Jonathan Boston
As New Zealand heads toward another general election, political attention is naturally focused on the issues touching people’s lives right now.
The months ahead are sure to bring more pledged policies to ease the country’s cost of living crisis, housing unaffordability, high unemployment and health system pressures.
With so many families struggling to make ends meet, that’s hardly surprising. But focusing on today’s challenges risks ignoring, if not worsening, those of tomorrow.
Many of New Zealand’s “long problems” – including the economic and social implications of an ageing population, a changing climate and transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence – are fast coming to bear.
Others – such as an ongoing biodiversity crisis, infrastructure and housing shortages and low productivity – have long loomed in the background but increasingly also require durable and effective policy responses.
None of these problems can be solved quickly or easily. Meaningful progress requires policymakers to look beyond the next three-year parliamentary term and the short-term incentives of the electoral cycle.
Why promises are easier than persistence
Encouragingly, some campaign policies already announced do stand to address long problems. Understandably, the specific problems highlighted and the preferred solutions reflect the political philosophies of the respective parties.
Centre-right National, for instance, proposes reforming the KiwiSaver scheme to enhance long-term savings and investment. Centre-left Labour has meanwhile promised to introduce a targeted capital gains tax to improve the overall fairness of the tax system and discourage housing speculation.
The smaller parties have also identified their own long-term priorities.
The right-wing libertarian Act Party is focused on reducing public expenditure and regulatory burdens on business. The right-leaning populist New Zealand First emphasises preserving local ownership of the nation’s resources.
At the other end of the political spectrum, the Greens prioritise rapid decarbonisation and reducing income and wealth inequality, while Te Pāti Māori advocates fundamental constitutional reform and stronger Indigenous rights.
The Opportunity Party, which claims to be centrist, proposes major welfare and tax reforms, along with greater public investment in research and innovation.
Announcing long-term policies, however, is only the first step. As I argue in the Helen Clark Foundation’s forthcoming book, Facing Up to Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand, the greater task is sustaining them over time.
Whatever the merits of individual proposals, tackling the country’s long problems will require a consistent and durable policy approach. Repeated policy reversals waste valuable resources, delay progress, discourage investment and risk eroding public confidence in the democratic process.
That kind of policy consistency cannot be delivered by one government alone.
It depends on parties of different political persuasions being willing to negotiate durable multiparty agreements, whether through formal accords or less explicit understandings.
New Zealand has demonstrated it can do this. Cross-party agreements notably led to the Superannuation Accord in 1993, the Zero Carbon Act in 2019 and, most recently, a new long-term program of infrastructure investment.
How lasting change happens
Not every democracy approaches long-term policymaking this way. The prominence of formal cross-party agreements varies considerably, reflecting each country’s constitutional arrangements, political history and culture.
That said, international experience suggests durable agreements on long-term challenges rarely emerge by accident.
They depend on broad agreement about the nature of the problem, shared goals and guiding principles, confidence in the policy tools being used and political incentives that reward cooperation rather than conflict.
For major parties of both the centre-left and centre-right, particularly, this requires informed and inclusive deliberation, negotiation and compromise. But the broader public also has an important role to play.
Voters can encourage long-term policymaking by rewarding responsible, evidence-informed and future-focused policies. Interest groups, unions, iwi and hapū, community organisations and think tanks can all help build support for long-term reform through evidence, ideas and public debate.
And other independent public institutions can identify long-term challenges, assess solutions and help build consensus.
New Zealand already has bodies such as the Climate Change Commission, the Infrastructure Commission, the Retirement Commissioner and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.
But it still lacks future-focused offices such as a Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, which exists elsewhere. New Zealand also does not have a Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology, a Parliamentary Budget Office or a centre for foresight and long-term strategy.
There is also no parliamentary select committee devoted specifically to long-term or intergenerational issues. The fiscal cost of addressing these institutional gaps would be modest.
Ultimately, governing for the future is a choice. It requires political leaders willing to look past the next election rather than simply follow the latest opinion poll.
That means respecting the best available evidence, speaking honestly about long-term challenges and unavoidable trade-offs and building the cross-party relationships needed to sustain reform over time.
Without that commitment, today’s long problems will simply become tomorrow’s bigger ones.
Jonathan Boston is a Professor of Public Policy at Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
The above first appeared in The Conversation and is republished with permission
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