Battler for reform now fighting cancer

Roger Kerr. Photo / John McCombe

For 25 years Roger Kerr has headed the New Zealand Business Roundtable, the right-wing public policy thinktank established in the mid-1980s.

Today, the 66-year-old Wellingtonian has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to business.

The honour comes as the Roundtable's executive director faces what is arguably his biggest battle - this time not against the political policies of the day but aggressive skin cancer.

"In a week's time I'm heading into a new pioneering role - treatment with a brand new, albeit strenuous drug ... I'll be the first in New Zealand to receive it," said Kerr. "So I'm very positive and optimistic about that and if it doesn't work at least I'll know I gave it my best shot, which I think I can say about my life in general."

Despite his optimism, he said the prognosis was not good.

"The outlook for melanoma once it has spread is bad," Kerr said. "It's been one of the cancers that until very recently there's been no very exciting breakthroughs for. So I have to operate on the basis that the outlook is not good but also not hopeless."

He said his family was doing well in coping with his illness.

"My wife [Catherine Isaac, a former Act Party president] has been with me to all the consultations I've had both here and in Sydney, Melbourne and Houston in the States. That's been very handy to take on board all the information you have to try to absorb."

He said the Business Roundtable's biggest achievement was the support it gave to turning the "fortress New Zealand model of the economy" into an open and competitive market during the Rogernomics reforms of the 1980s.

But Kerr - who has also been a director of the Electricity Corporation and a member of the council of Victoria University - dismissed the idea that the organisation had its heyday in the last century.

There was still much to be done, he said.

"New Zealand's been resting on its laurels for the last 15 years or so and drifted backwards in terms of policy settings. We've paid the price for that in terms of the slump in productivity growth and the imbalances in the economy that the Government's wrestling with."

Kerr said he was deeply honoured to be recognised for his achievements.

"But the honour really goes to those courageous business leaders who cared enough about the country to set up the Business Roundtable back in the 1980s when the country was in a crisis," he said.

"The honour also belongs to all of those business leaders who over the years have quietly but determinedly backed me as a foot soldier and the Business Roundtable as an organisation in our efforts to promote better public policies for New Zealand."

Kerr was also delighted with the honour for his family's sake, he said.

"Especially my three wonderful sons, who did not see as much of me when they were growing up as they might have needed to, when I was so heavily committed to my work."

Kerr envisaged that he would continue his work at the Roundtable provided there were no major side-effects from his cancer treatment.