All we want for Christmas

Sue Bennett, Margaret Morgan and the team from Triangle Recruitment in Auckland have quite a lengthy list for Santa: Oprah for President; a branch of Australian department store David Jones to open in Newmarket for the fashion conscious business woman; a dedicated TV channel for Coronation Street to be screened 24/7 for all staff to view whenever they need to be perked up; all Kiwi troops to be recalled from the Middle East for good; and Santa Cameron Brewer of the Newmarket Business Association to deliver on those new footpaths he has been promising.

Suzie Jones of On-hold Marketing, a telephone on-hold marketing service company, would like Santa Helen to pop a $1000 cheque refund into the stocking of every tax-payer in New Zealand from the $3 billion cash surplus the Government is currently sitting on. She also wants every politician to be given a truth serum injection so that the public can actually start believing what they are told!  

Dan Ormond of the Ideas Shop would love a 30-hour day allowing him more time to come up with brilliant publicity ideas for his SME clients. He would like to receive from Santa Helen a more flexible tax payment arrangement as he has a problem with the current lumpy nature of payments. December and January, typically, are quiet months for businesses but the IRD does not take this fact of business life into account, he says. 

Picking up on this subject, Suzie Jones feels the IRD passes the buck and is inflexible. All tax payments, she says, should fall on the 20th of the month and she would also like to be relieved of the third party responsibility of collecting revenue in the form of student loan repayments, child support, ACC and PAYE. Small businesses, she says, represent 90 percent of New Zealand businesses which means that most CEOs wear far too many hats already, fulfilling far too many different roles within their businesses. The last thing they need is to have more responsibilities thrust upon them or to be hamstrung by ever increasing legislation, she says.

Jeremy Hunt of Auckland IT service company Fisheye would be satisfied with no tax for start-up businesses and sound incentives for businesses that drive energy-efficient cars. He would like to see bio-fuels made compulsory as an alternative energy source.

Stephen Kale, a director of Kale Print and Design based in Tauranga, would like an outsize Xmas stocking so he can receive a road grader to level the business playing fields. He says it is tough for New Zealand businesses to compete with China with its unsurpassable economies of scale, cheap labour, tax incentives for taking on more staff and so on. He would also like to see a return to pre-computer days when trades people in the print industry were a highly skilled breed.

Chris Mardon of Christchurch-based Energy Mad would like to see everyone who does not switch to the eco-bulb being deprived of electric lights and forced to take cold showers in Winter until they realise what they are doing to the environment by indulging in their wasteful habits. By switching to the eco-bulb, says Mardon, the average household could save $700 over the life of the bulb or over $100 in a year. He would also like to see in his stocking a directive to the effect that every household has to switch to low flow shower-heads resulting in another saving of $100 per annum and wraps for hot water cylinders resulting in even more savings. Government, he reckons, is doing their bit and is heavily involved in energy-saving projects  his wish is for the general public to wake up and realise that we all have a role to play in conserving energy. 

Addressing the skills crisis

Michael Whybro of Red Recruitment raises some serious issues. He would like to see government aligning the production of graduates with the needs of the country. Why, he asks, do we produce so many of a particular type of graduate when what we desperately need are people with altogether different skills sets? He wants government to take a long term view of the skills that the economy requires. Right now, he says, he needs eight qualified chartered accountants and they are nowhere to be found  forcing him to head-hunt in Australia, South Africa, England and Sri Lanka.

Was it not possible, he asks, to foresee this crisis?

Whybro would also like to see in his Xmas stocking evidence of an inward migration policy that meets the needs of the country, as opposed to simply letting people in irrespective of whether they have the skills that the economy requires. And the other side of the coin is that he wants measures to be put in place to retain talented Kiwis who have been educated and trained in this country.

And back to Triangle Recruitments Sue Bennett  she would like to see the profits that rightfully belong in New Zealand kept here. She cites Feltex as a typical example  New Zealand should not allow the Aussies to buy out the company, she says.

Bennett equates New Zealands brain drain with a badly run company. Sound business practice dictates that it is more cost-effective to retain good staff than it is to replace them. The same principle she says, applies to the countrys economy. We constantly lose our skilled staff to other countries, forcing us to train up immigrants to fill the gap.

No business, she says, would get away with such a wasteful practice, why is Government not held accountable?

Are we going to wait until all our industries have been destroyed before we wake up? echoes Kale.

To summarise, it would seem that what business owners want for Christmas is an environment that is conducive to business so that every New Zealander benefits from the knock-on effect and has more expendable cash in their pocket for Christmases to come.

So there you have it Santa Helen, 2006 is going to be a busy Xmas for you!    NZB

Carlene du Toit is an Auckland-based writer.

Email: cdtcreative@xtra.co.nz