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RNZ News
10 hours ago
- RNZ News
Anthony Albanese, Christopher Luxon wrap up bilateral leaders' meeting in Queenstown
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Arrowtown War Memorial Park. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has laid out his vision for "frictionless" business and travel between Australia and New Zealand, as he wraps the annual bilateral leaders' meeting in Queenstown. Luxon and Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese paid tribute to Anzac soldiers in Arrowtown and took a scenic helicopter flight, before Albanese departed on Sunday afternoon. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese laying a wreath at the Arrowtown War Memorial Park. Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd The previous evening, the leaders met with the heads of major Australasian businesses, including Qantas, ASB Bank and Genesis Energy, after a one-on-one discussion at tech entrepreneur Rod Drury's new private retreat. In a media debrief at Queenstown Airport on Sunday afternoon, Luxon described how the countries could do more to remove the "barnacles from the boat" for businesses straddling the Tasman. "There's a lot that we could actually do to simplify some of the standards across both markets," he said. "There are a challenge within the domestic Australia, between the states, where there's often different regulatory requirements within the states and the point is we want it to be as frictionless as possible." Luxon pointed to recent progress, including harmonising building-product standards and trialling visa-free entry for Chinese nationals arriving from Australia. He said there were further opportunities to explore - like synchronising both countries' approaches to AI and environmental issues, and advancing work on digital IDs and drivers licences , which would be recognised on both sides of the Tasman. Luxon said it was all about getting rid of small "irritants" for travellers, such as Australians having to use their passports for ID at New Zealand bars. "It's those things... that make it frictioned in terms of trying to move between countries," he said. Luxon said previous efforts to achieve entirely seamless cross-border movement - such as trials of passport-less travel - had faltered, due to what he called genuine "nationhood" considerations, but that did not preclude other measures to streamline trans-Tasman travel. Defence was also high on the agenda during his meetings with Albanese, with both countries committed to intensifying defence co-operation and moving towards an increasingly integrated ANZAC force. Asked if New Zealand could join Australia's deal with Japan to build buy 11 Navy frigates, Luxon said "harmonisation in procurement" could benefit both countries. "We want to make sure that we have optionality to join the procurement process. For example, we're in the market for new helicopters - we want to make sure that they're as interoperable as possible with the Australians. "When we go to market, we want to present joint procurement bids for those things that we can tack on the New Zealand requirement and, as a result, lower the cost for each of those individual items for each country," he said. When it came to economic challenges, Luxon said Australia and New Zealand were both trying to improve their productivity. "We both have huge desires to improve economic productivity in our respective countries. It's been a problem for 30 years and both countries actually, under successive governments. "Everyone's working hard, but we haven't able to lift everyone's collective living standards sufficiently." As he bid goodbye to his "good mate" Albanese, Luxon hailed the leaders' meeting as a very successful trip altogether. "We're good friends and that helps a lot, when you have good chemistry with the leader," he said. "It's actually quite nice having a peer support group at times with fellow leaders you can actually talk to." The relationship was in "good heart", he said, although he conceded Albanese's decision to wear a Wallabies scarf on the final stretch of the trip may have been a bit of "trolling." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
18 hours ago
- RNZ News
Mediawatch: 'Surprise' rise in Trump's trade tariff?
