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Work will begin on Monday to sort through the ideas put forward by the Job Summit, Prime Minister John Key says.
The brainstorming session amongst 200 invited participants was intended to come up with ideas to save or create jobs as the waves of the global economic recession begin to hit New Zealand.
A myriad ideas were put forward with a list of the "top 20" presented at the end of the day. This grew to 21 after Key expressed personal support for building a mountain bike track stretching from Cape Reinga to Bluff.
Officials in the prime minister's office will now ensure the ideas, many of which were vague in detail, are fleshed out and considered as part of the Government's policy and budget programme.
Many of the ideas came with no price tag, but some could be big ticket items if they are adopted by the Government.
Key was said to be interested in looking at nine-day working fortnights for companies facing a shortage of work with the Government helping to pay for training costs on the tenth day.
This could cover as many as 100,000 workers though no detail has been settled. Other estimates said as little as 10,000 workers could be affected.
Costs could range from $20 million upwards depending on the numbers involved and the level of subsidy.
Key pointed to union support for the ideas as "hands being held across the shopfloor" to protect jobs in tough times.
After a day of intense debate, the country's banking bosses came up with an offer of a joint fund with the Government to help financially distressed firms through short term equity injections.
The banks offered up $1 billion and said if the Government could match this another $8 billion could be borrowed to take equity stakes in companies that had good long term prospects but needed cash to survive in the short term.
The move came after Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard took the unusual step of publicly warning the banks that they should not underestimate the anger in the corporate sector about banks' behaviour since the global credit crunch hit international financial institutions.
Bank bosses defended their lending behaviour, saying New Zealand businesses were the net beneficiary of loans from Australia and creditworthy companies would continue to get funding.
Other major ideas to come out of the summit:
A freeze on regulation making and enforcement activity reduced to minimum acceptable standards.
A moratorium on the introduction of minimum air and drinking water quality standards until the could be afforded.
A $60 million fund to boost tourism numbers set up by the private and public sectors.
A mountain bike track running through the entire country to attract tourist and create thousands of jobs around the country.
Many of the other ideas were in line with the Government's policy of bringing forward big project infrastructure spending and getting more people into education and retraining causes.
Key hailed the summit as a success and said he would be ensuring that at least some of the ideas were implemented.
