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RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
Luxon to tell National faithful country is 'turning the corner'
Luxon to tell National faithful "we're turning the corner" National leader Christopher Luxon. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro National Party members are gathering in Christchurch to cap off a week in which MPs attempted to steer public minds back towards the government's cost of living policies. Members will also farewell a party stalwart, with former president Peter Goodfellow retiring from National's board of directors. While leader Christopher Luxon will be speaking to the converted, he will be acutely aware the cost of living has become front of mind . Earlier this week, he was asked what his message to the party faithful would be. "Look, they know it's been a tough time, they know that we're turning the corner," Luxon said. "But really ... this country's got great potential and a great future ahead of it, and we've just got to keep working at it." National's deputy leader, Nicola Willis, said the conference would be focused on the steps the government was taking to make the country "an easier, better place to do business, to hire people, to create well paying jobs". "It is our job as a government not to moan about the things we can't control, but to focus on how we can make things better here in New Zealand, and we're very proud of the efforts we're making," she said. It is a stark contrast to this time last year, where Luxon's message ahead of the first conference since National returned to government was its focus on action and delivery . It shows just how much the cost of living crisis is lingering, and National has spent the week attempting to convince the public it has got it under control. With no announcement to make at this week's post-Cabinet press conference (bar the card surcharge ban, which had already been announced), Luxon and Willis gave a more than 10-minute address about the economy and cost of living, and actions the government had taken. "The most important thing we can do to make you better off is to double-down on our long-term economic plan," Luxon said. Willis used her speech to remind people of National's tax changes, FamilyBoost policy and a falling Official Cash Rate. It prompted Labour to accuse the government of "more spin than a front-load washing machine" . The latest Ipsos Issues Monitor has Labour in front of National as the party New Zealanders consider most able to handle the cost of living, despite releasing no substantive policy since the election. In 2023, National won 38.06 percent of the party vote, but since then has failed to poll above that. Recent polls have had National in the low thirties, with some showing the left bloc would have enough numbers to form a government. Other polls give the coalition the numbers to form a government, but only just. National party ministers will hold panels on health, education, law and order, agriculture, and the economy and cost of living. Members will also elect board positions. Long-serving board member and former party president Peter Goodfellow will be retiring from the board. Goodfellow was president from 2009 to 2022 before stepping down but remaining on the board. ANZCO Foods founder Sir Graeme Harrison, who joined the National board in 2021, has also decided to retire. Current board member Rachel Bird is up for re-election. Under National's constitution and rules, board members serve three years and then retire. They can then be eligible for re-election. Craig Carr, Andrew von Dadelszen and Edgar Wilson have also put their names forward for the vacancies. Party president Sylvia Wood and board members Jannita Pilisi, Stefan Sunde and David Ryan are not up for re-election, and so will remain on the board. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
Pushing our buttons to loosen our wallets
There's a suggestion that the cost-of-living crisis has taken the excitement out of supermarket campaigns. Photo: Supplied It's child pester-power versus high-end kitchenware versus 'just lower prices' at New Zealand supermarkets right now. The offerings couldn't be more different. New World shoppers collecting stickers to grab cast iron cookware , Woolworths giving out tin Disney Discs for kids to ... well, it's not really clear what kids do with them once they have them. At Pak'nSave, it's just business as usual - it doesn't do giveaways. In the past, these campaigns have created social media frenzies, with New World's knife promotion, miniature shops, and little gardens being big hits. During the so-called 'Summer of Smeg', shoppers took to Trade Me to complete their full set of knives. There were 39,000 searches for them on the site in the seven days after the promotion's launch. But there's a suggestion that the cost-of-living crisis has taken the excitement out of the offerings. Reddit users are divided between wanting New World's knife promotion back and just wanting lower grocery prices instead. "It feels to me like these promos ... people are getting less excited about them as they go along," says RNZ's money correspondent Susan Edmunds. "When we started off with the Smeg knives and the little gardens and stuff, it seemed like everyone was talking about it and swapping things, and there was lots of chatter about it online, and I'm not seeing that as much now. " Is the thought of some flash cookware enough to change a shopper's behaviour, or get them in the door of a different supermarket? Probably not, says Edmunds. "We're such creatures of habit when it comes to supermarket shopping that this is more likely to be rewarding loyalty with people who are already shopping there. "There wouldn't be that many people who are going 'oooh, Woolworths or New World'? and I'll be swayed to New World by the Smeg giveaway. But I suppose that