KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister John Key is keeping an open mind on recession-beating ideas likely to be presented to his jobs summit on Friday in Auckland.
The invitation list to the summit was revealed last night.
Click here for list of attendees
It is a mix of
chief executives of private firms, Government departments and state-owned enterprises, unionists, sector advocates, iwi organisations, local body leaders and 14 Cabinet ministers.
Asked yesterday about some of the ideas being proposed for discussion at the summit, Mr Key was noncommittal - even on his own party's policy to invest 40 per cent of the $12 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund in this country.
The Prime Minister said this policy was progressing.
Asked about a proposal in yesterday's Herald by superannuation expert Michael Littlewood for the Government to stop borrowing money to pay into the fund, Mr Key said: "I just don't think we are in a position to comment on that at this point."
He would not say if he thought Television New Zealand should stop paying its dividend to the Government as it tries to make $25 million in savings, although he did not rule it out.
But he did not favour establishhing an investment fund that could also own state-owned enterprises.
"This is a week where we are asking people to come forward and present ideas and I think it would be wrong for Government to squash those ideas just because they are radical or different or out of left field."
The investment-fund idea is in a report by the New Zealand Institute, a private centrist think tank.
Mr Key dismissed institute suggestions that unemployment could reach 11 per cent.
"I don't think we should spend a whole lot of time contemplating our navel about whether it is going to be 6 per cent, 7 per cent or 8.
"All I know is that predictions show unemployment will rise and any New Zealander losing their job worries me."
Mr Key said ideas from the summit would fall into three categories - those that would cost the Government money, those costing nothing but needing changes to regulations or laws, and private-sector bargains between, for example, unions and employers.