Election year is upon us, and this week we’re starting a series on the Politics of Investment and Innovation. Over the last two months, we’ve canvassed the positions of the significant parties in parliament on their approach to investment and innovation.

The Greens, ACT, NZ First, Labour, and National all happily provided their best spokespeople on these subjects, which in some cases left us with with the impression that they were pretty thin on the ground in these areas. The Māori party were a no-show, despite numerous attempts to connect with Dr Pita Sharples.. The interviews are presented in the chronological order in which they were conducted.

We’ll be releasing one party interview each week over the next five weeks, so that you can contemplate how well each party grasps the core issues and engage in lively and informed discussions with your colleagues. This will be followed up with a summary podcast at the end of the series.

This week we start with Russel Norman, co-leader of The Greens. As you know, Russel is new to the leadership game, and the Greens being a small party with an agenda focussed on sustainability issues, they don’t have well-developed policies in this area. For all of that, I was struck by Russel’s openness and willingness to incorporate new thinking into the Green agenda. After the interview was over, he said that he was seeking assistance from interested investors to help The Greens with policy formulation.

Key positions:

To encourage innovation in the “right” areas:

• The right pricing structures need to be put in place
• The right tax incentives need to be in place
• Publicly funded science research should be shored up

The Green Revolution is where the future of business should be.

The broadband backbone should be publicly owned as a key piece of national infrastructure; National and Labour haven’t gone far enough with their current policies

The Greens support a capital gains tax, excluding the family home, and possibly investment into “higher risk R&D-type investments”.

Foreign Direct Investment is good, but not where it results merely in the extraction of dividends overseas. The Overseas Investment Office says “yes” too often now, and would be encouraged to look closely on the net benefit of each investment to the NZ economy.

Listen to (or download) the podcast: