Unveiling New Zealand's Wellbeing Vision

UC Connect: Dawn of the Wellbeing Budget – revolution or facade?

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In a talk at the University of Canterbury, Sasha McMeeking explores New Zealand's ambitious attempt to break away from traditional economic measures through the Wellbeing Budget. The initiative seeks to redefine success beyond GDP, focusing instead on enhancing quality of life through systemic changes. McMeeking critically assesses whether this budget is transformative or just symbolic, given the challenges of ensuring substantial social change through policy alone. The discussion delves into the historical context of social values, the importance of political intent, and the complexities of implementing such visionary goals in pragmatic terms. While the intent behind the Wellbeing Budget is commendable, its impact remains debated.

Highlights

New Zealand aims to lead with a Wellbeing Budget prioritizing life quality over GDP. 🚀
Challenges exist in defining and measuring wellbeing within a political framework. 📏
The concept draws on historical and international efforts to improve societal values. 📚
Effects of the Wellbeing Budget are still uncertain as it attempts systemic change. ⚙️
Political intent is clear but execution may fall short due to logistical hurdles. 🛤️

Key Takeaways

New Zealand's Wellbeing Budget is a bold move beyond traditional GDP metrics. 🌍
The budget aims to address both immediate needs and long-term social issues. 📊
There's skepticism about whether this approach can truly transform societal structures. 🤔
The framework integrates financial, social, human, and natural capital considerations. 🏛️
Indicators used could end up being overly simplistic and miss cultural nuances. 🎯

Overview

New Zealand's Wellbeing Budget represents an ambitious step towards rethinking national success beyond traditional GDP scopes. It ushers in a new framework focusing on enhancing life quality, integrating factors like human, natural, and social capital. The challenge, however, lies in implementation—transforming such ideals into actionable, real-world policies is a massive undertaking.

Sasha McMeeking delves into the budget's potential as a transformative tool, though she expresses skepticism about its ability to bring profound change. Historical explorations highlight the continuous struggles of linking philosophical aspirations with tangible outcomes. While the budget's intent is robust, its actual impact on altering societal structures remains uncertain.

This new budget, while innovative, brings to the fore the age-old debate of well-being versus economic wealth. The attempt to redefine what success means on a governmental scale is notable, but as Sasha points out, without clear, actionable steps and adequate funding, the risk exists of the budget being more symbolic than substantial. Intent shines through, yet practical realization is questionable.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Welcome The chapter titled 'Introduction and Welcome' seems to involve a mix of playful and seemingly nonsensical dialogue. It mentions a range of topics and concepts such as a birthday, a cooperative, a trip to Tahiti, and references to a crew. It also includes various names or terms which might pertain to cultural or personal references. The language used does not seem to form a coherent narrative, indicating that this chapter might be an abstract or creative introduction meant to set a whimsical or humorous tone for the rest of the text.
10:00 - 25:00: Historical Perspective on Well-being The chapter titled 'Historical Perspective on Well-being' seems to focus on an informal conversation or monologue, which is interspersed with personal anecdotes and possibly non-sequiturs. The transcript appears as a stream of consciousness with references to pets, food, and personal interactions. The chapter might highlight the casual and subjective nature of well-being, using daily life examples and humor to convey its message.
25:00 - 40:00: Defining Well-being and the New Zealand Context The chapter opens with an introduction, mentioning a rainy Thursday evening and dedication to understanding or critiquing the budget. The speaker, Sasha, provides necessary health and safety announcements before discussing the budget. There's a reference to a location or person from Christchurch near the "furry Pocky" door leading to the lift. The initial focus is on setting the scene and acknowledging the participants' commitment to the topic of budget analysis.
40:00 - 55:00: Government's Role and Policy Instruments The lecture is part of the UC Connect series at the University of Canterbury. It highlights the importance of the institution's role in contributing to the community as part of its mission as a critic and conscience of society.
55:00 - 70:00: The Living Standards Framework The chapter titled 'The Living Standards Framework' delves into the role society plays in defining the space and mission of the University of Cancer within the community. The conversation is centered on a topic that is freshly emergent, being only five hours old, highlighting its immediate relevance. Attendees chose to participate actively in this dialogue rather than relax at home, underlining the significance of engaging with such pertinent issues. The speaker appreciates the audience’s choice and sees the occasion as both a privilege and a fundamental part of the university’s duty to its community.
70:00 - 85:00: Analysis of the Well-being Budget The chapter discusses the concept and execution of a well-being budget, as mentioned frequently on radio stations. It questions whether we truly have a well-being budget and explores what an ideal one might entail. However, there are numerous ambiguities surrounding the idea, and these are examined as the discussion unfolds.
85:00 - 100:00: Challenges and Critiques of the Budget The chapter titled 'Challenges and Critiques of the Budget' begins by discussing the concept of a well-being budget and the living standards framework. It highlights the confusion and lack of understanding among people, particularly in Wellington, about the relationship between the two concepts. The chapter emphasizes the need to start with the living standards framework, which is considered the macro architecture for understanding well-being across the government. The focus is on the challenges and critiques surrounding how well-being and living standards are measured and understood within the context of the budget.
100:00 - 115:00: Discussion on Societal Change and Frameworks The chapter explores the concepts of societal change and different frameworks used to measure and support it. There is a discussion on the origins and current global existence of these frameworks. Particular focus is given to the budget and its adequacy in relation to aspirations and living standards frameworks. There is contemplation on the definition of well-being, possibly leading to conclusions about the effectiveness of current systems in meeting these goals.
