Panel-style discussion among New Zealand political figures about preparing for a challenging future. James Shaw emphasises radical climate change over coming decades, the need to choose how much worse we make it, and the importance of civic duty and community preparedness for disasters and possible migration pressures. Christopher Luxon frames leadership as building prosperity for future generations via education, infrastructure, R&D, pro-business policy, and social cohesion; David Seymour makes brief interjections about community and government roles.
Chapters
What can you do as a leader.
At Parliament to help protect Finn's future and all the other young Kiwis?
Well, I think. I think.
Finn is going to grow up in a world that is radically different from the one that we have today.
The choice that we've got, I think, is how different and in what ways? So, obviously, the world that we live in today is very different from when I was 7 years old in 1980.
And, you know, if you project forward another kind of 43 years, it'll be. It'll be very different again.
The climate will be different.
Which means that weather patterns will be very, very different.
We have a choice about the extent to which we are continuing to make that worse and about how we've adapted to that change.
Now, when I think ahead to the future and.
A very challenging future in terms of climate change and potentially, and it might be in 30 years time might be in 50, it's time. Billion people having to move because it's too hot to live where they are. So that's that big swathe of Middle Earth, north and south, north and south. How are we going to deal with that? What can New Zealand offer in the way of living together? We're a small population in a big landmass. You know, you compare our landmass to, say, Japan or to the United Kingdom or to bits of Europe. How do we prepare? So. So for me, I think, until we get some, just even start the journey of what it means to be a citizen, what does civic duty look like? And of course, for a lot of people, it's like, oh, why should I do that? Or I can do my own thing. And it's like, yes, you can. But when you have a disaster, you can't contract out, you know, unless you've got pots of money and you can just get on a plane and fly out if you want to stay where you are, you're reliant on the people around you.
You.
You're reliant on your community, then you're reliant on your government structures and your disaster recovery. And I just think we have to start preparing our population.
In a different way.
What's it gonna look like? What would you like to see for our future Kiwis? Yeah, and that's exactly the motivation, because that's a big motivation for me to do it, because I think my job as Prime Minister is to fight for New Zealand, to make it a place of opportunity where our kids, our grandkids, actually say, this is a place I want to raise my family. This is the place I'm going to start a business and take a risk and make something happen. This is the place I want to give back to the community that I possibly can. And so for me that's the core purpose of what the Prime Minister and the leader of New Zealand is all about. That is what you've got to do is build it for future generations. So what do we want to see? We want to see a much more prosperous country and what do we have to do to do that? We've got to deliver a world class education system, invest in infrastructure, make sure that we have a really great R and D, science and technology. Ireland does that incredibly well and then make sure that we've got a pro business environment and we've got strong connections to the world. And that's been one of our fundamental challenges is how do we make this a more prosperous place. We're all working hard but how do we get our wages and our incomes going up? I think on the social side I'm a believer that having looked at centre right parties around the world that actually we want strong levels of social cohesion but we also want to be able to create the opportunities for people to be able to have. There's got to be an equality of opportunity in the country. I don't believe in an equality of outcome. I think if you work really hard you should have the rewards of that success. But I do think that 5 year olds in this country should be able to set off irrespective of their circumstances and have an equal shot at their version of the Kiwi dream, whatever that may be. What does it look like for future generations?
Well, I mean I look at places like New Zealand, I look at islands with nice beaches and nice climates and most of them, you know, just sort of turn into a nice place to visit but not a place you'd want to stay. So I'm talking Greece, I'm talking Fiji, Jamaica, Cuba. You know, basically there's something about a nice lifestyle where you can actually be quite happy without doing too much, at least for a while. And also being a bit isolated from the rest of the world so you can kind of go off course and delaminate from what's happening elsewhere that you would think would be New Zealand's long term trajectory to become another nice island paradise like Fiji, say. On the other hand, I think that we have a track record of keeping this dream alive. First world nation in an island paradise. We seem to have a unique blend. Some of the British institutions that we inherited, some of the nature of the people who had to make this big journey. That seems to be our core DNA that has allowed us to thrive and beat the odds and at times be one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, despite our isolation. So we can overcome the isolation, but that is the gravity that pulls us down.
