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Photo: 123rf Consumer confidence rises for the second straight month. Pessimists continue to outweigh optimists - overall sentiment remains subdued. Households feel it's still a bad time to buy a major household item. Further interest rate cuts could change the mood quickly. Consumer confidence has risen for the second straight month as households feel more upbeat about future conditions, but overall sentiment remains subdued. The ANZ Roy Morgan survey showed sentiment up 4 points to 92.2 in August, following last month's 5 point rise - although it remained well below its 10-year average of 109. A reading below 100 indicated pessimists outweighed the optimists. Households continued to feel more subdued about current conditions, but they were more optimistic when looking further ahead. ...

Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi TVNZ has posted a large full-year loss as advertising revenue fell and it wrote down the value of assets while signalling more cost cutting. The state owned broadcaster reported a loss of $85 million against a $1.7m profit the year before, driven by a $62m write down in asset values, which were not specified, and a $39m drop in revenue. The pre-tax loss before one-offs was $28.5m at the lower end of its forecasts in the middle of the year. Chief executive Jodi O'Donnell said TVNZ had made progress on its transformation with gains in streaming audiences and digital revenue. "Despite this, and our careful management of costs, our financial performance reflects a constrained economy, market disruption and a difficult advertising market." "It has been an extremely c...

Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles A commercial Hawke's Bay garlic grower has been accused of a social media smear campaign, misinformation and bullying and racially attacking smaller domestic producers to discredit them online. The squabble has predominantly played out on the garlic gurus NZ Facebook page, centred around debate over claims of an allium white rot (AWR) outbreak and which landowners are responsible for the fungal disease. Te Mata Garlic's Chris Morrison is facing allegations of scaremongering by falsely claiming to have been tasked by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and other industry bodies to compile data on growers as part of an "industry investigation". MPI has denied investigating an AWR outbreak. Morrison also left a comment on an international 150,000-member garli...