Middle East conflict poses threat to NZ economy

Experts are warning escalation of the conflict in the Middle East poses a major threat to New Zealand's economy. Money Correspondent Susan Edmunds spoke to Charlotte Cook.
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RNZ News

4 hours ago

• RNZ News

Free cuts a 'win-win' at Mr Barber

Whether you are after a fade, slick back, perm or a buzz cut look no further - a barber training centre in the Auckland CBD is offering free trims. If you do not mind yours being the first hair the apprentice barber has ever cut, that is. Mr Barber, an NZQA approved and registered training centre, is the only barber-specific training centre in Aotearoa. Barbers-in-training are chucked straight into the deep end, practising on real people from day one. At 10am on Thursday outside Mr Barber in the Auckland CBD, the place was already buzzing. For 25 years, Aucklanders have been going to the training school for a free trim, while apprentices snip their way towards a level four certificate in commercial barbering. Danelle Higgins did her barber training at Mr Barber in 2019. Now, alongside her brother Brodie, she is running the course. "We come up from a small town called Murupara. It's all poverty and all of that stuff. I wanted to do something different, help people, get them a qual. I had it hard growing up, so I touch base with a lot of these boys." Would-be barbers complete a 12-week course covering both theory and practical skills. They are then put on placements in barbershops, where they must work 780 hours to complete the qualification. Although the job market has slowed, especially during winter, she said there is no shortage of people applying to join their crew. "We get barber shops calling us up all the time for barber students. We have a barber job page as well, [if] they have job vacancies." Clarence Morrison has just graduated from the three-month programme and is soon heading into a placement. "It was something for like an investment for me. Came from drugs, alcohol, prison sort of background, brought up in foster homes and kind of cheated my way through life. "Those things don't really last, so it's starting from scratch again and this is a good place." Morrison has cut the hair of homeless people, university students, tourists and people popping in for a short back-and-sides during their work lunch break. "It gives some hope, people that are going for a job interview and if they're unsure, you're able to give them some confidence, to be able to step into their day. "It's like [being] little ambassadors for the community." Alex Burnett completed the course with one of his mates and is now a tutor on the course. "I was sort of at a loose end a little bit after school, just doing odd jobs and stuff and I just sort of thought of it as something that would suit me and I gave it a try and never looked back." Burnett said he can have 20 conversations a day with different customers. "We've had a lot of people that have been coming through since the start, and it helps with getting people something that they need and they can get it for free. "It's a win-win, really, because these guys get to get to learn, get to practise on them." When he is not working at a barbershop up on Karangahape Road, Alex works as a part-time a tutor at the school, where he's able to give tips from his own experience. "It gets the nerves out of the way and gets them used to having real people in the chair and having proper conversations, cause it's more than just cutting. "If you've just got a mannequin, all you're doing is cutting, whereas in here, you can talk to your customers [and] you can learn about yourself." Mr Barber was the brainchild of Jacqui Spence and her barber husband Neville, who, when they moved to New Zealand from the United Kingdom, saw the need for a barber-specific course. Jacqui said 90 percent of barbers walk into jobs when they complete it. "They've come through and done something that they've been passionate about and learned a trade and gone forward. "A lot of them have gone on to open their own businesses ultimately and they've raised their family and been able to live a really good life because of it." The school operates from 9.30am to 4pm Monday to Friday, with free haircuts on offer from 10 - 12pm and 1 - 3pm.

