Business
Beaten by Borat
by Rebecca Macfie
New Zealand is on track to be poorer than Kazakhstan
I must admit I groaned when I read businessman Lloyd Morrison’s 13-page document calling for New Zealand to unite behind a goal to be one of the world’s 10 richest countries by 2025.
Not because the content wasn’t worthy: on the contrary, it’s vitally important. Prosaically titled A Measurable Goal for New Zealand, it tells us that in just 50 years we’ve gone from being the sixth-richest country in the world to 32nd, that on current form we’ll be poorer than Botswana and Kazakhstan within 17 years.
It tells us economic growth matters because it enables us to pay for the healthcare, education and environmental protection we expect. And it tells us that if Kazakhstan winds up with a stronger economy than New Zealand’s, it will be able to offer better opportunities to our kids than we can.
I groaned because Morrison & Co is stating the obvious and because, after years of talkfests and policy frameworks aimed at lifting New Zealand’s fortunes, we shouldn’t have to be told it again.
Cast your mind back: the Porter Project of the early 90s; National’s Bright Future in the mid-90s; the Knowledge Wave in the early 2000s; and, of course, Labour’s long-forgotten goal of getting us back into the top half of the OECD.
None gained traction. Too many New Zealanders still fail to grasp the connection between economic growth and our ability to sustain the quality of life we want. Too many still resent business (NZX chief executive Mark Weldon says he hears public servants refer to colleagues who have joined the private sector as having gone to the “dark side”). Too many think First World living standards are a birthright for those lucky enough to live in Godzone.
Will a country that has chosen to turn a blind eye to its slow slide for decades suddenly take notice because Morrison warns of being “beaten by Borat”?
I’m pessimistic. Yet something about Morrison’s offering gives pause for hope.
For one thing, this is not the product of politicians and bureaucrats. No doubt its release in late October was timed to capitalise on election fever, but it would be wrong to dismiss it as simple electioneering. It’s a spontaneous eruption of concern from the leader of a private company willing to commit resources to a project with no immediate payback.
Secondly, Morrison isn’t alone in trying to crystallise the threat to New Zealand’s future. About the same time as he was inveigling his staff into helping him start a debate about our long-term prospects, Weldon and outgoing New Zealand Institute chief executive David Skilling were having a similar conversation.
Their contribution, Economy on the Edge: Swan Dive or Belly Flop, calls for immediate changes to lessen the short-term impact of severe recession (for instance, accelerated depreciation and deductibility of capital-raising costs), and longer-term reforms such as compulsory savings and the creation of a new structure to extract more value from state-owned enterprises.
There is plenty of room for debate about these recommendations, but what matters more than the specific proposals is that outfits such as the NZX and Morrison & Co are willing to put their heads above the parapet to offer them.
As Weldon says, policymakers should see this as an opportunity – and quickly. New Zealand has already lost Skilling, who is off to a new job in Singapore. People such as Weldon, Morrison and Paul Newfield, the 33-year-old philosophy graduate who did much of the work on A Measurable Goal for New Zealand, also have world-class skills; they are here because they choose to be, not because they have to be. New Zealand is too small and too vulnerable to ignore what they have to offer.
The new Government has a choice. It can let the contributions of people such as Morrison and Weldon be sucked into the same vortex that consumed the promise of the Knowledge Wave and the ambition of Labour’s top-half-of-the-OECD goal. Or it can find a way of harnessing the brains, experience and patriotic energy on offer.
As we’ve seen from the world financial crisis and the fresh start in the US, this is a season for new thinking and aspiration, qualities depressingly absent from John Key and Helen Clark’s campaigns.
The closest Key has come to a clearly expressed vision is: “This is not as good as it gets.” If that’s as good as it gets, economic parity with Gaborone and Astana will be that much closer in three years.
