A day on Waiheke
Had a lovely day and night on Waiheke Island on Thursday and Friday as the Business Roundtable kindly invited me to attend their emerging business leader’s Dunes Symposium.
By coincidence was on the same flight up as Bill English so poor Bill had to endure me raving on about the evils of the Electoral Finance Bill for an hour or so. Not that Bill needed educating – his speech against it at first reading was a classic.
Then on the ferry across to Waiheke again by coincidence Michelle Boag was on the same ferry, so had a nice catchup there and she kindly drove us to the venue.
The Thursday evening dinner was great fun and I didn’t leave until after midnight. As the audience was emerging business leaders, the audience were younger than usual for such events and met some great people. Also have to mention the wonderful staff from the BRT and Awaroa who shone.
Chris Trotter was at the dinner also, and shares his less sunny views in the SST. What I find amusing is that Chris has been at almost every BRT or similar event that I have been at in the last year. For someone who spends so long railing against the “ruling elite” he does enjoy their bar tab often đ
Jonathan Ling, the chief executive of Fletcher Building, was the speaker at the dinner and gave a great treatise about leadership in business.
The next morning we heard from John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne.
An Australian commentator observed that in late 80s both NZ parties were to right of both Aust parties and that now one could suggest both are to the left of both Australian parties. John predicted Kevin Rudd would win in Australia but that it may be closer than people think. He also defended some of what Howard has done with workchoice, work for the dole (now supported by ALP) but lambasted him for a lack of overall reform, a growing of the state and turning into an anti-federalist where
He said that he believes Rudd is proud of the reforms of the former Labor Government and he may become a very good reforming Prime Minister, noting a reform Labor Govt with a generally supportive Opposition can be the best way to get reform. So he is optimistic about getting some future looking policies in Australia.
John also noted that in the late 80s both NZ parties were to right of both Australian parties and that now one could suggest both are to the left of both Australian parties. Personally I wouldn’t put NZNP to the left of the ALP but the ALP certainly is far far less ideologically fixated than NZ Labour when it comes to the economy, defence etc.
Labour MP Charles Chauvel also spoke to the conference and gave a well tailored good viewpoint of what he thinks should be done to help business through public policy and spoke about regulatory responsibility, sunset clauses in laws etc.
The final speaker was John Key and he spoke broadly about a number of areas where National sees far more private sector involvement than Labour and took many questions in a very unruffled way which went down very well with the group. Someone suggested to acclaim he should have twice as much time next year.
A picture from the villas where we stayed on Waiheke. A gorgeous setting helped by a nice sunny day.
And another view of the venue.
Many thanks to the BRT for the invite. It was purely by coincidence that I was up in Auckland anyway so could attend for no cost.
The whole concept of putting this on for emerging business leaders is excellent also. Public policy has a huge impact on business, so it is a great investment to make them aware of issues around economic management and other areas. And it isn’t the converted preaching to the converted. There was a pretty wide range of people and views in the room.