NZ needs to be 'clean, green and smart'
Competitiveness lies in the way the government positions industry clusters in front of international business minds, says John Allen.
Thursday, December 01 2011 || News || BY William Mace, Businessday.co.nz
That's the question New Zealand's Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade John Allen posed to delegates at The Competitiveness Institute's global conference today.
Allen captured the attention of several hundred business people, academics and policy-makers in Auckland by repeating a story about a European bureaucrat who recently remarked he would decamp to New Zealand to ''buy land and sell vegetables to the Chinese'' if political and economic armageddon closed in.
But while Allen said the bureaucrat's impression was flattering, small countries still faced significant risks while instability rocked the nation's large economies.
New Zealand's future prosperity would not lie in feeding the Asian population and wealth explosion, nor in cutting costs to increase competitiveness, said Allen.
Instead, he suggested, the answer lies in the way the Government was positioning Kiwi industry clusters at the forefront of international business minds, including being outward-looking, connecting with multilateral organisations, investing in education and attracting business talent through our high standards of living.
''If we can't be cost-competitive across all of our industry sectors then we have to be able to derive that premium, so the 'clean, green' image is important to New Zealand's international position, but we need to be 'clean, green and smart'.
''That says we're not just clean and green but we are ideas-led and we're looking for opportunities to leverage that on the international stage.''
He also saw New Zealanders' natural roles as relationship builders would become a huge advantage in an interconnected world, where our close neighbours Asia are the main drivers of growth.
''The competitive environment in which this country is positioned and the challenges that we face will reward humility and respect. They will reward much of the natural DNA of our country, which is all about understanding how to build partnerships and keep partnerships, and in a multipolar world it is partnerships that will be central to being able to solve issues that confront us.''
TCI delegates from all over the world also heard Professor Michael Enright speak about New Zealand's prospects in the world.
Enright co-authored a seminal book with Michael Porter about New Zealand's options emerging from the economic disaster of the late 1980s.
He said the country had been transformed since his first visit here in 1991, and announced that he is currently leading work on a new study into New Zealand's competitiveness.