115:00 - 124:30: Audience Q&A The chapter titled 'Audience Q&A' delves into philosophical questions, comparing them to age-old quandaries such as 'Does a tree make a noise when it falls if no one is around to hear it?' The discussion highlights the complexity of such questions, emphasizing the subjective nature of the answers, which individuals must determine for themselves. Additionally, the chapter touches on global efforts to define and measure well-being, referencing significant contributions from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in shaping policy around these definitions.

UC Connect: Dawn of the Wellbeing Budget – revolution or facade? Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 Tina birthday co-op I hit a bit too Turkey attorney ko out Tahiti goofy Noah take it the crew of one man 1801 a kata akira nakano Tahiti raro kata UT for iguana it's in my name hurry could you know wait for it then I would type koto quiet
00:30 - 01:00 om I tried it goodbye my cat the matter it a taco puts yeah multi night I ha ha ha yes give me nahi Quixote wiki night Kota me annoyed cut the orange a fun way more papa KO mera natira genomic called the cut well it is lovely to be with you
01:00 - 01:30 on a raining Thursday evening you are obviously dedicated to thinking about the budget and or perhaps critiquing the budget when we get to QA my name is Sasha make making it is lovely to be with you before we can start talking about the budget I have to do very important health and safety announcements the first is the the furry Pocky just at that door into the lift girl from Christchurch so if there's an
01:30 - 02:00 earthquake you probably know what to do but there will be very official young beautiful people to guide you out onto an assembly area there is wet and muddy but still very safe so this lecture is part of the UC connect series and for the University of Canterbury it's really important that our people contribute to our community the whole notion of being part of the critic and conscience
02:00 - 02:30 society is deeply woven into why we are here so this opportunity to have a conversation on something that is so topical it's only five hours old as a really important part I think of the University of cancer contributing to our place in the community so thank you for choosing not to have a cup of tea in your pajamas and to come here and to give us the opportunity and the privilege to do what is fundamentally a job and for tonight I
02:30 - 03:00 want to talk about the well-being budget which will have been bombarded you on the radio station on your way here and ask the question about do we really have a well-being budget what could or should a well-being budget look like and to answer that question there are just countless points of ambiguity the first one is that we're talking about a
03:00 - 03:30 well-being budget and we're talking about a living standards framework and most of those that don't spend this I did time wondering Wellington the streets don't really know how these two things relate so what I want to do is to start with the living standards framework which is supposed to be the macro architecture that we understand well-being across government I want to
03:30 - 04:00 talk about how it came to be and where it exists in the world and then talk about the budget and how well the budget reflects all of the aspirations and the living standards framework or perhaps just giving you a an entree into my conclusions the hips where it doesn't so if we're talking about a well-being budget what is well-being what is beauty what
04:00 - 04:30 is the Rose in does a tree really make a noise when it falls they're all the same kind of question the philosophical questions that we can really only answer for ourselves but a lot of people globally for a long time have been trying to articulate an ax policy since what well-being could or should be so the first definition is from the OECD who are doing a huge amount of leadership work
04:30 - 05:00 internationally and trying to define what well-being could be and to develop the frameworks that we could use to understand well-being and government policy and it's a wonderful definition but perhaps completely unlikely because it uses well-being to define well-being it's the first problem and it talks about quality of life so some seats of
05:00 - 05:30 well-being some sense of quality of life does that give us any real understanding about what quality of life could and should mean to a government not really so at least with New Zealand we've gone slightly further than this kind of circular definition by having our politicians be really clear while still being politicians of what they think well-being means but it's still not
05:30 - 06:00 crystal clear so they're indicators we've had from government have been there first it's about widening our focus it's about acknowledging that GDP is arguably just a means it's not an end so that if we're just looking at financial performance as a country there's a real risk of missing the point so we're going to widen our focus and we're going to look at wider bigger different things and its route starts to
06:00 - 06:30 get back into the realm of the philosophical again a Minister of Finance has been quite consistent in saying there to him well-being means New Zealanders having the capability to live lives they value and and referring to living lives they value in having the capability to do so he's really drawing
06:30 - 07:00 on the work of a Murchison this is that if we're going to realise the conditions and which humans have the opportunity to flourish where human dignity is a real thing then we have to here real choices and the real capability to give a fit to those choices but like all things that might resonate with their hearts on a philosophical level how we do this is just enormous ly complicated
07:00 - 07:30 so if we're talking about people having the capability to live lives they value does that mean it's about taking away barriers to things that frustrate people's choices what about some of the really deep and troubling systemic issues like levels of disparity what about what does that mean in terms of how much we trade off having opportunities this is trying to generate
07:30 - 08:00 outcomes there people experience so we've got a sense from our government but what we don't have yet is real clarity and the definition of well-being that we're talking about which is kind of problematic when you're launching a well-being budget so we've got lots of rhetoric we've got lots of since about we're talking about enhancing quality of life somehow and in some way but we're not really sure what
08:00 - 08:30 it means we're not alone in it the entire globe is having the same kind of conundrum but it does mean when we start to have this conversation about how do you know if a well-being budget is really a well-being budget we've got to accept that we're all going to be talking about slightly different things if we don't have an agreed definition about what well-being is then we will
08:30 - 09:00 all look in the mirror and tell ourselves what well-being means to us but not necessarily explain that to other people and it's gonna mean is we've already seen in the five hours since the budget was delivered people were being able to debate what well-being is I'm not sure how many of you listen to the leader of the opposition's speech in response to the budget which he took the opportunity to debate
09:00 - 09:30 effectively when the things in the budget really about well being or were other things more properly seen as well being priorities and if we don't hear the definition we can continue to hear those political debates it takers know we're but filling up politicians lungs so what it's over in the space of talking about well-being I think it's really important that we both acknowledge that New Zealanders trying
