The SME Stream

Another swathe of Government agency job cuts and public sector reform. 

Finance Minister Nicola Willis says they want to return the public servant headcount to 1% of the population by mid-2029, culling about 8,700 jobs. 

Government agency operating budgets will again be reduced – 2% now, increasing over following years. 

Willis says they will also thin out the ministries, pointing to savings it'll bring. 

She says they expect to hire more nurses, Police officers, and others in critical frontline roles. 

Willis says AI is “incredible” at slashing the amount of time needed for mundane tasks, revealing her staff used it to write a report on public service reform. 

She told Mike Hosking the Government was streamlining agencies and embedding AI and digitisation, and asking the public service to "get out of the 80s". 

She was experimenting with AI in her own office. 

“Instead of one of my analysts spending half a day coming up with a document, they said to AI, ‘Have a look at public service reform around the world, tell us who's done what, what seems to have worked well, what hasn't’. 

“And 10 minutes later, you've got a beautiful document with some guidance and some advice.” 

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The services sector continues to contract. 

The latest Services Index rose 2.7 points to 48.9 – with anything below 50 signalling contraction. 

New orders was the only category in expansion, sitting at 51.2, while employment remained negative for the 29th consecutive month.  

BusinessNZ Advocacy Director Catherine Beard told Mike Hosking the figures are the result of the fuel situation due to the conflict in the Middle East.  

It’s a shame, she says, as we started the year in quite positive territory.  

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New Zealanders owe 9.5billion dollars in overdue tax, with small business owners and the self-employed most likely to get behind.

Director of Future Focused Accountants, Catriona Knapp, joins Nadine to explain what can go wrong if you don't get on top of your tax obligations and why it's better to face the debt head-on than bury your head in the sand. 

With the IRD cracking down on collecting overdue tax, now is the time to school up on what you need to know to avoid a knock on your door from the taxman. 

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Artificial intelligence is being sold to us as the future.  

Faster, smarter, more efficient, maybe even world changing. 

But as a handful of tech companies race to build ever more powerful AI, there are growing questions about secrecy, exploitation, and the extraordinary concentration of power behind the scenes. 

Journalist Karen Hao has spent years reporting on OpenAI and the global AI industry, and in her book Empire of AI, she argues this isn’t just a story about technology, it’s a story about ideology, labour, resources, and control. 

Today on The Front Page, Karen Hao joins us to unpack the rise of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and the real cost of the AI arms race.

Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.

Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee

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The New Zealand First leader says they'll be telling the National Australia Bank we want our bank back - as he lays out plans for the Government to buy BNZ.

The party will campaign on the purchase - after its sale in 1992 - and merging it with Kiwibank to create a National Bank of New Zealand. 

Winston Peters told Mike Hosking that the bank may not be for sale, but they'll make sure it is.

He says he doubts the National Australia Bank would turn them down - so Kiwis won't be ripped off for much longer if NZ First gets back in. 

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The ads we see on social media promise us a great many things, but how many of them are as good as they seem? 

Ed McKnight was recently served an ad on Facebook promising rental investment with great returns that set off a few alarms. 

He joined Jack Tame to break down the ad and explain the concerning signs to look for if you spot an investment ad that seems too good to be true. 

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BusinessDesk's Riley Kennedy discusses Synlait's Leadership Reset. 

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Craigs Investment Partner's Andrew Ede discusses how global interest rates continue to shape NZ's rates outlook.

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Synlait board seeks a seventh CEO in 5 years and an independent director. Will Air NZ need a cap raise? Cerebras soars almost 70% on Nasdaq listing. /

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We need to talk about what Chris Hipkins has said about immigration.

First of all, Labour can frankly shut up accusing the Nats of anti-migrant rhetoric because this is a party that hasn’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to migration. 

This is the party - and some of the very same people are still there - that campaigned on reducing immigration by up to 30,000 people in 2017, produced a list of Chinese-sounding names two years earlier and then shut down immigration completely, only to do the opposite by opening it up too much during and after COVID. So, on immigration - glass houses etc.

But having said that, what National is proposing to do on immigration should worry businesses up and down this country that rely on migrants. And I’m looking at you - the aged-care sector wanting to bring in Filipino workers to look after our elderly; and I’m looking at you, Health New Zealand, needing to employ Indian nurses; and I’m looking at you, the construction sector, needing to bring in general labourers.

Because Chris Luxon has made it clear in his speech he’s shutting his door to businesses wanting to lobby him for migrant workers. He said: “My message to the business community is that when it comes to immigration, when I’m faced with a choice between social stability and your bottom line, I will choose the former every single time.”

Now that begs the question to the Prime Minister: what does “social stability” mean? Is that basically you saying we’ve got too many Indian migrants?

Which then begs the question: is National trying to match New Zealand First’s anti-Indian rhetoric to avoid losing voters to them? Which then logically begs the next question: is Luxon putting his vote share at the election ahead of New Zealand’s need to bring in the workers that we know we need?

Because we’ve been through COVID, and we know that we do not do these low-skilled jobs - you need migrants to do them. So I think we should all be worried about this.

I think businesses in New Zealand, in particular, should be very worried about this. And it begs a final question: if this is the position that National has taken, is there now even a single party in Parliament that is looking after New Zealand businesses?

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