Out of the box this statement is reasonably accurate in that it has to be .
configured and workflows added to do retention and disposal. The new 2010 version has usable retention and disposal for businesses requiring simple rules. For PRA compliance, extensions like our iWorkPlace Retention and Disposal Manager extend SharePoint 2007 and 2010 platforms to do better retention and disposal than many EDRMS products.

New Zealand legislation does not use the "declare" model, and SharePoint does not have to be configured this way, despite what some vendors who DO know better would like you to believe...

It does have these but in our experience you would need more sophistication than is catered for - hence our iWorkPlace Retention and Disposal Manager

Yes and this has been done e.g. our iWorkplace designs that allow R+D actions not only by location, but through the use of any metadata field combination as well as allowing recordkeepers to easily set trigger dates and manage manual approvals if required. This gives real flexibility that enables repositories to be classification based, but R+D policies to be applied based upon the business and archival value of individual records or groups of records.