09:30 - 10:00 to take a leadership position internationally and I think that there is something to celebrate but in taking a leadership position we're not the first movers and in fact we're building on hundreds of years of political exploration about how we create well-being within our societies and this is a minimalist timeline it is woefully incomplete in the time scales are inaccurate but it looks pretty what I'm
10:00 - 10:30 trying to show with it is when it comes to the conversation about how do we create well-being in our society we can go back to the 1200 s with the Magna Carta where we had both a political revolution and a legal response to pressing debates at the time about what were the conditions in which human dignity could flourish can jump forward to the 18th century and we did it twice
10:30 - 11:00 with the US Constitution and the French Revolution and their constitutional responses were and from their 18th century point we had well-being as something that was understood in our political communities is something that was about liberty equality and fairness they kind of the base principles that sit at the heart of both the US and French constitutions so from the 18th
11:00 - 11:30 century we were saying we will get well-being in our society if we have liberty freedom justice equality those kind of concepts and then we had we jump to the 19th century and what we get busy doing globally is governments get busy making themselves as their Industrial Revolution took took its course governments bureaucratized that was one of the main responses to society
11:30 - 12:00 becoming more complicated and having more dense relationships amongst themselves and when our governments got into that business of bureaucratize and employing civil servants and creating new government departments we had a new set of values that came and to play about politically how do we create the conditions were well-being we do things like the rule of law and we ensure that
12:00 - 12:30 civil servants are independent and impartial so we had a whole set of values about the nature of democratic institutions that were formed so we have independent and partial government there make sure that those Bastardly politicians don't get away with too much because we've got clever people making sure that smart decisions are being thought about in at that point we
12:30 - 13:00 continue to have attention from the 19th century until now about what kind of values we're talking about if our goal is to create societal well-being we're either going to be talking about values that represents the ends so theorists would call them prime values so their goals like common good and social cohesion and altruism so some of us would describe them as the normative
13:00 - 13:30 aspects of well-being so we will have well-being in our society if we have social cohesion if we have a common commitment to the common good if we have commitments to sustainability whatever that might mean as well and then on the other side we've got people who are relying on values like transparency and openness if we have transparent open and accountable
13:30 - 14:00 government we will have their conditions for well-being in our society and those values are the means or instrumental values if government conducts itself well then we can trust the process we can trust the integrity of the process to deliver a good outcome and good sense of well-being and throughout the 20th century those two positions kind of the battle and we had various periods when
14:00 - 14:30 their ends or prime values row so with all of our human rights instruments their Universal Declaration on human rights and all of the other human rights treaties that came along and response to civil rights movements and women's rights movements effectively what those human rights standards were doing was creating a legal expression that it was hoped at the time gave effect to a moral
14:30 - 15:00 consensus about the conditions needed for human dignity because all human rights standards are supposed to do is describe the minimum conditions necessary for humans to flourish it's all human rights standards earth and then on the other hand particularly from the 1980s we heard the rise of new public management which was all about efficiency in rationalization and it was
15:00 - 15:30 very much about those instrumental values how do we do things more efficiently more effectively faster and cleaner and so those tensions I think are really important to see as we come into the debate about the well-being budget because they're the same teachings that we're going to keep talking about and towards the end of the
15:30 - 16:00 20th century and early into this century what started happening is a whole lot of organizations started trying to bring both of those sets of values together and a whole range of different approaches to looking at more than just financial things and response to well-being and interestingly it's not just government related entities that have been trying to grapple with this notion of it's more than just money that
16:00 - 16:30 we should be talking about business has been doing this as well and I'd go so far as to say that the business community might even be a step ahead of government but it could get me in trouble so there with their attempt to grapple with more than just financial metrics to define success you can look into the business community and to the triple bottom line reporting or the quadruple bottom line reporting and after that it just got unable to be
16:30 - 17:00 counted what they were trying to do was trying to recognize that if they were just pursuing profit without regard for social and environmental factors they were going to have consequences like Nike being boycotted the years in child slaves business worked out that it was dependent on the moral pulse of their consumers to do business so business started trying to respond to a changing moral climate where we expected more
17:00 - 17:30 than just good stuff done cheap where we expected things that contributed in some way to a world that we believed in but at least didn't contravene the things that we considered to be right and there the government sector came along slightly later and started also trying to work out if we were going to measure success on a national or an international scale would we do it in a
17:30 - 18:00 way that was more than just yet would we do it on more than just the financial accounts of a government and if we were going to look at more than just the financial economist what would success really mean for a government what makes a good country and there were a range of indicators there and frameworks it was like battle of the frameworks it really was and I don't think the better was over yet where we had a genuine progress
18:00 - 18:30 indicator framework and had some sustainable development goals we had the OECD better life we had some big international consulting firms that developed their own frameworks and effectively what they were trying to do was find a way to articulate a common set of prime values which is really tricky because if you turn to your neighbor even if you happen to be married to them and ask them what how they would define a concept of
18:30 - 19:00 well-being or how they would define a concept of holistic success they would say something different to you so what all of these frameworks were trying to do was to find some way to wrestle with deep diverse values in a way that would get some reasonable subscription and if you look underneath all of those things that were happening I think it's important to recognize that there are
19:00 - 19:30 different ways of a government trying to create greater well-being in society so government can try and forge moral consensus and we can look at all of the human rights instruments is a way of reflecting moral consensus at the time so we have human rights protections for women's equality because society broadly agrees that there is something that is good still struggling to implement it
19:30 - 20:00 but we broadly agree it is a moral consensus about it and so most of those legal directors and declarations are a reflection of moral consensus but you can also look at the different frameworks and what the 'trying so if we've got a whole set of indicators about what well-being could mean it gives us the ability to benchmark countries against each other get a little bit of competitive spirit going on fundamentally what they're
