We’ve lost the vision: Mainfreight boss

We’re sort of being run by a couple of accountants, rather than visionaries, and I think the country needs some visionaries.

We’ve forgotten about what we do about investing for the future.

The infrastructure of the country both in transportation, education, housing, water — all those things, have been forgotten about in our view. And now we need to have an intense look at where the country sits to fund the growth of the population, to fund the tourism that the country has found — which is all good for us, but we’ll lose it if we don’t look after it.

You know, with all due respect, we’re sort of being run by a couple of accountants, rather than visionaries, and I think the country needs some visionaries.

I think we need to rethink our political landscape for the future.

This old style of sending all our tax money to Wellington for them to decide what they do with it as if it’s their money, and dish it out when they think it’s ready, or, when they think they need it for perhaps political gain rather than for economic gain for the country, might well be some of the problem.

The indictment comes when you have a current Government who have been in power for three terms, who then on the basis of electioneering suddenly find money available for certain projects to actually tick the political landscape box. Whereas perhaps it might well have been better, that if they’d continued to invest over a longer period of time the voter would’ve understood that they’re the government for the next term.

I’m worried about whether the Government are thinking longer term; and perhaps that comes also to the political term that we allow these governments. Is three years far too short? We would say that it is. Four years plus might well be a far better term of government and allow them to think more strategically about the future.

Fom a business perspective we need to think bigger and we need to think more offshore. We need to internationalise our businesses. We have a great labour force here that can compete with any other labour force in the world. We just need both the government and the businesses of New Zealand to think about those opportunities that are offshore.

We need to find a way to have affordable housing and we need to invest in that affordable housing sooner rather than later. I just don’t think that there is enough energy around the number of houses that are needed.

A lot of nations around the world are coming up with innovative ways to get around that problem. If we were to look at some of the things they’re doing in London. How the loan structure is placed. Whether the local government will take a portion of the loan if a person can find 40 per cent. Easing the rules as they’ve done in Stockholm or Copenhagen, where they’re not so strict with the RMA-type rule, to allow cheaper, more affordable homes to be built.

Many countries are educating their children a lot better than we are here. We need to think about those trends. We need an educated workforce. I think the Government has to listen to what business is saying and has to listen to the people. And I think this current Government isn’t listening enough.”

Source: Mood of the Boardroom leaders series video interview.