Techday NZ

6 hours ago

• Techday NZ

Exclusive: How Cybersecurity startup Blackveil is targetting AI-driven threats

After 20 years in the IT trenches, Adam Burns had seen enough. Burns, the founder of New Zealand-based cybersecurity startup Blackveil, spent much of his career working for managed service providers – firms tasked with overseeing the IT infrastructure of other businesses. And time and again, he says, he witnessed companies fall victim to the same avoidable cyberattacks. "Each time, I saw the same things going wrong," he said. "The industry was missing something critical." Blackveil was his answer: a company with a mission to protect the "forgotten child of cybersecurity" by focusing on overlooked but essential components of digital defence. The turning point came last year, after Burns responded to his twelfth cyberattack incident in short succession. Frustrated by the pattern, he decided to act. "I built a little application, a Python crawler, and stuck it on the internet," he explained. "It ran on the . TLD for six weeks and confirmed that over 50% of Kiwi businesses had critical gaps in their cybersecurity." The data, drawn from public domain records, validated Burns' suspicion that weak digital hygiene – like unprotected DNS records – was leaving companies wide open to attack. From there, Blackveil's reach grew beyond New Zealand. The team expanded their scanning to include Australian businesses and even global Fortune 500 companies. The result? Even the biggest players weren't immune. "These aren't always advanced attacks," Burns said. "It's usually someone forgetting to change a default password, turn on multi-factor authentication, or tidy up an email record." But the landscape is rapidly evolving, and the rise of AI-powered cyberattacks, particularly tools like Xanthorox, is escalating the threat. Burns described Xanthorox as "ChatGPT for hackers" – a platform capable of generating malware, conducting reconnaissance, and launching tailored phishing campaigns. "You don't need technical knowledge anymore," he said. "You just talk to it in plain language. If something doesn't work, it evolves and tries something else. It's terrifying." To counter this, Blackveil developed its own AI assistant: Buck. While it doesn't yet fix vulnerabilities directly, it acts as an intelligent guide for businesses, simplifying complex security insights into accessible language. "You log in, scan your domain, and Buck breaks it down for you," Burns said. "You don't have to be a technical guru to understand what's wrong." For now, Buck exists as a standalone agent, but future versions will be fully integrated into Blackveil's platform. "Our goal is to make cybersecurity accessible," Burns explained. "We're lifting the veil – hence the name Blackveil – on a space that's been out of reach for many businesses." The company's flagship product, Blackvault, is a domain security platform that focuses on prevention rather than reaction. Traditional cybersecurity tools often work in a reactive way, alerting users after something has already gone wrong. Blackvault flips that model by proactively securing digital entry points – what Burns calls "shutting the front door." According to Blackveil's internal data, aligning three critical DNS records – SPF, DKIM, and DMARC – can reduce phishing, spoofing and spam threats by up to 87%. The company promises deployment within two to four weeks for most businesses. "For a small to medium-sized business, the return on investment is huge," Burns said. "This is one of the most cost-effective ways to secure your business." Despite its focus on the ANZ region, Blackveil operates globally, and the remote-first company has seen growing demand abroad. Headquartered in Tauranga, the business can support international clients without needing to be onsite, although on-the-ground assistance is available in the Bay of Plenty. Burns himself relocated from Auckland a few years ago for a slower pace of life, but remains deeply connected to the broader tech world. In addition to Blackveil, he developed KiwiCost, a side project offering real-time cost comparisons for people living in or moving to New Zealand. "That one was just me scratching an itch," he said. "But it also helped me practice and refine the design direction for Blackveil." His approach is anything but traditional. "Most IT companies are run by old guys in blue suits," he joked. "I wanted to bring something different – vibrant, creative and approachable." That includes how the company communicates. On LinkedIn, Burns shares cybersecurity insights with a dose of humour and sarcasm. One of his recent posts – about seemingly mundane email security protocols – went viral, drawing over 100,000 impressions. "People are clearly looking for plain-English guidance," he said. "And they appreciate a bit of personality." Asked what advice he'd give businesses unsure how to prepare for the evolving threat landscape, Burns had three clear steps: train your staff, get the basics right, and monitor your systems. "Every staff member is a risk if they don't know how to spot bad actors," he said. "Their inbox is their digital passport. If you train them properly and secure your fundamentals, 90% of attacks become impossible." He added: "And after that, monitor everything – because DNS records can be altered by mistake, or worse." For those in crisis, Blackveil also offers an emergency helpline – 0508 HACKED – designed to provide immediate assistance to compromised businesses. "That line goes straight to my mobile," Burns said. "It's about being there when people need us most." Blackvault is still evolving, with plans to become what Burns calls "the Swiss Army knife of domain security." But his goal remains clear: "We want to make strong cybersecurity achievable for everyone," he said. "Because it's not just big companies under threat anymore – it's all of us."

