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MONIQUE FORD / STUFF / Things
Not being able to bring qualified personnel across the border is a great frustration for companies, ExportNZ says.
A plan to safely open the New Zealand border to international students, business travelers and “essential skilled workers” should be the next government’s top priority, says lobby group ExportNZ.
Executive Director Catherine Beard praised the government’s health response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but said the National Party and ACT Party policies were closer to their “manifesto.”
Labor and national leaders Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins were optimistic about the prospects for a vaccine during the Newshub leaders’ debate on Wednesday.
But Beard said ExportNZ believed New Zealand would need to live with the virus “in such a way that companies can continue to operate, trade and travel safely.”
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“Obviously, everyone has a great interest in finding a vaccine, but some of us are concerned that these things will take time,” he said.
That was especially the case given that any mistake with a vaccine would set things back, he said.
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ExportNZ CEO Catherine Beard says fast contact tracing is “very important” to avoid economic downtime.
The concern of the export sector was that the country could not remain isolated from the world for long “because it will have implications for the future of business,” he said.
ExportNZ said it wanted to see “a sophisticated and ‘high-tech’ frontier, for timely access to import of critical skilled talent, for business travel and for foreign students.”
That could involve the deployment of Bluetooth CovidCard devices to improve contact tracing, Beard said.
“Sounds pretty sensible to us.
“In our opinion, if we are going to continue operating and not have outages that are hugely damaging, then that speed of contact tracing is absolutely very important,” he said.
“The ability to expand that crawl and do it very quickly is part of our openness again.”
A combination of National and ACT policies probably came closer to those of the ExportNZ manifesto, he said.
“The current government has done a fantastic job of containing Covid.
“It has been a very health-driven response and that has been good for New Zealand as we are now more open compared to other countries.”
That had also been good for the “New Zealand brand,” he said.
“But I think the economic recovery is a whole new ball game and companies need to be closer to the table.
“There is a lot of frustration in the business sector with the ability to get trained and critical people across the border. We just think we need a more sophisticated plan for that, ”he said.
