Our next government, whether Labour alone or with the Greens, will continue our fight against Covid-19, and for a recovery that builds a more sustainable, wealthy and equitable society. It’s an awesome responsibility.
So great are the ravages of the virus globally, and the upending of long held orthodoxies we, along with the rest of humankind, have by far the best opportunity in some generations to achieve extraordinarily good things.
“We are living in an era of multiple crises: Covid-19; a crisis of economic disappointment; a crisis of democratic legitimacy; a crisis of the global commons; a crisis of international relations; and a crisis of global governance. We do not know how to deal with all of these. This is partly because it is hard to develop the needed ideas for reform. Yet it is far more because politics cannot deliver the necessary changes.”
So wrote Martin Wolf, chief economics columnist of the Financial Times in July. As a leading neoliberal 30 years ago, admired by Roger Kerr, the chief executive of the NZ Business Roundtable in its heyday, Wolf used to apply a simple, narrow ideology to solve the problems of the world. But over the decades since as he’s grappled with the great complexities of economics, politics and life in general his analysis and remedies have become deeply grounded in principles, values and practicality that serve all.
As for the opportunity for change, “Covid-19 has already triggered major shifts in individual behaviours, social practices, beliefs, the role of the government in the economy, and relationships between nations and international institutions. These shifts have occurred on remarkably rapid timescales,” wrote the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University in its May report on what types of infrastructure projects are best to pursue when building back better.
“You can do them quickly, many of them are labour intensive, and many of them have big multipliers,” wrote Nick Stern, one of the report’s authors. A former World Bank chief economist, he chairs the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
Instead, their astonishingly brief briefings only reiterate old themes – such as more skills, greater productivity – and narrow old policy prescriptions for how those might be achieved.
So, some vision and mission from New Zealand’s business sector would be a great help on our journey. After all, it co-creates our future by working with citizens and politicians.
But business lobby groups are devoid of vision or mission in their briefings for the in-coming government. They express no view on how radically the world is changing and what opportunities they might pursue to benefit them and society. As you read these dispiriting documents, you’d think business was magnificently immune to the virus and unchanged by it.
Where they mention the virus at all, it is only briefly and in the context of what they need short term. Yes, of course, they have to have a growing flow of skilled people across a health-controlled border, for example. But are they for business as usual or for some new and greater opportunity?
Instead, their astonishingly brief briefings only reiterate old themes – such as more skills, greater productivity – and narrow old policy prescriptions for how those might be achieved.
Worse, there are glaring contradictions within and between the briefings, even though many companies are members of one or more of the three main business lobbying organisations.
The only briefing which is forward looking is from the Sustainable Business Council, which has now formally merged with the Climate Leaders Coalition, a grouping of companies it organised to help lobby for the Zero Carbon Act. Its report says the top three priorities for the Government are “Climate; Backing business to be leaders in sustainability; and A future that works for everyone.”
It offers evidence that 46 percent of New Zealanders want to see government leadership on climate change. Of them, 76 percent say environmental policies influence how they vote. Moreover, 72 percent of youth say it’s important their future employer is socially and environmentally responsible.
On climate, it says the key actions it needs from government are “policy clarity and certainty to enable businesses to make the investment and innovation decisions needed to transition to carbon zero; to work with business to develop and implement a series of projects, policies, partnerships and R&D for the short and long-term, including: facilitating access to low emissions technologies, fuels and lower emissions energy supply; developing transport and energy priority roadmaps for the next decade, both supply and demand side; prioritising actions that attract cross-party support by building off the bipartisanship of the Zero Carbon Act; and investing in sustainable, future-focused projects that leverage positive climate outcomes in the Covid-19 economic recovery.”
While the briefing is only six pages, the Council is promising a fuller report to government post-election. To be effective, though, that needs to be set in full economic and social context and drill down into more specific proposals.
Logically, help with that should come from its parent organisation, Business New Zealand. But the latter still fails to integrate the fundamental issues of our transition to a low emissions economy into its work. Thus its post-election briefing to government is a remarkably scant seven pages with only one reference to emissions and none to climate. All it says on sustainability is: “Sustainability should remain a high priority, with New Zealand’s economic growth based on sustainable principles.”
The slim document has a grand title: “Guidance on Economic Plan for New Zealand Post Covid-19.” It offers four themes: Jobs; The Border; Infrastructure: and the Economy – but no insights or substance.
It does note that “Several major sectors including energy, agriculture, heavy industry, transport, international education, vocational education, tourism, and hospitality are currently lacking a coherent roadmap for future development.”
But it offers no thoughts on those, nor any help to those sectors to draw them up. Worse, it is not up with the play. Earlier this year, the Primary Sector Council delivered “Fit for a Better World,” which is a very good vision and strategy with backing from sector organisations and the Government.
This Newsroom report describes the announcement of the strategy; this report from the Primary Sector Council describes the ecological and cultural framework for it; this is the Council’s overall report and the Government’s strategy in response; and this Newsroom column describes New Zealand’s role in this global revolution to regenerative farming.
The third of the three major business lobby groups is the New Zealand Initiative, the successor to the neoliberal Business Roundtable. Its Roadmap for Recovery: Briefing to the Incoming Government runs to 56 pages.
“This report may be the only briefing a new minister needs to read,” Oliver Hartwich, NZI’s executive director, writes in it.
Well, any ministers taking his advice would end up with a very narrow and long promoted view of the world. For example, the one big idea NZI has on reform of the Resource Management Act is enhanced property rights; on the climate crisis is to rely solely on an all-powerful Emissions Trading Scheme; and on post-Covid recovery is deregulation of the labour market, axing all curbs on foreign investment, driving down government debt, ending “wasteful government spending” and a raft of other proposals Kerr made repeatedly when the Roundtable dominated business and government thinking more than 20 years ago.
In its 56 pages, NZI makes no reference to agriculture or sustainability, and its few references to the environment are almost all to the business not natural environment.
Coherent leadership from business would be a big help to the sector itself. It might then have a clear idea of where it’s trying to go; which in turn would help government and society at large to progress.
The first step would be the simplest. Each of the major companies which are paying dues to two or three of the above lobby groups should tell their stakeholders which view of the future they hold for themselves and the country: is it the Sustainable Business Council’s? Business New Zealand’s? Or the New Zealand Initiative’s?
Logically they can hold all three simultaneously. If they want to compromise by blending two or three, then they should exercise their clout as members to achieve that with the groups.
What each company truly stands for is what the Government and the rest of New Zealand deserve to know. Then we can find ways to build together New Zealand’s future.
