NZBR Update February/March 2006

NZBR Update February/March 2006
February/March 2006

Below are recent communications from the New Zealand Business Roundtable:

Articles

What’s wrong with Keynesian economics?

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.

The itch to regulate broadband

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.

Big business needs to put apathetic policy to the sword

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.

Budget 2006: more spending and less growth

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.

ARC rating claims exposed

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.

Reality breaks through with axing of carbon tax

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

Top entrepreneur appointed Business Roundtable vice-chair

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.

Submission on Budget Policy Statement 2006 released

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.

Working paper on Maori project released

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

Submission on the 2006 Budget Policy Statement

15 February, 2006

Perspectives

Corporate responsibility is to make profits

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.

Green lies

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

Maori economic development: glimpses from statistical sources,

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

For the latest in free-market education news, research and comment, visit

http://www.educationforum.org.nz

Roundtable public speakers available

Several of our members, as well as a number of our consultants, are available for speaking engagements.
ENDS

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