Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andrew Dickens: The country is desperate for growth, the question is how?

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Andrew Dickens: The country is desperate for growth, the question is how? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So the country is desperate to go for growth for
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: obvious reasons, and that means we're having a good old
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: debate and I like it. The question is how and
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: you go to a barbecue, you go anywhere, people start
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: talking about the economy. What should we do? What should
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: we do? We're going to have to do something because
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: what we've been doing over the last thirty years hasn't worked.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: We've got three points of view over the weekend. So
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: first of all, Friday it was the turn of Matthew
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Houghton and the Herald. He had a piece called New
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Zealand needs a strategic approach to building wealth, like Singapore's Temasek. Now,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Temasek owns and manages assets that are held directly by
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the Singapore government. They operate a major bank and an
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  Speaker 1: insurance company, Singapore Airlines, the country's main port, the Marina Bay, Sandstel, hotel,
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  Speaker 1: a load of other things, biggest company in Singapore. It's
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a good idea and we have actually been investigating it
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: for decades. Even Grant Robertson was interested in having a
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: New Zealand agency like Temasek here, but nothing's ever happened.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: So it has cross party appeal. Why hasn't it happened?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: No one knows. Politicians all talk, no action. Honestly, twenty
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: or thirty years have been talking about this. Nothing's happened anyway.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Then on Sunday it was the turn of Don Brash
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: at Michael Riddell, who in a shared piece said our
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: problem was low productivity. Good lord, If I had a
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: dollar for every time someone said our problem as low productivity,
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  Speaker 1: I'd be a very rich man. People say this all
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the time, every single politician says that, but nobody has
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: an answer to it. They just go, what we did
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: is better productivity. Well, how do we do that? I
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: don't know, but I know we need better productivity. So
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: in their piece, Brash and Roddell the only profit solution
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that they offered in the piece was to lower company
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: tax rates to attract overseas and local investment. And they
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: sat there and claimed that we have one of the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: highest company tax rates in the world, which is balderdash.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We said it around twenty eight percent. Australia is at
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: thirty percent, the states in the UK are around twenty
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: six percent. Were actually slightly above median And no disrespect
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: to Dom Brash, you had terms as a Reserve bank
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: governor and a leader of a couple of political parties
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: and plenty of opportune unities to lift productivity, but you
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: failed too. And the third piece was from Sam Stubbs,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: who said, if we're selling public assets, let's sell them
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to New Zealanders like super funds, so the wealth stays
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  Speaker 1: in New Zealand instead of being exported. And I agree
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  Speaker 1: with this. Stop saying productivity, start saying wealth creations, Start
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: creating some wealth, keep it in New Zealand, find out
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: how to make or supply stuff that the world wants,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: and then keep the profits and the workers in New Zealand.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Then we start generating wealth. Then we recycle it to
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: make more wealth. And that is Denmark's trick. You know,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you know that Denmark operates the second largest container ship
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: operation in the world. And the reason why to import
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: capital rather than to export it. For more from early
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News Talks it
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.