The politicians would tell us that New Zealand is heading into a high-tech global 22nd century future.But the numbers tell a different story – we are spending more on superannuation than we do on education.As a country, we are effectively investing more in our past than our future.
But as education attendance and achievement drop, and an ageing population is squeezed by historically high house and rental prices, we appear to be at a critical intersection.
Treasury has highlighted those factors in its upcoming Wellbeing Report – Te Tai Waiora – which found Kiwis have high reported life satisfaction, very high air quality, strong employment outcomes and measures of social connection.
“Nonetheless, we lag behind other countries in other areas,” says Secretary to the Treasury Dr Caralee McLiesh.
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“We have among the lowest housing affordability and highest teen suicides in the OECD, and lower average household incomes.And like most other OECD countries, we face longstanding challenges like climate change and an ageing population.
“We are seeing worrying trends of high and worsening psychological distress, particularly among young people and women.”
In our special report earlier this month – Slower, Dearer, Harder, is New Zealand broken – we looked at the perfect storm contributing to the feeling that New Zealand was broken
./Stuff Chief Executive and Secretary to the Treasury Dr Caralee McLiesh.Shortfalls in labour, overworked mental health and health workers, and education woes all require fixes.Economist Cameron Bagrie would start with education.
Does New Zealand spending more on super than education make sense, he asks? His answer is no.
And the issue is not simply spending on super (an entitlement for the over-65s), it’s decades of underspending on education.
In 30 years’ time it will hurt us economically, Bagrie says.
“Does the education sector really suit the 21st Century economy, or are we stuck in the 20th? Truancy is becoming really problematic, and we have been thinking around the edges, opposed to asking some really hard questions,” he says.
“There needs to be a sense of urgency in that.My personal opinion is teachers, like nurses, are seriously underpaid.”
John Bisset/Stuff Economist Cameron Bagrie – pay teachers and nurses more.
International Science Council president Sir Peter Gluckman opts for a big picture view that sees a mass of interlocked issues, which defy silver bullet solutions.
Gluckman was the first Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister and served both National and Labour during his nine-year term from 2009-2018, under John Key, Bill English and Jacinda Ardern.
Short-term political thinking has been unhelpful, yet Gluckman sees no real effort by politicians of any hue to devise a common, thoughtful, well-informed way out.
“New Zealand has a short-term, she’ll be right attitude, rather than long-term thinking,” he says.And that’s now not enough.
“The infrastructure deficit is ultimately an issue of long-term thinking, the ongoing debate about what is a bicultural, multicultural New Zealand, there’s a difference of having a complex conversation, an open and difficult conversation over many decades.
“We need a fundamental rethink, that means going back to first principles …a deep conversation about what is the purpose of commerce, of education in the middle of the 21st century.
“It is not a political discussion.It’s actually a deep discussion about the future of society, and needs to be handled first, to understand what the purpose is, and what the needs are of people who’ve got to live into the 22nd century.
“We have not been very good at asking those questions.
Why has the loss of mental and subjective well-being doubled or tripled in the last 15 years? That is a far deeper systems question.
“We need to ask why, after decades, do we continue to have intergenerational disadvantage, not just for Māori but for other groups in the community as well.How do we break that?”
RYAN ANDERSON/Stuff Sir Peter Gluckman at the Auckland Future Now conference.New Zealand is not alone in facing those problems, yet Gluckman fears it is not handling them as well as other nations.
Political antagonism and shortfalls of deep thinking and analysis by parliamentary select committees do not lead to robust decisions.Outside Parliament, political commentators in the newspapers “are just so overtly political and partisan, it’s not helpful”.
“These are complex multidimensional issues, which require more than shallow, political or partisan argument.
And that’s what we’re not good at,” he says.
“The reality of it is, the world is in a dangerous place at the moment, conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, supply line problems, fractured geostrategic issues – it’s a very unstable place.And you know, even in the issues of the moment, we’re not really having a particularly sophisticated conversation.”
As well as education woes, Bagrie sees a creaking health system and failing infrastructure – roads, power, health, education and housing.
STUFF Health Minister Andrew Little talks to Stuff health reporter Rachel Thomas about pressures on the health system, nurses’ pay and how he intends to fix workforce shortages.
”We’ve got ideology driven decision-making as opposed to quantitative driven decision-making, and that’s coming through in a whole lot of areas, not just in regard to health,” he says.
“I do not believe for one instant that the Government’s splatter-gun approach to Government finances is the right solution, nor do I believe that going out there and giving people tax cuts is the right solution.
“I don’t want a tax cut – I would far prefer that money was reinvested for New Zealand’s economic future and education, and I think most New Zealanders are the same – they’d want it reinvested in education too, with the caveat that it is going to produce results.
