Cairns, who is retiring in June next year after more than 15 years in the CEO role, is adamant the present Resource Management Act (RMA) is a handbrake on the economy and he welcomes the cross-party support for amending the RMA. "It does need reform. If you look at the piece of legislation and the size of it, it's bigger than my advanced engineering textbook. It's an enormous cottage industry for consultants."
He said infrastructure projects were key to reducing rising unemployment. "We want to tip $80 million into the regional economy by building a new wharf but there are so many impediments to get it under way."
Looking at the next six months, Cairns said rising unemployment could reduce consumption, resulting in a marked drop in imports. "The world is always going to need food; Tauranga port is export orientated, and the primary produce trade will carry on and get us out of the mess."
The port handles 80 per cent of the kiwifruit export and "that's going gangbusters — demand is strong because of the vibrancy characteristics of the fruit. Maybe we should be focusing the market potential at the premium end rather than the commodity end of the continuum."
He didn't expect cruise ships to be berthing at the port within three years.
"That's an impact of $6-7m in earnings before interest and tax and a drop of $90m into the regional economy. It will be tough on tourism and hospitality operators."
Cairns said New Zealand should establish air bridges with other countries, such as China, Taiwan and Australia, when they get Covid-19 under control.
His No 1 priority is keeping the business going in a stable fashion and maintaining job security "for a great bunch of people at the port."
The competitive position of the port can only get stronger and stronger and "we run a conservative balance sheet with strong capital discipline. Where we are spending millions of dollars, we have the revenue to pay for it."
Cairns said his teams went the extra mile to get through Covid and "I want them to have jobs in the next 12 months.
"Covid threw curve balls at us when there was not a lot of information available. I was in awe of the bravery of the staff in boarding foreign vessels with (then) no protocols in place to keep the business running.
"Ironically, our productivity improved during that period. A regular weekly shipping service out of Asia was dropped back to fortnightly and we exchanged 9700 containers in one visit. It blitzed the record of 9500 containers and that was an extraordinary amount of cargo to go off and on," Cairns said.
Mark Cairns' top 3 issues
Top three issues facing New Zealand
1. Unemployment — will there be jobs for my children?
2. Level of government debt and the long-term ability to repay. Finance Minister Grant Robertson has done a pretty good job on managing expenditure, but the $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund is a questionable use of taxpayer money in terms of economic outcomes and jobs
3. We have scarce capital and it has to be spent judiciously. Infrastructure projects will be a way of working our way out of the unemployment hole, but are we building the right projects that are prioritised as having the highest GDP enhancing outcomes.
Top three business priorities
1. Retaining full employment at the port and maintaining firm control of costs within company over the medium term.
2. Building infrastructure to cater for the future. The current Resource Management Act is a massive impediment to timely infrastructure development that will provide environmental- enhancing outcomes.
3. Having a 'tight-arse' chief financial officer who has iron-fisted capital discipline and an acute focus on managing the balance sheet over the coming years.
