By Bernard Hickey
John F Kennedy's famous words about America's quest to be the first to the moon before the end of the 1960s were invoked at least once this week by New Zealand politicians talking about a 'big hairy stretch target.'
It's worth reprinting the President's entire quote to get a sense of the power of his speech and why it had such a galvanising effect.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too," he said on September 12, 1962 at Rice University football stadium in Houston.
"To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money," he said, noting NASA's budget had tripled in one year to US$5.4 billion or 50 cents per week for every American citizen. This was almost 1% of US GDP at the time and the space programme went on to cost US$34 billion or 0.5% of GDP through the entire decade of the 1960s.
That didn't deter Kennedy though, and his final sales pitch was aspirational as well as inspirational.
"But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun - almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out - then we must be bold."
There was an element of that crazy bold ambition in this week's announcement by the Government that it was committing to achieving a rat, stoat and possum free New Zealand by 2050, and would have to invent new technologies that don't even exist yet to do it.
But that's where the boldness ended. Prime Minister John Key and Conservation Minister Maggie Barry committed to spend NZ$7 million a year for four years (or 0.003 % of GDP) to do it, and only if philanthropists stumped up another NZ$14 million.
Barry cited Sir Paul Callaghan's vision of a Predator-free New Zealand in the announcement.
"This is the big hairy stretch goal that he called his Apollo mission," Barry said at Zealandia on Monday.
Removing all predators by 2050 is of course a laudable target, but it pales in comparison to the Apollo programme when it comes to true cost and commitment, or impact for that matter.
So what would be a real 'moon shot' for New Zealand?
Strangely, the best suggestion came this week from the faceless collection of town planners, environment lawyers and an Environment Court judge on the Independent Hearings Panel for the Auckland Unitary Plan
They proposed a truly ambitious set of zoning rules that would allow the building of 422,000 new houses in an expanded Auckland - both up and out - by 2040. In particular, they pointed out there was already a shortage of 40,000 homes and an extra 131,000 houses needed to be built in the next seven years to whittle that away and keep up with population growth.
To put that in context, that is over 18,000 houses a year or more than double what was built in Auckland over the last year. On the face of it, it seems an impossible target at a time when skill shortages abound and the political and financial obstacles are apparently enormous. Anyone who has tried to employ a builder or tradie in Auckland in recent months or order up a truck of concrete would wince and shrug at the thought.
Building those houses would cost at least NZ$65 billion and require an unprecedented level of cooperation between central Government, which has to pay for the schools and hospitals and motorways to enable such growth, and the Auckland Council, which has to approve the zonings and pay for the pipes and local road and public transport.
On the face of it, such a 'moon shot' seems an astronomically unattainable target for a nation, yet it would make an enormous difference for everyone up and down the country. New Zealand needs Auckland to grow in a fast and sustainable way that doesn't inflate housing costs and doesn't hold the currency and the export sector hostage, as is happening right now. Future generations need the affordable, healthy and stable homes that build productive and happy communities, which we certainly don't have for a substantial chunk of the population right now.
New Zealand politicians often steer clear of the 'big hairy target' because they are risky and open up the targeters to attack. Green Co-Leader Metiria Turei took a big risk this week when she said New Zealand should target a house price to income multiple of three to four, which would imply a near-halving of house prices if it were to happen overnight without any wage increases. Labour Leader Andrew Little was the first to criticise such a hairy target as "irresponsible." Mr Key said Turei wanted to "destroy the savings of New Zealanders."
Ms Turei was actually just adopting the stance already expressed by a couple of very conventional economic thinkers in Don Brash and Arthur Grimes, and which the Auckland Council has talked about in its strategy for a multiple of five times income by 2030.
The best way to start to get there would be to adopt the biggest and hairiest and most meaningful moon shot in our history - committing to building those 131,000 houses in seven years.
A version of this article was published in the Herald on Sunday. It is here with permission.
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