Kiwi Jobs Bill
The New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporter support the efforts from Claire Curran on the Kiwi Jobs bill.
“The jobs bill is a good idea but we need to go much further,” says John Walley CEO NZMEA, “this is really all about local spill-over benefits from Crown spending that are not achieved when the Crown buys imports.”
“The make-up of the proposed Kiwi Jobs Commission is interesting, we really need to avoid lawyers, bureaucrats and the like, and focus on appointing more practical down to earth representatives who can bring operational experience into play. Exporters who have been there and done that are needed in this sort of work.” Says Walley.
“I recall the first Obama stimulus package (page 189) in the USA. Local purchases were required if the price was within 25% of an imported alternative. The US put a number on the spill-over benefit, clearly indicating what they saw as necessary to eliminate bias.”
“For the US, government spending begins at home; it should be case for New Zealand. Clearly this is not an issue for the WTO. It is reasonable and sensible to quantify spill-over benefits and require those benefits to be taken into account when making purchase decisions.”
“Spill-over needs to be clearly quantified, to ensure the subtle and pervasive policy differences elsewhere do not disadvantage local suppliers. For example if other countries run low interest rates, low exchange rate policies, has supportive interventions for manufacturing industry (loans, grants, tax credits, depreciation rates, skills training and export incentives), and as a result they can make things, say, trains, cheaper than New Zealand manufacturers who have none of these advantages – who wins in the long term? Unless the spill-over is defined by pragmatists who have been there and fought such problems, the policy makers will miss the mark yet again.”
“This is mostly an attitude of mind, and the collective mind here is that of a cargo cult; all the good stuff comes from elsewhere – wrong-headed, yes; ill-informed, yes; short sighted, yes; unsustainable, yes – but that is the evident bias in thinking.”
“A Kiwi Jobs Commission would make a contribution; given the right skills, and the right brief to define the spill-over benefit and the determination to really implement those considerations across Crown procurement policy.”
