16 June 2016
GDP doesn’t show the story of National’s New Zealand
Today’s GDP numbers fail to capture the increasing numbers of families sleeping in cars and declining water quality in
our rivers and lakes, the Green Party said today.
Gross domestic product (GDP) statistics released today by Statistics New Zealand show that the economy grew by 0.7
percent in the March 2016 quarter, but only grew 0.1 percent when population increases were accounted for.
“Once increasing population pressures are factored in, the economy grew by just 0.1 percent this quarter,” said Green
Party Co-leader James Shaw.
“GDP as a measure isn’t capturing the other side of National’s economy: increasing numbers of people sleeping in cars
and increasing amounts of carbon pollution pouring into our atmosphere.
“After eight years, National has failed to spread the benefits of economic growth fairly and decouple growth from
destructive climate change.
“GDP is a bad measure of material well-being. GDP fails to measure the ongoing damage we are doing to our natural
environment and our stocks of natural capital.
“We need new ways to measure New Zealand’s economic success to complement GDP.
“The Government has had eight years to develop alternative measures of economic progress yet has failed in this area
completely.
“The results would show declines in the quality of many people’s lives, declines in their real income relative to the
well-off, and declines in the state of our rivers and climate.
“The Greens would implement a dashboard of economic measures to complement GDP and capture more accurately the changes
to our human and environmental welfare,” said Mr Shaw.
ends