20:00 - 20:30 trying to do is they're trying to change behavior within government as well as across society so we create these frameworks because they are supposed to encourage Crown servants to think differently to make different options available and ultimately for our politicians to have something to encourage them to prioritize things in different ways so it's a behavior change
20:30 - 21:00 aspiration I think one of the things that is really important somewhat missing and going to be the main way I critique our budget is about mechanism change so if we've got some tools that help us create or sustain and moral consensus about what well-being is or should be and we've got some tools that help us create some behavior change amongst our decision makers and people or there give effect to decisions what
21:00 - 21:30 about the next bit about how we try and create social change the next bit about how we try and create conditions in which there is greater degrees of well-being in a way that reflects our values and pretty much at the moment our language is really unsophisticated in this space we've got this assumption that if we throw money at something that we value that some good will come of it
21:30 - 22:00 there are very many shoes and very many people's wardrobes there prove that just throwing money in it does not mean you're going to wear those shoes in the same goes when we're talking about a social change which is far greater meaning just because we throw money at it doesn't mean we're going to get the desired outcome and how did the reason for their is how we think about implementing
22:00 - 22:30 values in these inspirations needs some work which I'm going to come back to so and all of those policy levers exist in New Zealand but the one that is particularly relevant to the living standards framework is the indicators one so the OECD has been doing world-leading work and identifying a range of indicators that they believe
22:30 - 23:00 Express well-being and a reasonably universal way and what these pictures show is the one worth lots of wind loans is actually rankings of countries against the OECD's set of indicators and the larger blown-up one mole is Canterbury so the OECD has developed a whole range of indicators you can go to that website pick any region in the
23:00 - 23:30 world and it will pop up and show you how that region ranks against a whole bunch of well-being indicators and this is the breakdown of where Canterbury is strong average and not-so-good and which is interesting and I'm sure you would love to debate whether that really is an accurate reflection of Canterbury about
23:30 - 24:00 whether when we look at ourselves in our collective mirror whether we would rate Canterbury highly on civic engagement and jobs in life satisfaction in housing particularly after the earthquake where our housing is not quite restored and potential desire to debate this just a raise of hands how many people would like to debate the scoring of Canterbury
24:00 - 24:30 quite a fair proportion and reflects the real difficulties with indicators because what these indicators do as they take broad concepts of well-being quality of life a sense of well-being that means well-being whatever that might be and then they try and break it down and two things that we can measure that in some way reflect the various elements of our views about
24:30 - 25:00 well-being so for the OECD the way they approach well-being is that they've got 11 dimensions of well-being in each of those dimensions here's a key indicator so things like air quality pollution in the ear is used as an indicator of well-being life expectancy is used as an indicator of well-being homicide rate
25:00 - 25:30 which is used as an indicator of societal safety voter turnout is an indicator of civic engagement and life satisfaction understood however it is that people score their own sense of life satisfaction and I think this is where we get to the first real challenge with using indicator frameworks to give an expression to well-being is they're
25:30 - 26:00 the indicators we use become the de facto definitions of what well-being means so if I said to you there in New Zealand well-being means that we have high voter turnout we don't have much air pollution we live reasonably long and increasingly longer and we don't have many babies that die at birth and we'll perceive that our life satisfaction is quite reasonably high
26:00 - 26:30 and we all have access to broadband access to broadband as genuinely one of the indicators of well-being what how many of you would say that there reflects your values or concepts about what well-being is what it reflects your full sense of what well-being is No so all of these indicators are quite
26:30 - 27:00 rightly part of understanding what well-being could be but we know that the things that get measured get elevated and priority so we've got this real tendency with these frameworks to try and drive behavior change to create societal change that leads to greater conditions for human dignity to flourish but be compromised in my opinion by having indicators there have kind of got
27:00 - 27:30 the soul stripped from them be good in this sound in their fear but the concept of meaning they're extinct to which we feel we have the ability the agency to make real choices about our lives and to follow through on them and reflected in air pollution and life quality and they're the data technicians how I see
27:30 - 28:00 it not much with is human but I very much respect the contributions are really fixated on objective measures so we have to have things like air quality and life expectancy to understand well-being so that they are comparable so that there is consistency and stability and that's how we get a good understanding of the data as we have objective measures like there where as me who's a humanist is
28:00 - 28:30 that's nice I want to know how people feel when the data technicians at their point have an allergic response because that's not consistent there is totally about an individual's perception and not only is it difficult to be compared against there it's really expensive to collect that data because you have to talk to people and some of them don't
28:30 - 29:00 have broadband so you really have to talk to them and it becomes ever more expensive they and that kind of context if you take the global picture is one where there is a global move to try and engage with well-being that we've got two main mechanisms that are being used internationally using the law to say what is a moral consensus or what could be a moral consensus and you've got indicators that are trying to drive behavioural change but some of the
29:00 - 29:30 potential of those indicators is compromised by them being less than soulful it's the concept context that the living standards framework steps into so the living standards framework has been part of it's been a work in progress for about 12 years so this is not new but it's become visible now because we've got this well-being budget what the living standards framework is
29:30 - 30:00 designed to do is to be a macro framework that applies over everything that government does which would mean it's not about a party political thing it is designed to give us consistency across governments so there we can see a broad reflection of the things that New Zealand values it's called the living standards framework because it's supposed to be in articulation of what
30:00 - 30:30 would heighten all of our living standards and a holistic sense and the way it works now it's evolved over the last six months is it's got two parts so it's got the four capitols natural capital human capital or social capital and financial or physical capital and they refer to the things that we need as a society to exist natural capital is
