Job summit ends first day

The Job Summit ended tonight with a set of ideas whose supporters believe can potentially save or create tens of thousands of jobs and prop up many shaky businesses.

The brainstorming sessions among the 200 invited participants – dominated by business heavyweights – ended with a "top twenty" ideas, ranging from the mundane to the unexpected.

After a day of intense debate in Auckland, the country's banking bosses came up with an offer of a joint fund with the Government to help financially distressed firms through short term equity injections.

The fund – if it gets off the ground – would result in the banks putting in $1 billion and the Government matching this and then the fund borrowing another $8 billion to create a $10 billion kitty to deal with companies that had good long term prospects but needed equity to survive in the short term.

The move came after Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard took the unusual step of publicly warning the banks that they should not underestimate the anger in the corporate sector about their behaviour since the global credit crunch hit international financial institutions.

After Mr Bollard's statement, the banks' bosses said they had lent out $3.6 billion in corporate credit in the last quarter, funded by $4 billion from their Australian parent companies.

The banks said they were committed to continue lending on the same basis in the future to "creditworthy" businesses.

The banks have also offered to develop over a longer period an equity growth fund to make "quality" investment in small to medium size businesses.

Prime Minister John Key said the idea of a joint fund was one that had come solely out of the day's work and the Government would look at it.

Other major ideas to come out of the summit:

* Nine day working fortnights for companies facing a shortage of work, with the Government helping to pay for training costs on the 10th day. This could cover as many as 100,000 workers though no detail has been settled. Other estimates had as few as 10,000 workers affected.

* A freeze on regulation making and enforcement activity reduced to minimum acceptable standards.

* A moratorium on the introduction of minimum air and drinking water quality standards until that could be afforded.

* A $60 million fund to boost tourism numbers set up by the private and public sectors.

* A mountain bike track running through the entire country to attract tourist and create thousands of jobs around the country.

Many of the other ideas were in line with the Government's policy such as bringing forward and fast tracking big project infrastructure spending and getting more people into education and retraining causes.

Mr Key hailed the summit as a success and said he would be ensuring that at least some of the ideas were implemented.

Earlier in the day he promised that summit ideas that created jobs would be considered just like any ministerial budget bid and those "that met the hurdle of effectiveness would be seriously considered".

Finance Minister Bill English said there was "some head room" in his late May budget for the new ideas.

Mr Bollard told the summit he was ready to lower interest rates further if that was necessary to combat the impact of the international recession.

"We are facing the biggest destruction of global wealth ever," he told participants.

New Zealand's banking sector was sound, but he issued a warning.

They had made good profits in the good times, and they were expected to help out in the bad times.

-NZPA