would happen if you had one on one side of the road and one on the other." Kids' pester-power is probably worth a lot. "As more of us shop online, that's less of a factor, because kids don't get any say on where you're online shopping. But I suppose if you've got your kids nagging you to go to a particular shop, then that probably would sway you .... but people are so committed usually to 'their' supermarket that they're comfortable with and know where everything is." Having said that, her kids are collecting the Disney Discs and she's "finding them all over the house - probably Smeg dishes would be more useful". She says the New World tie-up with Smeg is helping the higher-end brand to get established. "This will help their brand recognition. People will start to get more familiar with it and maybe feel more comfortable if they're shopping, and they maybe want a fridge, and they see a Smeg fridge. This all helps with that." The cookware being offered at New World doesn't seem to feature in retail stores, although there's plenty of similar, and expensive, equipment. "But not that stuff, so I feel like this is probably a promotional play for Smeg to try and broaden its ... potential market, and build up its brand name, and it's got the power of New World behind it. Everyone loves these New World promotions, so it's a win for them [Smeg] from a marketing perspective, and it's a win for New World because you get these quite high-end products at a relatively cheap price ... and then I guess it's a win for consumers who get to stock up on - what is it - utensil holders and baking dishes and all sorts." Dr Saira Raza Khan (left) and Dr Pragea Putra (right) Photo: Alexia Russell Dr Pragea Putra is a lecturer in marketing at the University of Auckland Business School. His shopping behaviour is currently being dictated by the demands of his seven-year-old son, who is collecting the Disney Discs from Woolworths. He tells The Detail , while New World tends to attract shoppers who are a bit more established and value quality, and want nice things in their kitchen, Woolworths is tapping into the family market - parents with kids in tow. But he thinks Woolworths has missed a marketing trick with its failure to emphasise that the discs it's giving away aren't plastic - they're recyclable aluminium - and that there are games you can play with them instead of just collecting them to look at. Dr Putra's colleague, Dr Saira Raza Khan, looks at a different form of button-pushing - she's an expert in consumer behaviour. Her research has looked at the best way to get public health messages through, and it suggests that consumers are sick of having the fear factor used against them to get them to change their behaviour. Dr Khan says gratitude is an underused, but powerful, motivator and health practitioners should be looking at it more often. Check out how to listen to and fol low The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter .
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
The battle to get netball on TV: How did it come to this?
The Tactix celebrate winning the 2025 ANZ Premiership. Photo: Andrew Cornaga/ Analysis - How has New Zealand's top netball competition gone from attracting millions in broadcast rights, to having to fork out some of its own money to get it on TV? Just six years ago the Silver Ferns were on top of the world after beating Australia in the final to win the 2019 Netball World Cup. Fast-forward, and the national body finally secured a broadcast deal this week for next year's ANZ Premiership, following months of drawn-out negotiations. Sky Sport had been the major broadcast partner since 2008, but the national body is going back to TVNZ - marking the return of the sport on free-to-air television. RNZ understands that Sky TVs offer was so much lower than any of its previous deals, that Netball New Zealand didn't actually have too much to lose in rolling the dice. The new broadcast deal does not include rights for Silver Ferns matches - Netball New Zealand is still looking for a home for Test netball from 2026. How much TVNZ are actually paying for the rights, if any, won't be disclosed but it seems inevitable that players will face pay cuts. Netball NZ is taking a calculated risk that a bigger TV audience will draw more commercial revenue to make up for a massive shortfall in broadcast revenue. The one-year agreement also buys Netball New Zealand some time if it wants to explore joining the Australian league from 2027 in some capacity. It feels like netball is back where it was in 2007 before the dawn of the semi-professional trans-Tasman competition, which promised so much. But at least then the country's best players were still playing in New Zealand. Next year, nearly half the Silver Ferns could be playing in Australia. Netball World Cup 2019 winners. Photo: © (t/a Photography Hub Ltd) Netball New Zealand's stocks were high following the Silver Ferns' victory at the 2019 World Cup. When Spark emerged as a player in the sports broadcast market in 2019, Sky quickly locked down the netball rights until the end of 2024, despite having two years to run on the existing deal. In 2023 Spark Sport came to an end and Sky has had no real competition since. Tougher economic times means a lot of sports are now looking over their shoulder. Talks over a new broadcast deal between New Zealand Rugby and Sky have dragged on for months. Sky Television's profits have taken a hit , and they are tightening their belts. Sky Sport's 2025 ANZ Premiership broadcast looked a little different to previous years. The weekly Netball Zone programme was dropped, one on-site host fronted regular season games instead of two, and remote commentary was used for four of the matches. White Fern Amelia Kerr is now one of the most recognised sports personalities in NZ. Photo: Photosport Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of women's sport globally and it's not really netball's fault that this has happened - it was always going to. As traditionally male dominated sports have invested more in their women's programmes, it's helped increase the profile of codes like of women's cricket and rugby. Netball used to be essential in Sky Sports' line-up because it was the only female sport it would broadcast on a regular basis. Women's rugby gets far more coverage on Sky than it used to, including Super Rugby Aupiki, the Farah Palmer Cup, the Black Ferns, and sevens. The same goes for women's cricket and next year will see the return to Sky of the White Ferns playing domestically. Sky also broadcasts the New Zealand women's basketball league, rugby league's NRLW, and football's A-League women's competition. And if Sky want the rights to All Blacks and Black Caps matches, New Zealand Rugby and New Zealand Cricket can leverage that to get better coverage for their women. Sky TV's Anna Stanley and Anna Harrison. Photo: PHOTOSPORT When Australian Diamonds sides used to tour New Zealand, they would be jealous of the level of media coverage the Silver Ferns got. But former Diamonds coach Lisa Alexander told RNZ earlier this year that she had noticed a shift. "There was so much more coverage in New Zealand [back then] and I think you've taken it for granted to be quite honest because it's really hard to get it back," Alexander said. "In Australia we are fighting very very hard to have our slice of the media pie and it's still very tough …but I'm now a columnist, I write about netball - I wouldn't have dreamed of that 10 years ago." It probably took Netball NZ too long to recognise that with more female sports vying for eyeballs, it had to actively generate more intrigue in its showpiece competition. A concerted effort to attract top-tier quality import players to the ANZ Premiership from the start would have helped it compete with the Australian league. But a one import player per team limit and a lack of ambition in targeting a pool of top talent, meant that ship sailed a long time ago. NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark and players at the launch of the ground-breaking ANZ Championship, March 2008. Photo: James Ensing-Trussell Oh how the tables have turned. Between 2008 and 2016, revenue generated from New Zealand propped up the former trans-Tasman ANZ Championship. Broadcast revenue from Sky was divvied up equally among the franchises on both sides of the Tasman to cover the salary cap. But after banking more than $10 million from Sky for eight years, eventually Australia didn't need New Zealand anymore. Netball Australia finally started carrying some clout with their broadcasters and secured a paid broadcast deal for the first time. Australia's Suncorp Super Netball (SSN) competition struggles to break even, but crowds and viewership have been growing and the SSN pays the highest salaries of any league. England Netball launched a new-look Netball Super League (NSL) this year, marking a significant step towards professionalism. For the first time all games were available to watch, and the average salary increased by at least 60 percent. New Zealand was a couple of decades ahead of the curve when TVNZ started broadcasting netball regularly from the 1980's. It's only been in the last few years that other countries finally figured out that broadcasting women's sport is actually pretty cool. Any novelty factor has long gone in New Zealand, but England Netball and Netball Australia are riding that wave of momentum - and they operate in bigger economies. Kelly Jackson Photo: PHOTOSPORT It would be easy to conclude that the quality of the ANZ Premiership must be declining, that less people are playing netball, and viewership is dwindling - but that's not the case. Netball NZ said this year's domestic competition saw record-breaking crowds. Its 2024 annual report described last year's ANZ Premiership as the most popular season yet and that viewership was up over 1.7 million viewers - "another large increase year-on-year for the competition." It reported a 50 percent increase in ANZ Premiership viewership and over 35 percent increase in Constellation Cup audience in New Zealand. Silver Fern defender Kelly Jackson said the country's top netballers were still among the best in the world. "I think the hardest part of all to accept in these troubling times is that the product we are putting out on court is still to a really high standard and that's not being reflected in what's going on," Jackson said. The Silver Ferns beat Australia 3-1 in the Constellation Cup last year, suggesting the ANZ Premiership can't be too bad. Players' Association boss Steph Bond said participation rates were still miles ahead of other female sports. "The community game is still growing … there is definitely the fans and the people that are supporting the game just at this point in time we don't seem to be able to be getting that turned into dollars and making that a difference at that level," Bond said. The National Bank Cup final in Invercargill, 2005. The Southern Sting had a huge fanbase. Photo: Richard Jones Netball New Zealand's move to free-to-air might see some short-term pain for long-term gain. No longer will people miss out on watching the domestic competition because they can't afford a Sky subscription. In the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s most budding young netballers would have been able to name every member of the Silver Ferns and that helped netball hold its own against male codes. In 2024, Netball NZ trialled free-to-air coverage of the ANZ Premiership, and this year Saturday games were screened exclusively on TVNZ. If fans are the bedrock of professional sport then opening up the sport to more of them could ultimately pay off for Netball New Zealand. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
