New Zealand to host int'l conference on wellbeing: FinMin

Source: Xinhua| 2018-02-01 22:24:19|Editor: Jiaxin

Video PlayerClose

WELLINGTON, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- A conference bringing international experts on wellbeing to New Zealand will provide valuable insights for policies to raise the living standards of all Kiwis, and help promote New Zealand as a world-leading proponent of wellbeing research, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said on Thursday.

The Third International Conference on Wellbeing and Public Policy will be held in Wellington on Sept. 5-7. The conference will bring together world-leading scholars and organizations to share the latest developments in their work on wellbeing and its application to public policy, Robertson said, adding the conference is held by the Treasury, in partnership with the Victoria University of Wellington and the International Journal of Wellbeing.

The New Zealand government is committed to pursuing "productive, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth that improves the wellbeing and living standards of all New Zealanders," Robertson said.

"The government is currently developing a comprehensive set of wellbeing measures, against which our progress in lifting living standards for all New Zealanders will be tracked and assessed," he said, adding that while economic measures like GDP are still important, "we will move beyond using narrow tools for measuring success which often hide growing inequality and lead to generational inequity."

It is the government's intention to report against a wider set of wellbeing indicators in future budgets, in line with the Confidence and Supply Agreement with New Zealand's Green Party, which will allow for a rounded measure of policy success in developing capitals including financial and physical, human, social and natural capital, rather than just GDP, the minister said.

The hosting of the conference is part of these efforts to draw world-leading organizations and thinkers working on this topic to New Zealand to share their research, Robertson said.

The International Conference on Wellbeing and Public Policy series was launched in Wellington in 2012. In 2014, the second conference was held in New York.