PM pumps ‘Wellbeing Budget’
The world is watching the Government’s first ‘‘Wellbeing Budget’’ as economic leaders in Switzerland pressed Jacinda Ardern for details on addressing stability through tackling inequality.
The Prime Minister is part-way through a European blitz, where she has already met British Prime Minister Theresa May, and yesterday met renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough, the Duke of Cambridge, Al Gore and Klaus Schwab – the chair and founder of the World Economic Forum.
Ardern took part in a panel on climate change in the Swiss resort town of Davos and said while some key global leaders were not in the room, it did not weaken the world’s resolve to tackle the issue.
But it was the relative destabilisation across a number of democracies that developed a large amount of discussion around New Zealand’s first ‘‘Wellbeing Budget’’, to be delivered by Finance Minister Grant Robertson in May.
Ardern said there was a ‘‘genuine interest’’ in the work.
‘‘Ultimately, it all brings us back to the same question, which is, people are feeling dissatisfied, and what’s the cause of that?
‘‘If we can put into our system, new ways of operating that try and get to the heart of what it is people are seeking from their politicians, from elections, then perhaps we can get to the heart of some of that destabilisation that we’re seeing,’’ Ardern said.
A deliberately-timed op-ed from the prime minister also ran in the Financial Times overnight, espousing the ‘‘economics of kindness’’ to a global audience.