I had a nice chat with Radio New Zealand yesterday afternoon regarding the State Government’s new Buy Queensland policy, which I have previously criticised as protectionist and parochial and not in our State’s best interests. The policy comes into effect tomorrow, 1 September, and the Kiwis are very angry about it, as you can see in this Radio NZ article which quotes me:

Qld trade policy ‘really bad’ for NZ firms

The article includes this quote from me, in which I first comment on the prospect of trade retaliation from NZ:

“It’s definitely a genuine concern,” Brisbane economist Gene Tunny said.

“I’m a former Australian Treasury bureaucrat and this sort of thing, it’s just hard to fathom why Queensland … is making difficulties for the federal government in the trade arena.”

I also received a brief mention on Radio NZ’s 6am news bulletin (at 1 minute, 47 seconds).

Buy Queensland is bad policy which will result in a higher procurement bill for the Queensland Government and could even unfairly discriminate against Queensland businesses competing for work in regions outside of their own in the State (see diagram below). That is, it may make it harder for many Brisbane-based businesses to win State Government work in Townsville or Cairns, for example.

See my previous post on Buy Queensland:

Protectionist Buy Qld policy unlikely to survive in current form