Nigel Tutt: First Wellbeing Budget will be closely watched

While the government's focus on regional New Zealand is great, it would be even better to see real actions to take us up a level, writes Nigel Tutt. Photo/File

By Nigel Tutt

Comment: The 2019 budget will see a different approach from the traditional – with the concept of a wellbeing budget rolled out for the first time.

In simple terms, this means looking wider than economic and fiscal metrics and focusing on the environment and community more.

This concept is a logical one and one I'm sure most will support – after all, a strong economy is only good if it can deliver for its community - now and in the future.

Some of the challenges in this type of approach come from measurement; fiscal metrics are established and therefore easy to gravitate to, I'm really interested to see how some of the community and environmental wellbeings will be measured, and I hope that we can translate this meaningfully at local level.

For the Western Bay, I expect that businesses will simply want to see the government deliver on one of its core roles, which is to provide infrastructure, particularly in a growing region like ours. If the last 18 months is anything to go by, we face a challenge in this region to get a fair share of infrastructure funding.

This is probably a combination of large issues elsewhere, and lack of political
motivation to get anything done in our region. If our country is to be strong in the future, growth must be supported.

The Bay of Plenty plays a key role for the country within the "golden triangle" and our transport links to the rest of New Zealand, in particular, can't be ignored. Let's see increased investment in key infrastructure while the economy is going well.

From an economic perspective, it would be great to see the plan for developing the New Zealand economy concentrate on building higher-value industries and jobs. While the focus on areas of deprivation is needed and admirable, we must look wider than a one-track strategy of providing low-end jobs in small towns.

The government has a stated objective to lift business research and development spending to 2 per cent of GDP, which should help us be a more productive economy. While initiatives like the research and development tax incentive are useful for this, I'd like to see bolder moves to take New Zealand into the future.

Our focus must become to create more high-value jobs in the economy and to get the right people into those jobs.

That means we need to take a different approach to how we view education in a
modern world, and how we stimulate our economy to create higher-value sectors and growth businesses.

I really like what Canada has done with their innovation supercluster strategy, where they spend about $1 billion on supporting five areas of innovation.

The intent of this is to support businesses and education institutions to become more globally competitive.

While the government's focus on regional New Zealand is great, it would be even better to see real actions to take us up a level.

A good start would simply be to provide more government assistance and funding
towards regional education, science and research and development – particularly those initiatives where we can get students close to businesses and industry needs.

The wellbeing budget would seem a great step in the direction of a more inclusive economy and New Zealand; I can only hope that our enthusiasm for looking after our community is matched with intelligent actions to make our country a sustainable economic force for future generations.

Nigel Tutt is the head of Tauranga's economic development agency, Priority One.