Address at the launch of The Great New Zealand Business Venture

It's my pleasure to be here for the launch of The Great New Zealand Business Venture. I guess I'm representing the Prime Minister, who can't be here. She was keen to come and said to me again earlier this afternoon that she hopes this idea fizzes.

This is a really promising initiative to kick-start New Zealand business. I'm told that similar programmes in Europe have resulted in many successful new businesses that might otherwise never have seen daylight.

It is impressive that so many successful New Zealand businesspeople and community leaders are here to support the venture, and that the sponsorship has been so forthcoming. Credit to Bridget no doubt, but credit also to those who put their hands up.

The Government is bringing new ideas to business development and job creation in this country. It's good to see business leaders also taking the initiative.

More and more I think the business community is recognising that a little clever intervention - like this venture - is what the economy needs. There are gaps in business development and start-up assistance that the market hasn't filled.

Last week Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton announced the establishment of the delivery structure the Government will use to do its bit towards filling those gaps. He called it our jobs machine.

But don't look to the past when you're trying to figure out how this machine will work. This is no juggernaut, with Government sitting alone in the driver's seat. It's more like software than hardware. It will work flexibly, in partnership with others.

We'll work with business, with local government, with sector groups. We'll work with anyone who has practical, economic ideas about how to get business humming in this country.

We'll monitor and evaluate every programme. We'll dump the ones that don't work to our satisfaction and ramp up the ones that do. When we're no longer needed, we'll withdraw and let the private sector fill the gap.

We take this approach because we know our jobs machine isn't the only one in town. It's not even the biggest. The business sector is the jobs machine we want to accelerate. We can help it, and we will.

There is no single measure that will do the trick. We haven't got a magic bullet and we haven't got a five-year plan.

What will work is a toolbox of economical, practical initiatives like the one being launched here tonight.

The toolbox we've inherited is pretty empty. We've got Trade New Zealand, the Biz programme, Technology New Zealand and some fresh air.

We need more sources of venture capital. We need an export credit guarantee scheme. We need incubators for innovative new businesses. We need more development of industry clusters. We need better marketing of New Zealand as an investment destination. We need more R&D.

We're working on all of these things. But this Government doesn't pretend it can do it alone. We know we need bright ideas from elsewhere. The Great New Zealand Business Venture idea is one of these. I hope to see a lot more like it in the years ahead. The Government's job is to lead, partner, broker, facilitate, occasionally fund and in this case do no more than say thank you and good luck.