Demand for workers is far higher than supply, according to EMA’s employer survey. The imbalance is intensifying competition in the job market, driving up the cost of wages and prompting companies to poach staff from others. “Businesses are receiving little to no applicants; they are struggling to find appropriately trained individuals in NZ and are unable to hire immigrants,” EMA reports, saying the drive to upskill more NZers over the medium term will be important, but employers should be allowed to hire more workers from overseas in the meantime.

The Reserve Bank is considering taking on a wider range of responsibilities. In 2018 the Reserve Bank Act expanded the Bank’s objectives beyond a sole focus on price stability, to also include responsibility for maximum employment. Now Govt is intending to widen the remit which guides monetary policy to include further responsibilities - for house prices, inequality and climate change. BusinessNZ says the more responsibilities placed on the RB, the harder it will be to deliver on the important objective of price stability, and the proposed additional responsibilities should not be adopted.

Plans to introduce stringent and cumbersome tax avoidance measures on businesses have been removed from upcoming legislation, following representations by BusinessNZ and the Corporate Tax Group. The IRD, seeking to prevent tax avoidance following the introduction of the new top tax rate of 39%, proposed a series of measures that would have had the effect of unfairly capturing those who were not using company structures to avoid tax. BusinessNZ said the proposal would cause unnecessary disruption for many small firms and was unnecessary since such avoidance can already be addressed by enforcement of existing law.