Oliver Hartwich: NZ Initiative Executive Director on their report looking at the progress New Zealand has made since 1970

Questions are circling about how much progress New Zealand's actually made in the years since 1970.  

An NZ Initiative report suggests it's a mixed bag, with genuine improvements that are largely going unseen alongside stubborn problems that refuse to budge.  

On the positive side, fewer people are dying on the roads and life expectancy at birth has risen almost 11 years.  

But on the other side, education and housing are lagging behind. 

NZ Initiative executive director Oliver Hartwich told Mike Hosking the improvements they’ve tracked almost happen automatically – there are fewer road deaths because cars are getting safer and we’re living long because medicines are improving.  

He says the issues we’re stagnating or falling behind on are the ones where it would demand bold reformers to actually improve the situation. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New Zealand The Initiative new report. They've been looking at
our economy, tracking our success across more than one hundred measures. Say,
road deaths, for example, fall and dramatically over the decade.
Smoking rates down formidably. Productivity though a bit of a problem.
Oliver Hart, which doctor Oliver Hart, which New Zealand Initiative
executive director, one of the authors of this reporters with
us all of the morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Overall, are we winning or not?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
We're both, I mean on some measures we're improving dramatically.
On other measures, we're still lagging the world behind. If
you look at broad Desk, you mentioned we had more
than eight minute fatalities on our roads in the nineteen seventies.
That's down to under three hundred. Still too many, I think,
but it's a suspect success story. Nevertheless, because we've got
way more traffic and way more people, infant mortality has
equally collapsed. We now have also better connectivity. We have

(00:46):
more mobile phone connections than we have people in this country.
So some things are improving all the time. On other measures,
of course, housing affordability for example, but also productivity, it's
a different story.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So what about life expectancy, for example, of course it's
better and better. But is that our story or is
that basically the Western world story We've gone along with
everyone else.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
I think it's the latter. I think we're going along
with everybody else because we nor we have better nutritionally safe,
we have better medical care, we have better pharmaceuticals available.
So in a way we're just doing what the rest
of the world is also doing. But still the result
is that life expectancies improve them dramatically. What we also see,
of course, as a massive demographic shift. In the nineteen seventies,

(01:26):
the median age was twenty five years, meaning half the
population under twenty five. Half the population all but twenty
five years of age that is now thirty eight years,
which is still relatively young by developed word standards, but
it is a massive increase in aging.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Interesting you talk about the result, you talk about productivity
and the gap to Australia in places like it. The
Resource Management Act. You say, nineteen ninety one made a
bad situation worse and generally upsetting people is not something
that politicians do anymore. Hence we are in the quandary
we're in, and yet you isolate out Stanford and her
education reform as being example of big bold and getting

(02:04):
on with it, almost like the Douglas era. So is
that our conundrum We don't Douglas the way we used to.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I think that's exactly right. What really stands out about
all the improvements that we tracked is actually these improvements
almost happen automatically. We have fewer deaths on the roads
because our cars are getting safer for example, well that
it doesn't require any great reformist politician. And of course
we're living longer because our med since are getting better.
And again this is something that just happens automatically. Where

(02:33):
we're sagnating or going backwards. Are usually those issues where
it would demand bald reformers to actually improve a situation.
We haven't really had them. With a few exceptions like
Erica Sanford on education. She's doing a remarkable job turning
around the curriculum, the assessment system. She's getting into teach
her education soon, so she is actually making a real

(02:53):
difference that we will probably see in the statistics in
You to Come.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah good stuff now. Oliver hat would out of the
New Zealand Initiative. Australia now squeezes seventy seven dollars for
every hour of work. Britain is sixty eight, New Zealand's
not quite fifty. An Australian our produces more than half
as much again as a New Zealand one, and if
that doesn't worry, nothing does. For more from the mic

(03:16):
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