RNZ News

7 hours ago

• RNZ News

Climate Minister says gas shortage will lower greenhouse emissions

Kapuni gas plant. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says the gas shortage will lower greenhouse gas emissions, but at a cost for businesses that can't switch to electricity. Supply from existing gas fields has plunged since the government published its Emissions Reduction Plan in December 2024. Watts was asked in a scrutiny hearing in front of the environment committee of MPs why the government's climate plan had put such heavy emphasis on capturing and storing carbon dioxide underground at Kapuni gas field, when the project was untested and its prospects were now looking dubious. Watts blamed the gas shortage - but said the shortage itself would lower carbon dioxide emissions. He said, compared with when the plan was written, "New Zealand has less gas than it thought". "Less gas that's available by virtue is less emissions, so in some ways there is an acceleration of the emissions reduction because we simply don't have that gas available," he said. "We are at critical levels in the context of low levels of gas. Some may say with a purely climate hat on, well that's good, there are no emissions and therefore they can't use it (gas)," Watts said. "But the reality is, in a manufacturing and industrial sense there are a number of businesses who either have an inability to transition to other sources ... or doing so is a significant fiscal cost and/or time horizon." Watts said the government was looking at ways to help those companies. "The good thing is, in the current environment there is an economic [and] commercial case to transition off gas because electricity is cheaper, and therefore the commercial imperative is driving that transition." "I'll take market intervention over government regulation any day." Watts said the government's assumptions regarding future gas use and the prospects of carbon capture at Kapuni would need to be reassessed and the results would published later this year. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) condenses carbon dioxide and stores it underground in reservoirs. Overseas, some high profile projects have been controversial because taxpayer funds for climate action were being paid to some of the planet's biggest emitters, fossil fuel companies, to capture and store just a tiny fraction of their pollution underground. Fully a third of the carbon savings needed to meet the government's legal obligations to cut emissions from 2025-2030 was supposed to come from carbon dioxide being stashed permanently underground at Taranaki's Kapuni gas field. But in May, Kapuni's owner Todd Energy told RNZ the project wasn't viable unless it received some kind of extra incentive or subsidy from the government. The scheme would earn carbon credits for every tonne of emissions stored, but Todd said the market price of carbon was too low to justify the investment. Simon Watts. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone At the scrutiny hearing, Watts was grilled by opposition MPs on whether Todd Energy had asked for direct subsidies from the government. Watts said he hadn't seen such a request, but Labour MP Deborah Russell presented him with an answer to a written question in Parliament, confirming Todd had asked for subsidies. Watts didn't directly answer Russell when she asked what the government's reply had been. He said in regards to support for industries "there's a number of aspects that remain under active consideration". Watts said the government was still committed to passing regulations allowing carbon capture and storage as "one tool in the toolbox" for lowering emissions. RNZ asked Todd to clarify what it had asked for. It said it had not asked the government for a direct subsidy for carbon capture and storage at Kapuni. But the company confirmed it wanted either co-investment, government underwriting or shared liability with the taxpayer for any future carbon leaks from the project. Todd has previously argued the government should treat carbon capture and storage facilities as infrastructure. "In our 2024 submission to MBIE (Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment) on the CCUS consultation, we did signal that government support - particularly in the form of risk-sharing or enabling mechanisms - would be essential for CCS to proceed in New Zealand," it said. "Particularly, we noted that New Zealand's declining gas reserves make the economics of CCS challenging and that 'for CCS to be effective, the government should consider sharing project risks and responsibilities. "It could be liability for leakage, particularly if the intent is to store third party CO2 in time. Due to challenging economics there is also financing risk that co-investment or a government underwrite could help to de-risk," said the company. Todd Energy had previously estimated the Kapuni field would have room for storing carbon dioxide produced by other companies, as well as its own. Earlier in the hearing, Watts was asked by National MP Grant McCallum about the risk of "emissions leakage" if New Zealand started lowering its methane emissions from farming. Emissions leakage refers to the risk of production moving overseas to get away from emissions pricing in its country of origin. Watts defended the necessity of meeting New Zealand's climate targets and international obligations. "You hear some on some corners saying, we're very small and insignificant," he said. "Every country, big or small, has a role to play in terms of reducing emissions and New Zealand is part of the Paris Agreement for that purpose. "In terms of adding up all the small and insignificant countries, it adds up to 40 per cent of global emissions," Watts said. "If we pull out, what signal does that send? There are three countries that are not part of the Paris Agreement, the USA and a number of other countries that most people probably have probably never heard of." [Those countries are Iran, Libya and Yemen . "Russia, China, India, they're all part of the Paris Agreement, and all the other countries we would look to - the only one is the US. "In regards to the implications on international trade, ... New Zealand has a reputation as a primary sector exporter of red meat, dairy and other products," he said. "Why would we put that at risk?"