The gender pay gap in New Zealand has narrowed to a record low, new data shows. The pay gap between men and women was 5.2% in the June 2025 quarter, Statistics New Zealand said. It is a drop from 8.2% in the corresponding period last year. Dellwyn Stuart, co-founder of campaign group Mind the Gap, said the figure showed a “trend in the right direction”, but more movement was needed. Stuart told the Herald the narrowing gap follows “a few good interventions” in the past five years. “I think it’s on the back of the very successful Mind the Gap campaign, and the work that the public service did under the last Government around mandating pay gap measurement and reporting. “And then for this Government, it followed up by creating a gender pay gap toolkit that’s freely available. So there has been quite a few good interventions in the last five years and I think we’re seeing that impact now. “But we need more information and there is more to go. Any pay gap based on gender or ethnicity is unacceptable.” The gender pay gap is the difference between the average pay of men versus the average pay of women. Stuart said Stats NZ’s new figure is a broad look at the overall gap but Pasifika and Maori women had a much larger pay difference. Mind the Gap co-founder Dellwyn Stuart says the narrower gap follows `a few good interventions` in the past five years. Photo / Michael Bradley “I’d be interested to see if their pay gaps have also shrunk in a way that is significant,” she said. Professor Gail Pacheco, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission, called the data “hugely encouraging”. “Put simply, that means the median woman now earns about 95c for every dollar earned by the median man,” Pacheco said. She agreed with Stuart on the ethnic pay gaps and also noted Stats NZ’s figure did not cover the self-employed or unemployed. Stats NZ’s labour market spokeswoman Abby Johnston said the data showed the lowest pay gap since records began in 1998. “Annually, the gender pay gap declined by three percentage points, the first statistically significant annual decline noted since 2017,” she said. Stats NZ said the gap had narrowed because of women receiving larger increases in median hourly earnings from wages and salaries than men. The new figure comes on the same day five labour unions announced plans for a rally outside the High Court at Wellington on Friday over Government legislation cancelling their members’ pay equity claims. Pay equity, as opposed to equal pay, is the same remuneration for different work that has the same or similar level of skill or responsibility, the Ministry of Women says. Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers business, breaking news and local stories from Tamaki Makaurau. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022. Read...

Denheath Desserts, with its famous custard squares, has been placed in liquidation. The Official Assignee was appointed to Denheath Corporation Ltd last Thursday, a notice in the New Zealand Gazette said. A little over 12% of Denheath shares were owned by the estate of Brian James Kenton. The executors of Kenton’s estate applied to the High Court at Timaru to liquidate the company in March. The Official Assignee’s notice told creditors or anyone with information to help the liquidation process to contact them on the insolvency.govt.nz website. Denheath’s directors, Donald and Lisa Templeton, had 71.49% of shares in the company. Geoff Cloake had 5.6%, Vaughan Moloney owned 4%, Albert and Raymond Gain owned 4%, Josephine Turnell, Mark and Sarah Lawson owned 1.6% and Kevin Guthrie 0.8%. The Herald has approached Lisa Templeton for comment. The Herald has not been able to access the company’s website following the announcement, and the Timaru Herald reported the business was closed when it visited. Denheath once said its squares were “as Kiwi as alpine ranges, glacier-fed lakes and little men with hairy feet”. The Official Assignee was appointed to Denheath Corporation Ltd last Thursday, a notice in the New Zealand Gazette said. Photo / Denheath Desserts It also made profiteroles and cheesecakes. The name came from Denheath House – a country café at the old post office in sleepy little Pleasant Point, South Canterbury. That was the birthplace of the uniquely different, light and fluffy Denheath Custard Square. The original owners of the cafe where the squares were sold were Dennis Knight and his potter wife Heather, hence the name Denheath. Lisa Templeton worked in the Knights’ arts and craft shop in Pleasant Point when she was at secondary school. The family-owned manufacturer has sold its products in more than 53 Costco outlets in NZ, Australia, Korea and Japan. Templeton said Denheath was “lucky” in 2013 to forge into Costco Australia when the American-headquartered giant had only a few stores across the Tasman and was yet to open here. The company was put up for sale at the end of 2023, the Timaru Herald said. Lisa Templeton was unwell at the time and wanted to spend more time with family, the paper reported. The company launched a fundraiser for $1.2 million in 2016 to fund an upgrade of its factory. The fundraiser fell short, raising just under $380,000, the Timaru Herald said. Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers business, breaking news and local stories from Tamaki Makaurau. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022. Read...

One of Wellington’s most successful breweries, Fortune Favours, is ending operations and closing its brew bar only a day after winning first place at the country’s biggest beer festival.  After nearly a decade brewing in the capital, owners Shannon Thorpe and Dale Cooper announced the business was no longer financially sustainable.  “Unfortunately, the cost of living crisis has proven too difficult for us to navigate. We’re down 20% on last year, which was already 25% down on the year before,” a post on the company’s social media read.  Since starting in 2016, the company has brewed over 500 unique blends, including New Zealand’s strongest beer.  On Tuesday, its Wairarapa IPA was named the top-praised beer at Wellington’s Beervana event.  The inner-city brewpub on Leeds St will close its doors for the final time on August 31.  “We’ve loved our 8 years here [...] without your support Fortune Favours would not be the brand that it is,” the post said.  Fortune Favours craft beer bar featured on a Wellington craft beer tour. Photo / Nicola Edmonds  The brewery started when Thorpe quit his day job to move to the capital with his young family to start brewing craft beer. Award-winning brewer Cooper then joined and the business expanded, winning awards in New Zealand and Australia and being stocked around the country.  The pair also opened a bar in Wellington Airport in 2019.  In 2022, the brewery made a splash with its Hyper Fuel brew, the strongest beer in the country at 31% ABV.  Fortune Favours’ move is just the latest in a string of recent sector closures.  A number of popular hospitality venues have shut up shop in the capital over the past year, citing a range of factors including the public sector cuts, loss of car parks, and general economic conditions.  Craft breweries across the country from Brothers Beer to Deep Creek, Epic Brewing and Boneface Brewing have all faced financial trouble in recent years.  It also comes as new economic figures show 177 Wellington businesses closed down in the year to the end of the June quarter.  Business counts, meaning the number of business units in an area, is down -2.3% in the capital, a greater drop than the country’s average of 0.9%.  Infometrics principal economist Nick Brunsdon said the capital’s struggles “in large part stems from the cuts in the public sector”.  Ethan Manera is a New Zealand Herald journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 as a broadcast journalist with Newstalk ZB and is interested in local issues, politics, and property in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.  Read...

A family on Auckland’s North Shore have been left terrified after being sent a letter from an anonymous driver.  The letter was in response to an alleged incident while an 18-year-old student was crossing the Harbour Bridge. It was not delivered by a postal service.  The student’s father has now gone to the police and is outraged, saying it is a “very, very scary” thought that someone possibly abused their power to threaten his family.  The dad, who wished to remain anonymous, said the letter had his wife’s full name and their address at the top of the letter, because the car is registered to her, followed by a veiled threat.  “Re: 07:30am, Friday 15th August on ramp before Auckland Harbor Bridge.  “If you are going to drive like an a****** and almost cause a crash with your lane changes, make sure its not to a person who can find where you live.”  The sender identified themselves only as “Person you nearly ran off the road”.  A North Shore family are frightened after an anonymous sender delivered a typed letter to their home. The father said he originally did not entertain the threat as his wife had not been driving at that time, but then he discovered his daughter had borrowed her mum’s car that morning.  He said, although he was not pleased to hear his daughter had possibly been driving dangerously, the idea that someone was abusing their privileges greatly concerned him.  He said his daughter could not even recall the incident. There was no contact with another car, and she did not remember anyone honking at her.  “At the end of the day, new drivers and all the rest of it, they have to cut their teeth on the job, and that is obviously getting used to the road.”  He said he did not know how soon after the incident the letter got dropped off, but he found it three days after the sender alleged they were wronged.  “This takes sort of road rage to another level, doesn’t it?  “You’ve got somebody there who’s clearly got a job where they have access to privacy, you know, your address, all that sort of stuff.  “And clearly they’ve abused their ability to have that and used it for their own personal gain.  “And then gone ahead and made this threat … very, very scary for somebody who’s, you know, an 18-year-old girl.”  He said his daughter and wife have been left shaken, wondering if the person is watching their home.  He said it was clear the sender felt some amount of remorse or guilt about their actions, because he or she chose not to leave a name and number with the note.  A police spokesperson said they had received information about an unsigned letter that was delivered to a North Shore address between August 16-20.  “The letter referenced a vehicle that is connected to the property.  “It is not known how personal information relating to the vehicle was accessed and shared.  “Police have not received any other complaints of this nature and will assess the report for any further lines of inquiry.”  The Privacy Commissioner said information about motor vehicles, including car number plates, is held by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and can be accessed in several different ways by authorised users, with authorisation granted by NZTA.  “Unauthorised access or use of this information can lead to a range of privacy harms, including theft and emotional harm.  “In a situation where access has occurred without authorisation, we expect the responsible business to assess whether the breach has caused or is likely to cause serious harm and therefore whether the breach requires notification to my office.”  A spokesperson for NZTA said it consults the Ombudsman, Privacy Commissioner and police (our advising agencies) before deciding whether to grant an authorisation to the Motor Vehicle Register (the MVR).  NZTA requires all parties to use the MVR to report every 12 months, providing evidence that they h... Read...

