Latest / Best of Business / Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Was David Seymour right about Air New Zealand going 'woke'?

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Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Was David Seymour right about Air New Zealand going 'woke'? · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: So David Seymour's right about a New Zealand, but he's
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  Speaker 2: also wrong about in New Zealand. Now, before we get
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  Speaker 2: to that, let me bring you up to speed with
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  Speaker 2: what's gone on with their New Zealand today. The news
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  Speaker 2: is not good. The half year result is bad. It's
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  Speaker 2: a fifty nine million dollar pre tax loss, which is
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  Speaker 2: a little bit worse than was expected. Most of that,
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  Speaker 2: to be fair to Air New Zealand is just really
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  Speaker 2: not their fault. They've had not one but two of
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  Speaker 2: their engines that they use give them trouble. The economic
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  Speaker 2: downturn that we're experiencing New Zealand experiencing in New Zealand
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  Speaker 2: is the worst in most of our lifetimes. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: you have to go back more than fifty years to
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  Speaker 2: find anything this bad and that directly impacts their earnings
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  Speaker 2: because if we don't have money, we're certainly not going
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  Speaker 2: to be spending money on flying. But some of it
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  Speaker 2: is their fault. They're squandering their customer loyalty with their
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  Speaker 2: poor on time performance and a crappy Corra Club offering.
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  Speaker 2: And this is where David Seymour is right when he
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  Speaker 2: says go woke, go broke, because part of the reason
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  Speaker 2: ear New Zealand is losing customers to Jetstar in this
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  Speaker 2: country is because there are people who do not want
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  Speaker 2: to pay for the Coral Club anymore. Because the offering
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  Speaker 2: is diminished from the good old days. You can't even
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  Speaker 2: and this bugs people more than a New Zealand I
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  Speaker 2: think ever realized it would. You can't even go into
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  Speaker 2: the Coraw Club lounge ask for a coffee and take
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  Speaker 2: that coffee away like you can at a cafe. There
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  Speaker 2: is no takeaway coffee coffee offering because they don't want
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  Speaker 2: you to take a paper plane on a paper cup
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  Speaker 2: onto the plane because paper cups are bad for the environment.
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  Speaker 2: When they're flying planes, they've just wasted time and money
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  Speaker 2: trialing an electric plane they don't even know how to
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  Speaker 2: use in their fleet, and they constantly harp on at
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  Speaker 2: the government about getting everyone to use sustainable aviation fuel,
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  Speaker 2: which is more expensive than the normal fuel, which is
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  Speaker 2: very expensive at the moment. But where David Seymour is
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  Speaker 2: wrong is that he says the solution here is to
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  Speaker 2: sell down the government's fifty one percent share in near
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand. We can't do that. We're an island country.
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  Speaker 2: There are two ways to get to this country, by
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  Speaker 2: boat or by plane, and we know which one of
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  Speaker 2: those people use more often. We need to own those
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  Speaker 2: planes to make sure that they keep on flying. And
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  Speaker 2: if we learned this at any time, it was during
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  Speaker 2: COVID when in New Zealand became a de facto logistics
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  Speaker 2: provider and ran repatriation flights for US. So David Simil's
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  Speaker 2: part right and part wrong. We have to keep it
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  Speaker 2: in government hands and in New Zealand's hands. We just
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  Speaker 2: needed to start doing its job properly.
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