The only drive show you can trust, to ask the questions, get the answers, find the facts,
and give the analysis, Heather Dupesiel and Drive, with one New Zealand and the power of
satellite mobile news talks at B.
Good afternoon, here he's are starting to open their wallets against Stats New Zealand
car data show Spending Rose 2.4% in February compared with a year ago, this is of course
a welcome boost for businesses after a tough holiday period and frankly a tough few years.
Caroline Young is the CEO of retail New Zealand, hi Caroline.
Do you want to know how you're doing?
I'm very well thank you, what are the highlights in these numbers for you?
Look I think the highlight first is that we've had two positive months in a row that's
we haven't seen that in a while and they're reasonably good numbers right so it's not
like it's 0.1% increase or a 0.5% we had 1.1% rise in January a 2.4% rise in February.
Now notwithstanding we might have some headwinds through the next month or two, that's a really
positive thing that we haven't seen for a number of years and generally speaking across
most parts of the sector so all retailers would have been feeling slightly better about
the outlook heading into the year, obviously the current turmoil around the international
conflict does put a little bit of a dampener on that but let's hope it's a short sharp
thing and we can get back to business as usual.
Yeah I see Hospos had a bit of a decent boost, now is that us going out more often or is
that tourism bouncing back?
It's a bit of both really, we're seeing good tourism numbers come through, you know
February is a really good month for tourism obviously, you know, usually the best weather
month in New Zealand so it's good both internally and internally and externally for domestic
and international tourism coming in so you know and some great events that are on around
Yeah, now how worried are you about what is going on in Iran and its ability to derail
Yeah look it is a concern, you can't get away from that, we know that you know the price
of crude oil is gone from $100 a barrel to $190 a barrel in a very short period of time
that getting supplies through the strait is really difficult, we know that freight ships
are stopping in Singapore for longer, the longer they stop in Singapore, we know that
you know they're waiting for the boats to be full and then the price of getting the boat
from Singapore to here will be much higher because the fuel price is higher.
Alongside that the insurance cost that these businesses, the further shipping has risen
significantly and barrel costs that are going to get passed on once it gets to New
Zealand and I think two other quick things, one is we're seeing a 10 to 15% increased
demand and fuel at the moment and that feels like a little bit of panic buying.
We need everybody to just you know keep calm and just buy what you need so that we make
sure one that there's fuel for everyone and two that for the internal distribution of
freight getting across New Zealand that there's fuel for those guys and we don't have to
have restrictions put on everybody but we do need everybody to get back to their normal
spending habits and to use your fuel.
Restrictions put on everybody like you think this is something that's going to happen?
Certainly mobile we've been talking about whether they may need to implement some restrictions
you know if we're to for emergency services for freight distributors you know just really
thinking about where the fuel is and how quickly we're going through it.
When you see a 10 to 15% demand and a number of fuel stations running out of fuel that
does cause panic and it does cause other consumers then to think I must go out and get more
fuel which causes more demand.
So we're really partly.
I heard that today so I think there is some information out there and I know that Minister
Willis has been talking and cabinet about what are they considering in terms of making
sure that there is good supply for everyone.
Listen just quickly on the citizens arrest thing.
Why have you guys come out against it when you consider that there are dairy owners out
there who have their hands tied at the moment and can't do anything when they're being
You know it's a really complex topic and there are lots of things that they can do.
What we've said to the minister and we've said to a number of other ministers that we're
having discussions with is that if you took the current settings of citizens arrest and
applied them during the daytime, that would work but we don't think that citizens arrest
is appropriate for a child.
We don't think that the right to strike something, someone in looking at a recent something
that we want New Zealanders to be able to do.
We don't think that being able to arrest someone for as little as a stealing of bottle of
water or bag of lollies versus something more substantive is the right setting.
So it's about the settings not being right for any citizens arrest happening during the
All right Carolyn, thank you very much for your time as Carolyn Young, Retail NZ CEO.
