Oiling the wheels of business

Geoff Dangerfield's lofty goal is helping to create a business environment that promotes a higher rate of sustainable growth. Picture / Mark Mitchell

Despite a surname that sounds like something clandestine out of an Austin Powers' secret agent movie, Geoff Dangerfield's job efforts are very much in the public eye.

As chief executive of the Ministry of Economic Development, he is a pivotal commander in the Government's efforts to return New Zealand to the top half of the OECD table in terms of income per capita.

His task: the lofty goal of helping to create a business environment that promotes a higher rate of sustainable growth. That covers things such as free-trade negotiations with China, developing the Government's energy and telecoms policies, registering companies and issuing patents and trademarks.

"One of the tricky things about this place is to think about what are the really important things that happen, and out of all of that, which ones are going to have the most impact on lifting performance," he said.

Dangerfield has been with the ministry since May 2001, joining about a year after it was formed by the Labour-Alliance Government out of the old Commerce Ministry. Before that he worked as a Treasury deputy secretary and a policy adviser on fiscal and economic issues to Prime Minister Jim Bolger from 1993 to 1995.

More than three years into his ministry job, the 51-year-old Christchurch-born father of three is "pretty pleased" with progress.

"We've made huge strides focusing the organisation on looking at all of our roles from an economic development perspective."

Aside from Economic Development Minister Jim Anderton, the ministry answers to several other Cabinet ministers, including Commerce Minister Pete Hodgson and an assortment of associate ministers.

Dangerfield said this did not create dilemmas but made life more complex than in other departments.

The ministry's five priorities for facilitating economic growth in the next three to five years are:

* To help to align economic development activities in the public sector.

* To improve international connections, particularly with Australia.

* To stimulate the entrepreneurial and innovative capability of firms.

* To improve the regulatory environment for business.

* To improve infrastructure.

He said the challenge was to get to grips with these issues from a business point of view.

"For our advice to the Government to be credible, we have to understand what's going on inside businesses and what issues they're facing."

To help achieve this, Dangerfield has introduced a scheme that mimics one run by Britain's Department of Trade and Industry. Called Industry Insite, it involves the ministry's senior managers spending a week each year with a company to get a better feel for how policy impacts on the real world.

Deputy secretary David Smol spent a week with Telecom, for example, and another deputy secretary, Mark Steel, will spend time with Fonterra.

Dangerfield has also established four consultative groups who discuss strategic priorities for business looking three, five and seven years into the future.

These groups include major business leaders with the international agenda group, for example, including Westpac chief executive Ann Sherry, NZX chairman Simon Allen and Carter Holt Harvey chairman John Maasland. 

Dangerfield said that as a small international player, New Zealand would have a stronger presence in third countries if it teamed up with Australia.

"Twenty years ago there was a notion that if we had a regulatory environment that was fabulous compared with the rest of the world everyone would flock here.

"That doesn't work. We are much better to be more closely aligned to the economies with which we are dealing most."

The ministry is also working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on regulatory issues surrounding the free-trade deals the Government is developing with Thailand, Chile, Singapore, China and Asean (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations).

Businesses had expressed "concern and caution" about a free-trade deal with China, which Dangerfield said was understandable.

China looked like a "big black box" to most New Zealand firms, he said. "We have to work quite hard to make sure firms are well-positioned to take advantage of opportunities in China."

But whether the two countries struck a trade deal or not, New Zealand had to get used to dealing with China as a major economic power, Dangerfield said.

"The major challenge for New Zealand is trying to think through how we grapple with a country that we don't have a lot of experience with at all."

Unsurprisingly, given the concerns about New Zealand's continued access to cheap energy, he has found energy sector work one of the most demanding aspects of his job.

"I try very hard not to be driven by individual issues but to keep working at longer-term strategies and solutions and to build a very capable organisation that can put its mind to solving problems."

Resume

* Geoff Dangerfield
* Ministry of Economic Development chief executive
* Age: 51.
* Born: Christchurch.
* Married to Claire.
* Three children.
* Education:
University of Canterbury.
MSc in resource management.

* Career:
Appointed Ministry of Economic Development chief executive in May 2001. Previously deputy secretary to the Treasury.
Joined the Treasury in 1985, working on reforms to transform departmental trading activities into SOEs, and on primary sector and science policy. From 1993 to 1995, he worked as an adviser on fiscal and economic policy in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Before joining the Treasury, Mr Dangerfield worked in the Ministry of Works and Development on assessing public sector resource investment and regional infrastructure projects.