30:30 - 31:00 our environment and all of the health and integrity of our environment social capital is about our levels of trust and cohesion and our society human capital is broadly about their talents and the potentials of humans and society commonly measured with things like qualifications and the life and financial and physical capital is about the money in the bank financial
31:00 - 31:30 opportunities and the quality of our infrastructure so what the living standards framework is trying to do is to say that all four of those dimensions are important to our ability to have well-being now and into the future we have to have strong natural capital we to have an environment that will stain sustain as long into the future we need to have enough social cohesion and trust
31:30 - 32:00 for social capital to have a sense of well-being we need to have humans that have enough capabilities to do things and enough confidence to act on those capabilities and we need to have enough money and fiber networks and roads and things like that to be able to do the things that we aspire to do and then the second part to the living standards framework is to
32:00 - 32:30 pretty much take the dimensions of well-being that exists in the OECD framework and to apply them to New Zealand their only real difference is there we've got a placeholder for cultural identity we're not quite sure what to do with it yet but there's a placeholder the afford and the way the living standards framework operates is there first it's a work in progress so
32:30 - 33:00 how it operates now will be different in 612 we have a much longer is their policy budget Birds go through a screening effectively to see how well they contribute to those dimensions of well-being so contribute contributions to civic engagement it's in sounds very aspirational I will contribute to environmental sustainability income cultural identity
33:00 - 33:30 notions of life satisfaction so they go through that screening process and that's just wavin unto how government does things with greater or lesser specification at the moment because it's a work in progress and we'll come back today so if we've got this description that is what New Zealand thinks is well being at least is interpreted by
33:30 - 34:00 Treasury I was waiting for someone to Hickel a punch line yeah I wasn't gonna if there are good people in Treasury so if this is how a New Zealand is currently articulating well-being it's all of those dimensions of well-being plus the recognition that we need to protect and elevate the four capitals there's a real question about how well
34:00 - 34:30 this genuinely reflects what New Zealand people think well-being means and there is a really interesting discussion The Times is I don't have time to pause on what their living standards framework should do what Treasury has did they want it to do is to create greater alignment across government so they're the first thing that we all know is that government works through silos police
34:30 - 35:00 want to do something over here might be completely related to what Otto otama Dickey want to do but the chances of them talking is real so the living standards framework first objective is to help all of government be aligned to the same priorities in the same values and it's a really significant contribution if it can just achieve that in my opinion that will have done something that is really valuable the
35:00 - 35:30 second thing that the living standards framework is designed to do is to change the type of analysis that we give it's based on the really common sense way of thinking that if we ask a different question then we get a different answer so if we just ask the question what's the most financially sensible thing to do here we'll get one answer but if we ask the question what is the thing that will create the greatest long-term
35:30 - 36:00 environmental sustainability the thing that will deepen the relationship between humans and environment and be financially sensible will get a really different set of answers and finally it's supposed to be a consistent benchmark that we can monitor across time so that it can genuinely be something that is cross-party so how does the living standards framework
36:00 - 36:30 relate to the budget and this is where there is been five hours of analysis so you can take it as less than ideal this analysis I think when we locate the budget there are a whole bunch of and understated teachings that we need to engage with and I think one of them is the difference between well-being and wealthier and I think that will over the
36:30 - 37:00 next couple of weeks we'll have a conversation about is this a well-being budget or is it a wealthier budget and I don't think that they are completely opposite ideas I think that they are related because if we want well-being and if we accept that social cohesion as part of us experiencing well-being then we need to address the things that are the greatest threats to our social
37:00 - 37:30 cohesion the greatest threats to our social cohesion income inequality in all of the disparities there come from there and we can look to Briggs it or to the election of Trump to see what happens when there is an address disparity we get political polarization and chump we don't want that any Zeeland so if we're going to have a society in
37:30 - 38:00 which well-being can flourish we have to address the threats to well-being which income disparity and lots of the really significant issues and challenges and harms that people are experiencing today but we're at risk I think with the well-being budget is its build trying to conflate those two ideas and I think so these are the five priorities that were launched pre budget and the budget Alliance - and I think that you can come
38:00 - 38:30 up to halfway and broadly they're designed to do long term approaches to generating well-being and more on this side of the budget line they're about short term welfare interventions there eris and immediate contribution to making a society that is more sustainable for well-being but they're still different that's their the budget
38:30 - 39:00 process which is not very interesting and I'm running short on time so I will just say their ministers are convinced that using the living standards framework has changed the nature of the budget process and there were a range of tools to help government officials do better screening of how effectively their budget Birds contributed to well-being outcomes what I think is
39:00 - 39:30 really important if we're going to assess the budget against the living standards framework and our broader notions of well-being is to recognize that any government has very little discretionary money even though we're talking about huge and for me and conceivable ahead to Google how many zeroes billions really here amounts of money a breath to the left is
39:30 - 40:00 using an actual accountants data to reflect how much discretionary spend we really have so like all of the graphs that are about to come it's been prepared at high speed by a non accountant so please treat it is a pattern rather than being statistically accurate so we have a commitment to a big concept of well-being we have a big
40:00 - 40:30 media hype about this being a well-being budget which has created really expectations that this budget will be transformational so as we go into this analytical part I think the first thing is there no budget no one-year budget I don't believe can ever be transformational because there's just not enough money that is not allocated to paying people's jobs or paying other
40:30 - 41:00 ongoing fixed costs to make really profound change and one meaning and the way that the budget has been allocated has got some really big ticket items on it so this is just a sprinkling some of the budget commitments which I'm sure because you were here on a rainy Thursday evening you've all had some
41:00 - 41:30 exposure to some of the headline commitments in the budget so we've got really significant financial commitments to mental health intervention really significant financial commitments to addressing child poverty what I want to do though is to to try and break down what these funding commitments mean against three different things so the
