Dear Members,

 
Just reading reports of snow in Wellington and Auckland make me shiver but when I saw a photograph recently of a portaloo covered in snow on a Christchurch street it sent me running for a hot water bottle!

It’s less than a month to go for the start of the Rugby World Cup and I’m sure you are busy working out where you are going to watch the games. NZTCC, New Zealand Society and the Embassy have all been busy making plans for events for the RWC period so look out for more information coming your way about this. With the All Blacks successfully retaining the Bledisloe Cup lets hope this is a good omen for their RWC campaign.

One month on after the election and, apart from the typical political sparring, all is still calm which is very positive so let’s hope the dark clouds that are still hovering are blown away. Thailand now has its first female Prime Minister in Yingluk Shinawatra; she certainly has some tough challenges ahead of her.

One positive aspect of having a single party with a large majority in power is that it should be easier to get cooperation across ministries and therefore make changes to key policies because there aren’t multiple parties with different agendas involved. Well that’s the theory anyway; we will have to wait and see how it works out in practice. It could also be a double edged sword in that it would also be easier to implement policies less favourable to the business community.

One piece of good news is that the NBTC does not currently plan to gazette their proposed Foreign Dominance regulation. It seems that responses from the JFCCT ICT committee and three foreign missions were uploaded to the NBTC website but were taken down shortly afterwards. This doesn’t mean to say that the new government may choose to pursue it but for now it is on the backburner.

Most JFCCT committees are playing a waiting game to see what moves the new government are making. The JFCCT itself is currently drafting policy positions in the various areas of interest to the business community. I welcome any input or thoughts you might have to help us shape those policies. At the recent Presidents’ Council lunch, education was brought up as an area of concern that we should be trying to help improve. This is something that affects all businesses, large and small. There was a suggestion that JFCCT should establish a working group to develop ideas as to how we can help develop education in this country. If anyone is interested in participating in such a group if it is formed, please let me know.

For this month’s Corporate Knight we have a change of scenery and will be holding the event on 25th August at the Crowne Plaza Bangkok Lumpini Park. We have invited our friends from the Singapore and Malaysian Chambers to join us so lots of opportunity to meet some new faces. I would like to thank Khun Somsak Chopka at Siam Inter Law for kindly sponsoring this event. It’s always nice to have new sponsors join us.


We look forward to seeing you all at the Crowne Plaza on the 25th.

Kind regards,

Sponsored By

with 

Venue & Catering Sponsor

   

Some recent Kiwi Snippets and Kiwis in the news:

Tourism New Zealand is partnering with Auckland Airport and Thai Airways International to target free independent travellers and incentive visit groups to New Zealand during July-November 2011.
The two campaigns aim to boost low season visitor numbers. The campaign targeting independent travellers provides a free night's hotel accommodation including breakfast, for every Thai Airways, Bangkok-Auckland-Bangkok round trip ticket purchased. Visitors can choose to stay in Auckland, Rotorua or Queenstown. Participating hotels include Sky City Hotel, Accor and Millennium Hotels. The promotion is valid until 31 August 2011.
The incentive market promotion offers a refund of the New Zealand group visa fee for every visit group of 20 people or more, with the promotion valid until 30 November 2011.
In the year to June 2011, New Zealand welcomed 20,000 visitors from Thailand with June 2011 arrivals up 1.8 per cent on June 2010 arrivals.

