WREDA has head in sand, When kiwi meets bitcoin, Infratil’s debatable disclosure

In NBR Print today: The Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency (WREDA) is copping flak for its lack of results and transparency – despite receiving millions a year from the capital’s ratepayers. The two-year-old organisation is an amalgamation of economic development group Grow Wellington, tourism bodies Positively Wellington Tourism and Destination Wellington, and operational arm Positively Wellington Venues and Major Events. But rather than realising anticipated efficiencies, critics claim WREDA has bitten off more than can be chewed – and choked. Calida Smylie reports.

The idea is simple: New Zealand should merge its fiat currency with digital cryptocurrencies to better utilise the new form of money, Nathan Smith writes. Bill English “gets it” and Reserve Bank officials are slowly waking up – but experts are sceptical, he writes. There’s a real risk, they say, of the system making this country the laughing stock of the cyber-security and banking world.

Partnerships have proved valuable for a small, high-end operator in the retirement village sector. Generus Living Group owner Graham Wilkinson has used affiliations with iwi, charitable trusts and private developers to establish villages around the country worth about $100 million. Sally Lindsay has the story.

When Infratil held an investor day in March, a single slide in one of its seven presentations foreshadowed its NZ Bus unit shrinking to two-thirds of its present size. The company says its comments at the event assumed the worst possible outcome and that it’s confident it adequately disclosed the situation. But Shoeshine begs to differ.

Rob Hosking says the Maori Party’s MPs are feeling chipper.  Te Ururoa Flavell and Marama Fox aren’t remotely fazed by the threats of either Labour or New Zealand First to not work with them after the election,  he writes. In NZ First’s case, it’s not so much whether the Maori Party could work with leader Winston Peters but “can Winston work with us?”

In Hunter’s Corner, Tim Hunter finds in the wake of the Commerce Commission’s refusal of the Fairfax NZ and NZME merger, it appears the media companies’ executives have persuaded many of their own journalists such a transaction is necessary.  “Those worthy scribes would do well to consider the advice coined by screenwriter William Goldman in Watergate thriller All the President’s Men.”

All this and more in today's NBR Print edition. Out now.