Kerre Woodham: Ask not what your country can do for you

New Zealand Inc. is in trouble and it's on us —you and me— to fix it. Not politicians, not economists, not even our blessed farmers who've got us out of trouble time and time again – it is on us, New Zealand voters. 

It doesn't matter whether we vote left or right, red, blue, green, yellow, or black. We all have to give our political parties the cojones they need to enact the policies that will save this country. Treasury's been warning us for years now, decades. Current government policies —whichever government has been in— are not sustainable. 

Treasury's 2025 long-term fiscal statement says population ageing is going to put unbearable pressure on New Zealand's long-term fiscal position. You know this. If you know anything about news, if you know anything about New Zealand politics, if you know anything about New Zealand society, you know this to be true. 

ANZ senior economist Miles Workman says Treasury's report should be on the reading list of every New Zealander. Because, he says, I don't think politicians are going to be able to make the changes that are needed here until the voting public is behind those changes. And he's right. 

In short, fiscal pressures will accelerate in coming decades with costs of superannuation and healthcare expected to rise significantly as the population ages. There is no one solution. In 1965, there were seven working-age New Zealanders for every person over 65. So that was seven working New Zealanders paying taxes for every person over 65, and for the most part, in 1965, those people on the Super weren't working. Today, we have four working-age New Zealanders to one person over 65. In 40 years, which is not a very long time, it'll be just two working New Zealanders to every person over 65. Successive governments have known this. Voters have known this. 

But political parties need the support of voters to make the changes that are needed, as Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen told Ryan Bridge last night. 

“The worry a little bit is that we've had these warnings before. We had something very similar from the Treasury four years ago in 2021. And realistically, I think what the Treasury is continuing to highlight is that there's, there's a lot of big challenges in front of us. We don't have to solve them all tomorrow, but we really do have to start sometime soon to get us out of what looks like a very unsustainable pathway going forward. But, and here's the biggest kicker for me, you can't do any one thing and it will magically solve our sort of fiscal challenges. There's a lot that's going to have to happen that will be unpalatable to politicians across the political spectrum, but by goodness, we've got to start soon.” 

It's only going to be “unpalatable” if political parties expect voters to act out of self-interest. And that's what I mean, it's on us to affect the changes. 

I was talking earlier this week about the need for political parties to have a bipartisan approach to important issues like infrastructure and health and education curriculum. It's absolutely imperative. They can tinker around the edges, but it is incumbent upon them to have an infrastructure plan to stop the waste of money. And it's incumbent upon us to take a grown-up approach and look at the good of the country as a whole, not our immediate needs. 

If you've got your Super, calm the farm – your gin money's quite safe. Nobody's taking it off you now. But those of us in the 45 to 60-year age group need to realise that we're the ones that need to affect the changes needed to keep the country alive by allowing politicians to introduce policies that if they tried to introduce them previously would have sent them to political oblivion. 

There are options: raising the age of Super eligibility, broadening the tax base, (euphemism for fiscal drag and wealth taxes), index linking super payments to inflation rather than wages, means testing – these are all options.  And another option is that New Zealand grows its wealth, that we become wealthier so we can afford it all. That's not looking likely. Treasury notes in the report that recent productivity trends have diverged from past projections, which means productivity growth over the past two decades has been weaker than predicted, averaging just 0.7% per year, and they expect that to last. 

So, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. 

I would like to think if we make the changes necessary, the Super will be there for those who need it. I would like to think that if we make the changes necessary, young people starting off in life, starting off with their families, will not be crippled by the burden of looking after people who were too lazy and self-interested to vote for the changes needed to spread the burden. 

It's on us. We can't just look to the politicians – what are they going to do? They are only going to come out with policies that they think will appeal to us. Are we that childlike that we just want the sweets before we'll vote a political party in? We have to be grown-ups. We have to grasp the nettle and say this is tough and this is going to be ugly, but we're going to do our bit to ensure that New Zealand is a better society for future generations. That's the way it used to be, and we've dropped the ball. 

You know, we can moan and grizzle all we like about the waste of money and the lack of purpose and the dithering around and the incompetence, but ultimately, if we want to affect change, it's on every voter in this country to do so. 

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