EXPLAINER: From Welfare to Education: The Latest List to Get NZ ‘Back on Track’

National leader Christopher Luxon arrives at Shed 10 after winning the general election in Auckland, New Zealand on Oct. 14, 2023. Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is keen on lists. Newly elected, he set out an agenda of 49 reforms for the first 100 days of his government.

He achieved most of them, not least because the Coalition has passed more laws under urgency than any MMP government before it. Many of the 49 promises were to repeal legislation put in place by Labour, meaning it is a relatively quick process requiring little, if any, parliamentary debate.

On April 2, he produced another list, covering priorities for the next three months. They include tax cuts, paid for by deep cuts to the public service.

Then on April 8, another—this time just nine “targets” aimed at “getting New Zealand back on track.” The government has given itself a longer run-up to achieve these objectives: they’re all to be completed by 2030.

1. Shorter Stays in Emergency Departments

The aim is to have 95 percent of patients admitted, discharged, or transferred from an emergency department within six hours.

There is, however, no target for how long patients have to wait to be seen. Less than six hours, presumably.

The Labour government set a target of six hours for that metric, but then stopped publishing results. In 2023 it was reported that at a busy hospital in Auckland, 36 percent of patients had not managed seen a doctor after six hours, let alone been admitted or sent home.

2. Shorter Wait Times for Elective Treatment

The goal is to have 95 percent of people wait less than four months for elective treatment.

Again, Labour also set a target, of four months. After five years in office, there were 30,000 people waiting longer than four months for their planned surgery at the end of October 2022.

3. Reduced Child and Youth Offending

The government is aiming for a 15 percent reduction in the total number of children and young people with serious and persistent offending behaviour.

According to the Ministry for Social Development, an estimated one in 20 New Zealand children are known to the police for offending before reaching 14 years of age.

Boys are twice as likely as girls to offend. Māori children are approximately three times more likely than non-Māori children to become known to the police as an offender by age 14.

However, it’s already trending downwards (pdf). Between 2011/12 and 2021/22 the overall offending rates for children and young people decreased by 63 percent and 64 percent respectively.

Nonetheless, in a bid to further tackle the issue, the government has decided to introduce military-style “boot camps.”

4. Reduced Violent Crime

The aim is to reduce the number people who are victims of an assault, robbery, or sexual assault by 20,000.

The Ministry of Justice says that in 2023 there were 15,072 people with “finalised charges” for serious offences (9 percent more than in 2022, 1 percent fewer than in 2018). The majority (62 percent) of those people were convicted.

The ministry says serious offences include homicide, sexual violation, and burglary, while violent offences are “homicide, sexual violation, and assault.”

Last year, there were 32,631 finalised charges for violent offences (eight percent more than in 2022, three percent more than in 2018).

Confusingly, “not all violent offences are serious offences, for example common assault is not included as a serious offence.”

That makes it difficult to judge how much work needs to go into achieving the target, especially as some victims don’t report having been offended against. It also raises the question of what the government will measure to report on progress.

5. Fewer People on the Jobseeker Support Benefit

The aim is 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support Benefit.

At the end of June 2023, 173,130 people were receiving Jobseeker Support. Achieving this target would be reduce the number of people on social welfare by 28.9 percent.

Unemployment is currently running at 4 percent, and online job advertising fell by 6.3 percent in the December 2023 quarter.

6. Increased Student Attendance

The target is for 80 percent of students to be present in class for more than 90 percent of the term.

In term three of 2023, only 45.9 percent of students met the criteria for regular attendance at schools.

The Ministry of Education says the main driver of absence was “short term illness/medical reasons (with contributing factors including COVID-19 in the community and winter illnesses).”

ACT Party Leader David Seymour recently said parents should send sick children to school, something even conservative talk radio hosts thought wasn’t a good idea.

7. More Students at Expected Curriculum Levels

The government wants 80 percent of Year 8 students to be at or above the expected curriculum level for their age in reading, writing, and maths.

Currently, almost 60 percent of New Zealand Year 8 students are not achieving at curriculum level for maths, while students at low decile schools have fallen 2.5 years behind their high decile peers.

8. Fewer People in Emergency Housing

The aim is a 75 percent reduction of households in emergency housing.

In the five years, from 2018 to 2022, the Ministry of Social Development spent $1.48 billion (US$894 million) on emergency housing grants—jumping from $52.4 million in 2018 to a peak of $374.2 million in 2022.

Just under 3,000 households are in emergency accommodation nationwide, but there are currently 25,000 families on the waiting list for social housing, suggesting they’re living in sub-optimal conditions.

9. Reduced Net Greenhouse Gas Emissions:

New Zealand is on track to meet the 2050 net zero climate change targets, with total net emissions of no more than 290 megatonnes from 2022 to 2025 and 305 megatonnes from 2026 to 2030.

According to the International Energy Authority, that’s going to mean much greater reliance on renewables—something the government has yet to make a significant move on.

Challenge to Achieve

Mr. Luxon admits the targets set out would not be easy to achieve.

“But we’re not here to do what is easy—we’re here to do what is needed to reduce crime, shorten healthcare wait times and improve educational achievement, no matter how difficult,” he said.

“We know that spending more money will not in itself deliver better results. Despite significant increases in spending under the previous government, New Zealanders got worse results from their public services.

“We are taking a different approach. Setting targets will put a focus on delivery in the public sector where there wasn’t before. They will also drive greater value for taxpayer money.”

It’s likely that more detail on policy settings to achieve these goals will emerge when Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers her first Budget on May 30, though it seems the public sector will be expected to make a lot of the decisions itself, while the government checks its list.

“The targets are deliberately ambitious—they will be challenging and require the public sector to think differently, dig deeply into root causes, learn from other places, and be innovative and disciplined in directing resources to where they will have the greatest impact on outcomes,” Mr. Luxon warned.