Reports & Media

The Business Roundtable supports well-conceived law regulating cartel conduct. However, for the reasons explained in our March 2010 submission on the earlier Ministry of Economic Development discussion document, we are opposed to criminalisation. Read more

More ladders, fewer snakes proposes that accelerated roll-out of e-learning to low decile schools and improving the school-to-work transition will materially reduce youth unemployment and resulting social issues. Read more

A submission by the New Zealand Business Roundtable to members of the 2011 Emissions Trading Scheme Review Panel. Read more

This is a submission by the Major Electricity Users’ Group and the New Zealand Business Roundtable on the paper “Gazetting New Zealand’s 2050 Emissions Target - Minister’s Position Paper” released 29th January 2011 by the Minister for Climate Change Issues along with a media release “50 by 50 emissions reduction target proposed”. Read more

We see the issue of welfare dependency and welfare costs as hugely important – economically, fiscally and socially. The WWG’s work should be seen in the context of the precarious current economic situation, with an anaemic GDP growth outlook and dangerous external vulnerabilities due to very high foreign indebtedness. Read more

Plugging the gap proposes 14 policy directions to improve the success of internationalising New Zealand businesses. Internationalisation performance improvement will accelerate growth in high value exports and lift prosperity. Read more

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has the potential to play a positive role in relation to New Zealand’s financial markets provided that its approach to the exercise of its significant regulatory powers is measured and responsible. Read more

This is a revised version of the keynote address to the joint conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists and Law and Economics Association of New Zealand held in Auckland on 30 June 2010. The neoclassical ‘economist king’ has tumbled from his pedestal. Read more

Sir Ronald Trotter was the first chairman of the New Zealand Business Roundtable in its present form, a position he held from 1985 to 1990. Among his many other roles he has been chief executive and chairman of Fletcher Challenge Limited, chairman of the Steering Committee of the 1984 Economic Summit, a director of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, chairman of the State-owned Enterprises Advisory Committee, chairman of Telecom Corporation, chairman of the National Interim Provider Board, a chairman or director of several major New Zealand and Australian companies, and chairman of the board of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Read more

The Business Roundtable welcomes the establishment of the Savings Working Group. We think there has been much mistaken analysis around savings over the past decade, especially by the Treasury, and that as a result, costly policies have been based on false premises. Read more

Holidays legislation remains complex and difficult to administer. It is far less problematical in many countries, including Australia. Read more

The Business Roundtable believes that New Zealand employment law has become unnecessarily complex and costly for both employers and employees. Contrary to common misconceptions, there is no inherent and systematic imbalance in bargaining power in the labour market. Read more

The Business Roundtable welcomes the establishment of the Welfare Working Group (WWG). Welfare dependency is an enormous problem that blights the lives of many people and has wider deleterious social and economic effects. Read more