What comes subsequent?
New Zealand’s different financial issues — which embrace an getting old inhabitants, a crumbling well being service, insufficient infrastructure and an financial system reliant on dairy and different meals exports that’s set to be examined by excessive climate occasions — have defied the efforts of successive governments, mentioned Craig Renney, an economist for the New Zealand Council of Commerce Unions.
“We nonetheless have an financial system which, structurally, is a commodity-exporting, low-wage financial system,” Mr. Renney mentioned, “supported by an enormous housing market the place we promote homes to one another.”
There’s a specific antipathy towards public spending to resolve these issues, even because the liabilities of not appearing proceed to climb, he added. “We’ve a nationwide debt that’s the envy of each developed nation on the earth,” he mentioned, “but we now have this insistence that there’s a debt disaster simply across the nook.”
Regardless of these challenges, New Zealand’s trajectory was largely constructive, mentioned Shamubeel Eaqub, a New Zealand-based economist. “I’m optimistic about New Zealand,” he mentioned. “I’m not optimistic about our politics.”
And whereas New Zealanders could strategy Saturday’s vote with a way of irritability, after an election marketing campaign that has been characterised by mudslinging and small-target campaigning, there have been few allegations of the misinformation or antidemocratic behaviors which have bedeviled elections elsewhere on the earth.
“In New Zealand, we don’t cease and assume, ‘Should you take a look at all the indicators and league tables around the globe, we’re truly one of many best-governed nations on earth,’ ” mentioned Dr. Duncan, the political scientist. “However in case you truly tried to say it to most New Zealanders, they’ll ask you, ‘What are you on?’”
