Aotearoa New Zealand’s economy is fragile, and we’re
all feeling it. Our standard of living is being buffeted by
global forces we don’t control and home ownership is
slipping out of reach for everyday New Zealanders. Fewer
than one
in five New Zealanders (17%) believe the next generation
will be better off than today. Taken together, decades of
short-term thinking have left us dangerously
exposed.
Today, the Wellbeing Economy
Alliance Aotearoa is releasing Blueprint
for Prosperity: 10 missions for a wealthier, more resilient
Aotearoa at the Kia Tika, Kia Pono–For a Just Society
Conference. A bold, practical roadmap to chart a way to a
more resilient future. The Blueprint is clear: our
interrelated crises, like the cost of living, housing,
inequality, and climate change, share a common root cause.
Which is an economic system that was designed in 1984 and
hasn’t been fundamentally rethought since. Neoliberalism
reshaped who our economy serves and it’s time we redesign it
again, with everyday people and the living world at the
centre.
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Ambitious, yet credible, the Blueprint
outlines 10 missions and 33 practical policies to chart the
way to a more resilient future. One where Aotearoa is one of
the wealthiest countries in the world, not just financially
but in true wellbeing and resilience.
Among the 33
practical policies, the Blueprint calls for rebuilding
public ownership of the energy sector for greater energy
independence and resilience, lifting investment in research
and development to make New Zealand one of the world’s
smartest economies, putting everyday people back at the
heart of local economies through Community Wealth Building,
and ensuring the ultra-rich pay their fair share. Recent
polling commissioned by WEAll Aotearoa shows two thirds
of New Zealanders want the super-rich to contribute more to
fund public goods like healthcare, housing, and climate
action.
The
Blueprint is part of an ongoing conversation about the
kind of economy New Zealanders want and need. The next phase
will involve interviews with academics, iwi, and community
organisations, building towards a comprehensive briefing to
the incoming government in 2027, complete with scenarios and
pathways to give decision-makers the evidence they need to
act with confidence.
Quotes
Gareth Hughes,
Director of WEAll Aotearoa, says:
“Right now, our
economy is fragile and not fit for the challenges of the
21st century. When global shocks hit, and they will keep
coming, we need an economy that can absorb them and protect
all of us.”
“Decades of siloed, short-term, bottom of
the cliff thinking by politicians has left most of us worse
off and our parties now need to think systemically and
deliver big change.”
“Our economy is a product of
design, which means it can be redesigned. We’ve done it
before. The question is whether our politicians have the
courage to do it again, and to do it right this
time.”
“Our current economic system is myopically
focused on GDP growth as the only answer, without thinking
smarter about what kind of growth, for whom, and at what
cost. In New Zealand, economic growth has been accompanied
by rising child poverty and inequality. We grow GDP while
eroding the very foundations of long-term prosperity –
shifting costs onto future generations, degrading nature,
and underinvesting in the capabilities that people and
businesses need to thrive. We should instead judge success
by the outcomes we actually achieve: lower child poverty,
better health and education, affordable homes, a lighter
environmental footprint, and an economy that creates good
jobs with rising incomes.”
“This is fundamentally
about taking a smarter, more common sense approach to the
economy. We look around and see that our economy is not
working as it should, and we need to have the courage to say
when the emperor has got no clothes. Too often, governments
have responded to crises with costly band-aids that don’t
address the root cause, essentially paying to fix what we
continue to break. Our global Failure
Demand research found that governments are caught in a
cycle of spending money to respond to harms created by an
unjust and unsustainable economic system. Those costs are
avoidable. Preventing social and environmental damage from
happening in the first place should be at the forefront of
our approach.”
“There’s a real sense in the
community that the track we’re on leads somewhere we don’t
want to go. If we keep heading in the current direction, we
risk becoming an economy like America where ordinary people
are charged ‘user-pays prices’ for everything, like
hospital care. That’s not who we are as New Zealanders, and
it’s not who we want to become.”
“This is an election
year. We are telling our politicians to stop tinkering at
the edges, and that big problems need big answers. New
Zealanders want to put down roots here, raise families here,
grow old here with dignity, so we are demanding our leaders
think boldly about the future.”
“The Blueprint for
Prosperity gives them the tools to do exactly that. We
already know what works. We can build a richer, more
resilient economy, we just need the political will to choose
it.”