Q+A: Grant Robertson interviewed by Corin Dann

Finance Minister Grant Robertson on his first “Well-being Budget” to be released in 2019

Corin Dann: What would you do to help someone who is lonely and isolated? What can a government do to help improve, to ensure that they’ve got friends?

Grant Robertson: Well, it’s not about ensuring that they’ve got friends. It’s about ensuring that they’re connected to their communities. And there will be a range of policy responses all the way from
supporting, you know, programmes like, you know, SeniorNet, where we support people to learn about how to use the internet, all the way through to programmes where we get mentoring
relationships for apprentices with retired workers. There’s all sorts of ideas that could be brought up there. It’s not about saying the government’s going to make you not lonely. It’s about recognising
that an issue like loneliness detracts from our wellbeing, from our strength as a community.

Grant Robertson: What I do know is that where people do feel connected, where their own personal sense of life satisfaction is good, then that will improve their wellbeing. I’m not making a claim, Corin, that the government will be able to control someone’s wellbeing as such. By putting it, though, as our purpose, we’re actually getting a much better set of indicators of our overall success as a country. When people are surveyed, they do say the things that give them happiness are around family. It is around being connected to each other, and, sure, it’s also around their standard of living and the wages and the jobs they have. So we’re not dispensing with any of those core elements. We’re just saying if we’re going to truly value what it means to be a successful country, then it can’t just be GDP.

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