Weekly Digest – 1 March 2023

Welcome back to our Weekly Digest. Read on for the latest updates and some ideas to help us all move forward.

Mortgage shock: Aucklanders pay up to $900/fortnight more

Economists at Westpac released an overview of how much more mortgage holders in Auckland will be paying with higher interest rates. It calculates that they will pay $900 per fortnight more than they were at the lower rates.

Transpower left to assess damage from Cyclone Gabrielle

National power grid operator Transpower said costs arising from Cyclone Gabrielle were expected to be significant but that damaged assets were insured. The state-owned company said it was in the early stages of modelling the financial impacts of the cyclone.

KiwiSaver queries see an uptick

People are accessing their KiwiSaver to make ends meet after the severe weather events of the past few months.

Retail spending is down, but tourism is getting stronger

New figures from StatsNZ show that retail spending softened in the final quarter of last year before rising interest rates and a warning from the Reserve Bank to “cool the jets”. However, the demand for hospitality and accommodation is up.

New tool for small businesses to measure their environmental impact

The Sustainable Business Network has launched the free Docket survey, which lets business owners measure their effect on the environment and learn how to reduce it.

CO2 shortage exposes supply vulnerabilities

The country’s unexpected shortage of C02 has impacted the beverage industry and sheds light on broader issues and vulnerabilities that could pose future risks to other essential sectors.

TikTok gets banned from federal government phones in Canada

The chief information officer in Canada announced earlier this week that the video-sharing platform TikTok will be removed and blocked from all federal government devices. He cited security concerns as the reason.

Twitter lays off 10% of its remaining workforce

About 200 employees awoke on Sunday to find they had been let go. It’s just the latest round of layoffs at Twitter, whose workforce numbered around 7500 before Elon Musk took over.

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