I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
What really bugs me about the budget is the lack of any sort of vision for New Zealand.
Thomas Pippos from Deloitte nailed it best for me.
Corporate vision sadly missing from the equation
But what’s missing in both Budgets is the vision to do something different to keep businesses here.
… we can actually influence corporate behaviour rather than just observe it. If everything is left to a competitive market and we play with a straight bat, we will lose every time. Every other jurisdiction “cheats” - they play to win. Capital and labour has never been as mobile.
Rodney Hide also nailed it
The trouble with Dr Cullen’s Budgets is that they are all about carving up the economy cake rather than baking a bigger one.
Australia is eating our lunch. Isn’t about time we got in the game?
blog
Absolutely - no vision on display at the moment. We have been dumbed down to thinking that activity and productivity are the same thing. What crap. There is far to much activity in NZ that is not productive. Need proof? Look no further than our ballooning spending on the ‘Public Service’. Absolute waste.
NZ need to increase our competitiveness in a global resource marketplace. We know we’re not competing effectively when we complain about the cost of petrol and the flight of human talent off to better prospects.
Solution? We need to raise personal expectation of productivity, raise the bar on what we expect from each other, and be prepared to lambast ability that is masked by laziness. In short - we need a step change. And that will take vision.
I don’t mean to sound like a simplistic, talk back listening right winger - but this is what you get when you have teachers, trade union officials and university lecturers running an economy. How can you have vision about something if you don’t understand it or have never really worked in it. The current governments solution to growing our economy will properly be to: 1. commission a $10m report into it, 2. hire 500 bureaucrats to run the newly formed ministry of growing the economy and 3. launch a $100m tv campaign on the importance of economic growth.
No Government can solve the problems entirely but we need a Vision set by people who understand the economy and will introduce specific measures that focus on growing the pie. A good place to start is a capital gains tax on property!
It has always ripped my shorts that the current govt whinge about where the country is ranked in terms of broadband when compared to the OECD (an easy target we all want faster and better). They’re quite happy to say they want us in the top 5-10 or whatever. Because they can pass the buck and make it the Telco’s problem (the common enemy). They do not spend nearly as much energy working to get us into the same rank in the OECD for GDP! -something they do control!
a repost of a comment on my blog…
“The budget was, again for me, hugely disappointing. Tax cuts to me are an irrelevancy. it just feels like there is no big vision for NZ from labour… just a “lets do the same thing we’ve been doing, seems ok”.
I want someone who says “WTF? Is this it? I don’t want to be on a par with Australia! I want to kick their asses to Ayers Rock! I want to/I demand to be the best, most productive, most innovative country in the whole world! And I don’t know if I’m gonna get there soon, but I’m sure as hell gonna get get on that bus, and floor it! And I’m not going to do the old things, because they’ve always been done that way. Every apple cart I see, Im going to at least think about tipping it over. And I’m going to rock every damn boat in the overloaded auckland marina”.
How? Support people who want to innovate, at any level, from school kids to seasoned entrepreneurs. Incentivise people to raise productivity, to push bars. not just jump on board when all the tough work has been done. And the tough work begins when people have an idea, not when they’ve signed their first export deal.
In IT specifically, I think we need to drive and support product development. Xeros a good start, but the long tail is a reality. David from 37signals said it best, make a $million company by selling a $50/mth product/service to 2000 people.
Half agree. But hey, you know there are some fantastically smart business leaders in NZ too, what if they decided to get together, bypass the Government, and start directly setting some agenda’s themselves? Can anyone tell me why this doesn’t happen?
Anyway, can I ask what is the vision coming out of National at the moment? (I’m not getting all the local news right now. But before I’d left it seemed like there wasn’t one, and they were *all exactly the same guys on the bench as before*, just a new face for the leader. Call me a skeptic.)
not all wisdom comes from the commercial sector. There is much knowledge in public service that has a positive efffect on the progress of the economy. National is just as limited in its vision as Labour; they just have different limitations.
I don’t buy the biz knows best mantra
Neither do I
But at the moment there is NO leadership.
We’ve heard many rallying cries since 1999, but none of them have lasted. It’s time for something as simple and consistent as ‘we try harder’ is for Avis; i.e. no matter where we get to, it still works!
My suggestion - “NZ - First in quality of life”.
What’s YOUR vision?
The plot thickens - TUANZ’s Ernie Newman clarifies a few things…
http://www.tuanz.org.nz/blog/e379f711-b2b6-4423-9e32-4a8bf9f301db/03aa7d50-f29f-4188-8bf6-ba66d4206ce3.html
Hi Rod,
Its unfair to expect vision from government, because they’re supposed to be a reflection of the people, our vision, aspirations, dreams, and hopes for the future, but I see little evidence of that anywhere whether in the media, from business or civic society.
Theres alot of complaints, whinging, and grievances. A culture of negativity and blame seems pervasive in our society, which pervaded the country before the international economic outlook and environment turned sour. We need to stop and reflect and appreciate what we’ve got. Is there such a culture that needs to be confronted and challenged?
If we don’t then we’ll never be able to progress or grasp the oppurtunities that are available out there and we’ll fail to realise what we’re capable as individuals or as a society.
http://www.longacre.co.nz/books/KillingUs.html
Rather than trials or problems, I see oppurtunites for the people this country.
We have so much going for us in this country. Attributes that people, especially in the Third World, can only dream of. a) stable and relatively corruption free political and legal institutions, b) a social safety net in case we suffer misfortune of one sort or another, c) cultural and political links to nations like us, d) a reputation for being entreprenuerial, hard working, and creative, e)access to abundant international markets f) plus we’ve got a new trainset to play with thanks to Dr. Cullens masterful negotiating powers lol.