PM close to home as due date near

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has held her last post-Cabinet press conference with the media before having her baby, revealing yesterday that she will be basing herself in Auckland for the rest of the week.

Ardern’s child is due on Sunday and she told reporters at her weekly briefing that it had been pointed out she may be “tempting fate” to continue travelling so near her due date.

Parliament resumes after a two-week break.

Ardern was in good spirits as she informed reporters that while she would continue to work this week, she would be based in Auckland.

“The suggestion has been that my consistent travel may be tempting fate to a certain degree so I will be travelling within vehicular distance from Auckland for the remainder of the week.”

Ardern admitted to being excited about the upcoming birth, a first child for her and partner Clarke Gayford.

“Yes, of course. The impending arrival of a new addition to your family is an exciting time.

“I have to admit though, of course, things like travel does add a little air of tension because it means that you are not just managing your own but you are managing logistics in case things happen before you are ready.”

Ardern reassured New Zealanders that the plan to hand over to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters during her six weeks’ parental leave was robust and in place.

Peters will be Acting Prime Minister while Ardern is on leave.

The pair hammered out a plan some weeks ago and Ardern gave

I am still the leader of the Labour Party. Minister Peters is not taking over as acting leader of the Labour Party. Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister

this week Peters a formal letter outlining his duties while he’s in charge.

“These things are often intuitive. We already know the things that we engage on and I would expect there just to be a continuation of that, as Deputy Prime Minister Peters would as well.”

Ardern said if there were any issues such as disciplining a Labour MP, she would expect that she or deputy Labour leader Kelvin Davis would be involved.

“I’m still the leader of the Labour Party. Minister Peters is not taking over as acting leader of the Labour Party, so that’s something that I would expect myself or Kelvin Davis to be involved in.”

Ardern said picking out a baby name was going “terribly” and asked for suggestions.

She laughed when a reporter suggested Winston.

“You’re not the first to suggest that.” She understood the curiosity around her pregnancy and the birth but hoped for some privacy after her baby was born.

“I’m keen to make sure that, given all the well wishes that we’ve had and all of the kindness that New Zealanders have shown, making sure that we at least put out a response to that by sharing the good news . . . we hope to have a little bit of quiet time together as a family too.”

Agencies across the country are fighting to stop money scammed off innocent Kiwis being funnelled into illegal activities abroad. New Zealanders are affected by scams every day and estimates show the cost of cybercrime to the nation could be between $400 million and $500m every year.

Agencies such as Netsafe, police, the Financial Markets Authority and cyber security watchdog CERT NZ make up a multi-agency group dedicated to scam and fraud prevention — ever vigilant about the changing tactics used by foreign criminal syndicates.

The experts liaise with international money security agencies in a bid to block accounts and track down the scammers.

Together with the banking sector, the group is employing new technology in the fight. This includes tracking overseas money transfers and blocking suspect accounts.

It also includes anti-scam phone technology that blocks scam calls and records via computer software where they originated so authorities can track the culprits.

Education is another important tool, teaching people what to look out for and what to do if they realise they’ve been scammed.

Sometimes scammers don’t get their own way, such as when a fake Malaysian travel company tried to trick a savvy pensioner into passing on her personal information.

Noeleen Sutton, 80, was curious when an envelope came in the mail with five “large, pretty Malaysian stamps” and stuffed with a travel brochure and two scratch cards.

One of the scratchies said she’d won US$200,000 — all she had to do was contact the “travel company” and send them her passport or driver’s licence information.

Part of her knew it was too good to be true, but another curious part of her wanted to see whether she might be able to claim the prize.

“All common sense went out the window,” Sutton said.

She ended up talking to Netsafe, and pulling out before the scam cost her anything. “I had a lucky escape.”

Commission for Financial Capability (CFFC) manager fraud education Bronwyn Groot advocates for scam victims.

In one case she called “absolutely devastating”, a Kiwi family lost more than $2m in what was then called binary options and is now referred to as cryptocurrency.

Last year, the recently retired parents of a man in his early 30s agreed to loan him money so he could trade in an online market which transpired to be fake.

Groot said cryptocurrency trading functioned similarly to online gambling — victims were sucked in by the thrill of “winning” trades, the earnings which would always eventually be lost by scammers secretly pulling the strings.

The initial investment was only US$250, but once the first trade went awry the victim would be asked to invest more money, with the promise they’d be guided by the company to make even bigger gains.

And so on it goes, until victims have lost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.

In the case Groot worked on, which unfolded last year over six months, the fallout ripped the family apart. There was no way the couple’s son could ever pay them back the money they’d lent him.

‘It’s just been horrendous,” Groot said. “It was a huge majority of their money. They will struggle and the family will struggle to come to terms with it.”

In another case, a man in his 70s lost $175,000 in one weekend by trading on a cryptocurrency site.

“He struggles to accept that — the money was to support his wife.”

Meanwhile, Groot took another case involving a couple in Nelson