The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that over $7 million of taxpayer money has been spent on the power bills of 94 of New Zealand’s largest companies since July 2014. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority’s (EECA) ‘large energy users programme’ provides funding to businesses, in an attempt to encourage them to reduce energy use. Of this $7 million, more than $1 million has been wasted on 'initiatives' which haven't recorded any energy savings to date. Taxpayers’ Union Researcher, Matthew Rhodes says, “Taxpayer money doesn’t need to be spent telling the country’s largest power users to save power. All of these companies pay millions for power, and have every interest as it is to lower their energy use.” “If the EECA don’t think that the corporations at the big end of town aren’t looking at how electricity costs can be saved, they are delusional. Most of these corporates are buying electricity off the spot market or have hedging arrangements. They are anything but unsophisticated consumers requiring the help from bureaucrats.” “This whole regime is a little bit of a rort. Electricity users are levied so that officials can tell people to use less power, meanwhile, people rightly scratch their heads about why electricity is so expensive.”
"We asked how much money has been recovered from companies where taxpayers' money has been thrown at projects where the promised energy savings cannot yet be demonstrated, and it appears that not a single dollar has been recovered." “At best, it’s a waste of money and pointless, at worst, it is corporate welfare in an environmental jacket, paid for by kiwis who have to pay more to turn on their heater.” A response to the Official Information Act request shows:
More information can be obtained on EECA’s website: https://www.eecabusiness.govt.nz/funding-and-support/support-for-large-energy-users/
The relevant information released to the Taxpayers' Union under the OIA is available at: http://www.taxpayers.org.nz/corporate_power_bill_welfare
| A Taxpayers Union release || July 18, 2017 |||
SANY Group, China's top construction machinery manufacturer, has made remarkable progress in Asia-Pacific region since entering the local markets in 2007. After establishing its branch office in Sydney, SANY continues to make substantial efforts to develop business in Australia.
SANY's vast range of products have participated in major projects in the Australian market. In Aug 2015, three 300 ton SANY crawler cranes were delivered to the Wheatstone LNG project in Ashburton North, Western Australia. As one of Australia's largest resource developments, it is expected to produce 8.9 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of LNG that will power 1.8 million local homes with electricity.
In addition to super projects, SANY compact and medium excavators have been widely used in urban construction, agricultural and landscaping applications across Australia. After proving its unrivaled performance and reliability, SANY excavators have won the favor of Australian mainstream market of construction machinery.
Following the booming e-commerce business, SANY launched the mini excavator online sales in Australia and New Zealand in mid-May, which has attracted considerable attention of the local customers. When they visited SANY's manufacturing facilities in China, they were all impressed by the exceptional efficiency and value-adding features of the excavators.
"I have heard of SANY in Australia before. This time I examined its products in detail and found that they are very good quality machines," said Mr. Buckley.
In recent years, sticking to the "going out" strategy, SANY has made proactive efforts to expand in the global markets. Its overseas performance is growing by 20% each year, registering about 43% of the company's total revenue. Furthermore, SANY has entered new business sectors, such as wind energy, prefabrication and internet of things, boosting SANY's growth around the world.
About SANYSANY Group (SANY) is a leading global heavy machinery manufacturer with plants in the US, Germany, Brazil and India, and business covering over 100 countries and regions worldwide. The company has been recognized as one of the most innovative and successful companies in the world, and its concrete machinery is ranked No. 1 globally.
For more information, please visit: www.sanyglobal.com, or follow SANY Group on Facebook and YouTube.
| A SANY release || July 18, 2017 |||
Emirates and flydubai have unveiled an extensive partnership which will see the two Dubai-based airlines join forces to offer customers unmatched travel options.
Both airlines will continue to be managed independently, but will leverage each other’s network to scale up their operations and accelerate growth.
The innovative partnership goes beyond code-sharing and includes integrated network collaboration with coordinated scheduling. The new model will give flydubai customers seamless connectivity to Emirates’ worldwide destinations spanning six continents. For Emirates’ customers, it opens up flydubai’s robust regional network.
The two airlines will also further develop their hub at Dubai International, aligning their systems and operations to ensure a seamless travel experience through the ultra-modern airport; currently the world’s busiest for international passengers.
HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Group and Chairman of flydubai, said: "This is an exciting and significant development for Emirates, flydubai, and Dubai aviation. Both airlines have grown independently and successfully over the years, and this new partnership will unlock the immense value that the complementary models of both companies can bring to consumers, each airline, and to Dubai.”
