Kiwiblog

The NZ Institute has published an update on its scorecard of 16 measures to assess how NZ is doing. Their summary:

Social

• Life Expectancy B
• Unemployment C
• Income Inequality D
• Assault Mortality D
• Suicide C

Economic

• GDP per capita C
• household Wealth D
• Labour productivity D
• Innovation D
• Educational Achievement B

Environmental

• Agricultural land per capita B
• Water Quality C
• CO2 concentration D
• CO2e per capita D
• Invasive species C

Overall they give a C grade, the same as last time. They note:

There is an improving trend for five of the measures and deterioration for four. New Zealand gets three B grades reflecting valuable strengths in education, agricultural land per capita and life expectancy. But there are also still seven D grades and not one A grade.

And

With widespread recognition of the issues New Zealand faces, and action in place to improve outcomes on almost all the measures, there is definitely evidence of effort. However, the efforts are not all well-directed and some do not comply with best practice for performance management. There are not clear and widely understood strategies for success. Progress toward goals is not always monitored and reported, and efforts in one area are not always well coordinated with other efforts. On balance, New Zealanders care and are taking action. Overall an unchanged grade of B- for effort.

Moving some of those grades is not something that can be done in just a year or two. Some of them are very long-term. But hopefully the NZ Institute will keeps its scorecard going for many years, as an interesting ongoing assessment. Their summary is also below.

Simon Collins at the NZ Herald reports:

A leading think tank has slammed New Zealand’s education system for producing disadvantaged youth who are worse off than in any other developed country.

On average our students do well. But our “tail” is known to perform worse than almost all other OECD countries.

The business-backed New Zealand Institute, which has focused until now on economic policy, says the education system has lost sight of the need to keep young people engaged in school and transition successfully into work.

It recommends radical reforms including widespread use of computer-based e-learning, putting students on to pathways to work from the first year of intermediate school (Year 7), giving employers more input into what schools teach and giving all students career advice through school years and support after leaving school.

I hope the Government take the report and recommendations seriously.

The institute believes e-learning can reduce boredom by giving students personal links with teachers and global audiences for their work. At Auckland’s decile 1 Pt England School, with 93 per cent Maori and Pacific students, Mubasshira Mehter’s blog has been viewed by 17,452 people in 125 countries.

“People can see our work and what we’ve been doing around our school,” said Mubasshira, who is 12.

Five local primary schools have joined Tamaki Intermediate and Tamaki College in the Manaiakalani (“Hook from Heaven”) Trust, which carries the credit risk for parents to buy $400 notebook computers for their children at $15 a month for three years, including an internet connection and technical support.

Pt England principal Russell Burt said the schools used new media as “the hook of engaging students”.

And that is very much the future. Every three year old should have an iPad as a learning and development tool.

The NZI report is here.

The NZ Institute has launched today the NZahead report card. It grades NZ in 17 areas, and will be tracking how we do over time with some targets for 2015. A very worthwhile initiative.

The initial grades are:

• Life Expectancy B
• Unemployment C
• Inequality D
• Assault Mortality D
• Suicide C
• GDP per capita C
• Household Wealth D
• Labour Productivity D
• Innovation and Business Sophistication D
• Educational Achievement B
• Agriculture and Forestry Land per capita B
• Water Quality C
• CO2 concentration in the atmosphere D
• CO2e emissions per capita D
• Invasive Species C
• Net migration of Citizens C
• Overall NZI Grade C, with Effort a B-

Each grade, has an associated page with graphs on related indicators, background on why it is important etc.

It is interactive also. You can get to vote on how important a criteria should be overall, and also give your own overall grade.

The NZ Institute has published an analysis of NZ’s lack of economic fitness, and that it is not all about the “recessionary flu”. The Institute notes:

Achieving a step change in New Zealand’s economic growth rate is essential to improve the fiscal position. Unless New Zealand radically improves its growth prospects, basic amenities such as quality free education, health services, environmental protection measures and security in retirement may be at risk.

Yep, we need more pro-growth policies. The recession is a good reminder of how important economic growth is.

Both tax and spending measures should also be on the table to control the deficit, to make room for growth-boosting policies, and to maintain and strengthen support for at-risk individuals through the recession to avoid creating a future social deficit.

A $10 billion a year deficit must be curtailed. The interest on public debt would indeed threaten education and health funding.

The next two proposed tranches of income tax cuts should be cancelled on the grounds that they would contribute to the structural deficit and likely do very little for growth.

Long term, tax cuts are part of higher growth, but I agree these one are unsustainable.

Other spending areas that have contributed to the increase in government spending between 2003 and 2008 of 1.6% of GDP should be carefully reviewed with the aim of achieving their objectives more effectively at lower cost going forward. These include: the Working for Families tax credit system, and health expenditure.

WFF is very inefficient. There is huge wastage or churn as you take money from taxpayers to give it back to the same taxpayers. Welfare should be targeted to those most at need.

The tax mix should also be on the table as part of a long-term rebalancing exercise. Creating new sources of revenue (such as from taxes on property) will create room to finance the cost arising from future demographic pressures. Another objective is to more lightly tax productive investment and savings (for example through gradual reductions in company tax and taxes on savings overtime), while making residential property investment less attractive. This will help to address the structural imbalances in the New Zealand economy.

This is a big call, but one that does have to be looked at.

Very welcome news on Monday that Kordia is going to invest in a new fibre cable between New Zealand and Australia. Initially it will have 240 Gb/s of capacity. But it it not just the capacity that is welcpome, but the competition it will provide to Southern Cross Cable and Telstra who have pretty much all the international bandwidth.

Southern Cross Cable has also announced a boost in capacity to 860 Gb/s so we will in a few years have 1 Tb/s capacity. But that only allows 125,000 to be using the Internet at the same time at 8 Mb/s or 1 MB/s.  The SCC has 2.5Tb/s maximum capacity but new technology may push this even further.

The other fibre that has been in the news had been the NZ Institute’s proposal for how to get fibre rolled out to 75% of premises by 2018.  Basically they propose the creation of a dedicated fibe company which will do the last mile fibre to homes, and provide open access to all providers at a regulated price. They estimate this will cost between $4 and $5 billion based on 25,000 kms of fibre duct at $150,000 per km.

They also estimate that $3 to $4 billion of that can be met by private investment and that a Government commitment of $1 billion over ten years ($100 million a year) is needed to reach 75% of the population.

Bernard Hickey supports the plan and says:

The goverment has already posted a budget surplus before accounting gains and losses of $3.649 billion in the seven months to the end of January. That’s an average of $521 million a month.

Meanwhile our productivity growth keeps slowing, as this chart on the left shows. Just imagine if many of us could work from home with much faster connections and we could access overseas markets more easily.

Surely it’s time our government did something useful with that money to invest in the nation’s future. I can think of nothing better than spending $1 billion of public money to build a broadband network that would generate around $4 billion a year in economic benefits. It would pay for itself in extra tax revenues within a year or two. Just imagine if the government had done this three years ago instead of wasting money with its nutty free student loans (bribe).

I’ve yet to fully get to grip with the pros and cons of the NZ Institute proposal, but I think it is an excellent contribution to the debate, and am trying to learn more about it.

Rod Drury has also blogged in support of it:

The FibreCo solution is very logical and I think takes into account the concerns of the many stakeholders around this issue. Some very smart people took the time to really think about this.

I like that it balances private and public sector needs. It builds on what we learned as a country in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. It is a savvy financial solution.

I think there is going to be a lot of discussion this year on fibre.