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Photo: 123RF New Zealand was once a homeowner's dream, now just 60 percent of households own the house they live in - and that's on the slide, a housing advocate says. Now New Zealand has some of the least affordable housing in the OECD and is experiencing a "collapse of tenure," says Charles Waldegrave. Waldegrave is coordinator of the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit, a former member of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and recently authored a report for the Waitangi Tribunal on Māori home ownership. It wasn't always this way, Waldegrave told RNZ Nights. Up until the early 1990s there was bipartisan support for homeownership and secure social housing, he said. "Governments provided security for people by ensuring they could get into houses and pay for it over the course of t...

Air New Zealand has pulled the plug on its climate targets on 30 July saying the resources needed to meet them are unaffordable and unavailable. Photo: Supplied/ Air NZ Air New Zealand is unlikely to be the only major company that will renege on its near-term climate targets, experts say. The airline made global headlines last week with an announcement that it was pulling the plug on its 2030 emissions reduction target. It had committed in 2022 to reduce its carbon intensity by nearly 29 percent before 2030, compared to a 2019 baseline. Carbon intensity is a measure of greenhouse gas emissions relative to a certain activity. In Air New Zealand's case, that's emissions per revenue tonne kilometres - the total weight of revenue-generating passengers and freight multiplied by the distanc...

picture id="4KPW3T6_Matahina_Power_Station_jpg" crop="16x10" layout="full"] Electricity generator Manawa Energy has cut its earnings guidance after a key customer defaulted on its payment terms with the company. Manawa said it acted as a wholesale intermediary for an unnamed electricity retailer which has not kept up with payments. It said as a result, Manawa would set money aside for potential bad debt in its full-year results for the year ending March 2025. It comes as wholesale electricity prices soared on the back of low hydro lake levels. Manawa expected underlying earnings for the year to be in the range of $95 million to $115m, compared to the previous $130m to $150m. It said about half of the change in guidance was because of the money set aside for potential bad debt. Manawa confi...

Businesses are expected to upskill existing staff rather than increase headcount. File photo. Photo: 123RF Rising unemployment is another symptom of the economic stress businesses are under, say employers and manufacturers. June quarter unemployment rose to 4.6 percent - from a revised 4.4 percent - in the first quarter of the year. EMA head of advocacy Alan McDonald said the increased rate was not a surprise and reflected the record high volume of calls to its advice line service. "The struggles facing Kiwi businesses, with the number of requests for help from our members in the areas of restructuring and redundancy skyrocketing this year," he said. "Instead of increasing headcount, we expect businesses to upskill their existing staff in the likes of health and safety and leadership co...

Southern Cross paid out $42 million in claims for cancer treatment in the 2023 year. File photo. Photo: 123RF The increase in the amount of chemotherapy being done by the private sector had been "exponential" in recent years, with New Zealand's largest health insurer paying tens of millions for cancer treatment every year. New Zealanders are increasingly turning to private healthcare to provide chemotherapy due to concerns about wait times in the public system. Medical oncologist and professor cancer medicine Professor Christopher Jackson said the growth has been "exponential". "There has been rapid growth in chemotherapy and radiation services [in the private sector]," he said. He said that was partly driven by the wait times in the public health system, and the availability of drugs t...