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Speaker 1: So David Seymour's right about Air New Zealand, but he's

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Speaker 1: also wrong about in New Zealand. Now, before we get

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Speaker 1: to that, let me bring you up to speed with

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Speaker 1: what's gone on with their New Zealand today. The news

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Speaker 1: is not good. The half year result is bad. It's

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Speaker 1: a dollar fifty nine million dollar pre tax loss, which

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Speaker 1: is a little bit worse than was expected. Most of that,

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Speaker 1: to be fair to Air New Zealand, is just really

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Speaker 1: not their fault. They've had not one but two of

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Speaker 1: their engines that they use give them trouble. The economic

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Speaker 1: downturn that we're experiencing New Zealand experiencing in New Zealand

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Speaker 1: is the worst in most of our lifetimes. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you have to go back more than fifty years to

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Speaker 1: find anything this bad. And that directly impacts their earnings

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Speaker 1: because if we don't have money, we're certainly not going

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Speaker 1: to be spending money on flying. But some of it

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Speaker 1: is their fault. They're squandering their customer loyalty with their

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Speaker 1: poor on time performance and a crappy Corra club offering.

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Speaker 1: And this is where David Seymour is right when he says,

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Speaker 1: go Woke, Go broke because part of the reason Ear

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Speaker 1: New Zealand is losing customers to Jetstar in this country

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Speaker 1: is because there are people who do not want to

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Speaker 1: pay for the Corral Club anymore because the offering is

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Speaker 1: diminished from the good old days. You can't even and

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Speaker 1: this bugs people more than a New Zealand I think

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Speaker 1: ever realized it would. You can't even go into the

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Speaker 1: Core Club lounge, ask for a coffee and take that

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Speaker 1: coffee away like you can at a cafe. There is

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Speaker 1: no takeaway coffee offering because they don't want you to

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Speaker 1: take a paper plane on a paper cup onto the

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Speaker 1: plane because paper cups are bad for the environment. When

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Speaker 1: they're flying planes, they've just wasted time and money trialing

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Speaker 1: an electric plane they don't even know how to use

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Speaker 1: in their fleet. And they constantly harp on at the

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Speaker 1: government about getting everyone to use sustainable aviation fuel, which

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Speaker 1: is more expensive than the normal fuel, which is very

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Speaker 1: expensive at the moment. But where David Seymour is wrong

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Speaker 1: is that he says the solution here is to sell

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Speaker 1: down the government's fifty one percent share in Near New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: We can't do that. We're an island country. There are

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Speaker 1: two ways to get to this country, by boat or

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Speaker 1: by plane, and we know which one of those people

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Speaker 1: use more often. We need to own those planes to

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Speaker 1: make sure that they keep on flying. And if we

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Speaker 1: learned this at any time, it was during COVID when

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Speaker 1: a New Zealand became a de facto logistics provider and

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Speaker 1: ran repatriation flights for US. So David Simil's part right

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Speaker 1: and part wrong. We have to keep it in government

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Speaker 1: hands and in New Zealand's hands. We just needed to

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Speaker 1: start doing its job properly. For more from Hither Duplessy

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Speaker 1: Allen Drive, listen live to news talks it'd be from

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Speaker 1: four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio