Today our report Commentary on He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021 was presented to the House of Representatives.

He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021 combines the Treasury’s latest long-term fiscal statement and its first long-term insights briefing into one. These documents are part of a suite of the Treasury’s reporting obligations designed to provide information about the government’s current and projected financial position, the country’s economic outlook, and the well-being of New Zealanders.

These documents are important for the long-term future of New Zealand, and they should matter. Recent events have reinforced the challenges of anticipating and planning for the future. However, long-term planning has never been more important.

We reviewed He Tirohanga Mokopuna 2021 to look at how well it had identified long-term insights about challenges and opportunities and integrated them into a view of the Government’s long-term financial position. We wanted to understand whether it would be useful to assist the Government to make good financial decisions and increase the quality and depth of public information.

The Treasury’s decision to combine the long-term fiscal statement and its first long-term insights briefing provided an opportunity to analyse long-term trends, understand the financial implications and present a range of policy options to address them. The Treasury also did considerable work to prepare two projection models that support analysis of the long-term financial implications of potential natural disasters, economic shocks, and certain challenges arising from climate change.

However, the Treasury’s decision to combine the two documents reduced the time it had available to prepare the long-term insights briefing. Although it made efforts to consult widely, many of the issues raised in consultation could not be fully explored. In addition, some of the models’ underlying assumptions and the limited number of scenarios that they incorporate still constrain the usefulness of the projections.

Although the statement and briefing have potential, they need improvements to be more meaningful. We strongly encourage the Treasury to consider the overall purpose of both the long-term fiscal statement and the long-term insights briefing within the public financial management system.

Our report contains some observations about how these documents could be improved in the future to improve the quality of information and analysis they contain.

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