Founded by Max Farndale 1947 - 2018
MPM Marketing Services, a major manufacturer and distributor in the disposable food packaging industry has a signed a new six-year lease on premises at 17 Kahika Road, Birkdale on Auckland's North Shore.
Newshub reports:
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters is stepping up his attack on the iwi which own public transport operator Go Bus, over claims it’s looking offshore for new workers instead of employing jobless locals.
Mr Peters says the company has asked for help from Immigration New Zealand to bring foreign workers into the country from Samoa and the Philippines.
It’s owned by Ngai Tahu and Waikato Tainui and operates buses in Christchurch, Tauranga, Hamilton, and a number of other regional cities.
“It’s advertising offshore for drivers. It’s not training and recruiting young Māori, no. It’s going offshore and getting people from the Philippines and elsewhere, including the Pacific,” says Mr Peters.
His source for this is a woman who popped into an office and said she’d heard it from someone. No, seriously.
The allegations are being rubbished by Go Bus managing director Calum Haslop, who says Winston Peters has the wrong end of the stick.
“Go Bus is not recruiting offshore at the moment. We’ve not advertised for any positions in the islands, we don’t have a policy to recruit from the islands, and we don’t have any intention of recruiting from the islands at this stage,” he says.
Mr Haslop has confirmed there were conversations with Immigration New Zealand about foreign recruitment but they never gained any traction due to a huge demand from jobless locals.
“We had a chat with Immigration New Zealand very early on in the piece for our Auckland recruitment and just looked at [foreign recruitment] as an option should we need it if we had a problem with local recruitment.
“But we’ve been delighted with the response to our local recruitment and haven’t needed to take it any further and don’t intend to,” he says.
Immigration New Zealand says there haven’t been any recent interactions with the company and there are no visa applications underway.
Wouldn’t it be nice if media asked for proof of his claims, before reporting them. Once there is a categorical denial from the company and Immigration NZ, then his claims should not be reported on unless he can provide proof.
In France the Left means the Left -
Even if his boss has failed to see the danger, France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls has slipped the leash attack-dog style to go for the throat of Nicolas Sarkozy, the most serious contender to replace France’s president Francois Hollande at next year’s election.
Nicolas Sarkozy was deposed as France’s president by Francois Hollande. Mr Sarkozy is not a good loser. He has seen his opportunity, writes our European Correspondent.
It is in the form of Mr Hollande’s seeming hesitation in coping with the new religious threat viewed by many French as the modern reincarnation of the nation’s sinister Fifth Column, wreaking destruction from within.
Mr Sarkozy announced his come-back in a book which he only ceased penning several days before it appeared in the bookshops last week.
In the book he announced his firm hand on the problem. No more shilly-shallying in the matter of coverall religious garb. No more immigration open-doors in the form of family re-grouping. No more fiery imams. And so on.
Mr Hollande meanwhile has been viewed as being distracted from the problem, even if he recognised it, by having to appease his own leftward-sprawling ruling constituency.
Their battle cry centres on the rights-of-man doctrine which takes the form of a turbo-charged political correctness at the expense of any larger focus on national or even individual security.
It is into this vacuum of discontent that Mr Sarkozy plunged. He has done so without any vague double talk. He has singled out the problem. He has defined the policies that he will use to solve it.
In contrast his main rival in the Republican Party (Conservative) primary the former prime minister Alain Juppe, presently mayor of Bordeaux, has been content to announce a generalised presidential policy based on nationwide “happiness.”
Mr Hollande meanwhile is facing a full scale revolt in his own Socialist Party which has taken the form of a platoon-sized field of internal rival candidates for his throne at the Elysee Palace.
Chief among these is his own former industries minister Arnaud Montebourg, a lawyer, and a Kennedyesque figure who is short on policy but long on the type of political glamour that French voters crave and have found absent during the Hollande tenure.
Mr Sarkozy’s drive to return to the Elysee rests on two formulas. The first is that he will plunder the votes of the National Front.. These will be the votes of those who are worried about the religious fanaticism threat. Yet who do not want to buy into the National Front’s full ticket.
