Waikato business leader Kiri Goulter has been appointed to the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) Council.

Over 5,000 taxpayers have signed the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union’s petition to end taxpayer funding for the Clinton Health Access Initiative, a subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation. In addition, 1,231 people have personally written to Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters urging him to redirect the funding to a better cause. Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director Jordan Williams says, “The public response on this issue has been overwhelming, with 5,300 signatures collected over the last few days.” “The message from the public is clear: there are higher priorities for spending taxpayer dollars, and MFAT shouldn’t be using the aid budget to impress foreign politicians."

"It’s time New Zealand followed Australia’s lead and cut funding for Clinton Health Access Initiative.” “This funding is especially foolish considering the Clinton Foundation is under investigation by the FBI for receiving money from foreign governments during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as US Secretary of State.” “We had hoped that Winston Peters would put an end to these taxpayer-funded contributions – especially since his government has declared funding deficits in health and education at home in New Zealand. Our supporters are hoping Mr Peters puts an end to this nonsense." The Taxpayers’ Union will deliver the petition and messages to the office of Rt Hon Winston Peters next week.

A taxpayersUnion release  ||  may 09, 2018   |||

The government says political considerations about New Zealand's relationship with China aren't the reason why it chose not to tax Chinese steel imports, as local steel producer New Zealand Steel attempts to have that decision overturned in the High Court.

In July 2017, then-Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Jacqui Dean decided not to impose countervailing duties on imports of galvanised steel coil from China, following an investigation by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment which found that Chinese subsidies on the steel were too small to have injured the domestic industry.

NZ Steel, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Australia's Bluescope Steel, lodged an application for judicial review of the former minister's decision in September 2017. It says Chinese steel flooded the local market and cut into its profits, and wants the court to quash the decision and have it be reconsidered by going back and re-investigating the matter. The hearing began on Monday, and is set down for the rest of the week, in front of Justice Jillian Mallon.

In opening the government's reply today, the Crown's lawyer James Every-Palmer QC said all relevant considerations were taken into account in making the decision, based on information that was available to it and that it considered to be reliable, and that it provided full reasons and correctly interpreted the act and did not act unreasonably.

"The application for judicial review here attacks matters that are really for the decision maker - the process of inference, the weighting of evidence, and the evaluative judgements it made," Every-Palmer said. "In our submission it's fair to characterise the application as seeking a merits review of the decision that was made, effectively an extra round of the decision-making process, but one in which there's only one interested party participating, and so the new material and evidence presented hasn't been tested in any systematic way." Every-Palmer stressed the decision was "absolutely was not affected by any concerns about how China might react", and later referred to an affidavit from former minister Dean on her making the decision not to impose duties.

Dean noted that "during the investigation, I recall noting media reports about the visit by the Premier Li Keqiang to New Zealand around March 2017, but the matter discussed in those media reports did not affect my decision in any way", Every-Palmer said.

A BusinessDesk release   ||  May 09, 2018   |||

Traffic will flow in both directions* over the entire length of Queenstown’s new $22 million Kawarau Falls Bridge from mid-afternoon* Thursday, 10 May.

The Commerce Commission is warning monopoly electricity networks not to treat electric vehicle chargers as assets they can charge all electricity users for

The Employment Relations Amendment Bill is an attack on the rights of non-union workers, BusinessNZ says.

New Zealand Steel's lawyers, who are trying to have a government decision not to tax Chinese steel imports overturned by the …

Port of Tauranga, New Zealand's biggest port company, registered strong growth in container volumes in the first quarter, helping boost the Bay of Plenty economy, Westpac Banking Corp said in a report

If a week is a long time in politics, then eighteen months must represent an eternity in the New Zealand channel.

Liquid Voice has announced the immediate availability of Liquid Analytics. This new contact centre tool includes the latest generation transcription engine, developed by Speechmatics in partnership with the University of Cambridge, and uses deep neural networks to achieve an average accuracy of 85% on recordings. The Liquid Analytics transcription engine has been independently benchmarked and consistently outperforms other leading systems to deliver unrivalled operational insight to increase contact centre productivity and performance.