New Zealand's Wellbeing Outlook
The Labour Government is committed to achieving its policy goals using a wellbeing approach. This aims to improve New Zealanders' living standards by taking an intergenerational view to tackling long-term challenges. It also means looking beyond traditional measures of success, such as gross domestic product (GDP), and towards broader indicators of wellbeing.
The Treasury's Living Standards Framework recognises that human, environmental, social, and physical and financial capital needs to be developed and sustained in order to achieve wellbeing. A complementary framework is being developed to sit alongside, He Ara Waiora, which draws on a te ao Māori perspective. Each framework provides a distinct contribution to understanding New Zealand's wellbeing outlook.
These frameworks invite us to consider the distributional impacts of policies on different groups and the environment. This is achieved by working in the spirit of kotahitanga (unity) with those most affected by policy changes, and by considering the intergenerational impacts of the choices we make to support our tiakitanga (stewardship) and mana whanake (intergenerational prosperity).