Oliver Hartwich: NZ Initiative Executive Director on Luxon's new foreign investment agency

During his state of the nation speech Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced a new foreign investment agency with the aim of driving more overseas revenue to our shores and boost local economy and productivity.

It's a model based on Ireland and Singapore and will see Invest New Zealand become part of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, which itself is set to become an autonomous crown entity.

Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative Oliver Hartwich has been advocating for a model like this for more than a decade and says he took Luxon on a trip to Ireland to show how a model like theirs could work locally.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, during his State of the Nation speech, Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon announced a new foreign investment agency with the
aim of driving more overseas revenue to our shores. It's
a model based on Ireland in Singapore, and we'll see
Invest New Zealand become part of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise,
which will become an autonomous Crown entity. Oliver Hartwich is
the executive director for the New Zealand Initiative and he

(00:22):
joins me, now, thanks for your.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Time, Oliver, Yeah, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
You took I believe you took the Prime Minister on
overseas trips to see how a model like this could work.
What do you make of the announcement.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I think it's a wonderful announcement because it's exactly what
New Zealand needs. And you're right, we traveled with a
Prime minister. We traveled with him to Switzerland and Denmark
when he was a member of our group. But we
also took another group to Ireland and we encountered the
IDA Ireland Agency, exactly the model on which Invest New
Zealand is now based, and so we saw how it works.

(00:56):
We sought in practice and from that perspective, I can
tell you this is exactly the kind of investment agency
that really makes a difference, that attracts for investors to
the country, and that creates jobs and opportunities. So I'm
not surprised that Cristopher Luxen is enthusiastic about this model,
because we were too.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
What's going to be key to its success? Oliver, Well, the.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Really important thing is actually that it goes hand in
hand with liberalization of our foreign direct investment rules, because
they are really complicated. We have made it extremely hard
for international investors to navigate New Zealand. And so when
they look at potentially investing in New Zealand currently, they
will find all these rules and regulations and in the
end they will ask themselves, well, if it really worth it,

(01:42):
should be really trying to jump through all of these
hoops and jump over all of these hurdles, or should
we rather take our money elsewhere? And often the case
is that they said, well, it's really not worth it.
It's a small market, it's a small country. New Zealand
is not a must have in our portfolio, it's a
nice to have, And so we write they we're somewhere else,
and if we change the rules if you make it easier,

(02:04):
if you make it more welcoming to be here and
to be an investor in New Zealand, then they would
consider a New Zealand more. And then if they also
encounter the invest New Zealand agency which takes them by
the hand, guides them through the system and tells them
really how New Zealand works, how the country takes them,
really makes that lending in New Zealand a little bit easier,
then I think we have a good chance to get

(02:26):
way more international investment than we currently have.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Oliver, how long do you think it will take to
make those changes to the rules of legislature.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Oh, the legislative changes are easy. You could basically do
them almost overnight. But you have to create an agency,
and you have to create an agency with a right mindset.
We have New Zealand Trade and Investor of course right now,
and that is part of their role also right now
to attract international investors. But the mindset so far has
been to are always be a bit careful, really emphasize

(02:55):
the risks and really make sure that we are getting
the right kind of investors. We have to turn them
one set into something that really wants investors. I mean
that's what Ireland's done. Ireland at one stage decided they
no longer wanted to be the poor house of Europe,
and then they had this mindset to really get cracking
and really change things and attract investors. And we have
to do exactly the same.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
So, Oliver, how soon do you expect it to start
drawing in more overseas investment.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
I hope within the next month. I mean, the signal
that I'm just sending out is positive. The signals for
the world is we are open for business, we want
you here. And that's quite a change of mindset, and
I think if we continued on that path, that change
could happen quite quickly.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
And look, as you've been traveling to Singapore and Ireland, anything,
did you pick up on anything we need to be
aware of to you know that potentially you know might
be wrong or we addressed sort of any issues that
may arise.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
No. I think what we have to do is actually
we just have to make the case. We have to
explain that this is worthwhile. I can totally one experience
we had in Ireland. We have hosted the Irish Economics
Minister at the time and he told us that he
could not travel to a single place in Ireland, and
not even the smallest village without being asked by the locals, hey, minister,
what can you do to get foreign investment into our area?

(04:08):
And then we asked success, well would that happen in
New Zealand And the answer was probably not because here
we haven't actually learned to actually appreciate the benefits of
foreign investment. We always think about them as risks. We
think about them as becoming tenants in our own country,
boards selling out about losing control. The Irish narrative was different.
The Irish narrative was always what can this investment do

(04:29):
for us? How many jobs can it create? How much
opportunity do we get out of it? How much growth
do we create out of this? So it was a
growth mindset and that's what the Primus had talked about yesterday.
He said we should actually think about what can it
do to make the economy grow? What can it do
to make New Zealand a better place? And that should
be our mindset rather than thinking what are they any
potential risks?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Oliver, thank you so much for your time this morning.
Nice to talk to you, Oliver. Heart which is the
executive director for the New Zealand Initiative. For more from
Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live to news talks.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
It'd be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio