The SME Stream

'The big question for global markets is what's going to happen with reporting season?'

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In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 60, our guest is The Right Honourable David Seymour, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand and Leader of the Act Party.

To many of us, it seems like David Seymour has been in the public eye for so long that we feel like we know him. And yet, as it turns out, we know very little.

He grew up in a Whangarei family, with working parents and a personal ambition shaped partly by a mother who suffered from a disability.

As a youngster he was exposed to business and voluntary work, all of which drove a unique work ethic and a passion for the freedoms his generation took for granted.

He left the family home for life as a boarder at Auckland Grammar and soon he was at Auckland University studying for degrees in Engineering and Philosophy. He had to work his way through university to make ends meet and talks of forty hour weeks bookended by lectures and assignments.

His early career focussed on engineering until the opportunity came to work for a Canadian think tank and a new career path was formed, one that would ultimately see him return to New Zealand, becoming an MP and Act party leader in 2014.

On the Leaders Getting Coffee Podcast, David Seymour speaks with Bruce Cotterill about the loneliness of his early years as parliament’s sole Act MP and his focus on working with other politicians, many of whom were not natural bedfellows, to get his End of Life Choice Act passed into law as a result of a referendum in 2020.

That led to him ushering in nine additional MP’s in 2020 and Act’s role in parliament has been secured as a result.

David Seymour speaks proudly about taking on some of parliament’s tougher challenges, including charter schools, regulatory reform, and the treaty principles bill, as well as the End of Life legislation.

This is a man who is passionate about personal freedoms and making New Zealand a better and more productive place for it’s people. And as one of parliament’s best communicators, he is very clear on some of the challenges ahead.

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Big organisations love to talk about innovation. They set up labs, hire “transformation” teams, and run hackathons. 

Yet inside many companies, the best ideas still die in PowerPoint decks or get buried in cautious business cases.

In this week’s episode of The Business of Tech, I talk to Gravity cofounder James Boult, an innovation specialist who has spent years inside large New Zealand organisations, watching this play out in real time. 

Boult’s verdict is that most corporates are structurally set up to smother genuinely new ideas, even when the will – and the talent – is there.

Boult’s core advice is to treat every significant new idea as if it were a venture‑backed startup inside your organisation. That means giving it a dedicated budget, a finite runway, clear deliverables, and hard stage gates where the project must “earn” the right to continue. No more quietly funding side projects from the core P&L. No more open‑ended experiments that drift for years without real customers.

The gatekeepers and the fear factor

Instead, project owners should be forced to pitch for the next tranche of funding just like founders fronting up to investors. That shift, says Boult, changes behaviour overnight. Teams become sharper on the problem they’re solving and far less likely to hide behind internal politics or legacy metrics.

The episode also digs into the human side of corporate innovation – the “gatekeepers” who can make or break new ideas. These people aren’t cartoon villains. They’re often acting out of fear about budgets, risk, or their own roles. Boult explains how to identify them early, understand their motivations, and design an innovation process that works with – rather than around – those emotional realities.

For frustrated “intrapreneurs” who feel like they’re “going mad” inside a big company, Boult offers a practical playbook for testing startup thinking without immediately quitting the day job. And for senior leaders, he lays out why outsourcing innovation, spinning up venture arms, or re‑branding old projects as “agile” won’t work unless the underlying incentives and governance change.

If you work in a large organisation that talks a big game on innovation but struggles to ship anything truly new, this episode is required listening. Listen to The Business of Tech wherever you get your podcasts. 

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Could diversification across 10,000 global companies can help protect your wealth against volatility? Kathy Kellert, Vanguard’s Head of Equity Index Product, talks to us about Vanguard Total World Fund (VT), and responding to supply shocks and inflation without compromising long-term strategy.

Hear why Kathy believes timing the market is "paralyzing," and the hidden costs of holding cash during a recession. We explore the classic "core-satellite" strategy, which pairs steady index funds with high-growth bets like AI, and why VT’s global portfolio remains 60% US investments, while keeping an eye on markets like India and Brazil.

Plus, Kathy traces how geopolitical events, from 1960s shocks to modern conflicts, typically result in positive returns within twelve months.

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Inland Revenue has claimed New Zealand needs higher taxes, building off earlier arguments made by Treasury.

It sees scope to increase the goods and services tax (GST) rate - offering a cash transfer to low-income earners - and tax more capital gains.

NZ Herald Wellington business editor Jenee Tibshraeny explained further.

LISTEN ABOVE

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The PM ponders the Indian FTA, whether the $3.2 billion Fonterra capital return injection into the economy will “touch the sides”, and whether he needs help when it comes to his own communication with the media. 

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'Three rate hikes ignores that the market has already dramatically tightened conditions": Matt Goodson, Salt Funds Management.

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Fonterra’s new chief executive in waiting joins us to discuss his past and Fonterra’s future. 

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Economists are divided over how fast the Reserve Bank should raise the Official Cash Rate. 

ANZ has already picked three consecutive hikes in July, September, and October, while Westpac says it’s becoming more of a possibility next month, but is more likely in September.  

On the hand, Kiwibank believes raising the rate multiple times before the election would be reckless. 

Independent Economist Cameron Bagrie told Ryan Bridge there’s a case for raising the OCR in May – a pre-emptive strike against inflation. 

He says that if they feel the need to go, they're better off going early as if they leave it later and let inflation get a bit embedded, they’ll have to take the OCR higher to compensate.  

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Business update with Garth Bray, thanks to Forsyth Barr

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