Andrew Little gave the best speech I’ve heard him make at Labour’s conference last weekend. It was about the Kiwi dream—the things that brought us or our forebears to New Zealand to make a better life.
New Zealanders don’t ask for a lot, but some things are important to us and for those we love. They include having a home to call your own, a job that gives an income sufficient to enjoy life without constantly worrying about money, the services we rely on for our well-being and betterment such as health and education, and living in a clean and sustainable environment in which we can enjoy our leisure hours.
There is a lot we can be thankful for living in New Zealand. However there is also more that we should be doing to make this the great country it can be. It is not a case of throwing money at problems rather of doing things better, sometimes doing more with less and sorting out our priorities.
There were some good examples of that in discussion over the weekend. Andrew put the emphasis on jobs. Unemployment has just gone up to more than six per cent and there are predictions that it might reach seven percent by late next year. Unemployment wastes human potential, damages those who are affected by it and costs us all both in benefits and the loss of tax and production we’d have had if the people were in work.
We need a better system for upskilling people to be able to find work. This becomes even more important when we learn that over the next 30 years, up to 47 percent of today’s jobs will be eaten up by automation. Our education and training system must be more flexible and responsive to people’s need to retrain, possibly for as many as six or seven careers, during their working life.
Annette King and Andrew spoke at conference about our health system and the pressures it is under, affecting services that are struggling to keep up with demand. Annette focused on non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. With New Zealand having one of the world’s most obese populations, we also have one of the highest rates for some of these diseases. Prevention is better than cure.
Fast foods and heavily processed foods with high sugar content are one of the main causes. Getting industry to reduce the amount of sugar and salt they add, and requiring proper labelling telling us, in language we can understand, how many teaspoons of sugar per serving is a good way to promote better health.
It is time for the government to get its priorities right and debate these issues rather than wasting time, money and energy on such things as $30 million pandas and expensive referendums on changing our flag.