British visitor sees bright outlook for 'clean, green' NZ

Sir Richard Lambert. Photo / Natalie Slade

Former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry Sir Richard Lambert is visiting New Zealand to talk about climate change and earthquake recovery.

Lambert, here as a business ambassador for Britain, will tour Christchurch this weekend to see the scale of the earthquake damage and on Monday he will speak at a climate change conference in Wellington.

"As well as risks posed by climate change, there are also opportunities posed by the fact that the economy's going to have to change and there'll be new products and services, and we better get on with it," he said.

"I strongly believe that in future years companies will have to be green to grow and New Zealand has assets, not least it has a very high renewable energy content, it's got great experience and intellectual property in water and forestry and fisheries and all these things and it has a brand that can be exploited in the world as a clean, green country.

"The question is are you going to manage to co-ordinate all that and produce a strategy that turns it into something that really creates jobs."

The Christchurch earthquake resulted in a terrible human cost but in economic terms was also a huge deal.

"What I learn there I'll take back to the UK and I'll say to people in the Foreign Office, 'This is what I've seen and this may be a role for the United Kingdom,' but I'll also talk to the business folk I know and say, 'Have you looked at this? Maybe you should."'

Lambert, a former editor of the Financial Times, said the mood in the British business community was cautious.

He left as the latest eurozone bailout was being hammered out.

"It really felt very serious indeed; before the deal was struck it felt as though the eurozone was on the brink of something very, very serious and the politicians left it to the last minute to do a deal."

His personal view was that more work would be needed.

"Will we end up having a lot more Europe, that's to say a much more integrated eurozone in fiscal and tax terms, and if not how will the shape of the eurozone change over the longer term," he said. "Because where it is now I don't think it's sustainable."

British companies had strong balance sheets, lots of cash and once they gained confidence they had plenty of capacity to invest, he said.

But business confidence was low with people worried about what might happen in export markets.

In the northern autumn the British Government would announce how the banking sector would be reregulated, which was also making people a bit nervous, and family spending was subdued.

In the United States, where debate is raging about raising the debt ceiling, both side of the political divide had an interest in making things look as scary as possible, Lambert said.

A default was unlikely but there was a risk of damage to the reputation of the US as the world's risk-free borrower.

"That would be bad for all of us because all economies depend one way or another on Uncle Sam being the absolutely trustworthy borrower of last resort. We will get a deal, but will it actually fix the long-term question? Probably not."

Lambert had never experienced such an economic environment as that since the global financial crisis.

"In the economies like the US and the UK in particular we got ourselves into a place where growth was fuelled by debt, both government debt and family household borrowing."

Policymakers were working to shape an economy driven in future by savings and not debt.

"We can't afford a bigger crash that this one again, certainly not in my lifetime."