Institute of Directors in New Zealand

Andrew Johnson CFInstD estimates it takes up to two years for a new trustee to understand the school they govern. Trustees, however, don’t get two years’ grace. Governance responsibility begins from the first meeting – including for public money, staff and student safety – and some trustees arrive with a deep connection to their school but little understanding of the role.

A recent Gisborne case involving the clean-up of forestry slash and debris is a reminder that a company structure will not always shield directors from personal liability. Three forestry directors lost their High Court appeal and will personally be liable for the costs of cleaning up woody debris and sediment left behind from their operations.

Does someone need a vote to have a real stake in governance? The question gained fresh prominence in June when the Government announced plans to restrict voting on council committees to elected members. Under the proposed changes, councils would still be able to appoint people for their professional expertise or to represent communities, but those appointees would not vote or count towards a quorum.

A supply chain dashboard can show inventory, freight delays and supplier concentration. It cannot measure trust. “No dashboard measures trust and no audit catches the strength of a relationship,” says Miriana Stephens MInstD, Deputy Chair of Wakatū Incorporation. Stephens begins her assessment of supply chain resilience well before products reach a port. She focuses first on whenua, water, biodiversity, people, mātauranga and the relationships connecting them.

As budgets tighten, sustainability commitments are often the first areas reviewed and frequently the first to be cut. For nature and biodiversity, that pressure can instead be an invitation to lay down the foundations properly. For much of the past decade, sustainability has sat at the edges of business strategy, a commitment layered on top of the core plan rather than built into it from the outset. A tighter environment forces every initiative to justify its place.

Digital transformation cuts across technology, people, customers and suppliers, often with different owners, reporting lines and KPIs. Everyone’s individual slice can look green while no one owns whether the whole thing is actually delivered. If your governance structure mirrors the org chart rather than the outcome, you’re not really governing the transformation. You’re governing the silos that are quietly working against it.

KPMG’s Agribusiness Agenda 2026 emphasises resilience, adaptation and long-term systems thinking as essential agribusiness governance concepts in an unstable operating environment. And electrification, argues leading Australian sustainability strategist and futurist Professor Ray Wils, can be a powerful driver of these priorities.

Director fees can produce some of the most uncomfortable conversations around a board table. The people deciding what constitutes fair remuneration are often the same people receiving it, while every increase must be weighed against the expectations of shareholders, ratepayers, members or the community. Without independent evidence, the discussion can become a contest of personal views.

“We’re right at the end of human beings’ capacity to say we’re better than it is.” Shelly Palmer knows the line is provocative. He thinks boards need to hear it. He argues that the most advanced models can draw on more information, process it faster and identify connections no director, executive or subject-matter expert could hope to replicate alone.

Audit and risk committees have traditionally been closely associated with financial reporting, controls and external audit. Those responsibilities remain central, but the committee’s remit now reaches into areas such as cyber risk, climate and supply chain impacts, and geopolitical and trade pressures. These risks may be harder to quantify, cut across several parts of the organisation, and require a wider range of experience and judgement around the table.