Kiwis best in world at climbing trees

New Children do it, monkeys do it and even adults do it. But did you know New Zealanders are the best at it?
Two kiwis have proven that New Zealanders are the best in the world at a sport you've probably never heard of – tree climbing.
Chrissy Spence and Scott Forrest won the female and men's categories, respectively, at the 2011 International Tree Climbing Championship at the weekend.
Spence had previously won the title in 2005 and 2007 but no New Zealand men had managed to secure first place – until now.
Climbers were given a task of reaching the top of a tree and then maneuvering across branches and swinging their way to another specimen.
There were 20 female competitors at the championships, which is the most Spence has ever competed against. They were narrowed down to three women, including Spence and two Australians.
Forrest battled it out against 40 men, followed by four other finalists before he secured first place.
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Seven-year-old Kiwi on top of the BMX world 

New Zealand's latest double world champion -  he's just seven years old.
BMX rider Lachlan Stevens-McNabb claimed his second world title in two years, winning the seven-year-old age group at the world BMX cycling championships in Copenhagen, Denmark overnight (NZT).
The Rotorua rider, who last year won the six-year-old category in South Africa, led from start to finish as he followed in the footsteps of North Harbour's Rico Bearman, who won the six and seven years world titles in 2009 and last year and was third in the eight-year-old field today.
Stevens-McNabb won all three qualifying motos, his quarterfinal, semifinal and final, but he still reckons it was a tough competition.

It is official; the Tui Brewery Brews a  Good Drop

The Tui Brewery Ltd from small town Mangatainoka added to its big reputation, when it collected more than just the judge’s nod of approval at BrewNZ Awards in Wellington. Mangatainoka’s finest, have won Gold and Silver Medals as well as a Grand Category Trophy award.

The Tui Brewery’s East India Pale Ale (affectionately known as Tui) was awarded top honours with a Gold Medal and in doing so took out the Trophy for ‘New Zealand’s Best Draught Beer’ for a third successive year. 

Hamilton flight school to train BA pilots 

A Hamilton flight school has been selected by British Airways to train cadet pilots.
Only people with the right to work in the European Union would be eligible to apply - and only five or six percent of them would get through the tough selection criteria.
The CTC Aviation Training NZ Ltd school is the largest pilot training establishment in the country.
Its chief executive Ian Calvert said the company had supplied cadet pilots to the airline in the past but not on a regular basis. He expected around 12 cadets a month to arrive from the UK.
Those cadets would do their general skills training in the UK before arriving in New Zealand.
New Zealanders who were eligible to work in the European Union could also apply.
 

CHRISTCHURCH UPDATE

Hi Everybody,

The icing on the quake!!

This is a press photo taken on our street. Our house is directly behind (no pun intended) the portaloo placed there following the earthquake.

Imagine having to use one of these today as so many in the city will.

Also 1700 houses have been without power today because of the storm - imagine that too.

Life slowly returns to normal. Schools that have closed following the earthquake and shared another’s premises up until now (one teaching 0700 to 1200 and the other 1300 pm to 1800) return to their own schools next week.

Ballantynes, our posh departmental store closed because of the earthquake have been running a very popular bus service to their outreach store in Timaru some two hours drive away. The trip is complete with champers, lunch and a personal guide. How clever is that?

By way of painting a picture of our future, we have lost 1300 commercial buildings that have either fallen or been demolished. This means that to replace them, we have to build a new, fully operational commercial building every second day for seven years. I suspect many of the vacant sites will simply become parks or parking areas.

Warm regards,

Mike and Susan

Tourism New Zealand has welcomed Rugby New Zealand forecasts that 95,000 international visitors are anticipated to visit New Zealand for Rugby World Cup 2011 - 10,000 more than recent estimates.

Australians were expected to make up 30,000 of those fans, 10,000 from France, 25,000 from the United Kingdom and Ireland and 10,000 US, Canada and Argentina supporters. International visitors were expected to account for one third of total ticket sales.

Figures just released  show ticket sales are on target with 1.08 million tickets, worth $234 million, sold ahead of the September 9 tournament kick-off.

Research carried out in 2010 indicated visitors expected to stay an average 23 days and travel throughout New Zealand - 38,000 of them for the first time.

Total ticket sales are already 10 times higher than the 2005 British and Irish Lions tours; the previous largest event held in New Zealand.
 

New Members

 

We would like to welcome the following new member to the Chamber :