Category: Management Magazine

The only party which argued the property rights line in the foreshore and seabed furore in 2003-04 was ACT. ACT said iwi should be able to pursue due process through the courts. National belatedly rediscovered property rights with new intakes of MPs from 2005.

That rediscovery fuelled National’s agreement with the Maori party to repeal the 2004 act. But its bill in turn has stirred fears, which ACT shares, that backroom cabinet-iwi deals might transfer large sections of the coastline into iwi hands. read more

s the Prime Minister John Key the trader or John Key the manager of traders? In that distinction lies a clue to his prime ministership.

Last year was to have delivered, in Key’s own words in a Management cover story, a “step-change”. “We were elected on making a step-change for New Zealand,” he said in an interview for that article. He emphasised the strategic nature of his intentions: “What we do in 2010 will have some impact on our electability in 2011 but a much greater impact on our electability in 2014.” read more

Beware the enemy within. Business leaders might take a leaf from democrats’ phrasebook: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. That is because the enemies of democracy and its freedoms are part of the democracy.

The same goes for business. Many enemies of capitalism lie within. When capitalism’s leaders don’t expose and denounce those enemies they risk the freedoms on which capitalism depends. read more

New Zealand a think tank? We’re 4.4 million at the bottom of the world specialising in exporting much of our best talent to more interesting, challenging and rewarding places.

We’re inventive. But our inventors mostly sell out to live the triple-B life plus offshore comforts. Governments have kept research funding below the OECD government average, thinking that they mustn’t pick winners (except for Sir Peter Jackson), that the point is early commercial wins, that this country is too small and that voters want the money spent on other things. read more

This month, if he sticks to plan, Environment Minister Nick Smith will announce a working group on clean-tech, modelled loosely on the tax working group. He started talking about it in February.

Back in June Singapore, roughly New Zealand’s economic and population size, announced a $US700 million (around $NZ1 billion) programme of research into clean technologies. New Zealand’s commitments so far are at most a fiftieth of that. read more

In 1996 Helen Clark got a big hairdo and flash makeup and went public with this near-unrecognisable persona. It was the boldest cosmetic rebranding since Bob Harvey remodelled Norman Kirk in 1972 from greasy slob to greying statesman.

Julia Gillard had a cosmetic remake, for a women’s magazine, as a campaign manoeuvre in Australia’s election last month. As the polls plunged she then proclaimed that she was going back to the “real Julia”. read more

It’s not business as usual. After every big technology-induced economic boom and crash, things are done differently. After the “great financial crash”, politics, like business, requires a different sort of leader and a different sort of leadership.

This is only partly because governments think they need to re-regulate those who caused the crash. It is also only partly because most governments in the rich world have mountains of debt and huge budget deficits to defray. read more

Last year John Key, ex-banker, went to his first National party conference as Prime Minister as the adulated winner who had restored the party to power. This year he is the Prime Minister who has taken the party into uncomfortable territory in his dealings with iwi leaders. Next year will he be the economic game-changing Prime Minister? read more

Which major party is harder-nosed on bicultural issues: the supposedly soft-centred left-of-centre Labour party or the supposedly hard-nosed right-of-centre National party?

The answer will be obvious from the mere posing of the question.

The Maori party hates the Labour party for its foreshore and seabed law. It basks in the National party’s indulgence on whanau ora, the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, repeal of the foreshore law and, still to come as this was written, a constitutional review. read more

Bill English’s budget this month has two points to prove. He must demonstrate he is holding spending enough to get on a credible path back to surplus. And he must encapsulate the government’s broad economic policy thrust.

The first is straightforward. English is determined to stick to his $1.1 billion limit on new spending (adjusted for inflation in future budgets). read more