The importance of long-term thinking and commitment to addressing Aotearoa New Zealand’s productivity challenges was the strongest message received through the stakeholder workshops – mirroring the domestic and international evidence. It is essential that government continues to place a strong focus on productivity across its work.
In this context, we signal the importance of setting and maintaining an enduring productivity policy and research agenda.
Below, we set out a starting point for such an agenda, bringing together what we heard from stakeholders with our other analysis.
We have identified five key opportunities:
- Opportunity 1: Focus on the role of innovation – and diffusion of innovation
- Opportunity 2: Invest in the basics – a skilled, healthy population
- Opportunity 3: Think long-term about Aotearoa New Zealand’s approach to land use and infrastructure
- Opportunity 4: Look to the potential inherent in te ao Māori and across the Māori economy
- Opportunity 5: Continue work to address Aotearoa New Zealand’s specific productivity challenges.
Each opportunity is set out in more detail below and, where relevant, linked to “inquiry topic”[6] ideas identified through engagement. These topics provide more concrete potential issues that could be investigated to target productivity improvement in specific contexts across the opportunity areas – although noting that the scope of the opportunities identified are much broader than any single inquiry topic. Fuller explanations of each topic are provided in Appendix B.