In October 2025, Treasury released its Long-Term Fiscal Statements.
A month later Longevity and the public purse: Fiscal and economic impacts of increasing longevity, was released by Treasury chair Dominick Stephens .
Long-term fiscal future, is always a difficult exercise because long term projections are near worthless, they do not take into account, political decisions or events that follow day by day, week by week, year by year after the date of release.
*Unfortunately, such projections are seized upon by many media, treated as gospel, and become the vehicle for crisis rhetoric.
Both of the above, in my view were substandard pieces of work, and I responded in detail to Dominick’s comments on NZ Superannuation.
I was pleased to see economist Susan St Johns scathing assessment of the approach taken to the Long term Fiscal Statements, and her comments are shown below