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Speaker 1: So the country is desperate to go for growth for

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Speaker 1: obvious reasons, and that means we're having a good old

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Speaker 1: debate and I like it. The question is how and

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Speaker 1: you go to a barbecue, you go anywhere, people start

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Speaker 1: talking about the economy. What should we do? What should

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Speaker 1: we do? We're going to have to do something because

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Speaker 1: what we've been doing over the last thirty years hasn't worked.

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Speaker 1: We've got three points of view over the weekend. So

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Speaker 1: first of all, Friday it was the turn of Matthew

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Speaker 1: Houghton and the Herald. He had a piece called New

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Speaker 1: Zealand needs a strategic approach to building wealth, like Singapore's Temasek. Now,

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Speaker 1: Temasek owns and manages assets that are held directly by

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Speaker 1: the Singapore government. They operate a major bank and an

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Speaker 1: insurance company, Singapore Airlines, the country's main port, the Marina Bay, Sandstel, hotel,

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Speaker 1: a load of other things, biggest company in Singapore. It's

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Speaker 1: a good idea and we have actually been investigating it

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Speaker 1: for decades. Even Grant Robertson was interested in having a

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Speaker 1: New Zealand agency like Temasek here, but nothing's ever happened.

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Speaker 1: So it has cross party appeal. Why hasn't it happened?

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Speaker 1: No one knows. Politicians all talk, no action. Honestly, twenty

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Speaker 1: or thirty years have been talking about this. Nothing's happened anyway.

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Speaker 1: Then on Sunday it was the turn of Don Brash

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Speaker 1: at Michael Riddell, who in a shared piece said our

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Speaker 1: problem was low productivity. Good lord, If I had a

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Speaker 1: dollar for every time someone said our problem as low productivity,

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Speaker 1: I'd be a very rich man. People say this all

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Speaker 1: the time, every single politician says that, but nobody has

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Speaker 1: an answer to it. They just go, what we did

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Speaker 1: is better productivity. Well, how do we do that? I

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Speaker 1: don't know, but I know we need better productivity. So

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Speaker 1: in their piece, Brash and Roddell the only profit solution

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Speaker 1: that they offered in the piece was to lower company

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Speaker 1: tax rates to attract overseas and local investment. And they

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Speaker 1: sat there and claimed that we have one of the

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Speaker 1: highest company tax rates in the world, which is balderdash.

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Speaker 1: We said it around twenty eight percent. Australia is at

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Speaker 1: thirty percent, the states in the UK are around twenty

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Speaker 1: six percent. Were actually slightly above median And no disrespect

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Speaker 1: to Dom Brash, you had terms as a Reserve bank

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Speaker 1: governor and a leader of a couple of political parties

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Speaker 1: and plenty of opportune unities to lift productivity, but you

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Speaker 1: failed too. And the third piece was from Sam Stubbs,

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Speaker 1: who said, if we're selling public assets, let's sell them

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Speaker 1: to New Zealanders like super funds, so the wealth stays

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Speaker 1: in New Zealand instead of being exported. And I agree

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Speaker 1: with this. Stop saying productivity, start saying wealth creations, Start

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Speaker 1: creating some wealth, keep it in New Zealand, find out

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Speaker 1: how to make or supply stuff that the world wants,

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Speaker 1: and then keep the profits and the workers in New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: Then we start generating wealth. Then we recycle it to

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Speaker 1: make more wealth. And that is Denmark's trick. You know,

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Speaker 1: you know that Denmark operates the second largest container ship

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Speaker 1: operation in the world. And the reason why to import

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Speaker 1: capital rather than to export it. For more from early

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Speaker 1: edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to News Talks it

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Speaker 1: be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.