Roger Patridge: NZ Initiative Co-founder and Chair on the results of the Mood of the Boardroom Survey

A grim outlook from business leaders. 

The Herald's annual Mood of the Boardroom survey shows business leaders are less optimistic about the economy than they were a year ago. 

They’re calling for more bipartisanship when it comes to tax, retirement, and the long-term outlook for New Zealand. 

NZ Initiative co-founder and Chair Roger Patridge told Francesca Rudkin the business community is looking for clear direction from the Government, and it doesn’t feel like they’re delivering. 

He says there’s pretty much unanimous agreement the economy isn’t taking off in the ways we were promised. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got the Herald's mood of the boardroom, and in
a word, it's grim. Our business leaders are calling for
more bipartisanship when it comes to tax retirement and the
long term outlook for New Zealand. A big talking point
was Trump's tariffs, with CEO's confidence plummeting in light of
the president's aversion to free trade. Roger Patridge is the
co founder and chair of the New Zealand Initiative, and

(00:21):
he joins me now, good morning, Roger, thanks for your time.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Good morning, Francesca.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
So if you could describe the mood of the boardroom
in one word, what would it be.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, I think grim is quite a good word. Troubled.
Everybody's are ware the economy's struggling, cost of livings high,
and the business communities looking for a clear direction from
the government and not feeling that they're quite delivering.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
There's pretty much unanimous agreement that the economy isn't taking
off in the ways that we were promised. What are
those key issues holding us back?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Well, one of the big issues is the extent of
government spending. That's meant that it's taken longer for interest
rates to come down and with interest rates high productive
activity has not rebounded in the way you'd hope after
a recession. I think the government underestimated the extent of

(01:19):
the problem they inherited from the last government, and underestimated
how much pain it was going to take and cause
to firms, workers and consumers. Probably should have managed expectations
better on how long it was going to take to
turn things around.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
You've called for bipartisanship on our economic future. What's stopping
this progress? Is it the fringe parties?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, I think it's worth We're always tempted to think
about what divides us politically, but it's worth thinking a
bit about how much we agree on and trying to
broaden the scope when you step back and think about
the issues that aren't so object to political flip flops
every time there's an election. We've got bipartisanship on free trade,

(02:06):
on an independent foreign policy. We've had by partisanship and
probably still do on the need for a broad based
tax system with a clean GST. We don't have a
successive governments tinkling this talk of it every now and then,
not tinkering with our GSD. But it's the envy of
the world. It's a very efficient tax. We've had cross

(02:27):
party support for more than three decades on treaty settlements
and cross party support on climate change. So there's a
lot that unites us, and I think that's a strength
of our political system. One of the challenges is to
broaden that out. We've had bipartisan support for a prudent
fiscal policy and low levels of debt, keeping debt at

(02:48):
around twenty percent of GST our GDP, and that lasted
until the pandemic, and then the trading wheels came off.
The spending constraints came off with both parties. So I
think we should think about the important areas where we
can agree politically on issues like retirement savings, infrastructure pipeline.

(03:12):
There are a whole host of policy areas just crying
out for certainty.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
A lot of feedback about Trump's tariffs and the impact
that's had on confidence. Trump did what he said he
was going to do. Should we have been more prepared
for the reality of these tariffs.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I think people were misled globally about what Trump term
two was going to look like. Trump said an awful
lot of things before term one, which he didn't do,
and I think people thought he might have been messing
with America and the world more than he actually was,
so we weren't alone in not taking what he said

(03:51):
at face value.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
There we go and really quickly, Roger, do you think
the Prime Minister will be happy with his ranking?

Speaker 2 (03:57):
He won't be happy. No, it's it's for him. It's
definitely work in progress.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time this morning.
That was Roger Patridge.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
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