Stuart Nash. Photo / Andrew Warner
One of the tasks of the Government's Small Business Council is to advise the Government on whether the Small Business Council should continue, which amounts to a classic Yes, Minister scenario, according to National.
The primary role of the 13-member Small Business Council, announced by Small Business Minister Stuart Nash in early August, is to develop a strategy to drive improvement and innovation in the sector.
It has a fixed term of one year to deliver results. With monthly meetings and an estimated cost of $135,000, that works out to more than $11,000 of tax-payer funding per meeting.
The council is made up of business leaders from the private sector including The Icehouse, Xero and Fonterra, Chamber of Commerce heads, tax experts and academics.
In response to questions from National, Nash said the council would report back in July 2019 with a "Small Business Strategy, advice on a segmented definition of small business, advice on the potential establishment of a small business institute and a recommendation on whether the Small Business Council should continue to exist, and if so, what its ongoing form and function should be".
National's small business spokeswoman Jacqui Dean said the situation was farcical.
"In a classic Yes, Minister scenario, the council has been tasked with advising Small Business Minister Stuart Nash on the establishment of a small business institute, or to put it plainly, a working group will advise on whether to create another working group.
"The council, which will also advise on its own future beyond June 2019, is one of more than 180 working groups hatched by a Government that came to office without having worked out its policies during nine years in opposition. It prefers to use $135,000 of taxpayer money to pay for this working group," Dean said in a statement.
Yes, Minister was a British political satire which aired on television in the 1980s.
Dean said nothing had been heard from the Small Business Council since it was unveiled two months ago and Nash had also been silent.
"Small business owners might have thought a priority for this Government would be to listen to a group that makes up 97 per cent of all New Zealand firms and employs more than 600,000 Kiwis, given their confidence has slumped to a 10-year low. But that will have to wait," she said.
Nash is in Australia this week for meetings with his small business counterparts.
In a statement, he said that during its first three meetings the council had held high-level discussions on key issues and themes important to small businesses and had begun to map out the broad topics that would feed into the outputs of the council.
"The council has also starting planning how it would effectively engage and consult with small businesses to ensure that the voice of small business was reflected in all of the outputs of the council.
"Over the three meetings held so far, the council has heard from a variety of presenters such as business.govt.nz, Better for Business, the Digital Economy and Digital Inclusion Ministerial Advisory Group, SME Subgroup, Tax Working Group, the Treasury's Living Standards Framework team and Xero," Nash said.
The council had also held a function to which small business owners were invited to meet council members to exchange knowledge and ideas.
"This is just the beginning of this important work and I look forward to seeing the next update from the council," he said.