Latest / Best of Business / Catherine Beard: BusinessNZ Advocacy Director on the report calling for a long-term plan to strengthen the country by 2050

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Catherine Beard: BusinessNZ Advocacy Director on the report calling for a long-term plan to strengthen the country by 2050 · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk ZEDB. Follow this
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  Speaker 2: A Big Picture of Stuff from Business New Zealand for
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  Speaker 2: you this morning. They're reporting to the future of n Z.
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  Speaker 2: They're looking at key issues that face us between now
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  Speaker 2: and twenty fifty. Lack of workers called of a million
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  Speaker 2: of them, cost of health and pensions, twenty five percent
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  Speaker 2: chance we've got zero population growth. Catherine Birds the Business
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  Speaker 2: New Zealand Advocacy director, and is where's Catherine morning?
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  Speaker 3: Good morning?
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  Speaker 2: Do you reckon? We're up for this is a country.
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  Speaker 3: Look, the only way we're going to meet these challenges
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  Speaker 3: really is to have a bit of a collective vision
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  Speaker 3: about what good looks like in the future. And there's
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  Speaker 3: definitely a concern from the business community that we are
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  Speaker 3: sort of stuck in a cycle of short terms thinking,
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  Speaker 3: you know, we have three year electional election cycles, we
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  Speaker 3: have changes of government, we have policy u tunes and
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  Speaker 3: flip flops, and we're not really planning for the future.
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  Speaker 3: We're sort of stumbling towards it in kind of a
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  Speaker 3: blindfolded fashion. So this report, it's really designed to get
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  Speaker 3: everybody to think outside the box. How big do we
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  Speaker 3: want to be as a country or do we want
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  Speaker 3: to sort of shrink into increasingly unviable future.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I wish you well with a quarter of a
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  Speaker 2: million workers and that's directly tied in with zero population growth.
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  Speaker 2: Do you reckon we're still a magnet for people who
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  Speaker 2: want to come here or not?
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  Speaker 3: Look, I think we can be, but again that has
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  Speaker 3: to be part of the plan and the thinking. Why
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  Speaker 3: would talent want to come here? And in fact way
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  Speaker 3: even would our children want to stay here. So we
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  Speaker 3: have to provide high paying jobs, we have to have
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  Speaker 3: affordable housing and you know, they have to see a
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  Speaker 3: future here. And we've got some fantastic attributes, but we
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  Speaker 3: really have to be competitive with Australia.
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  Speaker 2: Frankly indeed, and we're not. And this is not new.
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  Speaker 2: Do you guys, not just at Business New Zealand but
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  Speaker 2: in general, get sick of producing reports that say the
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  Speaker 2: right thing, but nobody does anything about them.
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  Speaker 3: Look, I think part of our hope with this report,
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  Speaker 3: and we've we've put it out very widely amongst all
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  Speaker 3: the industry groups, is that everybody starts singing the same
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  Speaker 3: song and we actually put pressure on the politicians to
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  Speaker 3: depoliticize them things. Sure, they're going to have differences of opinion,
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  Speaker 3: but you know, when you're campaigning in opposition on the
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  Speaker 3: fact that you're going to reverse everything that's currently been
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  Speaker 3: implemented from a business perspective, that's really hopeless.
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  Speaker 2: Isn't it, CARSA. All I can do is wish you well.
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  Speaker 2: With Katherine catherinebe who's the Business New Zealand advocacy director.
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  Speaker 2: I think Luxem to be fair to him, has reached
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  Speaker 2: out on the infrastructure side of the equation and tried
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  Speaker 2: to make it a bit apolitical. But I don't know
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  Speaker 2: that Labour's too open to that sort of thinking at
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  Speaker 2: the moment.
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