NZBR Update February/March 2006
February/March 2006
Below are recent communications from the New Zealand Business Roundtable:
Articles
published in the Otago Daily Times, 24 February, 2006
by Roger Kerr (Business Roundtable executive director)
Modern economic thinking has moved a long way from Keynesianism. It has rehabilitated the notion that involuntary
unemployment results from the failure of economies to adjust flexibly to government- or market-induced shocks. The
supply side of an economy - its productive capability and efficiency - not the demand side, is what matters most.
Published in the Dominion Post, 20 February, 2006
by Rob McLeod (a director of Telecom and chairman of the Business Roundtable)
New Zealand has benefited hugely by moving from a state-owned telecommunications monopoly to a competitive private
industry with relatively lighthanded regulation. We should keep it that way.
Published in the New Zealand Herald, 16 February, 2006
by Douglas Myers
Doug Myers, the exiled eminence grise of the Business Roundtable, reflects on two decades of economic advocacy with this
polemic on the state of the country, the Government, the media and the New Zealand Herald.
Published in the Otago Daily Times, 10 February, 2006
by Roger Kerr
Business organisations will be expressing serious concerns about the outlook for growth and the economic and fiscal
policy settings foreshadowed in the Budget Policy Statement. There is an urgent need to rein in spending, improve its
quality, reduce taxes ... and cut back regulations.
Published in The Independent, 1 February, 2006
by Roger Kerr
The Auckland Regional Council's claim that the business sector benefits more than proportionately from its services has
been exposed as groundless by two recent reports.
Published in the Otago Daily Times, 27 January, 2006
by Roger Kerr
The government’s decision to scrap the proposed carbon tax marks another (and more positive) phase in a sorry saga of
policy making on climate change.
Media releases
16 February, 2006
Bill Gallagher, CNZM MBE, the chairman and chief executive of Gallagher Group Limited, a Hamilton-based animal
management systems and security systems company, has been appointed a vice-chair of the Roundtable. He joins current
vice-chairs Diane Foreman and Bill Day.
15 February, 2006
The Business Roundtable is calling on the government to reconsider its spending programmes and tax policy, and to adopt
a more pro-growth economic strategy.
25 January, 2006
The Business Roundtable has released the first Working Paper in a series which will form the basis of a book to be
published later this year.
Submission
15 February, 2006
Perspectives
by John Roskam
After a decade of talking about corporate social responsibility, it is only in the past few years that companies have
come to appreciate the consequences of signing up to what seemed like a good idea at the time.
by Thomas Sowell
Not often do Rush Limbaugh and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman agree on anything but recently both of them pointed
out the same pattern in the prices of housing – and both were correct.
Publication
by Dave Maré and Sylvia Dixon of Motu and Andrew Coleman, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Michigan
An overview of Maori economic development during the past 150 years
Prize draw
Congratulations to Mary Ashby and Erica Cumming of Wellington and Derek Hopkins of Pukekohe for last month signing up to
receive the NZBR Update and winning a $75 Whitcoulls voucher each.
Education Forum
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Roundtable public speakers available
Several of our members, as well as a number of our consultants, are available for speaking engagements.
ENDS