Best of Business

Inland Revenue has claimed New Zealand needs higher taxes, building off earlier arguments made by Treasury.
It sees scope to increase the goods and services tax (GST) rate - offering a cash transfer to low-income earners - and tax more capital gains.
NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explained further.
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Shares in A2 Milk dropped this week after the company downgraded their earnings forecast - after the business was hoping to increase their net profit for the June year.
A2 Milk has cited supply chain issues, partly relating to the conflict in the Middle East.
Milford Asset Management's Jeremy Hutton explained further.
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If you haven’t watched the Bunnings video yet showing its staff being attacked, I recommend you go and watch it - especially if you feel uneasy about the company using CCTV for facial recognition. It’s a compilation of incidents that have occurred in its stores.
The first incident shows a man pulling a knife on a staff member and threatening them so he can walk out the door with two trolleys’ worth of stolen goods. That happened at the Porirua store.
The next incident shows a man holding a box who runs at and knocks over a staff member, while another man behind him tries to steal a second box. That happened at the Takanini store.
The incident I found hardest to watch is a man approaching a staff member at their car in a mostly empty car park. He sidles up to them, then smacks them in the head when they’re not expecting it. He then chases the staff member as they run away and trip because they are so frightened.
Now, let’s be clear about what’s going on here - Bunnings is releasing this video as part of a PR campaign. It’s trying to convince us that it needs to use facial recognition technology in two of its Hamilton stores.
What blows my mind is that it has to go to these lengths. It's been trialling facial recognition since 2018. It's fought its way through a tribunal process in Australia. It's had the Privacy Commissioner here, and the equivalent over the ditch, watching them. It's engaged a Māori digital sovereignty expert. It's released at least two of these video compilations.
And all of this, so far in New Zealand, is just for permission to operate in two stores. Not all stores - just two. Two Hamilton stores.
That’s because there are still enough people worried that Bunnings will take our biometric data and sell it, lose it or wrongly deny entry to some innocent person.
I would have thought this was a slam dunk. I would have thought the answer would be: yes, absolutely - go ahead and use facial recognition if that’s what you need to do to keep your staff safe.
Because sure, something might go wrong one day with the CCTV. But go and watch those videos. Things are going wrong right now.
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A Kiwi startup designed around rethinking the way we sleep is getting international recognition.
Do Not Disturb Sleep Company, an Auckland manufacturer of premium sleep products, has secured a multi-million-dollar distribution, sales, and marketing agreement in the US.
Founder Chris Larcombe says the brand's grown and evolved over the years, and this is great news.
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Repeat offenders are the target of the recent Bunnings facial recognition technology rollout.
It's turning on scanners in Te Rapa and Hamilton South today, before later rolling them out countrywide.
Threats have more than doubled in the hardware retailer's stores in the past four years, 34 percent from repeat offenders.
Bunnings New Zealand general manager Melissa Haines says data on regular shoppers won't be kept.
"If someone comes into our stores, there's a very quick scan of the face - if there's any match to a person that's previously committed serious harm in our stores, then that's where we're using it."
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