Emirates, which flies A380s four times daily from New Zealand to Dubai and beyond, today has a wide-body fleet of 259 aircraft, flying to 157 destinations (including 16 cargo-only points). flydubai operates 58 New-Generation Boeing 737 aircraft to 95 destinations. The current combined network comprises 216 unique destination points.
The partnership is working to optimise the networks and schedules of both airlines, to open up new city-pair connections offering consumers greater choice. Additionally, this will help both airlines feed more traffic into each other’s complementary networks. By 2022, the combined network of Emirates and flydubai is expected to reach 240 destinations, served by a combined fleet of 380 aircraft.
The Emirates and flydubai teams are working together on a number of initiatives spanning commercial, network planning, airport operations, customer journey, and frequent flyer programmes alignment.
The partnership will be rolled out over the coming months, with the first enhanced code-sharing arrangements starting in the last quarter of 2017. Further details will be communicated as they become available.
Fully owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), both Emirates and flydubai are operated independently and under separate management teams.
About flydubai
Since launching its operations in 2009, flydubai has:
Otago Polytechnic is investing in Central Otago’s educational future with a new Trades Hub and student accommodation for its Central campus.
Construction will begin once consents are obtained on the new 600 square metre trades building at Bannockburn Road. It will house Automotive and Carpentry programmes, classrooms, offices and a common room. There will also be a platform for the construction of a four-bedroom house that the students will build. This is stage one of the proposed campus redevelopment project, which is a move from the current location to a new facility on Otago Polytechnic’s Bannockburn Road site.
Head of Central Otago Campus, Alex Huffadine, says the polytechnic is very excited about bringing a Trades Hub to Central Otago.
“There’s a real skills shortage in the trades industry. By offering trades-based training here at Central campus, we really hope to solve that problem with well qualified graduates and, at the same time, help our students into a fantastic career,” he says.
He adds that Otago Polytechnic’s two new trades qualifications (the New Zealand Certificate in Construction Trade Skills (Level 3) (Carpentry) and the New Zealand Certificate in Automotive Engineering (Level 3)) will both be taught from the Trades Hub which is expected to be finished by the end of term one in 2018.
With a shortage of accommodation in Cromwell, Otago Polytechnic has also committed to building self-contained student accommodation at its Molyneux Avenue site. Stage one of the accommodation will include four houses with up to five bedrooms per house.
Mr Huffadine says accommodation is an important part of Otago Polytechnic’s growth in the region.
“We hope accommodation onsite removes the barrier of rental shortages in Cromwell. This offers a safe and easy option for our students.”
The first phase of student accommodation will be available for students studying in 2018.
The construction of both builds is currently out for tender.
Read more about studying at Otago Polytechnic's Central Campus.
Read about this in the Otago Daily Times.
The Taxpayers' Union can reveal that another $2.4 million has been paid by the NZ Aid programme to the controversial 'Clinton Health Initiative', a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, which President Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea Clinton sits on the board of.
The payment of $2,352,869 NZD was paid in May and revealed in a response to a Taxpayers' Union Official Information Act request to Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee. Mr Brownlee's response has been uploaded to www.taxpayers.org.nz/2017_clinton_payment
Jordan Williams, Executive Director of the Taxpayers' Union, says "Back in January, the Australian Government cut all ties with the very fund our Government is still pumping millions of taxpayers' money into. Mr Brownlee can say all he likes about the money apparently doing work in Africa, but no one really believes that a charity run by Chelsea Clinton is the best way to deliver that."
"Of real concern is Gerry Brownlee's claim that the Clinton Health Initiative is independent and not a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation. That is simply not true. We've gone back to the Minister pointing out the Initiative's public filings showing that the Clinton Foundation has full control, including appointing the board - which includes President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea Clinton. Under international accounting standards, the power to appoint the board is determinative of that organisation being a 'subsidiary'."
"The Minister is either misleading the public in claiming the fund is not a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, or his advisors are incompetent. If it is the latter, it seems $9.1 million of our money has been handed out on a false premise. From a taxpayer perspective, it's not clear which of those is worse."
"In addition to the constitutional objections to NZ Aid giving money to a foreign politician's foundation, if the Clinton Foundation was so effective at delivering aid outcomes, why have our Aussie neighbours pulled out?"
"If this was a charity run by President Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump, then we have no doubt we would not be funding it. So why are we funding the Clintons?"
Notes:
In the letter to the Taxpayers' Union, Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee claims that the Clinton Health Initiative is not a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation. This is wrong.
The Initiative’s “1023” Form – Application for recognition of Exemption under section 501 (c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code shows that the Foundation has full rights of appointment of the members board of the Initiative. As these non-profit groups do not have equity allocation (shareholders) the definition of subsidiary and groups (to the extent that the Initiative must be included in the Foundation’s group or consolidated financial statements) depend on the ability of the Foundation to exercise control over the Initiative. There can be no greater way to do this than the rights to appoint members of the board.
Because the Clinton Foundation has the power to appoint the Board of the Initiative:
The letter from the Minister, and the Taxpayers' Union's response are available at: www.taxpayers.org.nz/2017_clinton_payment.
| A taxpayers Union release || July 18, 2017 |||
During a McLaren press conference at the 2017 Goodwood Festival of Speed in the U.K., Chief Financial Officer Paul Buddin said the company’s new plant in Sheffield, England, building McLaren’s next-generation carbon-fiber tubs will have an annual capacity of 10,000 monocoque chassis by the end of 2019.
That number caught the ear of a number of automotive news outlets, including CarBuzz and Car and Driver, especially since McLaren had also claimed its target goal was to build 5,000 cars annually by the end of the decade. The discrepancy between 5,000 cars and 10,000 monocoque chassis, both outlets reported, is a result of McLaren’s desire to make room for any future sales expansion.
“It would be very short-sighted to limit ourselves to 5,000 cars,” McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt explained.
Flewitt also hinted that McLaren is considering using the Sheffield plant to build carbon fiber monocoque chassis for other car manufacturers looking to build limited-run performance cars.
“We won’t do it until we’re fully up and running ourselves, but it is something that we are considering as an obvious expansion.”
One of the innovations that will make this possible is the increase of automation. Back in March, new broke that McLaren aims to completely automate the carbon fiber production process its uses to create the lightweight “tubs” around which it builds its supercars. To do so, McLaren ended its contract with Austria’s Carbo Tech and moved the work to Sheffield. The production process at Carbo Tech, which also made the body for VW’s XL1 eco-car, is only 20 percent automated. McLaren wants to push that to 100 percent, allowing the British automaker to increase production to 20 to 25 cars a day, up from 15 now. The plant produces McLaren’s 720S supercars, the first of which has already rolled off the production line.
| A Composites Manufacturing release || July 17, 2017 |||
A large improvement in New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities as a share of GDP since 2009 makes the economy less vulnerable to shocks, Deputy Governor Geoff Bascand said in a speech today. “New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities – what we owe to the rest of the world, broadly speaking – reached nearly 85 percent of GDP at the start of 2009 but now they are down to 58.5 percent of GDP, their lowest level since the late-1980s,” Mr Bascand said. “New Zealand has become less reliant on offshore funding over the past decade, and the maturity of bank borrowing has lengthened, reducing the risks from a potential funding shock,” he said. The liquidity policy introduced by the Reserve Bank in 2010 has contributed to this improvement. The decline in New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities (NFL) partly reflects low global interest rates that have reduced the interest payments on our overseas debt, and high equity prices that have boosted the value of our overseas assets. More significantly, a better balance between national saving and investment during the current economic expansion has helped contain the current account deficit and lowered the ratio of net foreign liabilities to GDP. “Although some of the macroeconomic factors that have driven the improvement in our NFL position are potentially more transient or fortuitous than others, the higher domestic saving and financing of investment augurs well for the durability of the current growth phase.” However, Mr Bascand warned that New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities as a share of GDP is still relatively high internationally, especially given our exposure to commodity exports that can be subject to large price swings. “Significant uncertainty remains regarding household behaviour and the contribution of the sector to New Zealand’s saving-investment gap, and the extent that banks as intermediaries might increase their reliance on offshore funding. “Borrowing from the rest of the world isn’t automatically ‘bad’. It can be a good thing if it leads to productive investment that enhances our economic performance and leads to high per-capita incomes over time, but debt-fuelled consumption is less sustainable. “Much of the investment undertaken by the household sector is in the form of new house builds and renovations to existing homes. If housing demands cannot be met by increased household sector or domestic saving more broadly, it will be reflected in a deterioration in our NFL position.” Mr Bascand said that banks have recently begun to compete more aggressively for deposits and tighten lending standards, which should help alleviate offshore funding pressures and prevent a significant increase in NFL. “Relying on non-residents to fund investment makes the financial system vulnerable to changes in the availability or cost of that funding. That vulnerability may be exposed in times of acute financial stress, with financial institutions’ access to funding cut off or available only at much higher interest rates. “As always, the Bank will be monitoring these developments closely. We welcome the improvement in New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities since the GFC, but do not see it is a reason to become complacent,” Mr Bascand said. More information:· Speech: New Zealand’s net foreign liabilities: What lies beneath, and ahead?· Audio: listen to the excerpts of the speech on Soundcloud
| A RBNZ release || July 17, 2017 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242