We're living beyond our means: Glenn

Owen Glenn says borrowing $300 million a week means New Zealand is in serious trouble. Photo / Richard Robinson.

Kiwi business magnate Owen Glenn says New Zealand doesn't have a blueprint to start paying its way and the country is seriously in trouble by borrowing $300 million a week.

He says Prime Minister John Key is just tinkering with things and needs to "follow through on his tough attitude".

Mr Glenn made the comments in a radio interview at the weekend and said he raised the issue of the blueprint at a retreat for members of the Business Roundtable where Mr Key had been speaking at Beachlands in East Auckland in February.

Mr Key said he could not recall Mr Glenn making the comments at the retreat.

"We spent quite a bit of time at the Business Roundtable retreat," the PM said at his post-Cabinet media conference.

"I was just one of a number of speakers who went there. We laid out our view of where the country was going and, from memory, he was pretty supportive."

Mr Key didn't elaborate but the Government's oft-quoted six drivers of growth are: investment in productive infrastructure; removing red tape and improving regulation; supporting business innovation and trade; improving education and lifting skills; lifting productivity and improving services in the public sector; and strengthening the tax system.

Mr Glenn, one of the country's most successful businessmen with a global company, Vanguard Logistics, worth $500 million, said New Zealand could do a lot more to promote business overseas, and he was willing to help.

"Take Don Brash off trying to match Australia by 2025 - which is a forlorn hope if ever I heard one - and put him on to something that says, 'Draw us a blueprint of how you are going to do this'," he told RadioLive.

If Dr Brash, chairman of the 2025 Taskforce, was smart enough, he would engage with people who knew how to do it - "and I would like to promote myself as one".

Mr Glenn said that borrowing $300 million a week meant New Zealand was in serious trouble.

"You'll end up just servicing the debt. Heck, next they'll go after the assets. It's just like a company. Look at the balance sheet."

He believed the country should make greater use of its mineral wealth, including ironsands and gas.

"There are things we have to decide and make decisions on to pay our way. We are living beyond our means," he said.

"What this country needs is a firm hand. If we have got to take our medicine, let's take it and get on with it and then let's earn our keep and make it even more prosperous.

"We can do it. It's a wonderful country."