41:30 - 42:00 first is across the different dimensions of well-being so again this has been done at speed so please take it as a pattern rather than being statistically accurate and it's what it's trying to do is present a view about the relative prioritization of the different dimensions of our well being so we there health determinants
42:00 - 42:30 proportion is predominantly the mental health spin from this government so this government has put financially reasonably equal priority on investing and mental health and investing and poverty alleviation is the main ways to generate greater societal well-being we've got comparatively really little intervention and education in that
42:30 - 43:00 environment is perhaps the perhaps on a starvation diet and and then there are a few things under multiple that defied easy classification and the time available so when we look at this kind of graph really what we're being asked to think about is what do we believe the most important determinants of future
43:00 - 43:30 well-being are so do we believe that addressing mental health issues which are very real and affect a really significant proportion of New Zealand so we really believe they're addressing that issue is the most important way to change societal well-being at this time and in the longer term and academics talk about determinants so what is it
43:30 - 44:00 that determines whether you have greater or lesser prosperity what is it that determines whether you are more or less likely to end up engaged in criminal offending and potentially incarceration so with this well being budget what I believe the government has done and teach and carefully has tried to identify what the determinants are that matter and I think that there is that's something I would absolutely connealy we've got a budget that genuinely tries to engage
44:00 - 44:30 with the determinants that lead to good or bad outcomes the question is whether they are the most impactful determinants that could have been invested in and they're I'm not so sure about then the next way to think about the budget is how we are spending it vast majority of this budget like most budgets is on building or buying things capital
44:30 - 45:00 expenditure then the rest of it is very gets more interesting the next most significant fund goes into having more of the existing services so with mental health spend for example quite a lot of it is about extending existing services it's not about creating something new there are some of it that is like the Mental Health Commission but the majority of the next
45:00 - 45:30 set of government spend is on taking the status quo and making it bigger and I think that's really problematic and the reason I think it's problematic is because most of the greatest challenges that we experience now are not new so when we're looking at patterns of incarceration for example those patterns have three generations of history to them
45:30 - 46:00 three generations we're the same thing has been just progressively getting worse which means that those patterns have not only ensured through the status quo they have worsened during the status quo so I am concerned about a budget that aims to be transformational investing this much in growing the status quo and the status quo will be doing good things it's just I'm not convinced it's doing
46:00 - 46:30 enough good good things well enough or fastener which leads to the the next bit of the pouch at its lean the slice on new services so there is some money in this budget which is dedicated to doing some experimental pendants there's a lack of clarity about exactly what those experimental things might be but the 98 million that is going to go pop almighty solutions for imprisonment is one of
46:30 - 47:00 those new approaches that we at least from the way it's been billed can assume that it is not just continuing the status quo there will be some new service delivery involved then we've got the next one the black one is about direct funding or some kind of cash transfer from government to business or individuals most of it's been is made up with direct cash transfer from government to business in their form of
47:00 - 47:30 the new startup firm as well as and the matched savings for research and development which isn't new it's just a continuation integral is sam'l direct funding transfer with the indexing of benefits but predominantly their direct funding is going to business these some of the budget which is going to removing financial barriers like taking the fees
47:30 - 48:00 of NCEA and then there was some of the budget that I just couldn't work out exactly what it was trying to do because there wasn't enough detail or there wasn't enough time so I think when we look at this funny group the real question is if we are trying to create transformative social change is this the way we should spend money to create the most transformational change and my answer to that would be none so my
48:00 - 48:30 scoring of the budget so far and I'm not quite done is that I would score at highly for intent I would score it highly for thinking carefully about the determinants of well-being and I would not be searching when it came to how the money is visiting and then the final point just for a bit of reflection which really does show the salvation diet that natural capital is on its sphere it's
48:30 - 49:00 just so little you can't see it it's white the size of the grape it's about the relative split between the four capitals there underpin the living standards framework so physical our infrastructure and financial resources social things to do with social cohesion human things to do with human talent and capability a natural capital our environment and I was really surprised
49:00 - 49:30 when this popped out from the Excel spreadsheet given that we've got a Green Party coalition partner so trying to bring this to some point of conclusion I think across this budget we've got we've got the reality that it doesn't matter how good an indicator framework is at articulating what well-being might be
49:30 - 50:00 that could be a fantastic description but we've still got really deep existential and political debates about the next levels so what are the determinants that will create the greatest impact and their welfare or for well-being it's a debate which we have had since the beginning of humans becoming political and no well-being
50:00 - 50:30 budget will be able to overcome the different views and I think also the shallow views about the determinants that metalized I don't think we have enough quality and so and the determinants that will create the greatest well-being and a New Zealand context and I think for example and their developing world so these lots of work that's being done there says if you want to create the most powerful social transformation give women jobs and they're developed world changes
50:30 - 51:00 household income changes gender and equality issues changes the healthcare outcome for kids because there's more disposable income and women are more likely to invest it in the health and education of the kids they it's not an absolute truth but we've got lots of insights other places about the different types of levers and the different types of determinants we might want to focus on and New Zealand we've got Farley's character thing the second
51:00 - 51:30 political teaching we've got is that one between centralized and decentralized delivery so in a thing that was on that funding the status quo graph was predominantly about funding centralized delivery by state services one of the largest single investments from this budget is in to automata marry key getting a new service function to work with young people who would otherwise