“What we are seeing over a few years is Jandal Economics, so you get Flip Flops – in some periods we are investing massively in capital, in the other years it’s as lean as.
LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff Rob Campbell chair of Health NZ: “Only a fully integrated workforce and actively implemented plan will move us past the band-aid era” “We have to get certainty and stability into that sector, like they do in Europe, we park that money aside and we can’t let it be dictated by debt constraint, it is dictated by ‘this is what we need to be doing regarding capital stock and keeping it operational’.”
Bagrie doesn’t have a great deal of faith that politicians of any ilk will set ideology aside for the good of the country.
“You’ve got to have quality people making quality decisions, and getting quality advice.We have quite a dearth of (political) talent compared to what we had 20 years ago….it’s a global issue,” he says.
“Business has got to stop pointing the finger at government, the business sector needs to take some responsibility here in regard to some of the healing that needs to take place.”
Business needs to pull back from the short-term approach of rewarding shareholders to build “what’s called stakeholder capitalism, which is a fancy way of just putting people at the epicentre of what we do”.
“If we shift away from short-termism in the business sector and put people back at the centre of what we do, we are going to take a big step forward towards some of the healing that needs to take place between different sides of New Zealand.”
Out on the health coal face, Rob Campbell and Taimi Allen also pinpoint people as part of the answer.
In health, nurse practitioners are being touted as being able to take some load off doctors.
In mental health, Allen can see a similar role being filled until a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist arrives.There are obvious risks, yet it seems a partial solution to staffing shortfalls and the extended time it takes to train doctors and psychologists.
David White/Stuff Taimi Allan: “We need to go ‘what does a different workforce look like?’” Health NZ chair Campbell says the health system has been running around putting sticking plasters on things for years, and there is no quick fix.
“Nurse practitioners are one aspect of health staffing who can relieve pressure on GPs and clinicians at various contexts in primary and aged care for example.So yes, more of those would be helpful.
“But that is no more true than saying more GPs would be helpful as would more nurses at each level of seniority and training.
So too will be other care staff at a range of skills and qualifications.I would not give primacy to any of them.
“One of the many facets of years of neglect and avoidance has been that the issues are not just numbers but how jobs are structured, trained and paid for.Only a fully integrated workforce and actively implemented plan will move us past the band-aid era.”
Peter Meecham/Stuff Iwi have proved adept at holistic health care.Allen, who works for Ember Innovations in mental health, sees merit in the way Māori deal with it, particularly in the way iwi innovated when Covid gave them more freedom to work within their own communities.
Trying to save the day by training more psychologists was “looking at it all wrong,” she says.
“What we’re doing is we’re trying to emulate an existing workforce and create more of that.But that’s not going to solve our problem …in the next seven to 10 years, if we’re just trying to turn out more psychologists.
“We need to go ‘what does a different workforce look like?’ One of the things that sticks out to me is we actually have people capable of supporting other people in distress, because not a single person in New Zealand has not been a support person for someone in distress.
“Whether it’s a family member, a friend, someone on Facebook at one time or other at the very least, at one time, if not for most of us a lot more than once, we’ve been walking alongside someone as they navigate.‘What next, I’m in trouble’.
“Iwi are supremely good at doing this and not talking about it.Because our rangitahi are going to respect Auntie (from their marae), more so than some little white boy from Auckland flying down and saying ‘I’m an addiction specialist’.
“That’s our workforce, we’ve got amazing whānau who want to step up, but are prevented from doing so because of the barriers we’ve put around them: ‘you’re not clinical enough, you haven’t been trained’.
So let’s let them, and let’s value them for being able to do that.”
Allen sees the stresses imposed by Covid as an opportunity, rather than a barrier.
“We are all growing empathy by being in some form of hardship.The amazing whakataukī (Māori proverb) ‘he waka eke noa’ (we’re all in the same boat), that’s not quite true.
PACIFICA New Zealand in 2022: a melting pot with diverse views.“We’re on the same ocean right now, which gives us a great broad understanding, but we’re in different boats.
Some of us have little holey row boats, and some of us are on big cruise ships, but we all understand that the ocean is rough.
“We should be able to connect and support each other to innovate, to think quickly.The problem with democracy is it moves quite slowly.”
Whatever the solution or fixes, it’s both urgent and difficult, Gluckman says.
“Within New Zealand, which is now quite a melting pot, we have some very diverse views.We have a historical set of situations, we have an evolving situation, and somehow we have to find a consensual way through.And that’s not easy.
“But if we take some of the deep issues that we’re now confronted with, and keep on putting them aside they will just compound over time.There are some green shoots out there, green shoots don’t work unless they’re watered.”.
