Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Online auction site TradeMe posted a $4.7 million net profit after tax for the year to June, turning around earlier losses.

Experts believe the return to profit came from the site raising their prices- especially in its property arm.

BusinessDesk managing editor Pattrick Smellie explains how this increased net profit impacts TradeMe's overall earnings.

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New Zealand's trade deficit appears to be getting smaller, according to the latest data.

A new report from Stats NZ says imports were down, falling $1.2b to $7.1b compared to October last year.

Kiwibank economist Sabrina Delgado says increased interest rates are restraining demand and causing imports to fall.

"We actually saw that our imports surged during the post-Covid period when we had quite a lot of loose monetary policy and expanded fiscal policy- we saw imports rose off the back of that, now we've got really high interest rates."

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Belief opposing views could be behind the ousting of former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

At least 700 of 770 staff at the company famous for creating Chat GPT have penned an open letter calling for the board's resignation after it fired Altman.

Tech commentator Paul Stenhouse says no one knows for sure why Altman was shown the door in the first place.

"This comes from CNN tech contributor Kara Swisher- he wanted to move super fast, he wanted to monetise everything, he wanted to go to market more quickly and the board wanted to be a lot more cautious." 

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The country's top court has turned down appeals from two water bottling companies in Canterbury.

Cloud Ocean Water and Rapaki Natural Resources had extracted billions of litres from Christchurch's aquifers each year under a decades-old consent granted for industrial use.

The Supreme Court sat in Christchurch for the first time earlier this year, and yesterday released its decision dismissing their appeal.

Aotearoa Water Action chair Peter Richardson says he's thrilled with the decision - but it might not be over just yet.

"It's perhaps not the end of the matter, it depends on what Cloud Ocean decides to do. They may surrender their existing consent and apply pressure for a new consent. But it would have problems."

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New Plymouth's mayor is hitting out at those opposing the Mount Messenger bypass project.

A decision by Waka Kotahi to give construction workers pies has been under the spotlight and deemed wasteful by the Taxpayers Union.

Waka Kotahi prices the pies at $400 a month.

But mayor Neil Holdom says the pie criticism is a storm in a teacup.

"And it's a reflection of the desperation, because most New Zealanders have moved on and realised- actually it's happening, it's a good thing and we should look after the workers that are on site."

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Electronics have been found to be the most likely product to come from modern slavery.

World Vision has found New Zealand households spend $77 per week on average on products implicated in modern slavery.

This includes clothing, toys, coffee, bananas, furniture, phones and laptops.

Head of Advocacy and Justice Rebekah Armstrong says EVs, e-bikes and solar panels are also impacted.

"It's really interesting that in the transition to cleaner energy, we're actually potentially using products that harm children and people in forced labour."

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A former Deputy Prime Minister disagrees the role's largely ceremonial.

Prime Minister-elect Chris Luxon has confirmed policies have been settled in Coalition talks - and negotiations have turned to ministerial roles.

ACT's David Seymour made a public pitch for Deputy, but Luxon has downplayed the role's importance.

Sir Don McKinnon was the deputy to Jim Bolger in his National Government, under the single-party system.

He says under MMP it can be someone from a different party, but the duties are real.

"You're there to do things that your leader, your Prime Minister, doesn't want to do, meet the people he doesn't want to meet, go to the places he doesn't get time to go to."

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A prominent Auckland businessman has threatened legal action against Auckland Council if it votes to sell the Downtown Carpark building.

Precinct Property was selected as the preferred buyer in September last year- and it plans to use the space to build apartments and office towers.

Andrew Krukziener says the Downtown Carpark is a crucial asset to the city centre.

"To take it away will diminish business in the city, it'll be terrible for Aucklanders and people who live on Waiheke who use that carpark as a connection point."

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Punted Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan has spoken of deep-rooted issues in the sport across the Tasman.

It comes less than 48 hours after he was given his marching orders from the organisation's board, as the World Cup failure, appointment of Eddie Jones and a centralisation push came to a head.

Sportstalk host D'Arcy Waldegrave explains further.

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Again, it's looking pretty positive on the formation of Government today.

Here's the update for the day- The policy work is now actually done, all three parties have now reached agreement on the policy agenda for the next three years.

This seems like a minor step forward from yesterday, because yesterday ACT and NZ First had reached agreement with National.

Today, ACT and NZ First have signed off on each others’ agreements. So minor- but significant.

Because that is the hardest and most complex part of the negotiations. The next bit is basically doling out the fancy jobs, and Deputy PM is fast becoming the one we’re all going to watch.

Because this is also obviously a battle of the egos.

David Seymour is making a big play publicly of wanting it, he said to the waiting media today that he deserves the job because the job should go to the second biggest party - and the second biggest party is ACT.

It's kind of weird that he's putting up such a big fight publicly, given that he’s previously indicated he’s not so worried about portfolios and more interested in policy wins, but here we are.

But David, as he said, thinks he deserves it because his party is the biggest of the minor parties.

Winston Peters will likely think he deserves it because of seniority and because he’s done the job twice already.

Nicola Willis reportedly wants it too, and you can make an argument for her getting it given National is miles bigger than both the little parties and she will be Finance Minister - Deputy PM will signal her seniority in Government.

What none of them will say out loud but all of them will surely be thinking is that the Deputy is the one who gets to be acting PM when the actual PM is out of the country, which is why they all want it.

I don’t envy Luxon having to pick between them- but maybe he doesn’t have to. He could break with convention and have not one but two deputies.

One job for David, one for Winston and none for Nicola because she will probably have a more manageable ego than the other two.

It's not an unprecedented idea, Fiji has three.

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