Mr Sarkozy is also backed by the most powerful political machine in France centred on former president Jacques Chirac, revealed by all the polls to be the most popular living politician.
Mr Valls the Socialist Prime Minister, actually a scion of a prominent Spanish banking family, has understood all this. Wiry of build, he looks like the coach of a rather successful New Zealand rugger team. He has seen the other side’s star player and is tackling him, starting at his neck.
Mr Valls like all good coaches has seen his own side’s vulnerability. It is in its long tail doctrinal following. It is a tail that in the matter of the current emergency has been viewed as consistently wagging the dog.
English-speaking observers become instantly confused by this picture and for a simple reason.
Their mistake is to believe that France’s socialist parliamentarians are like their own. They believe that they teamed up with Labour Parties and the like just because they saw socialism as a more available, less competitive ladder. One which is easier and thus quicker to climb.
France’s vast and elitist Sciences Po (political science) educational industry ensures a constant flow of authentic hard-line political class inductees.
Even if they should waiver in their idealism this privileged cadre find themselves on their adult parliamentary journey constantly re-invigorated by the highly visible High Street manifestations of much earlier doctrinal struggles complete with festivals, icons, and stimulating fund-raising jaunts (see my photo).
From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk
(CW Group) In New Zealand, Timaru's container terminal has hit a new record for the number of containers handled in a year, reports Stuff.
The container terminal had moved 84,402 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), the result was a volume increase of 18 percent over the previous financial year, which had only seen 71,059 TEUs moved. Confirming the details, Timaru Container Terminal manager John Bromley said that container traffic at Timaru had quadrupled, since 2014.
According to the report, John Bromley, Timaru container terminal manager shows off what a successful year of shipping looks like. Bromley said the terminal's success was great news for the region and he "couldn't be happier" with the new record.
The news, follows the recent release of the South Canterbury Labour Market Survey which predicted activity levels at the port would continue to increase with projected growth in the region.
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Paul Goldsmith has today released part one of the review into insolvency law, which discusses and sets out recommendations on the regulation of insolvency practitioners and measures to address the harms of voluntary liquidations.
“I set up the Insolvency Working Group in November 2015 to conduct an in-depth look into a variety of insolvency law matters.
“This is the first of two reports the working group will publish and it has identified a number of areas where our corporate insolvency laws could be improved.
“The working group considers that regulation falls short of ensuring creditors can have confidence that the practitioners handling corporate insolvency are qualified and bound by an acceptable code of ethics.
“The report states the current requirements in place to become an insolvency practitioner are very low and includes a recommendation to license and regulate insolvency practitioners: a significant policy shift. It documents several cases of practitioner dishonesty, incompetence and failures to manage conflicts of interest by insolvency practitioners.
“The report includes a number of recommendations, all of which I am giving serious consideration to. In order to assess the full regulatory impact of the recommendations, such as the effect on competition and the efficiency of the industry if insolvency practitioners are licensed, I am seeking the public’s feedback on the report.
“Part two of the working group’s review considers voidable transactions and Ponzi schemes. This will be finalised later in the year,” says Mr Goldsmith.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, New Zealand's largest high-tech manufacturer, is planning to spend up to US$ 73 million expanding its manufacturing facilities at Tijuana, Mexico, from which it supplies the United States market.
F&P Healthcare makes breathing equipment for patients. In 2010, the business established a maquiladora in Tijuana and started transferring substantial plastics processing and product manufacturing technologies to Fisher & Paykel Healthcare SA de CV.
Now, the maquiladora employs about 600 and manufactures products for the firm’s groups focusing on respiratory-acute care and sleep apnea.
Fisher & Paykel leased 200,000 square feet, invested millions in moving toward three Class 8 clean rooms and operates around the clock. The Tijuana facility holds certification under the ISO 13485 quality-management-system standard for medical device manufacturing. - Maquila Portal
Customs Minister Nicky Wagner today announced eight new generation eGates have been installed at Wellington International Airport and are fully operational for arriving and departing passengers.
