Liam Dann: NZ has to shake the gloom, AMI and all

Business high-flyers visiting for the Rugby World Cup won't want to hear about the likes of AMI's woes. Photo / Natalie Slade

Insurance is a boring thing to have to talk about. Not to dismiss the importance of the industry or disrespect the good people who work in it, but it is the anti-Lotto.

Where Lotto requires a payment in exchange for dreams of great fortune, insurance is the price we pay to be free from nightmares about great calamity.

We need insurance. But we make sure the payments go out each month and that's it - hopefully our luck holds and we don't have to deal with the insurance company again.

As retail spending goes it must be up there with dentistry and cam-belt replacement as one of the least fun things to splash out on.

Tragic though it is, the Christchurch quake remains a dynamic and interesting beast full of geology, town planning and unprecedented social issues.

But having to get to grips with the workings of the global reinsurance business feels like one more misery heaped on the nation by its tectonic plates.

Of course the serious economic implications of a government bailout for AMI make it a hugely important story. But there is a more subtle cost to having the national discourse dominated by the likes of AMI's woes.

It is a price we also pay as we pick through the wreckage of the South Canterbury Finance bailout, as we struggle to get accountability from failed finance company bosses and seek justice for investors.

The cost comes from the extent to which the really good business stories, the ones that hold the key to economic transformation in this country, get crowded out.

The idea that New Zealand is an exciting, innovative economy with great business people and great potential for growth is now buried in the mire.

It is not just that the good stories are crowded from business pages and the airwaves, they start to lose their place in the collective consciousness of the nation.

Think about it in terms of the six weeks that we will host the Rugby World Cup.

New Zealand will be full of international media and playing host to wealthy entrepreneurs from all around the world. There will be thousands of executives and corporate high-flyers here, either on holiday or in some loosely ascribed business capacity.

What will we be talking about while they are here? Well, rugby obviously. But what else?

Finance company recriminations? The deficit?

Somehow, for those six weeks at least, we need to talk about what New Zealand does well. We need to talk about producing the best quality food and wine on the planet. We need to talk about the arts and fashion, biotechnology and science and those surprising little technology companies that export things we don't really understand.

Mostly we need to tell those stories among ourselves. Ramming them down the throats of our visitors would just be a bore. But what is important is that we recapture some confidence and optimism about our business world. If we can do that then the good stories will flow naturally and might just rub off on our visitors.

This week at the KEA World Class NZ Awards, more than 600 successful Kiwis gathered to celebrate just those sorts of stories.

The place was packed with entrepreneurs and business people who haven't stopped believing in this country's potential.

From high-profile guys such as Stephen Tindall and Lloyd Morrison to tech entrepreneurs such as Derek Handley and scientists turned exporters like the MacDiarmid Institute's Paul Callaghan, they were an eclectic bunch.

But what seems to bind these people is a determined optimism. That positive attitude is something most successful people seem to keep top of mind even as they acknowledge and enthusiastically engage in debate about the bad stuff.

New Zealand needs a bit more of that right now.

While it is not clear what, if any, direct financial gain the cup will bring when final costs are tallied against earnings, one thing it does provide is a chance to shift our mindset. As the various government agencies and business lobby groups want to make clear, we need to make that shift if we are to leverage the event for longer-term business opportunity.

Perhaps more importantly, we need to make that mindset shift for our own well-being.

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