Dr John Small

How did you come to be appointed as Chair of the Commerce Commission?

A varied working life has got me to this point. I had a string of manual jobs for about 10 years (farms, factories, warehouses, truck driving), then a concentrated stint of study at UC, followed by about a decade as an academic economist mostly at Auckland University, after which I started an economics practice and ran that for about 15 years.

The common threads were curiosity about how the world works, a desire to improve it, and a preference for variety. Along with my personal values which include empathy, fairness, and a strong antipathy to bullying.

I first joined the Commerce Commission as an Associate Commissioner in December 2018 to work on market studies and was appointed Chair four years later.

For those who don’t know, what is the role of the Commerce Commission? What do your responsibilities as Chair involve?

The Commerce Commission is the main regulator of commercial activity in New Zealand. We enforce competition and fair trading laws across the economy and more directly regulate some industries to restrain monopoly profits and promote competition.

As Chair, I lead a team of Commissioners whose main focus is on considering and making decisions about the many competition matters that come before us. We come together to set our strategy and govern the Commission. My role includes influencing our internal culture, interacting with Ministers, and engaging with policy making (including new legislation). I also stand up for the Commission in the media and maintain relationships with consumers and the business community.

What’s your favourite part of the job? What’s the most challenging?

I love it when we make New Zealanders better off, which we do often in different ways. Whether it’s busting a cartel, persuading a big retailer to get serious about consumer protection, or slowly opening up competition for banks, I always enjoy seeing the Commission’s work having an impact.

The most challenging part is staying up with the play. We have ongoing roles in many industries and a constant flow of project work like merger assessments, investigations, and prosecutions. Our staff do a fantastic job in all these areas and I owe it to them to stay in touch with at least the main threads of progress.

You somehow manage to also fit dairy farming into your schedule – can you tell us about that journey?

My wife and I have always loved the rural life. After our children left home we took the plunge and bought a dairy farm near Rai Valley. That was 16 years ago and we’ve been sticking to regenerative principles since then. We’ve learned a lot over that time, including that animals can be really beneficial for soil health and carbon sequestration. Working with cows is also a lot of fun. Most of the time we’ve employed a manager but we did run the place ourselves for a few years.

What memories stand out from your time at UC?

I have vivid memories of Professor Roy Kerr’s calculus lectures but it wasn’t until later that I appreciated what a legend he is. I was mainly an economics student in a fairly small cohort so we got to know each other pretty well. Alan Woodfield’s course on welfare economics has stuck with me, as has Michael Carter’s graduate game theory course. But it was Professor David Giles’s econometrics that I worked on most. That’s where I first experienced the thrill of original research.