Mainfreight's Plested gives recipe for NZ 29 Jul 2016
Related articles
- NZ consumers grow more upbeat, may resume spending Business
- Brownlee Leads Aviation Mission To Shanghai News
- Knowles quits as CEO of KiwiBank Business
- NZ migration bolstered by British invasion Migration
- Sludge Report #192: The Naked Budget Columns
- Budget 2010 – Building the Recovery News
- NZ manufacturing activity reaches highest since 04 Business
- NZ dollar hits 22-month high vs euro Business
- Budget provides $321m for RS&T activities News
- Licensing To Cut Out Cowboy Advisers Migration
Mainfreight's Plested gives recipe for NZ including capital gains tax, performance pay for teachers
By Jonathan Underhill
July 29 (BusinessDesk) - Mainfreight executive chairman Bruce Plested has advocated a capital gains tax to take the steam out of an overheated housing market and urged the government to treat teachers as "true professionals" paid on the basis of performance.
The transport group chair used his address to shareholders at their annual meeting in Auckland yesterday to give his recipe for lifting New Zealand's economic and social game by tackling issues such as education and housing affordability. In doing so he invoked NBR Rich Lister Stephen Jennings, who has warned that failure to fix New Zealand's social ills could lead to some sort of voter or civil unrest.
Plested says education is "the potential solver of almost all our problems" and he called on New Zealand to aspire to "the highest educational standards". Getting there required lifting the teaching profession "to the highest level as with other professionals" including "variable pay based on pupil success" and "measurable experiments with education, such as charter schools."
"The educated have choices through their lives," he told Mainfreight's shareholders. "They can become engineers, teachers, doctors, scientists or IT professionals. They can work and live in other countries – where they are welcomed and can compete on the same level as the locals."
By contrast, the uneducated "do not have choice".
"They are limited to doing what is regarded as menial, unskilled and consequently lower-paid work," he said. "A much greater number of them than the educated will become net takers from society and New Zealand, and only a few will battle their way through to create businesses and value for their community."
Both performance pay for teachers and charter schools are opposed by teacher unions. The PPTA has referred to them as "dud" policies, saying there's no evidence that linking pay to student data contributes to learning "but plenty to suggest that it’s profoundly demotivating and that it widens the gender pay gap," PPTA president Angela Roberts has said. By contrast, the ACT party argues that educational outcomes would be improved if educators faced more competition, on the basis that such forces produce the best outcomes for other goods and services.
Plested said the price of housing in New Zealand "is another glaring problem", with the average house in Auckland now costing 10 times the average household income, which is above the ratio of three-to-five times average income that is the globally accepted norm.
Unprecedented immigration, low interest rates and a trend for the well-off and those nearing retirement to return to invest in the Auckland housing market had resulted in Auckland being one of the world's most expensive housing markets. Profit expectations were driven by "the perception and reality ... that upon sale, the gains made would be capital gains non-taxable," he said.
"Not taxing capital gains on the sale of assets causes distortion in buying and investment decisions," he said. "There is no reason that New Zealand should be different from Australia, UK or the US in taxing capital gains on housing. If this tax needs to be introduced progressively over say a two-year period, it will alter buyers’ and sellers’ behavior and perhaps pave the way to solving New Zealand’s housing problems."
Plested also took aim at New Zealand's polluted rivers and over-fishing in the Hauraki Gulf.
"Let’s consider the pollution which we continue to allow to our rivers and streams and in particular the Hauraki Gulf," he said. "The gulf has been massacred with over-fishing and poor fishing methods, and land run-off from storm water, sewage and building sites. We need the gulf free of commercial fishers, and a publicity campaign followed up with fines for contaminating streams and the sea with chemicals, animal effluent and builders’ run-off"
In closing, he urged shareholders to remember to vote in their local body elections.
Mainfreight posted a record profit in the year ended March 31. Its shares last traded at $17.10 and have climbed 24 percent in the past 12 months, outpacing a 13 percent gain in the S&P/NZX 50 Index. The stock is rated a 'buy' based on the consensus of six analysts polled by Reuters.
