Welcome to the new Rapport editor year. Martin's act is a hard one to follow as he did such a great job week after week for three years.
Rapport this year will be published for the first time via Clubrunner, which allows all sorts of clever things. Bear with me as I navigate my way through this facility. One of the cute things I've found is that the Rapport you receive will list your personal registrations made through Clubrunner, e.g. Dinners, fellowship events, etc.
My intention this year is to educate and entertain, and include each week
- President's Post from Scott Burridge
- A precis of our speaker and our takeouts from this, including, where we can, a link to the speech or an attachment of it
- As this is our 75th Anniversary Year, an excerpt from our history book written for our 65th anniversary
- Contributions from our committees on their projects
- What's Coming Up - all of our future meetings, fellowship events and volunteer events
- Your registrations for these events
- Anything else of relevance - all contributions gratefully accepted!
We'll also be sending out What's Coming Up every Monday, to bring you up to date with all our future meetings and events.
Presidents Post
Two weeks into the year and a lot has happened already.
At the first meeting last Tuesday it was great to see so many people braving the bad weather to get to lunch at Ellerslie. I hope people thought it was worthwhile, hearing about our plans for the year. We will now have two physical meetings a month, one or two Zoom meetings and hopefully a fellowship event, along with more service opportunities. The committees have also already developed plans for the year ahead and are working on implementation.
At our meeting on July 14th, we had a big turnout. I think everyone went away with much to ponder from Roger Partridge’s address.
And now we have a new (another new) leader of the National Party. With only around 9 weeks until the election, it is hard to see how the party can turn their fortunes around sufficiently to win. However, as they say,” a week is a long time in politics”.
Coming up in the next few weeks are some great Club speaker evenings, including Caralise Trayes, talking on the End Of Life Choice Act. Caralise is an author whom we are very lucky to have talk to the Club, given her other speaking commitments in the lead up to the referendum. We also have Fran O’Sullivan speaking on politics and NZ business and Andrew Jeffs, a marine scientist from the UoA.
On fellowship, on Sat July 25th we have “Look Who’s Coming for Dinner”, so there is no meeting that week. We are also planning a soiree at Lewis Eady on Sun 23th Aug and a quiz night in Sept. Please support these events if you can. Your Club has worked hard to organise them for you to enjoy.
"How do we get ourselves out of this mess"
We were privileged to have Roger Partridge, Chairman and co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative, give a no-holds barred speech on NZ's current dilemma of very good Covid-19 recovery and potential economic disaster.
Here's some background on the NZ Initiative, taken straight from their website:
There are fantastic opportunities for New Zealand today. With our young and well-educated population, and being geographically positioned in the middle of the fast-growing Pacific region, New Zealand can be one of the rising stars of the 21st century.
This is what The New Zealand Initiative is all about. We are the organisation to sketch pathways towards a better future. Our mission is to help create a competitive, open and dynamic economy and a free, prosperous, fair, and cohesive society.
As New Zealand’s leading think tank, we work closely with our members, policymakers across the political spectrum, the wider business community, the media, academics and the general public.
Our researchers conduct independent research on a wide range of policy issues. From education to economic policy, from poverty to housing, and from local government to immigration, we are injecting new ideas into New Zealand's political debates.
We are strictly non-partisan in our work and welcome an open exchange of views and ideas. The results of our research are made available to the public, free of charge, on our website.
Roger drew a parallel with Britain's post WWII social experiment by Labour's Attlee government seized immense powers and nationalised many industries, and this directly led to Britain's bailout by the IMF three decades later. Roger and The NZ Initiative is deeply concerned that our Government is following this track, and is likely to be re-elected in September to take even more control over our economy.
For those who missed the evening, or attended and want to help your recall, you'll find his speech attached to Rapport.
Main takeouts from the address are:
- NZ is in a prime position to take advantage of our Covid success
- To achieve this, the government needs to make major steps in opening our borders in a strongly managed but creative way, relax regulatory requirements and OI rules, encourage big international businesses to relocate to NZ (Tesla to Bluff?), invest in the infrastructure projects with the best cost/benefit ratios, and scrutinise all government spending. Go Aunty Judy and Uncle David?!
Roger has since emailed Pr. Scott: "Any members who would like to see more of our work can sign up for our free e-newsletter at www.nzinitiative.org.nz. It comes out on a Friday and has three short opinion pieces on policy issues, plus links to our other columns and press mentions for the week:" 