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Hot Topic EARNINGS
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Think-tank gives NZ a 'C' report with a B- for effort

New Zealand has been given a C score in its first report card by the New Zealand Institute, and even in areas where the country performs well it falls short of an A.New Zealand had high potential, with material, environmental and cultural wealth and world

NZPA
Wed, 31 Mar 2010

New Zealand has been given a C score in its first report card by the New Zealand Institute, and even in areas where the country performs well it falls short of an A.

New Zealand had high potential, with material, environmental and cultural wealth and world-class institutions, NZ Institute director Rick Boven said.

The country was among the top-10 OECD countries in life expectancy, educational achievement, and agriculture and forestry land per capita, but failed to excel.

"Performance on life expectancy and educational achievement is very good but New Zealand has some disadvantaged segments within the population that suffer significantly worse results," Dr Boven said.

"And agriculture and forestry land per capita is very strong, but it has been declining quite quickly."

The institute gave New Zealand a D for seven of the 16 measures: innovation and business sophistication; labour productivity; household wealth; inequality; assault mortality; and for two environmental measures.

The NZahead report card into the country's social, economic and evironmental wellbeing differs from the government's National Report Card last year, which focuses on actions the government is taking to improve outcomes.

NZahead reported outcomes, the results of actions by the government and others.

The country received an average overall score of C, although it was given a B- for effort.

Efforts were under way to improve outcomes for almost all the measures, but in some cases improvements were slower than in other countries.

"The hard fact is that New Zealand has limited resources to address many important issues," Dr Boven said.

"Success is more likely if people have shared goals, and they are motivated to improve outcomes. We hope NZahead will be a useful way to focus debate about priorities, strategies and results."

Several things had also become apparent, Dr Boven said:

• despite improvements on average in some social measures, New Zealand's disadvantaged were not doing well relative to the disadvantaged in other OECD countries;

• relatively poor performance for innovation, labour productivity, GDP per capita and wealth indicated a need for better economic performance;

• New Zealand's environmental assets were being eroded, part of a global pattern.

Serious effort was going into improving labour productivity, innovation and suicide prevention. More effort was needed to improve inequality, assault mortality and water quality, Dr Boven said.

The institute is a think-tank, funded by its business members.

NZPA
Wed, 31 Mar 2010
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Think-tank gives NZ a 'C' report with a B- for effort
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