Three things to focus on this election

The Haps

Artemis is flying to the moon, missiles are flying to Iran. Happy Easter. New Zealand’s fuel supplies are holding up while all eyes turn to the sea. There are encouraging signs that the market is working. Ships from different destinations are setting sail for the Asian refineries that supply New Zealand. That may prevent the worst case scenario, shortages at any price, but as the Gulf conflict shows no sign of slowing, it is difficult to see relief on the prices that are hurting so many people.

A bright spot: the Government now publishes daily school attendance data, and the fuel shortage hasn’t driven down attendance. The first three days of the last week of term one had nearly identical attendance (89 per cent) to 2025 (89.4, the last two days are harder to compare because of the short week this year). All those saying children are missing out have underestimated New Zealanders’ commitment to education.

Three Things to Focus on this Election

Last week we talked about some flashing lights on the dashboard of New Zealand. This week we talk about what we could do about it, starting with deciding what to focus on this election.

Election year will sharpen the choices we face as a country, but what are the important ones that everything else flows from? When people look back at this period in ten years, twenty years, a generation, what will they wish we’d spent more time on?

Here’s a starter for three. Three basic questions New Zealand needs to answer at this point. If we get them right, the New Zealand story will be bright. If we don’t, we will lose time at best, and decline to second world status at worst.

Let Free Press know if you think they’re the right questions, or are there others? Do we have the right answers, or are there better solutions? Are the problems in the right order?

Number one, productivity and wage growth. The cost of living was already going to be the number one issue this election, but fuel shortages may make it the ONLY issue. The issue is framed as things being too expensive, because that’s how it feels, but that may be the wrong way to look at it.

Most things we buy are traded on the world market. Oil, food, cars, electronics. Even things produced abundantly in New Zealand, such as milk, trade at a world price. Another way of looking at the problem is that we have first world prices, but not first world wages.

Productivity and wage growth have been flat for the last decade. The only way people have got ahead is through asset price inflation, especially houses, but that’s left other people further behind. Cue understandable frustration from nearly everyone under 30 and many who are older than that.

The number one issue is how to get higher paying jobs and better returns on investments. That requires a reduction in red tape that wastes time, adds cost to doing simple things, and means projects don’t go ahead at all. It also requires attracting industries and technologies that produce more valuable products and services that drive wages and investment returns.

It can be mining, it can be digital, it can be agribusiness, but it has to bring in investment and technology that allows workers to take home more for a day’s work. ACT has made big gains in deregulation and attracting investment in this term, and we’ll have more to say about what’s possible in the future.

Number two, balancing the Government’s books. At the moment, we pay $10 billion in interest on $200 billion of debt each year. The forecast is that will get worse, the Government already has limited capacity to spend on the current fuel shortage, because of debt run up in the last big event, being COVID.

Raising taxes is one way to balance the budget, but it will further discourage people from investing and innovating to raise wages if Governments elsewhere take a smaller bite for doing the same thing. We are already among the highest taxed on the Pacific rim.

That leaves making the Government smaller and more efficient. Why does such a small country have such a big Government? So many Ministers, so many departments, so little efficiency. The answer is usually to put in more money for slightly better results instead of raising efficiency. Part of the problem is that most departments answer to multiple ministers (MBIE has 23!), and most Ministers are responsible for multiple departments.

Until we have a smaller group of Ministers, each solely accountable for a department, with a budget required to achieve agreed outcomes, we will keep treading water.

The third is a question about who we are as a nation. We haven’t been British for a long time, even though we’ve benefited enormously from British institutions. But, the over-done and often forced idea that we are bi-cultural with a special place for some people because their ancestors settled first hasn’t worked either. It’s created division and paralysis. We need a better story about who we are.

In truth we are a nation of settlers, with many waves coming over 700 years, for the same reason. Each wave has come here for opportunity, but they have also created it for others, building up the country we have today.

In truth we are pioneers and adventurers, who settled the last uninhabited landmass on earth. We, or our ancestors, took great risk to build a better future far from home. We could all be united by this aspirational story, if we chose it. It is about what we have in common, we all came here for better, instead of what divides us (who’s ancestors came when).

These are a starter for three. If we made it our business to raise productivity and wages, balance the budget with a smaller, more efficient Government, and embrace an identity where we are united by a spirit of adventure, New Zealand would be a much happier, healthier, wealthier place.

Do you agree these are the right places to focus? If you do, do you agree the directions above are the right directions for solving those problems?