Lamenting Kiwi short-termism

As much as I love New Zealand, I have often felt exasperated that it is the most short-term country I have lived in, and I have lived in a few.

The best reason I have been given for this is that we consider ourselves the ultimate pragmatists and can fix any problem with a bit of common sense – number 8 wire and all that.

And whilst that is admirable, it is simply not enough.

Meanwhile, some countries in Asia are surging ahead with ambitious projects – breath-taking infrastructure builds, clean energy initiatives, urban planning. Many of these projects anticipate needs that are decades in the future.

When New Zealanders think of successful and wealthy Asian economies like Singapore, Hong Kong, and increasingly Vietnam, we often think ‘‘hard-working, entrepreneurial, and freewheeling, and a sense of energy and fastpace’’.

Yet the truth is that central and local government have played a leading role.

Singapore, Shanghai, Taipei, Seoul and Hong Kong are cities that have generated enormous wealth over the last few decades; and had at their core economically hands-on governments.

For instance, if you want an affordable house in Singapore, it’s the Government you go to; more than 80 per cent of residents live in public housing. The Seoul transport system is something to behold, and to develop as a world-class arts centre, Hong Kong reclaimed acres of land and gifted it to an arts trust for development.

The part that appeals to me is these Asian countries’ ability to look 20-30 years ahead; decide where they want to go; and start to put in place plans and funding that extend well beyond the political electoral cycle; to set a framework and give certainty.

This may seem counter-intuitive to those New Zealanders who grew up in the Rogernomics era, which favoured freemarket reforms and minimal state intervention.

You may or may not agree with the long-term planning decisions that our neighbours in Asia have made, but it’s hard to argue against an approach that looks ahead by decades and identifies a vision for your country.

Population is one area where New Zealand appears to be driven by shortterm needs.

As we look ahead, what skills might we need from migrants long-term?

And what might our international responsibilities be to displaced people? Officials may have worked away on these issues, but I seem to have missed the public discussion.

If ‘‘demography is destiny’’, as many claim, then what is our basic plan for our demography?

Is five million a magic number for New Zealand to stay vibrant, or is there another number?

Do we want, for example, to be a country that has one dominant city and then some small satellite ones?

Or do we want to have several similarly-sized large cities?

How do we provide the best for our population as we grow, and how do we provide the conditions to get the most from the skills and talents of our population?

And then there is the economy. A constant challenge for New Zealand has been that the domestic market is so small, so we are reliant on exports for our prosperity.

This means we operate in an international trading environment where we have very little control, such as in the case of a Us-china trade war.

And because of skills shortages, we don’t always add the value we could to the goods we export.

Why can’t New Zealand have more specialised engineering, or expensive furniture design and production, or more high-value food product industries?

In New Zealand, we don’t seem to have an inclination or institutions to have the big conversations about what we want to be as a country in the future, not just next year, or in three years, but in the decades to come.

Great minds might be thinking about these things, but it isn’t necessarily apparent at the street level.

A three-year political cycle doesn’t help us, but we manage to have bipartisan support on key foreign policy and other issues.

Change is going to happen, and is happening. The question is: do we want to be a passive recipient of change, or do we want to be active in shaping our role and future?

I know what I would prefer.