This collection of speeches, submissions and articles is the eighteenth in a series produced by the New Zealand Business Roundtable (NZBR). The previous volumes in the series were Economic and Social Policy (1989), Sustaining Economic Reform (1990), Building a Competitive Economy (1991), From Recession to Recovery (1992), Towards an Enterprise Culture (1993), The Old New Zealand and the New (1994), The Next Decade of Change (1994), Growing Pains (1995), Why Not Simply the Best? (1996), MMP Must Mean Much More Progress (1996), Credibility Promises (1997), The Trouble with Teabreaks (1998), Excellence Isn’t Optional (1998), Turning Gain into Pain (1999), Wake Up New Zealand (1999), Can New Zealand Afford to Replay the Economic Past? (2000) and Choosing a First World or a Third World Future (2001).

The material in this volume is organised in six sections: economic directions; fiscal policy and the public sector; industry policy and regulation; education and the labour market; social policy; and miscellaneous.

It includes a paper by Bryce Wilkinson, consultant to the NZBR, and an article by Phil Barry, author of a NZBR report published in 2002, The Changing Balance Between the Public and Private Sectors.