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It's little wonder therefore that so many very small businesses, including a lot of one-man-bands, regularly appear on the radar.

Just about every programmer, analyst and other IT professional has at some stage or another, contemplated going out on their own and setting up their own little enterprise.

What's more, some of those take this very bold step have ended up becoming extremely successful and rich to boot. As often as not however, they end up disappearing offshore to realise their goals.

Which raises the question: is the great Kiwi ITC brain drain still underway?

It was only a very short time ago that the government announced it would be going overboard to encourage exp-pat Kiwis (particularly those in the ITC industry) to come home and start contributing to this nation's coffers again.

More recently an initiative to encourage the richer of those people back was announced, whereby they'd get some rather nifty tax exemptions on overseas investments for a while after returning.

On the face of it, this all sounds fine and dandy -- but then when I read this story from Stuff I realised that they're really just spitting into the wind.

Even in the most vertical of hi-tech markets, NZ will always be at a disadvantage in manufacturing-based industries when compared to countries like China because their wage rates are just so damned low.

Even in the area of skilled occupations like code-cutting, countries such as India can do the job a whole lot cheaper than New Zealand -- so how can we really compete?

The answer is that NZ has to become an "ideas factory." A place where brilliant solutions are conceived and taken (in the case of manufacturing) to a production-ready stage. In the case of software, we should be focusing on the concept to coding-ready stages.

Why not outsource manufacturing and code-cutting to those countries that can do it most cost-effectively? It simply makes good fiscal sense.

"But what about all the lost jobs here in NZ?" I hear you say...

Well I'm sure there'd be a few job losses, such a move would allow is for many people to climb up the ladder into jobs that should be more interesting and higher-paying.

So is government working really hard to help those Kiwis who are in the business of producing sound ideas that can be commercialised into more jobs and export earnings?

On the face of it one could be forgiven for believing that they are -- after all, the Minister for Economic Development has a grants scheme that seeks to fund people with good ideas -- hell, I was even offered one!

And, although the government has made some concessions towards easing the tax-burden of those engaged in R&D, there are still a lot of countries that offer actual *incentives* for individuals and companies to risk their money on new products and ideas.

But "ideas people" here in NZ are still facing a dearth of venture capital funding (all the nation's money seems to be going into yet another property boom right now).

Also, rather than provide increased incentives for R&D or more attractive tax rates for hi-tech (and all other) businesses, the government continues to suck the nation dry to top up its coffers -- now overflowing with taxpayer's money to the tune of $5.6 billion. And, when it does chose to spend a little of that taxpayers' money, what does it spend it on? Well believe it or not, it pays the delinquent tax bills of clairvoyants and spiritual healers.

Yes, while our best and brightest struggle to find money to properly develop or commercialise the ideas on which NZ's future in the world economy relies, it seems that at least one "clairvoyant" and his group of "spiritual healers" not only gets government funding to perform their quackery, they also get you and I to pay their tax bill!

Now examine this report closely -- will the $74,146.96 handed out in this instance create any new jobs? No. Will it produce any export earnings? No. Was it even going to an organisation qualified to receive such funding? It seems not.

Does the government really believe that clairvoyants and spiritual healers are more important to the future of this nation than bright young kiwis and their good ideas? Well that's the way it looks to me.

Why else would such a huge sum of taxpayers' money given away in such a manner?

And what's more -- why was it given from the health vote -- money that should be paying for life-saving operations and medical treatment? It would appear that keeping the nation's witch-doctors out of court on a tax charges comes before treating glue-ear amongst our kids, giving granny a new hip or providing timely treatment for cancer patients.

Quite frankly I'm very surprised that this story hasn't received more attention in the mainstream media -- or have we become so very politically correct that nobody dares to touch the issue?

Oh, and by the way, did you see that programme on Maori TV last night?

No, neither did anyone else -- how many tens of millions of dollars worth of your money has that cost?

I'm sorry, but if, in ten years time, we find that China buys the whole damned country of NZ because we can no longer afford to support ourselves then we should reflect at how we're prioritising "feel good" and politically correct spending over fostering an environment that encourages investment in the ideas of our "best and brightest".

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