Mediawatch - A business lobby group is urging New Zealand to emulate Ireland, which has a GDP twice as big as ours - but is the GDP picture warped?

The incoming government wants to grow the economy and attract more foreign investment.

A leading business lobby group is urging us to emulate Ireland, which had a GDP the same size as ours 30 years ago, but now has a GDP twice as big. The statistics are sobering, but is that the full picture?

One of the areas where there may have to be compromises between the parties forming a new government is economic policy.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters' views on the economy, international trade and foreign investment "pre-date Rogernomics, in that he has staunchly opposed the neo-liberal views held sacred by the Thatcherite ideologues within the business community, the Luxon-led National Party and the Act Party", columnist Gordon Campbell wrote at Scoop.co.nz.

On his site Politik, veteran political journalist Richard Harman said National would "have to tread between two very different views of how to grow New Zealand's economy".

He pointed to a freshly-published report from The NZ Initiative (NZI) think-tank called Irish Secrets - An Irish lesson in prosperity.

Harman said one set of figures stood out in the report: In 1990, New Zealand GDP per head was just under $US15,000 - slightly ahead of Ireland's. By last year, Ireland's had jumped to $US127,000, but ours was only $US52,000.

The Irish Secrets report followed a week-long tour of Ireland by three dozen businesspeople in June.

"The Emerald Isle leapt forward, leaving the Land of the Long White Cloud in its wake. Ireland now sits just below the US at sixth while New Zealand languishes at 20th," NZ Initiative chair Roger Partridge wrote in the New Zealand Herald on their return, about what he called "prosperity's most meaningful measure" - GDP per capita.

After the Ireland visit in July, NZI executive director Oliver Hartwich made the post-1990 GDP comparison in an interview with Reality Check Radio.

"Ireland has commonsense and we have ideology," he said.

NZI published a more detailed report - Benchmarking New Zealand's Economic Performance Against Ireland's - in August.

This report said Ireland's GDP per capita in 2020 was far higher than any other OECD member country, except Luxembourg, because "Ireland has attracted so much overseas investment that a significant proportion of what it produces at home belongs to overseas investors." …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details