Cross- party consensus that regulation won’t stifle risk
Commerce Minister Simon Power and his Labour Party opposite Lianne Dalziel reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring pending regulation will not stifle risks inherent in attracting capital to the New Zealand economy.
Thursday, September 17th 2009, 5:21AM
by Paul McBeth
Speaking at the Institute of Financial Advisers' Financial Awareness Breakfast in Wellington last week, Power reiterated his desire to find the right balance between protecting investors from questionable business practices and repeated his concern that investment statements disclosed too much unnecessary information to investors.
"Relevance is the key thing to this discussion - it's not enough to ensure disclosure of anything and everything - it needs to be targeted to the needs of investors," Power said. "There's a sense of improvement already starting to appear" from providers of some higher risk products, he said.
Dalziel echoed her opposite's sentiments, and reaffirmed her commitment as both Labour Party commerce spokeswoman and Commerce Committee chair to support the government in its endeavours to overhaul the sector.
"Regulatory creep as risk aversion takes over" needs to be avoided, she told the audience. "We can't eliminate risk, and we wouldn't want to if we could."
Power said he has been in discussions with Education Minister Anne Tolley and confirmed she is working to introduce financial literacy to the curriculum for secondary school students.
The results of a survey of secondary school leavers conducted by Young Enterprise Trust found more than half of the respondents could only manage to correctly answer 20% of questions around basic financial concepts.
Paul is a staff writer for Good Returns based in Wellington.
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