The changes come after a leaked cabinet paper revealed plans to make business easier for the alcohol industry. Read...

Last weekend, the Wellington brewery was the toast of Beervana. This weekend will be their last in business. Read...

Ataccama research reveals enterprises average 42/100 in data trust, risking AI progress and regulatory compliance due to poor data quality and governance. Read...

Streaming TV operators are always dreaming up new packages and bundles, and admittedly, I snooze through most of them. But Sling’s Day Pass subscription, which gives you a day’s access to Sling Orange—a package that includes ESPN and two-dozen other channels—for just five bucks sure got my attention.   Turns out it got Disney’s attention, too.  Disney, as you may know, owns ESPN, and Disney doesn’t want to sell you just a day’s worth of ESPN. It wants you to pay for at least a month—ideally though its new ESPN streaming service—or even more.   Now Disney is claiming it never got a heads-up from Sling about its paradigm-breaking Day Pass idea, and it’s suing to stop it.  As Deadline reports, Disney’s legal team filed a federal lawsuit late Tuesday that accuses Sling of rolling out its Day Passes “without our knowledge or consent,” adding that the short-term subscriptions “violate the terms of our existing license agreement.”  From a business perspective, Disney is right to be concerned. Sling’s Day Passes (there are Weekend and Week Passes, too) have the potential to upend the pay TV business, which (as Deadline notes) have long relied on lengthy commitments from subscribers. Back in the cable era, TV viewers would sign up for a year or even longer. In today’s streaming world, a minimum of a month is the norm. But just a week, or even only a day’s commitment? For the likes of Disney, that’s dangerous precedent.  What Disney’s afraid of, of course, are commitment-phobe streamers like me. I love the idea of being able to buy a $5 Day Pass for, say, a single Monday Night Football game on ESPN, or maybe just one night of U.S. Open Tennis. That’s way better than forking over $40 for a month-long subscription that I only need for 24 hours. And once that Day Pass expires, boom, I’m out—and no, a Day Pass doesn’t auto-renew in the hopes you’ll forget to cancel.  Now, Disney’s case against Sling will hinge not on what’s fair or desireable for consumers, but on the specifics of its deal with Sling. If the contract says Sling must offer ESPN and other Disney-owned channels for such-and-such a term and at XYZ rate, and Sling violated that agreement, then Sling might have a problem. A deal’s a deal.  Big picture, though, Sling’s Day Pass idea is a terrific idea—and quite possibly the future. Or at least, I certainly hope so. Read...

Those struggling to sell up their businesses have got a surprise boost with the changes announced today, experts say. Read...

Stanford announced a new business investor visa to replace the entrepreneur work visa, taking effect from November. Read...