One of many headlines calling the 15 percent tariff rate imposed by the US 'a surprise'. Photo: The Post "If the name of New Zealand is seriously so threatened, why didn't New Zealand First introduce this bill 12 months ago? Why not six years ago? Why not negotiate it into the coalition agreement when they formed a government?" Jack Tame asked on his Newstalk ZB show last weekend . He was talking about the New Zealand (Name of State) Bill freshly proposed by NZ First MP Andy Foster, which would legislate New Zealand as the official name of the country. "Could it possibly be that a few hours before ... Australia and the UK achieved lower trade tariffs with the United States, while our government's top officials were apparently surprised to learn that our tariff had been increased?" he asked. Party leader Winston Peters didn't like it. On social media, he pointed out that on the same show five years ago, Jack Tame had backed 'Aotearoa New Zealand' as the official name for our nation. In a long interview about the Bill on the alternative news platform The Platform, Peters said he was delighted his "counter-attack" on Jack Tame was getting good online engagement. The hike in US trade tariffs didn't come up until Peters himself mentioned it at the very end. "Before you go, you know, we've got this thing with the United States and everybody's alarmed. I've seen all the headlines on Radio New Zealand and all the newspapers today. We'll turn this thing around. You watch," the foreign minister said. Since 5 April, US importers of New Zealand products have been paying a 10 percent tariff on all goods - and 25 percent on steel and aluminium. While Tame said the 15 percent tariff the US confirmed late last week seemed to be a surprise to our government and trade officials, the media seemed surprised too. Many news stories - and many headlines - called it a 'surprise' rise . But ahead of that, Trade Minister Todd McClay himself said the tariff could rise to 15 percent. At a media conference earlier, President Trump himself told reporters that the universal tariff could increase to 15 or 20 percent for countries that had not struck deals with the US. Todd McClay also told reporters last week, if the tariff rate goes to 15 percent our exporters have already adjusted and will be able to deal with it. If so, they adjusted a bit better than the surprised media this past week. On Newstalk ZB, Mike Hosking told his listeners the lower rate charged across the Tasman was the real shock. "Australia can land their beef and their wine at 10 percent, we land ours at 15," he complained. But to those surprised by that, Scoop's Gordon Campbell said they shouldn't have been. "We sell them more than they buy from us. In Trumpland, any country that runs a trade surplus with the US is a bad country that is ripping the US off. How bad have we been? Pretty bad, in Trumpian terms," New Zealand is a victim of its own export success, Gordon Campbell said - a bit like butter buyers in our duopolistic supermarkets. Trade Minister Todd McClay also confirmed that 15 percent was no surprise on NZME's rural show The Country . "If we had run a trade deficit with the US like Australia, would we have got 10 percent?," host Jamie McKay asked McClay on Wednesday, in Bangkok en route to Washington to plead our case. "It is as simple as that," the trade minister replied, confirming he had been told as much previously by US trade representative Jamieson Greer. "He said it didn't matter if you had camped out here in Washington, if you'd had a trade deal or you're negotiating one. For any country that had a trade surplus against the US last year - it is 15 percent or more," McClay said. Todd MaClay dodged the next question, about whether we would agree to buy more stuff from the US to reduce our trade deficit. This week McClay and columnist Gordon Campbell both pointed out that the trade surplus has in previous years been flipped by one-off purchases of big-ticket items like aircraft. The deal Trump struck with the EU earlier this month included billions of dollars-worth of energy and military equipment. Many people in many industries are now watching this space, including the media - surely not so surprised by now. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- RNZ News
New Tesla owners get refund after Bosplus salesman Bojia Liu misleads them about self-driving capability
By Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter of Tesla Model 3. Photo: AFP / Xinhua News Agency A couple has won a refund after their new Tesla failed to "drive like a robot" as the salesman promised it would when he sold it to them. Jiahui Wang and Yuxuan Li purchased the 2020 Tesla Model 3 for $44,000 earlier this year from Bosplus Ltd in Auckland on the assurance that it had Full Self Driving (FSD) capability. This feature, contrary to its name, does not allow the car to drive itself but identifies stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows the vehicle. Regardless, Wang and Li's Tesla didn't have this program installed, despite the salesman, Bojia Liu, assuring them it did. Liu assured them that during a trip he did from Auckland to Tauranga in a similar car, it could "drive like a robot" and he barely had needed to touch the steering wheel at all. "In other words, by spending an extra $6000, you get an additional 100km of range, 100 more horsepower, all-wheel drive, and the Full Self-Driving feature," he told them by text message when they asked why the model they were looking at was more expensive than other Tesla vehicles. When Wang and Li discovered that the car they'd purchased didn't have this function, and couldn't be charged at many charging stations in New Zealand, they took Bosplus to the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal to get a full refund. At a hearing held earlier this year Bosplus, represented by Liu, admitted he'd copied the information about FSD capability from Tesla's official website onto the advertisement for the vehicle and wasn't aware it didn't have it. Instead, the Tesla had autopilot, which matches speed to surrounding traffic and assists with lane steering, and advanced autopilot, which helps with parallel parking, lane changes and navigating interchanges. Tesla confirmed with the couple that their model could not be fitted with FSD. Tesla also confirmed that the car was a Japanese import and had a different charging port, which could be changed but would result in slower charging of its battery. Tribunal adjudicator Crystal Euden said in a recently released ruling that Bosplus had been misleading in selling the vehicle. "Bosplus clearly represented that the vehicle had FSD capabilities, specifically Tesla's Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control functions," she said. "Although a third party may be able to configure the vehicle to enable those features, they are not currently available on the vehicle." Euden said she was confident the buyers wouldn't have purchased the vehicle if they'd known it didn't have the advertised features. "Liu specifically told the purchasers that the vehicle was more expensive because it had these features, but that was not the case," she said. Euden ordered that Bosplus refund the couple entirely. - This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald
