Five big issues for the next decade
The big issues of the next decade are many and varied. New ones will appear in the 2020s but most will be carried over from the past decade.
The difficulty and importance of these will intensify and how we respond will shape the decade.
I could list 20 big issues, many of which are inter-related.
One missed from the top five is how we handle China. Scolding the increasingly intransigent global power over human rights abuses and unfair trade practices is increasingly difficult.
Some of the big issues in New Zealand over the next 10 years will be social changes. They tend to come slowly in New Zealand but when they do happen they tend to stick. Governments rarely turn the clock back.
The next decade will see shifts many will find hard to stomach.
The right to die and the legalisation of drugs will be top of the agenda.
My top five are as follows:
1. Climate change
No surprise there. Climate change and how the country negotiates the transition to a low or zero carbon economy while keeping people in jobs and the lights on will dominate the decade. New Zealand can model good behaviour but the action will be overseas with the big polluting countries and also with developing countries that will produce another three or four billion people to be fed and housed.
Unfortunately the time for gradual change and consensus has passed and more radical action is required.
At a time of global power shifts and many other pressing issues, that is not going to happen and the climate will inevitably warm.
At the bottom of the world, New Zealand is in some ways in an enviable position.
But as a trading nation our standard of living will be threatened like never before.
2. Low interest rates
The unprecedented low interest rates experienced in the last decade will carry on into the next decade.
Developed economies around the world, whether led by Left or Right governments, are set on huge borrowing to stimulate economies.
Much of the money will be spent on building infrastructure.
Many finance ministers say it would be irresponsible not to borrow with interests rates so low.
Our coalition government is poised for a $12 billion spend.
The dangers of borrowing seem to be forgotten.
Interest rates could easily change and the money, presumably, has to be paid back. Or do you just print the money? The spending will stimulate inflation.
Greater spending on infrastructure will require more skills and labour, neither of which New Zealand has enough of.
More immigrants – work visa or permanent – will be required and those immigrants will create their own need for infrastructure.
How increased expenditure on bricks and mortar and turbocharged consumerism will help our carbon footprint is another vexed question.
3. Equality
No healthy society can tolerate huge differences between those at the bottom and those at the top.
That gap has steadily increased over the past decade and how it is addressed in the next is a fundamental issue.
Transferring resources to the bottom 20 per cent of the population requires careful handling.
A couple of consequences need to be avoided. One is actually increasing that 20 per cent, and the other is removing the reward for effort and sacrifice.
Compulsory charity is all very well but it is not sufficient motivation for excellence and high standards.
It is said the rich will pay but they find ways of avoiding, if not evading, tax. The well-off, who already bear the brunt of taxation, will be the likely targets.
Many tax experts call for a tax on assets rather than income but New Zealanders hate that.
Equality also brings up generational equity and the funding of superannuation.
Words like boomers and privilege have unhelpfully entered the debate.
Are we in this together or not?
4. Immigration
Immigration, which has been used to artificially stimulate the economy for years, has resulted in a very diverse society, especially in the big cities.
New Zealand has become a country like Singapore where migrants, often on short-term work visas, do the jobs we won’t or can’t do. At the same time a large class of beneficiaries, including
No healthy society can tolerate huge differences between those at the bottom and those at the top. That gap has steadily increased over the past decade and how it is addressed in the next is a fundamental issue.
superannuitants, do little.
High diversity also raises questions about national identity and acceptance, more importantly adherence, to the same sort of values. Some feel like strangers in their own land.
As a country of immigrants, New Zealanders generally have great tolerance, at least on the surface, but that will change.
5. Left and Right
The next decade will determine whether the country maintains its tilt towards a Scandinavian, socialist type of government or heads towards a less reformist, lower tax and more individual responsibility regime.
In a country increasingly divided by education, location and tribe, alliances will harden.
The reform agenda is set by a virtuous vanguard of leftie academics, reformist politicians, like-minded media columnists, career public servants and champagne socialist professionals.
Unfortunately they have no idea what ordinary people think and their shouty condemnation of other viewpoints only drives the common discourse underground.