We will promote innovation by substantially boosting R&D. The OECD average is 2.4 per cent of GDP whereas New Zealand currently spends 1.3 per cent ($2.6 billion) on R&D. The Internet Party will lift New Zealand's R&D expenditure to the OECD average over 7 years, with a $1 billion step-up in the next three years. A second avenue for innovation is university-linked hubs, modelled on the successful Stanford Research Park in California, US.
A range of support mechanisms will be instituted by providing professional services such as marketing, sales channels, NZ branding, governance and competitive analysis.
These three pillars of investment, innovation and support will help grow high-quality jobs and wages in Northland and other regions by moving up the value-added production chain.
Paul Doherty, Green Party:
It is essential to add value at home before exporting raw material. Most parties agree on this, but differ on how to achieve it.
Our plan to build a smarter, more innovative economy has as its centrepiece an additional $1 billion of government investment in research and development above current spend, including tax breaks for business.
The Green Party's plan for an innovative economy includes: $1 billion of new government funding over three years for research and development to kick-start a transformational shift in how our economy creates wealth; government taking a collaborative partnership approach to innovation with the private sector, which will include R&D funding made up of tax credits and grants; a requirement for firms that go into overseas ownership to repay their grants; a new voluntary option for large grants, where companies that receive significant taxpayer funds agree to the government taking an equity stake in their business.
The Green Party will fund an additional 1000 places at tertiary institutions for students of engineering, mathematics, computer science and the physical sciences. Innovation is one of the best ways to add value to our exports, raise wages, and better protect the natural world.
As well as having an enormous impact on current supply and distribution models, 3D printing is already bringing about an attitudinal shift in production and design. Its advantages lie in producing unique products, rapidly prototyping ideas, and changing distribution models. Manufacturing limitations will be more due to the designers' imagination and material science, not confined by technical capability.
The ability to rapidly design, print, and test a prototype will radically change the speed at which products move and will allow a popular idea to be spread almost immediately without waiting for the historic production line lag. The ability to rapidly prototype and diffuse an idea allows faster innovation and even international crowd-sourcing of designs to occur.
Kelly Ellis, Labour:
As logging trucks rip up our roads down to Auckland and out to the port, they're doing worse than just creating danger and delay; those trucks are taking jobs away from Northland. Those trucks are taking away jobs from our families.
Labour is committed to saving jobs for our region rather than sending them offshore. Currently those logs are getting processed in Asia and then imported to Christchurch for the rebuild. Those logs should be processed in Northland and Labour is committed to that. Rather than having low-value products going offshore, we need to add the value here.
Only by doing this can we guarantee jobs in this region for our young people. I make a personal commitment that regardless of whether I'm elected or not, I will fight to keep this work in our region. I shamelessly declare my personal interest in this - I have a son who needs a good job and increasing prosperity in this city will help everyone, business owners like me included.
This commitment to keeping logs in Northland for processing will require considerable investment in the region. Making modern laminates and chipboard will require not only skilled labour, but considerable investment in processing plants. Labour has a $200 million regional development fund which will be used to ensure we can maximise the value of our forestry as well as investing in upskilling the workforce to meet the needs of modernising the industry. I hope this will attract our young people back and encourage those that are here to stay in Whangarei.
Robin Grieve, Act Party
The raw materials are not ours, as is suggested by the question, they belong to private individuals or companies that seek to maximise their return by selling them to the highest bidder. If that bidder is out of the region or off shore we have no right to stop them accepting it. Forcing them to take a reduced price so that new local business can process the materials is not dissimilar to theft.
If the processors were to receive a subsidy from the taxpayer to enable them to compete for the materials then the seller of the material would not be out of pocket but now the taxpayer is worse off. This results in less jobs, not more, because the extra taxes levied on competitive industries to subsidise these new ones make them themselves less competitive. Every job created through subsidies costs real jobs.
The other consequence of any policy to bring industry into a region is that most of the jobs get filled by outsiders moving in. This is because the lack of skills and work ready capability is a big factor. This puts pressure on resources like accommodation putting rents up. This is not necessarily a bad thing for a region, but if all we do is create jobs for outsiders, while we bear the costs through higher taxes and demand on our infrastructure, while also causing the loss of real jobs then we have done ourselves a disservice.
Act's policy is to reduce the company tax rate to 12.5 per cent and the top personal tax rate to 17.5 per cent by cutting corporate and middle class welfare. This will do more to create real jobs than any other policy on offer at this election. It is these real jobs we need, not phoney ones.
Anaru Kaipo, Maori Party:
The Maori Party believe in regional development and keeping the jobs in the communities. The communities are the heart of our nation and it is imperative we do all we can to ensure our communities are strong, vibrant and have employment and economic opportunities to keep them afloat. Every day in Northland we are seeing truckloads of our logs heading towards the port and being shipped overseas for processing. To make matters worse we are then buying these products back. It only makes sense that keeping the raw materials in the communities and processing to finished products is not only sensible but vital for the lives of our communities. The Maori Party strongly support this notion.
Chris Leitch, Democrats for Social Credit:
Taking raw materials to finished goods, adding jobs and value to our region is a great idea. However, it's not as simple as just stopping logs from being shipped overseas.
Firstly, we need the skills and innovative ideas to turn raw materials to finished goods. Secondly, we need overseas markets to sell the finished products to there is no sense in swapping log piles that we can sell, for piles of finished wood products that we can't.
Thirdly, we need the infrastructure (good roads, rail, with a link to Marsden Pt) and a dollar at a level that enables our exports to be sold at internationally competitive prices.
If those things were already in place, don't you think that private enterprise would already be turning those raw materials into finished goods? Of course they would. A very small number already do, but they are mostly overseas owned and the profits go off-shore. We need NZ companies processing our raw materials.
So what's missing?
Firstly, investment not from overseas, where again profits are not ours, but from within New Zealand, in research and development, plant and machinery, international marketing, and infrastructure. The sums are large, and the initial risk too great for most investors.
Secondly, a competitive dollar combined with low interest rates. The only source that can supply both conditions is government, not through increased taxes or borrowing, but by using the power of our own Reserve Bank as recommended in an International Monetary Fund report published in August 2012. It's been done before, following the 1930s depression, to build houses, roads and other infrastructure. It would bring interest rates, our dollar, and inflation down. It would create the conditions for private enterprise to flourish and that's what our region needs.
Pita Paraone, New Zealand First:
New Zealand First policy is to promote and give substance to regional development that will provide the encouragement for local business interests to invest in our region and also provide easier access to world and domestic markets. This will include providing resources to improve our regional reading and railway systems, something which has been lacking for Whangarei and indeed Northland notwithstanding the stable and yet ineffective representation Whangarei and indeed Northland has had in Wellington over the past 24 years that now has the region rated one of the most social economic depressed regions in our country.
Given that forestry forms a major source of export product from our region, we would institute a minimum domestic log price to discourage the export of raw log products that will ensure that local sawmills have access to sufficient supplies and further encourage the processing of timber and wood products. We would also implement a regulatory and taxation regime that recognises the long-term nature of returns from forest plantings and further incentivise replanting and local manufacturing of finished products. Encourage the use of wood and wood products in building through Buy NZ made for government procurement intended to maximise sustainability and returns to our regional economy also forms part of our policy.
We would also maximise NZ ownership of forests through restrictions on overseas ownership of lands and cutting rights.
Allied to these policies NZ. First would delay the imposition of any form of carbon tax or emissions trading scheme on our primary producers and processors until such time as our major trading partners have implemented their own such measures.
Shane Reti, National Party:
The National Party's economic development policies support taking raw inputs and adding higher value. This is an across-the-board approach that includes raw materials and investing in human capital with training so that industry has higher skilled and higher valued workers.
The Juken New Zealand Mill at Kaitaia is an example of taking raw wood products and value adding services and materials to attract a higher sales margin.
However, it is important that before we outlay manufacturing and training costs, that we are sure that the products and services that we invest in for higher value actually meet a need in the marketplace. We need to manufacture and train into these areas.