Earn more says Key

We know how to spend like a first world nation - do we know how to earn like one John Key challenged an audience of elite businessmen.

The Prime Minister delivered a speech to a 500 strong audience at the Fairfax Media Business Hall of Fame last night.

Amongst those listening were Paul Reynolds of Telecom, Jonathan Ling of Fletchers, John Allen outgoing head of NZ Post, Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard and securities commission head Jane Diplock.

Key said the country needed to see greater exports and to achieve that we had to target industries where we had the opportunity to excel globally.

An example was aquaculture where New Zealand should have a natural advantage, but instead the industry was languishing, tied up by red tape such as the Resource Management Act.

Key also hammered home his productivity message, but said the route to productivity did not lie in working longer hours. New Zealanders already work the second longest hours in the world, after Iceland.

Instead business had to work smarter.

Also speaking was Young Enterprise Trust chairman Tony Caughey who delivered a message, aimed at former Reserve Bank Governor and National Party leader Don Brash who was also in the audience.

Brash has been confirmed as the head of a taskforce to increase productivity.

Mr Caughey said future living standards of New Zealand would be determined largely by how enterprising the country's young people were.

"Other issues are important, but if we don't have enterprising young business people, all other policies will count for nought."

Fairfax Media chief executive Allen Williams told the audience: "Entrepreneurship and enterprise is about aking ownership, exercising initiative and leadership.

"It is the ability to chart progress in the face of uncertain outcomes and tight resources. It requires using business disciplines in a highly integrative way. It is about change: doing new things and doing things better.

He said companies need leaders who could bring about such change. "The more leaders we have within every layer of our organisation, the stronger we will be and the greater our level of future success."

Also taking to the podium last night was a 17 year old Christchurch school student who told the room of business leaders they needed to remember the importance of community values, not just chasing money.

Victoria Clarke also praised role model New Zealand businessmen who ensured the benefits "return to our own country, rather than a multinational corporation abroad."

Victoria was invited to address the gala dinner honouring six new laureates into the Fairfax Media Business Hall of Fame.

She was selected as a businesswoman herself -  Managing Director of Big Sisters, a baby sitting home care company run through the Young Enterprise programme in schools.

She told the audience that "focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential."

The six laureates inducted were role models of aiming for something greater, she said.

"They have shaped the nature of New Zealand business not only by providing wealth in our country, but by providing employment and investment opportunities and well as providing us with worthy role models, showing us what Kiwi's have to offer the world and ensuring the benefits return to our own country, rather than a multinational corporation abroad.

"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."

She also urged that being in a recession "being in recession does not serve as an excuse does not equate to a lack of opportunities, or a reason for us not to achieve to the highest level."

Victoria was an experienced public speaker in school but said she was nervous talking to such an illustrious gathering of business heads.

She hoped her message would have an impact and said it came to her as she considered her own future. While wealth was important "it's not what will really lead to progress and affect what's going to be achieved in the future."

The business laureates honoured included former Telecom head Roderick Deane, a member of the government's strategic infrastructure review group Sir Ron Carter, and industrialist Ted Lees.

Three posthumous awards for pioneer business leaders were also made: John Plimmer (1812-1905) called the father of Wellington, engineer and war hero George Beca (1921-2001) and philanthropist Marianne Caughey Smith Preston (1851-1938).

To read profiles on the laureates click here.