Geof Shirtcliffe's piece in today's Herald may attract little more attention than the self sacrificing (self mutilating?) Principle 7 it describes. He wonders who in our Government is standing up for a hard-headed national interest analysis in the face of enthusiasm to look good to "our neighbours".

And great also to see Andrew Harmos, Chairman of the NZX asserting in Monday's Herald his determination to maintain control of the NZX here. And to see the reasons expressed so unapologetically.

All power to your arm Andrew, but for practical steps to build independent prosperity in our capital markets we'll need also much more determined attention to ensuring that our law is more simple and sensible than overseas. We've got to be more honest more speedy and less costly than overseas to counter the crushing advantages of size. We need less law enforced faster, cheaper, and with more certainty.

We also need courage enough among the leaders of the financial industry to denounce follies like most of the last 3 year's reforms to ape overseas markets.

I'm thinking in particular of the Financial Advisor regime slowly descending to stifle free debate on matters financial.

I'm reminded how easily folly gains momentum by the political willingness to change the law to look more like elsewhere in defensive first reaction to criticism of our company registration system (following revelation of the 'Lord' Taylor gun running structures). See for example today's DomPost editorial (which I would link to if I could find it).

What about something more simple like enforcing the law we have, for example the law requiring residential addresses on the register for company officers. From published accounts it seems that was broken. What about some prosecutions?