'Knight' of the Roundtable

Business Roundtable executive director Roger Kerr was made a Companion of the New Zealand order of Merit in the Queen's Birthday Honours - the country's secondest highest honour.

Mr Kerr (66) has held the role since the Business Roundtable was formed in 1986, and now notes that nobody expected the role, let alone the organisation itself, to last anything like this long.

Formed at the height of the economic reforms of the David Lange/Roger Douglas government, the organisation was aimed at seeing those reforms, and the principles which inspired them, continued.

Mr Kerr, at the time a Treasury official, was deeply involved with those reforms but he credits businessmen Sir Ron Trotter and Sir Douglas Myers as the main push for the Roundtable to become a formal organisation.

“We had the view the Lange-Douglas government economic reforms would not stay in place unless there was broad support in the business community for them.

“I thought we might all last for a year or two until it all fell apart in disunity and argument.”

At the time the Roundtable stood out from most of the other business groups (Federated Farmers was an exception) because it was not involved in arguing for specific concessions from the government for its members but instead was arguing for a principled approach of low taxes, no subsidies, and less rather than more regulation.

Ten years after its formation, at the start of the first MMP coalition government of National and New Zealand First, ministers offered a business assistance package and all the business groups turned it down.

“We said thanks, but no thanks … progressively all have come to the same sort of view – the differences between what we, Business New Zealand, the Chambers of Commerce and the Federated Farmers are all very similar.”

As for his award, he said that he is “delighted and deeply honoured to be recognised in this way; but the honour really goes to those courageous business leaders who cared enough about the country to set up the Business Roundtable back in the 1980s when the country was in a crisis.

“And the honour also belongs to all of those business leaders who over the years have quietly but determinedly backed me as a foot soldier and the Business Roundtable as an organisation in our efforts to promote better public policies for New Zealand.

“So I see this honour as recognition of all that we’ve been able to achieve together – and the list of achievements is very substantial – and I’m very proud to accept it on behalf of the organisation.”

He also acknowledge the support of his family, “especially my three wonderful sons, who did not see as much of me when they were growing up as they might have needed to, when I was so heavily committed to my work