But if women are given seats at the board table, who will keep the table polished?

How to build your female numbers and get a better ethnicity balance with just one board appointment.

Dunno about you, dear constituent, but Alf feels not one whit of embarrassment about the continuing dearth of women on the boards of New Zealand’s top companies. Nor is he alarmed, dismayed or perplexed.

If the people who run our companies have opted not to have too many women directors, it’s obviously because that’s the smart thing to do.

In Alf’s experience women make a great cup of tea and are dab hands at cleaning the office at the end of the day.

But a Government-appointed official with a grand-sounding title wants more of them – lots more – sitting around the board table rather than keeping it nicely polished, which is where there skills reside.

Explanations, please, on who made a killing from the promotion – then demotion – of Allied Farmers

Alf is hoping our Commerce Minister, the splendid Simon Power, will whistle Mark Weldon across to the Beehive this week for a “please explain”.

Weldon, of course, is the Chief Executive of the NZX and was a member of the Capital Market Development Taskforce. The task force came up with a bundle of ideas for improving that bit of our financial system.

Last week, Power was saying the Government shared the taskforce’s view that capital markets are key to improving the financial wellbeing of all New Zealanders and a vital source of finance for business.