Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

The long-standing tradition of popping over to an Irish pub for an authentic pint of Guinness may be coming to an end. 

New data shows 108 pubs closed in 2022, with an average of 152 pubs closing annually since 2019.

UK correspondent Enda Brady says the combination of Covid-19 and the ongoing cost of living crisis has encouraged many Irish locals to drink at home instead.

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Tonight on The Huddle, Infrastructure NZ CEO Nick Leggett and former Labour Chief of Staff Mike Munro joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day- and more!

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was one of ten people killed in a plane crash north of Moscow, on a private plane enroute to Saint Petersburg. Was this news expected? Is this good news for Putin? 

National MP National MP Tim van de Molen has been stripped of his portfolios and has had to apologise for threatening a Labour MP. Can National bounce back from this ahead of the election? 

National has opted to keep Labour's fees-free policy for tertiary education- despite the policy copping backlash. Is this just a last bid for votes?

Air New Zealand's annual after-tax profit of $412 million is being called 'a spectacular turnaround'. Is this good news?

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The food and fibre sector export revenue has reached new heights and earned $57.4 billion in the year to June 30.

This has brought an extra $1.2 billion into the economy, surpassing Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor's expectations.

The Country's Jamie Mackay says this news comes with a caveat, as the dairy and sheep sectors are likely to take a hit.

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How much financial pain is too much to inflict on young families struggling to pay off their first homes?

History indicates it's a rite of passage- baby boomers endured mortgage rate spikes of 20 percent and Generation X suffered under rates that soared above 10 percent.

NZ Herald business editor at large Liam Dann agrees it's a generational rite of passage, but the weight of the burden has grown for young people.

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Qantas has posted an underlying profit of nearly $2.5 billion- their first since Covid-19.

The flying kangaroo has bounced back from a $1.9 billion loss last financial year, driven by a 132 percent increase in passengers.

Australian correspondent Oliver Peterson says Qantas has been trying to distract their customer base with sales and extra points ahead of potential outrage.

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Auckland International Airport has managed to bounce back following the return of international travel.

A sharp increase in both domestic and international passengers enabled the company to report their first profit since the pandemic.

CEO Carrie Hurihanganui says the airport still requires upgrades, and they're confident the forecast growth will support these developments. 

"After 10 years of consultation, and 21 concept designs benchmarking worldwide, we are confident in regards to the forecast growth- which airlines had an input into."

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Sky TV has reported results in line with expectations and seeks to double their dividend payout to 30 cents in the next three years. 

Full-year profit fell 18 per cent to $51 million - but when adjusted for one-offs including restructuring costs, rose 15 per cent to $56.7m.

However, the company is struggling to get consumers to switch to their new Sky Box, as only 7 percent of users have traded in their decoders so far.

Sky TV CEO Sophie Moloney says a new update to be released next week will fix remaining issues with closed captions and improve navigation.

"I'm excited that we've got to that point. I'm sorry, as I said, to those customers who experienced some issues- and I'm excited about looking forward."

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An uncertain future looms for the Wagner Group after the leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's death.

The 62-year-old was one of ten people killed in a plane crash north of Moscow, on a private plane en route to Saint Petersburg.

Russian authorities say its commander and co-founder Dmitry Utkin was also among the casualties.

Australian National University defence expert Matthew Sussex it leaves a big void for Russia to fill in its African allies.

"Russia's gone on a kind of spree of constructing new private military companies, and it may well be that one of the existing ones will now step into the breach that Wagner's left."

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See what National’s doing with the fees-free policy?

This is exactly what I was warning you about a couple of days ago. National chickened out and it has now decided it’s going to keep Labour’s expensive policy of paying for university for students who were probably going to go anyway. 

This is a massive about-face from National, because they’ve spent six years bashing it and promising to cut it.

For good reason-  it’s an enormous and unnecessary waste of money when we are about to borrow tens more billions of dollars and can’t afford to waste money.

It’s hard to find an exact price, but this could be costing us somewhere around $320 million a year to pay for the university study of kids who were probably going to go anyway.

It doesn’t even do what it was supposed to do, which is lift the number of poor kids going to uni. Since it was introduced, fewer poor kids are going and more rich kids are going.

And the only thing that’s gone up is the dropout rate, which is now the highest it’s been since 2014. 

This is such a massive disappointment to me, because it shows the wasteful spending is not going to end after the October election. 

I know this is hard for some National supporters to hear, but the fact is- National is not going to dramatically change the wastage or even the wokiness in Government that we’ve seen under Labour.

We’ve had them supporting Labour’s dumb gender pay reporting policy just a few days ago, and now we’ve got them retaining an incredibly wasteful idea that they had told us they would ditch.

Obviously nothing can be as bad as it is right now, so a centre-right Government will definitely be an improvement, it would have to be.

But if you’re hanging out for a major reset of the country’s fortunes after October, I think you might need to set your expectations just a little lower. 

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Auckland's mayor says some flooded homeowners buyback could be less than they expect.

An Auckland flood recovery package worth more than $2 billion dollars has been agreed to in principle by Council and the Crown.

It includes $774 million for buying out homes where there's risk to life and no possible mitigation.

Wayne Brown says with different houses, there's bound to be variety in payouts.

"Some people who have chosen to be in places which are quite dangerous themselves were already taking some risks- some people weren't."

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