Gary Taylor: Green economy study more use

Don Brash's Productivity Taskforce Report is disappointingly short on practical measures to lift New Zealand's performance.

I was expecting some forward-looking analysis of the kind of world we will be living in by 2025, and what that means for policies today, but instead the taskforce looked back to the 1980s for inspiration.

Most of the Taskforce's ideas are so extreme, and lacking in coherence, that no government would implement them. The Prime Minister was forced to disown the report on the day it was launched. What were they thinking?

My main concern with Dr Brash's report is the lack of appreciation of the importance of New Zealand's environment. The report is right when it says that a strong economy gives us the ability to maintain high environmental standards. But it then goes on to infer that we should do away with the Resource Management Act. That is just ridiculous. It would turn us into a third world country and remove our key competitive advantage: the quality of our environment.

The report goes on to recommend opening most of our publicly-owned conservation lands to mining. But New Zealand's conservation lands have outstanding natural and scenic values that should be protected.

They also support one of our biggest export earners, the tourist industry.

They are not the west Australian deserts. In any case, the profits from the Australian-owned mining companies would add to Australia's GDP, not ours.

When thinking about comparisons with Australia, we should bear in mind that Australia is facing an uncertain and troubled future.

Climate change is seeing the red centre expand and muscle out the green coastal fringe where people live and food is produced. In contrast, the prospects for liveability in New Zealand are good. We should rejoice in the quality of our lifestyles and our environment. GPD per capita shouldn't be the only comparative measure we use.

Then we should move on to some serious thinking about the economic transformation that's needed for us to adapt and survive as a trading nation, remote from markets, in a rapidly changing world.

I'd like to see the establishment of a Green Economy Taskforce that would come up with some practical suggestions on how to create new, sustainable, low carbon jobs. It could also consider rolling out our tourism brand as a national brand: 100 per cent Pure New Zealand.

The Green Economy Taskforce would build on the ideas generated by the New Zealand Institute, especially growing "weightless exports" - products that can be transported via broadband - such as creative and technical services. It would look at how to transform our tourism and agricultural exports by developing niche products linked to our clean, green brand, and at our emerging biotechnology and cleantech sectors.

I'd bring business, science and academic leaders together to think about what New Zealand's economy should look like in 2025.

Gary Taylor is with the Environmental Defence Society www.eds.org.nz