51:30 - 52:00 have been dropped from stake here ah dangit America will have money to pay for those young people to continue to be an alternate America's here and there will be new funding for social workers to help with those young people not engaging and potentially nefarious activity that gets them locked up so bit centralized delivery where as we've always got the tension about
52:00 - 52:30 decentralized delivery and that's really we find our water comes in final waters is actually we've had enough of government services what we want are solutions that come from our farno and that I know identify with it it's about creating like he's been funded by final water new bilingual schools database didyma die or things like that so we've got an ongoing teaching as a nation about to what extent does centralized or
52:30 - 53:00 decentralized delivery relate to our various values and then the third teaching we've got is the time horizon so if we're talking about well-being which our Minister of Finance has openly done as a concept of intergenerational well-being when we look at a budget we've got to ask what the balances between interventions that are designed to create short-term change and
53:00 - 53:30 interventions that lead to sound and to generational change and that's a really difficult thing to do when the relative value of working with different determinants is at issue it's also a really tricky thing to do if you're a politician who not only history as we know think and really short timeframes but most importantly if we were doing things that created intergenerational
53:30 - 54:00 change it would mean that an issue that we currently experience doesn't happen and if you're a politician saying I did this wonderful thing which meant that team children didn't have a hungry day it's just not it's not a good sales line because you're trying to prove a negative so we've got their their political challenge about how do we balance and some immediate interventions which absolutely we have to do because
54:00 - 54:30 real people are having real lives there are nowhere near our emotions our well-being so we have to do immediate intervention but those immediate interventions don't necessarily lead to the greatest degree of intergenerational change which is why I would conclude there this budget has done some good things and it is an interesting precedent because it's used a new process it's been really intentional
54:30 - 55:00 about the importance of well-being and it's changed our national discourse but whether I believe that what has been funded will generate the intergenerational transformation that we're all hoping for I really really want to say yes and I absolutely can I believe in the intention of this budget and disappointed by the mechanisms that this budget has chosen to create social change so on that basis I would say that
55:00 - 55:30 the well-being budget is not a facade I believe in genuine intent I believe in genuine good efforts but it's not as much of an evolution as I was hoping for thank you or open for questions with apologies for talking for slightly longer then I should have this is being recorded which means that there will be a microphone passed around thank you I
55:30 - 56:00 I'm interested in the OECD measures and why we scored so low on education please yes it's an obvious one to go but we're far more brilliant to the next so apparently a population at the moment we've got a lack of qualifications at the right level for the OECD would you
56:00 - 56:30 say it's a fair comment that this process is something along the lines of the managerial ization of the political process surely politicians know what to do just by engaging in politics and listening to people wait is this managerial style framework necessary the
56:30 - 57:00 question about is this managerial necessary I think it's a legacy of the 1980s and there were things like the living standards framework are trying to do whether or not they do as a different question but what they're trying to do is to retract from some of that managerialism on one you could argue it that way or and another since you could just argue it being am energy realism with more stuff on the dashboard and is for a comment and that what our politicians
57:00 - 57:30 and I know politicians just know what to do I think actually one of this is of course the world according to me I think that one of the reasons we have the social challenges we do is because we don't have enough imagination about how to create meaningful social change and I don't think that our politicians are necessarily people with that imagination and I don't think that must have our bureaucrats are either so I think that
57:30 - 58:00 we need I've still got friends that are bureaucrats and I think that bureaucrats do really good work but we don't employ a civil servants to be imaginative we employ a civil servants to predominantly manage risk so that things don't tend to custard so we can't expect people who have a job of risk management to be imaginative creative Mavericks who create new ways of creating changing the world differently Kira do you think all
58:00 - 58:30 the dimensions are to be addressed in a budget for instance some that could be addressed by regulation or law rather than a budget item Lawrence it's water in Canterbury we could we could enforce the present laws against polluting rivers and ban the export of fresh water to the Chinese it wouldn't be a budget issue but he won't think me for dumping
58:30 - 59:00 a minute so I won't hand the mic over actually those things are a budget issue because if you want to do more law enforcement or if you want to do more promotion about what their standards are on things like their it actually goes into the budget is an operational expenditure cost assigned to human time so a huge amount of New Zealand's budget
59:00 - 59:30 is paying for salaries or people to do stuff so there is actually a budget item and yes we have got other levers than just money but we would still see it if it was a priority flowing through the manage de NOC we saw I was wondering if you had an opinion on how how it could look differently in a way that you felt was
59:30 - 60:00 more reflective of a well-being budget that was actually going to be constructive in the way that you feel would be you know actually effective [Music] question to come after me having a cricket other people are not being imaginative enough I'm not sure I'm imaginative enough when I think if this the living standards framework was taken back to the beginning and we did it with
60:00 - 60:30 a blank sheet of paper I think the way that we would do it is the way all of these frameworks work is the GDP plus some other stuff is how we think about the world if we were going to start with a blank sheet of paper and I think we would take GDP off the table and say actually it's that with a blank sheet of paper what is success and I think we would end up with a really different result and one of the pieces of work
60:30 - 61:00 there we're currently involved with is working with Treasury to try and come up with a Takuma Marty approach to looking at well-being it would sit alongside the living standards friendly or ideally come from within the living standards frame we can fundamentally change it and with that piece of work we're starting from a different set of values which I think will lead to an alternative to a
61:00 - 61:30 GDP based articulation of what well-being is so that frameworks called how to wire water and sorry this is going on it starts with a concept of why order to hold the essence of well-being and then sitting around why would a four values monarchy tango phenomena ocupado an Ohana which sofa magnet honor
61:30 - 62:00 is the values that relate to valuing human relationships and connectivity Mamaki ponder about placing value on uplifting people manake thumbnails quite often translated as hospitality but it's a really rubbish translation in my view because it's a let me break down the word it's about filling with mana so mine are keeping our is about uplifting people and quite the a katana is lots of