“Eight new eGates are available to New Zealand, Australian, US, UK, and Canadian ePassport holders arriving and departing in Wellington,” says Ms Wagner.
“The next-generation eGates give travellers the option of completing Customs checks using the one-step electronic process,” Ms Wagner says “The new eGates are faster taking around 25 seconds.”
“The installation of the new eGates coincides with Wellington International Airport’s wider terminal expansion project, and will help meet the increase in travellers expected next month with the arrival of new flights to the Capital from Singapore.”
“The government’s $6.6 million investment from Budget 2015 into expanding and modernising automated passport processing will help manage growth in traveller volumes by allowing legitimate passengers to complete Customs checks easily, and enabling Customs officers to focus on high risk travellers.
“In total, 29 new eGates will be installed and 22 eGates replaced as part of a national programme which started late last year in Auckland. The next stage will take place in Christchurch in time for Christmas,” says Ms Wagner.
We are proud to inform you that Mainfreight has opened its new branch in the United Kingdom providing the full range of air and ocean services. With this Mainfreight extends its global network to 239 branches in 21 countries. In Europe we are now present in the Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, The Netherlands, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
The opening of our first venture into the United Kingdom provides additional trade lanes for us to develop, and reduces our exposure to agents. We remain focused on continuous improvement in quality and service for our customers, and increased profitability across the European business.
Our new Mainfreight facility is located near London Heathrow Terminal 4 and includes a high-spec 8000sq ft warehouse. We have a professional and experienced UK airfreight and ocean freight team handling door-door import and export shipments, customs clearance and documentation, consolidation services and UK / European distribution.
We are excited to be the newest members of the Mainfreight’s global family and please feel free to come in and visit us for a warm Mainfreight welcome!
Trade Minister Todd McClay will Chair a meeting of Trade Ministers and senior representatives from 16 countries in Christchurch on Friday 26 August to negotiate the final terms of a trade and development deal for the Pacific region, called the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus (PACER Plus).
“This agreement is of significant importance to the economic integration and prosperity of the region,” says Mr McClay.
The agreement aims to open up opportunities for both New Zealand and Pacific Island countries to trade in a more consistent and transparent way.
“It recognises the unique challenges that Pacific island countries face in participating in international trade, and includes a significant focus on development. They have small and isolated land masses with limited production capabilities and employment opportunities.
“PACER Plus aims to help overcome some of these challenges by removing trade barriers; opening up opportunities for businesses to trade in more markets; and developing the capabilities needed to successfully participate in regional and global trade.
“These initiatives will strengthen growth prospects by creating more jobs, improving living standards and encouraging sustainable economic development across the region as a whole,” says Mr McClay.
New Zealand, Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, will be represented at the meeting.
Madame du Barry intervened
New Zealand’s pending free trade agreement with the EU presents the country with an opportunity to supply France’s Pacific possessions.
France has always insisted in supplying these foreign territories direct from France. The result has been that New Zealand exporters have enjoyed a fraction of the true value from this potential market.
In 2014 for example New Zealand exporters garnered $180 million from a market potentially worth much more. Total imports from these possessions that same year of $4 million, mainly scrap and decoratives, give an indication of a most favourable balance to be built upon.
This was certainly discussed during the one day visit in May by French prime minister Manuel Valls earlier this year.
In the event however the presence in Wellington of the operational head of the world’s sixth largest economy was overshadowed.
Mr Valls’ presence was eclipsed by the transition from private sector broadcasting to the government-owned version of news-reader Miss Hilary Barry.
The result was that communiques from this immensely important visit were allowed to focus on the well-trodden paths of the candidacy of former New Zealand premier Helen Clark for the top job at United Nations, and the Rainbow Warrior Affair.
Residents of France’s Oceania possessions because of their French citizenship participate in elections to the European Parliament. In trade terms these citizens are thus also citizens of the EU.
This is the reason why these French possessions are seen as being of economic value in the event of an EU trade agreement.
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
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