(BusinessDesk)
News
Hilary Timmins' Award-Winning UK Documentary Series To Inspire NZ Students
29 Jun 2020 Education
Dream Catchers, produced and directed by Hilary Timmins, celebrates the success stories of more than thirty inspirational New... more
New Zealand reaffirms support for Flight MH17 judicial process
7 Mar 2020 News
Ahead of the start of the criminal trial in the Netherlands on 9 March, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has reaffirmed the need to... more
Business
NZ Government's Economic package to fight COVID-19
17 Mar 2020 Business News
The Coalition Government has launched the most significant peace-time economic plan in modern New Zealand history to cushion the... more
NZ Government announces aviation relief package
19 Mar 2020 Business News
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today outlined the first tranche of the $600 million aviation sector relief package announced earlier... more
Living
Diversity was Key at New Zealand Trade Tasting in London
6 Jun 2022 Food & Wine
New Zealand Winegrowers Annual Trade Tasting was recently held in London, on Wednesday 4 May, in Lindley Hall.
It was the first... more
Kiwi author stuns Behind the Butterfly Gate
12 Jan 2022 Arts
Hidden behind the Butterfly Gate is where the secret has been kept for 76 years...
New Zealand writer Merryn Corcoran’s... more
Property
Fairer rules for tenants and landlords
17 Nov 2019 Property
17 NOVEMBER 2019
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer... more
New Zealand Government will not implement a Capital Gains Tax
17 Apr 2019 Property
The Coalition Government will not proceed with the Tax Working Group’s recommendation for a capital gains tax, Jacinda Ardern... more
Migration
Boosting border security with electronic travel authority – now over 500,000 issued
19 Nov 2019 Migration
19 NOVEMBER 2019
We’ve improved border security with the NZeTA, New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority, which helps us to... more
Christchurch reinstated as refugee settlement location
18 Aug 2018 Migration
18 AUGUST 2018
HON IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY
The announcement that Christchurch can once again be a settlement location for refugees... more
Travel
Gallipoli Anzac Day services cancelled
19 Mar 2020 Travel & Tourism
The New Zealand and Australian Governments have announced this year’s joint Anzac Day services at Gallipoli will be cancelled... more
New Zealanders advised not to travel overseas
19 Mar 2020 Travel & Tourism
New Zealanders advised not to travel overseas
more
Sport
The Skipper's Diary: Sir Richard Hadlee honouring his father and NZ's Forty-Niners
27 Oct 2019 Cricket
NZNewsUK London Editor Charlotte Everett spoke to Sir Richard Hadlee about why he’s chosen to publish his father’s... more
PREVIEW: All Blacks v England semi-final
26 Oct 2019 Rugby
The two most convincing quarterfinals winners are set to square off in a semifinal showdown for the ages when the All Blacks meet old... more
Columns
Gordon Campbell on the Gareth Morgan crusade
11 Nov 2016 Opinion
Gordon Campbell on the Gareth Morgan crusade
First published on Werewolf
The ghastly likes of Marine Le Pen in France and Geert ... more
Gordon Campbell on the US election outcome
10 Nov 2016 Opinion
Column - Gordon Campbell
Gordon Campbell on the US election outcome
Well um.. on the bright side, there (probably)... more
Kiwi Success
Congratulations to Loder Cup winner
26 Sep 2018 People
25 SEPTEMBER 2018
The Loder Cup, one of New Zealand’s oldest conservation awards, has been awarded to Robert McGowan for 2018... more
Appointments to New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO
16 Aug 2018 Appointments
16 AUGUST 2018Appointments to New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO
HON JENNY SALESA
Associate Education Minister Jenny Salesa is... more
Recruitment
Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
14 Aug 2018 Recruitment
14 AUGUST 2018Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
RT HON JACINDA ARDERN
HON CHRIS HIPKINS
Prime Minister
The... more
Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
22 Aug 2018 Recruitment
14 AUGUST 2018Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
RT HON JACINDA ARDERN
HON CHRIS HIPKINS
Prime Minister
The... more