New Zealand is a prosperous country. By almost every (reasonable) metric, this is one of the greatest countries in the world to live in. But behind that outward success lies longlived societal challenges which have dogged governments for decades: A dysfunctional housing market, an unequal education system, anaemic productivity growth, and an unsustainable retirement system are a few of the more high-profile complaints. Fiddling around the edges won't be enough. Instead, we need a fundamental reimagining of many crucial sectors.
That is what this book (read: web draft of a book) attempts to architect. It provides a policy programme which attacks the root causes of those societal ills. I have actively modelled that programme on the highly-successful structural reforms of the Fourth Labour Government in New Zealand in the 1980s, those of Australian Labor during a similar period, and those of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, also in the 1980s. They are unashamedly liberal in origin and aim, before all else, to increase the freedom of individual New Zealanders to achieve their own ambitions.
This programme, I recognise, is probably supported, in its entirety, by no-one except me. What I hope, however, is that it can marginally shift the terms of policy debate in the broad direction of liberalisation and reform.
