Dunedin

The incident happened at the Cumberland Street supermarket just before 2.30pm yesterday.

Police said three of the people injured in the attack are in a serious but stable condition in hospital. A fourth person is in a moderate condition.

They said the man was released from hospital last night and moved to Dunedin Central Police Station.

He is due to appear in the Dunedin District Court today.

The stabbing took place at a Countdown supermarket in central Dunedin on South Island in the afternoon.

One person has been taken into custody, authorities said.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the motivation behind the attack was not clear but that there was no indication it was a domestic terror event.

Incidents of mass violence are rare in New Zealand but the country saw the 2019 Christchurch shooting when a white supremacist killed more than 50 people at two mosques.

Read said the team only had to watch last week’s second half, where they bizarrely let  to see the dangers of the Wallabies, rueing a job they viewed as only half done.

“(You) just have to look at the footage from the last 20 minutes of the game and we know how dangerous they can be,” he said.

“We slightly took our foot off the throat and if we're not there mentally, they're a team that can do that. They're dangerous, they're hungry, they've certainly got a point to prove, so

Read said that was a mistake they wouldn’t want to be making on Saturday in Dunedin.

Dunedin mayor Dave Cull said there were still many slips on the road and the weather was freezing, with black ice on many city streets. Council officers were out laying grit, he said.

RNZI reports on the Taieri Plain, Dunedin Civil Defence said two houses in Outram were badly flooded but most of the approximately 100 people who had to get out on Friday could now return.

However, it said some residents of the nearby township of Henley might have to stay away for days. All its residents were evacuated on Friday night and there was no timeframe for them to return.

The Taieri Plain south of Dunedin is on track for its second-largest flood on record.

Dunedin Civil Defence said the Taieri river was flowing at 1200 cumecs, and at 100 cumecs the Taieri floodgates were normally opened.

The civil defence controller, Sue Bidrose, said that was because they had been working to evacuate all the farmhouses and stock on the land which will be flooded once the gates are opened.

Security guards were outside every entrance to the popular Cadbury World tourist attraction on Thursday morning and the factory was closed for the day.

Hundreds of workers were called to a meeting and briefed on the proposal to move production to Australia. In a statement, Mondelez said it would invest to redevelop the tourist side of the operation if the local community wanted it to.

Workers leaving the meeting had been told not to comment and had been given media contact cards to show people. They looked shocked and upset.