NZ needs a cultural reset as much as a political one

Saturday, 21 February 2026

Guess where? A Kiwi high street, displaying what Josie Pagani describes as our national cultural style.

Josie Pagani is a commentator on current affairs and a regular opinion contributor. She works in geopolitics, aid and development, and governance.

OPINION: On a radio slot the other day I was asked what New Zealand’s national dish is.

Pies and chips? Cheese so bland they have to stick bits of fruit in it to convince shoppers it’s fancy? White bread sandwiches stuffed with grated rubber and carrot?

Nah. We all know that authentic Kiwi kai is spag bol, KFC and nachos.

Then I got to asking myself, what is our national architecture? Grey boxes.

In our main streets our national style is ugly cheap advertising signage cluttered with phone numbers that no one, in the history of advertising, has ever rung.

Imagine any situation - having a feed, driving a car, greeting friends. Picture a stereotypical Aussie, Frenchman, American or Italian. Their art, what they would wear and eat, how they would behave. Do you think we have an identity as distinctive?

Josie Pagani on stage at last week’s economic forum at Waikato University.

I did think so when I came back to a New Zealand after it had been through cultural and economic upheavals in the 1980s. There was a sense of vibrant ideas being thrashed out in media, politics and culture. A Maori renaissance was underway.

I was reminded of the thrill of a contest of ideas last week at Waikato University’s economic forum, our very own “Davos with Jandals”. There I was up on the stage looking at the gathered political and business leaders, academics and media, and thinking that in any other country this gathering would be one private jet away from dinner with Jeffery Epstein.

The annual economic forum is one of the few places where you can see a roiling conversation about ideas and the tough choices we have to make.

There was a healthy tension between calls for bipartisan agreements to solve big problems, like a 30-year infrastructure plan, versus a feisty contest of ideas. Certainty or risky change.

We have bent too far towards safety, too much caution about risk. The problem might be culture, not politics. We culturally choose safe, bland options.

Three times in the past 25 years we voted for considerable change: The Clark, Key and Ardern governments. Clark delivered change, until the country was exhausted by it. The following governments did not, not the way people hoped.

John Key in 2011 - his skill was being able to speak frankly to the downsides as well as benefits of decisions, so that people who disagreed still felt heard, writes Josie Pagani.

The current Government is trying to, but struggles to express its ambition in a context of trade-offs and values, instead mostly positioning itself against the previous government.

Compare John Key’s skill: he constantly took the country into his confidence over trade-offs. He was able to sell a tax switch that wasn’t popular, increasing GST, by speaking frankly to downsides as well as benefits. People who disagreed felt heard because he simply described the problem.

That works for decisions that can be sorted in a year, but one of the themes from Waikato is that many of our largest problems are more long-term than that.

Decades of low productivity mean we work hard for comparatively low incomes compared to other developed countries.

We have a massive bill coming down the track in the form of retirement incomes. Treasury has said we need to raise the retirement age to 72 unless we earn more or spend less.

Our education system has not prepared our kids well enough. Māori and Pacific students are less likely to achieve key secondary qualifications than their Pakeha class mates. All of them are behind where they would be if those same kids were studying in the best educating countries.

We are so poor at dealing with long-term problems there is shit literally being emptied into the Cook Strait.

I don’t think our politics is short of the ability to recognise we have problems.

It comes up short at pushing through solutions.

ACT started their year by calling for a cut to the bureaucracy to make government work better. They’re stuck in an old debate in which the right promises cuts and the left campaigns to keep the status quo.

The problem is the way our ideas machinery works.

Ministers are presented with reports that offer vague, high-level options, or change so complex that governments stick with the status quo because it is easier.

We have destroyed specialist sector expertise in our government bureaucracy, with a cult of management.

We ask too much of political parties to expect them to have all the answers.

What we need is a culture of ideas. That begins with a lot more institutions like the Waikato forum. Beefed up select committees, government commissions that do not need ministerial approval to propose new ideas, universities that connect to the policy process.

In this election, people will vote for the risk-takers who tell it like it is, and come up with solutions they can deliver. Anyone who tries to fudge reality will end up a spatchcocked wreck of a candidate in these irritable times.

As the British pollster Michael Ashcroft once wrote: “If an election is an exam, voters will set the question; parties that choose to answer a different question will be marked accordingly.”