Dialogue: Development depends on attracting talent and skill

Continuing the political phase of the Common Core Debate, Deputy Prime Minister JIM ANDERTON says providing security and opportunity is crucial to making New Zealand a more vibrant country that is confident in its unique culture.

In many regions of New Zealand, communities are coming together to set out a common purpose.

They are making plans for development by asking what their top priorities are. They are also asking what advantages they enjoy and how they can overcome the challenges before them.

There needs to be broad participation and agreement around common values. If that exercise is positive in individual regions, it will surely work for New Zealand as a whole.

New Zealand needs a vision - a plan and a direction for development.

We face many challenges from the changing world around us:

* Developed countries, including our own, have ageing populations.

* International trade is growing quickly. Complex and powerful global trends have emerged.

* Technology has never advanced as rapidly. The internet is changing nearly everything.

New Zealand is not a natural winner from these changes.

We're seeing a much stronger international marketplace for certain services, particularly for skills and talent.

The challenge for New Zealand is to be a country that is attractive for skilled, talented individuals to live in.

We have some important competitive advantages on which to build. We have a stable, democratic government. That puts us far ahead of many parts of the world to begin with.

We have a solid infrastructure of roads, ports and clean water.

New Zealanders are also quick to adapt to, and use, new technology. And we have significant natural resources and an exciting physical environment.

Of course, we can't be satisfied or complacent.

The real incomes of New Zealanders have been falling for 30 years. We have a huge overseas deficit, massive overseas debt, and unemployment, inequality and pressure on our social services.

If we want to do better, we need a vision based around two fundamental values: security and opportunity.

Security means assurance about the future, that our way of life will be stable, that there will be jobs, incomes and opportunities - security of life's essentials, personal safety and security of property.

Opportunity means that the skills, talent and creativity of New Zealanders can be developed. There will be rewards for success and for skills.

We need to invest in people. Our education and training systems need to foster confidence, innovation and very high levels of skill.

We need to harness talents such as last year's Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Alan MacDiarmid, and William Pickering, Ernest Rutherford, Bruce McLaren and Bruce Farr, all of them brilliant New Zealanders.

Our education and training need to harness that creativity. We need world-class centres for excellence, where we are the very best at some things, not merely average.

True opportunity requires access to world-class ideas and the ability to use them.

Our success in the America's Cup was achieved by sailors who looked at the best that the rest of the world had - and then they added Kiwi ingenuity.

This is also a country where young people of almost all social strata can go sailing. The opportunities that exist for all New Zealanders, and access to the widest possible pool of talent, are what make New Zealand so good at water sports.

We need a strong, diverse economy. The present structure of the economy is incapable of providing full employment and rising living standards for most New Zealanders.

Our economy is too dependent on commodities alone for export income. We have to import too many of our capital goods. We sell products to the rest of world that are largely undifferentiated from the products of our competitors. We buy the complex manufactured goods that command prices set by sellers.

We must do much more than simply hope that the sun shines, the rain falls and the trees and grass grow.

Transforming our economy is not an easy task or a particularly quick one. To do it, we have to mobilise the resources we have.

We can't afford to have 6 per cent or more of the workforce on the scrap heap. If we want a modern social security system, we need to recognise that it was never built to withstand mass unemployment.

We need to do better at distributing the gains we make equitably instead of only among those at the very top.

Of course, incomes alone will never be enough. We need a country that is confident in its own unique culture.

When we think of Australia and Ireland right now, they are confident, successful countries. And they celebrate that in front of the world, in film, television, musicand art.

We need to be proud of what we do and the unique, distinctive way we do things. We need to see New Zealand performers on the world's stages.

We need the security that world-class education and healthcare can provide. That requires free access for all our citizens, not just access for those who can afford it. It requires a commitment to excellence and quality.

One of the singular quality-of-life advantages that New Zealand can offer is the physical beauty of our natural environment. That does not mean turning the whole country into a museum, it means using resources sustainably, protecting our unique flora and fauna.

We need a vision of a New Zealand that makes it an attractive place for skilled and talented people to live.

Attracting and retaining skill, talent and creativity is a virtuous circle. The more skilled the population, the more creativity is unleashed and the more exciting the country becomes.

New Zealand's development is a journey. It's one that is never over. There will never be a time when we can sit back and say we have arrived.

But at least we should be able to say that achieving those goals would be an exciting journey, and that we have at least begun it.

TOMORROW: Richard Prebble, leader of Act New Zealand.

Herald Online feature: Common core values

We invite to you to contribute to the debate on core values. E-mail dialogue@herald.co.nz.