Our recommendations
This Taskforce has been focused on the things governments can do to help position New Zealand to achieve the 2025 goal. Governments don't create growth and higher incomes: firms and households do, but they do so within an environment that is materially shaped by the institutions and policies that governments, on behalf of citizens, put in place.
Accordingly, we organize our recommendations under four broad headings, which are structured to encompass the main ways in which governments affect the climate for economic performance:
- Government as spender
- Government as tax collector
- Government as owner of substantial assets
- Government as regulator and law-maker
Members of the Taskforce strongly endorse the overall thrust of what follows. Nonetheless, we are fully conscious of the limited time and resources we have had to bring this report together. In most areas, we focus on highlighting issues and recommending broad directions for future policy. That means that in many cases we outline the flavour of the changes that are likely to be required, and the principles that should guide policymakers in considering reforms, rather than making specific highly detailed recommendations.
Government as spender
Government spending is, to a first approximation, what citizens get for their taxes. Government spending covers an enormous range of activities and functions: salaries of public servants spanning everything from the army to the Ministry of Women's Affairs, the purchase of police cars to the cost of Members of Parliament, social welfare benefits and KiwiSaver subsidies, new school buildings and the Office of the Race Relations Conciliator. Analytically, governments consume, invest, and make transfer payments (income transfers from taxpayers as a whole to particular income groups).
