Last night, The New Zealand Initiative released a new book, New Zealand by Numbers. Its first aim is to counter the perception that New Zealand is a country riddled with problems. Instead, it celebrates positive developments within our nation that happen too slowly to make the headlines. There are many such slow successes – and many reasons to be proud of what New Zealanders have achieved.
To give just a few examples, New Zealand’s roads have become much safer in recent decades. We could also celebrate that the divorce rate has been falling for a decade, as has the number of abortions. The number of homicides was regularly well above 100 cases in the 1990s, but over the past four years it has varied between 68 and 97 cases – still too many, of course, but the trend is positive. We can also see that today’s younger generation possess a better formal education than their parents.
On the economic front, we can see how our terms of trade have improved dramatically in recent years, and how the New Zealand economy today is employing a record number of people. New Zealand’s labour force is currently more than three times larger than the labour force in the 1960s.
Housing is too expensive because not enough houses are being built, and our education performance at secondary school level is sadly lagging behind the world leaders. Youth unemployment has been consistently higher than the total unemployment rate, and requires attention to ensure that all young people are either in education, employment or training.
As technology advances, and overseas labour becomes comparatively cheaper, it is even more pertinent that New Zealanders have the necessary education and skills. This will help close the gap in per capita incomes between New Zealand and the OECD average. It would also give a boost to New Zealand’s productivity performance which has been sadly lagging in recent decades.
The New Zealand Initiative is proud to make a contribution to those policy challenges in which we believe New Zealand could, and should, do better. But it does not blind us to recognise the great success story that is our country.
This is an edited excerpt from Roger Partridge’s foreword to New Zealand by Numbers. The book is available from the Initiative’s website.