Qantas chair gets behind single Australasian market

By FRAN O'SULLIVAN, assistant editor

Qantas chairman Margaret Jackson has put her muscle behind a single Australasian market (SAM) linked with a common currency.

Jackson - who will lead a 34-strong team of Australia's most influential business people to Wellington this week - will put an "it's time for Sam" focus squarely on the table at the inaugural Australian New Zealand Leadership Forum.

The forum - the first annual dialogue between Australasian politicians, business people, academics and commentators - is designed to strengthen a relationship threatened by transtasman drift. On the agenda are gritty questions on common economic challenges such as the growing political and economic power of China, governance issues in the Pacific, security and defence, and the single market.

But Jackson warns the crunch issue facing the forum is the level of ambition on the single market: "The Australian delegates will want to go faster - further - than what the New Zealand delegates may want to do."

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello and Finance Minister Michael Cullen put the goal for a single economic market on the agenda at their annual meeting in January. New Zealand and Australia have been linked by CER for 20 years. But the politicians agreed it was time to take the essentially trade-based relationship to a new level by setting common platforms to make it simpler to do business in each other's countries and with the rest of the world.

Transtasman working parties have since been set up to examine common frameworks.

From her Qantas office in Melbourne, Jackson enthused about the strong people-to-people links between the two countries. "Our greatest celebratory day is Anzac which has got New Zealand in it ... there's been many times in our history where we've been close then drifted apart ...

"I'd like to ask why we shouldn't have a common currency," said Jackson. "I'm on a lot of companies that are global and in the future we're going to have international accounting standards where you can choose which currency you can report in. If we're not careful we're all going to find we're going to be reporting in US dollars - so to me it would be a preference to have our own currency."

A transtasman common currency is not on the post-CER agenda. Cullen has said it is years away and Costello has made clear it will be up to New Zealand to adopt the Australian dollar if this goes ahead.

Shoulder-tapped by Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as forum co-chair, Jackson has mustered a stellar group who will converge on Wellington's Government House for the two-day forum which kicks off on Friday.

Jackson's guest list includes ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel, Business Council of Australia president Hugh Morgan, Pricewaterhouse CEO Tony Harrington and ANZ School of Government dean Allan Fels. The NZ side includes: NZX chairman Simon Allen, Fletcher Building CEO Ralph Waters. Securities Commission chairman Jane Diplock and Sir Frank Holmes from the NZ Institute of Policy Studies.

On top of her Qantas chairmanship, Jackson is a director of two Australian companies which last year acquired significant New Zealand assets: ANZ Bank, which added National Bank to its NZ banking franchise, and, Fairfax.

She admits a key personal driver is Qantas' stalled attempt to get closer to Air New Zealand.

"The New Zealand market is important to Qantas which has attempted a tie up with Air New Zealand and tripped on the regulatory wire in New Zealand and in Australia ... that's why I took on the challenge. We don't need two competition regimes - we need one process and one umpire."

Jackson's goals contrast with the broad approach taken by New Zealand co-chair Bank of New Zealand chairman Kerry McDonald.

"What we would like to achieve is a sense of what the two groups believe is the best way ahead for the relationship ... It's designed to be a high-level discussion, relatively unstructured so there will be less focus on the detail of possible economic policies and more on broad concepts and options for the development of the relationship," he said.