Future Generations Commissioner for Wales

So that principle of asking Kiwis, where's the common ground? Where's our collective goals for the country? There's a good learning from Wales, and I'm glad they've picked up on that.

Yeah, I should say I spoke to Sophie Howe, who was, I think, the first Future Generations Commissioner on the show a few years ago from Wales.

Can I ask, though, Gareth... will it eventually come down to politics? Because people have different values and people who have different views about what is in the interests of future generations.

I might think that it's great to have world-class infrastructure, even if it leaves future generations with a lot of debt to pay down.

They've got a 500-year strategy, an iwi-owned entity.

You know, maybe there's a sense of we're doing it already.

Was there anything you spotted in Wales that wouldn't have happened if they didn't have a future generations commissioner? That's a bit of a double negative.

That has happened because they have a commissioner?

All right, Trish.

Opportunity's announcement over the weekend was the Future Generations Commissioner.

Yes or no from you?

It's an absolute no for me.

And it's like, you know, let's take the politics out of politics.

It will all be much better.

So this idea of the future generations commissioner, it was taken from the Welsh government, the Labour government in Wales who did it.

Now, what Kule's not quite honest about is, first of all, well, she did actually say the example she gave.

We had a discussion about Now, you know, children's commissioners, and you told me they were terrible things and we needed to get rid of all these commissioners.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a commissioner being proposed by the Opportunity Party, a future generations commissioner, that you might be in favour from.

And I want you to justify yourself.

Well, I was always, as I've told you before, a great fan of Hugh Templeton.

And so we've had a whole lot of sort of boutique

commissions for the future.

And so it just seems to me that the opportunity party is, I thought were very clever in making that announcement yesterday about a future generations commissioner.

People on, and it's got to be bipartisan, with political involvement, not just the great and good who are made commissioners, who take a 50-year to 100-year look at some long-term issues.

This morning, their final policy of the campaign is being released.

The party wants to introduce a new Future Generations Commissioner.

Kule Wong, tēnā koe.

Good morning.

Tēnā koe.

What is a Future Generations Commissioner?

It is someone who advocates for the voice of future generations.

I think we all recognise that politics has become very short-termist and we are seeing the effects of that in our health system, in our infrastructure debt, because we're not taking a long-term view on these issues.

And also quite a good example of what I was writing about in my paper on the command capitalist economy, which to summarize very briefly, I argue that politicians are deliberately straightjacketing themselves and straightjacketing future governments with airy-fairy, quite vaguely worded aspirations, but making them legally binding.

So this lady who is over in Wales, she was a labor counselor and then a police and crime commissioner, and then she became the world's first future generations commissioner, which meant that she would get to put her input and give her opinions about virtually anything that happened in Wales, particularly in terms of development and building things and doing things.

But there is, it turns out to be a law in Wales called the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, which is exactly the kind of thing I was writing about.

So it has seven pillars and it must ensure legally that anything the Welsh government does has to bear the following in mind.

And the Welsh government probably is not that keen on building roads anyway.

But even if you had a government that was more inclined to do it, you've got these fairly pointless bureaucrats getting in the way all the time.

So I think it's rare to see somebody who personifies national decline quite so explicitly, and is so proud of it, as Sophie Howe, the former, she's now quit, the former Future Generations Commissioner of Wales.

Thoughts?

They often say that they think seven generations ahead, and that's what Kai Tiaki Taonga is all about.

Um- Presumably there's support in terms of embedding Te Tiriti through a Future Generations Commission?

Yeah, for sure.

I guess, yeah, we kind of are guided by the same values that are in Te Ao Māori, you know, such as kaitiakitanga and so forth.