62:00 - 62:30 people will know is about an intergenerational relationship or reciprocity with the natural environment and or hunger is about intergenerational prosperity so I think if we started genuinely with prime values so those that took on that articulations of prime values and that we're working on what would that look like how would that change concepts and the living standards framework how would it flow through it to change all of the indicators you
62:30 - 63:00 could start with took on the values we could start with a whole set of other prime values any prime values on a blank sheet of paper I think it gets to a different outcome what that looks like we might have some better ideas in a better year thank you for playing so much on context thank you and we are
63:00 - 63:30 governed locally by regional councils their City Council's local councils what amount of intent is disseminated and will take effect so there's two parts to that question that I'd like to address separately so one is just the question of intent and the relationship between
63:30 - 64:00 intent and well-being and then the second about what's the responsibility of our local government and our well-being Conti one of the global consulting firms that probably makes about as much money as New Zealand does in a year did some work on the relationship between an Tinch in generating well-being outcomes and under the framework they found there Brazil when is you know the silver
64:00 - 64:30 something like that was the president there there was enough intentionality from that political leadership that it led to real changes against the indicators they put into their well-being mission and they saw the same thing and Poland in an another nation and enough to say that the most important thing is political and teaching which is another reason I think that this budget and its high the most scores well because there's their
64:30 - 65:00 clarity of political and tension behind it and then the second point about what's the role of our local government there's obviously been different political views about whether local government should have contributions to a whole a sense of well-being the last government said no and took out those well-being dimensions this government's putting them back in my personal opinion is there because well-being is so
65:00 - 65:30 connected to our sense of community and local government exists in our community I think that local government has more of a role and contributing to our sense of lived well-being than central government does it's not how law or practice operates but it's how I think it should be
65:30 - 66:00 so for anyone there couldn't hear that
66:00 - 66:30 the abbreviated vision as was a question about how long will it take society to change looking at the difference between when the change that the war created
66:30 - 67:00 this is going towards these things and what the sociologists would say in response to that and I'm not a sociologist is there if you have different expectations for dramatic processes of social change like a war or an earthquake or something there goes big in the world is fundamentally different versus processes of incremental social change and the main reason for that is that we've got both
67:00 - 67:30 societal structures in psychological biases that make us want to hold on to the status quo if you look at society from a structural perspective you'd say that everything in society is geared to be conservative and to make itself continue and then on an individual level we're known to have what's called a status quo bias we would rather stick with the noan then pursue that unknown
67:30 - 68:00 so it means that any process of incremental social change is going up a really steep hill because societal structures want to keep the same because humans even when we say that we are rampantly excited about change actually don't want change at all there's been experiments done where you're given individual and individuals in a room chocolate bars and they have an opportunity to trade the chocolate bars people who are holding a chocolate
68:00 - 68:30 bar they don't like don't you trade it even if someone else in the room is a chocolate bar they really like so creating this kind of social change is slow and painful unless we hear things that come along they're dramatic points about people and so there's lots of philosophers going right back to Aristotle that would say instead of fighting the status quo just build something that's new and let that grow
68:30 - 69:00 over time to progressively replace the status quo but it's obviously a lifestyle choice I think building new things doesn't is the faster route and I am naturally impatient yep decades ago I heard the past noted anthropologist Margaret Mead when she came to New Zealand tell us that we could adapt to
69:00 - 69:30 big things slowly or small things fast but not both and I think we've seen that with the changes of the wealthy I'd like you comments since 1977 I'd like your comments about something thank you for the framework but also what would put the framework is that we're learning now about the importance of the first thousand days of a child setting their framework for their thinking and their values on their brainwaves and I was thinking that if we really did have some focus on that first
69:30 - 70:00 thousand days it would meet your short-term change it would meet the intergenerational change of parenting and grandparenting because we know what happens to the grandparents has actually reflected in the grandchildren because their eggs are fully formed and their kid and so it goes on but it would meet the short-term change and if it was done decentralized it with therapeutic relationships in the community it would meet that and if we
70:00 - 70:30 recognize that that parenting was the most important vital job anybody could do and actually paid them to attend a weekly parenting center for half an hour a week a half a day a week we could address all of those what do you think of children could we achieve all of this and I've got two parts to the answer the
70:30 - 71:00 first is that I've got a toddler waiting to be put to bed so I have to go very soon and the the second is absolutely but there the reality is that there was a trust that I'm only a couple of steps removed from an saflan and it was called the thousand days trust and it was called the thousand days trust because it was exactly what you described it was
71:00 - 71:30 a model of working with families for the first thousand days with therapeutic support with residential support working with the whole family and it closed down after operating for about two years because it couldn't receive it couldn't get any funding so I think absolutely I agree with it is a powerful intervention logic we've we've still got the challenge of these things that have
71:30 - 72:00 powerful potential not being financially supported so we will never know how effective that thousand days intervention was because the model didn't operate long enough for us to be able to do sound as it did in Canada professor Fraser mustered up in Canada did this with parents attending for half a day a week right through followed those children right through primary school their outcomes were much more positive not negative etcetera etcetera put it through the World Bank and the
72:00 - 72:30 cost-benefit analysis was very differently positive and we've just got one more question down the front and then there is a microphone coming I just wondered if you believed that there was genuine intent from this government when they in fact have dismissed absolutely out of hand a capital gains tax well there's a killer
72:30 - 73:00 questions in Don I I would I don't understand the vast in unequivocal rejection of the capital gains tax at all and I was really surprised by it and and but I don't think their debt being surprising compromises the integrity of
73:00 - 73:30 the intent with the well-being budget I think that's just part of our political system in particularly a political system that's still got one spin in it thank you very much for making the time to be here in saying later it's been lovely to enjoy that you