

An Otago town has launched a plan to lure families by offering new homes costing half the price of the government's affordable housing.

A fight is brewing over who will pay the millions of dollars needed to clean up one of the country's most toxic sites.

The cleaning up of thousands of toxic waste sites has been pushed back for at least a decade after the government dropped it as a priority.

A Labour MP has been accused of inappropriately trying to influence the Environment Court on the future of a prominent Dunedin hill.

An Otago community's dream of putting up its own windfarm has been challenged by the people living closest to the site.

A critic of the country's first proposed community windfarm says it's a political statement at the community's expense.

Dunedin retailers say the central city is dowdy and needs more investment and attention.

In the age of Uber and high speed travel, a Dunedin student is going against the flow with a business ferrying passengers by bicycle.

Residents of a Dunedin rest home share their advice to the monarch as she turns 90: eat plenty of seafood and catch up with your pals.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who was the godfather of the Resource Management Act, is pleading with the government to stop fiddling with it.

The Southern District Health Board has given up on a $5 million, 15-year dispute with a doctors' organisation.

Biosecurity teams are being scrambled on to hundreds of dairy farms to try to stop an outbreak of Velvetleaf - one of the world's worst cropping pests. Audio

Dunedin has been economically stagnant so long that no-one is brave enough to declare the gloomy times over.

High-tech footage of a balcony collapse at a student concert has revealed no-one was jumping on it when it fell. Audio

Submissions on an Otago community's plan to put up its own windfarm are evenly split for and against.