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Since the Living Wage Aotearoa's campaign launched in March last year, there has been no shortage of talk about the feasibility of its implementation, and how it will affect the business of employers and the livelihood of workers. Last week, Jesse Chalmers - treasurer for the Auckland division of the Green Party - waxed lyrical about the positive impact the living wage allegedly had on her small-to-medium enterprise. Read more
Consistency is regarded by some as a hallmark of a good politician, so by this logic Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce should be commended for steadfastly fronting the government's apparent commitment to ensuring that expensive recreational pastimes get well-rewarded. The latest beneficiary of the taxpayers’ purse is the New Zealand Open pro-am, an annual golf tournament which takes place at The Hills and Millbrook course in Queenstown. Read more
It’s tough for parties in the opposition benches. They have been stripped of a major rod with which to beat National in an election year. Read more
Inequality is the buzzword this election year. The usual vernacular is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Read more
The first management book I ever read, back in the late 1980s, was the sequel to In Search of Excellence, the book that established Tom Peters as the world’s leading management guru. A friend had given it to me. Read more
The Prime Minister visited Europe this week. After meetings with European Union leaders, John Key announced that – finally – a free trade deal between New Zealand and the EU was on the table. Read more
The good news about New Zealand's economy just keeps on coming. Business confidence is at a record high, employment is increasing, as are wages. Read more
Fiscal surpluses are in sight, export prices are extraordinarily high relative to import prices, national income growth prospects look brighter than for many years, and this is a general election year. This sets the stage for unsustainable increases in government spending - or for tax cuts or some combination of the two. Read more
Two years ago, when the New Zealand Business Roundtable merged with the New Zealand Institute to form The New Zealand Initiative, there were a fair share of people who wondered how these organisations would merge. Both were research organisations that had been headed by well-respected economists, the late Roger Kerr and David Skilling, who were perceived to come from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum. Read more
Expect to hear a chorus of grumbling from various parts of New Zealand on Thursday when the Reserve Bank is set to hike the Official Cash Rate (OCR) for the first time in almost four years. The move is not a foregone conclusion, but with the market "90 per cent" confident of a 25-basis point hike (plus all the throat clearing, nudging, and winking that has been coming from No 2 The Terrace over the past few months), a bump-up in the interest rate is pretty much guaranteed. Read more