If they're truly serious about this long term I guess a drastic shift away from the tourism industry which happens to be gigantic in New Zealand.
It's honestly difficult to see how this is sustainable.
It's honestly difficult to see how this is sustainable.
That's a large figure, but it's not as if New Zealand lacks any kind of other industry. There's a massive primary industries (dairy, meat, logging, wine, plus others) where the country hasn't yet fully exploited it's opportunities yet for secondary value-add processing.
As a completely anecdotal observation, most tourists go to the South Island, where roughly a fifth of the population lives. The North Island is four times as densely populated. This disparity sometimes leads people to believe that country is entirely dependant on tourism, with a few sheep thrown in.
[0] https://tia.org.nz/about-the-industry/quick-facts-and-figure...
It's a lot more nuanced than that, they're fluffy and warm on those cold winter nights
It's also 15% of employment though, which isn't surprising because there's a lot of low wage service work done in that sector, it employs a huge chunk of the population.
For reference, both in terms of GDP contribution and employment that is larger than the contribution of the entire automotive industry to Germany.
And being German and seeing how people are starting to get worried about the economy, I can't see this working long term politically.
If you tell people in the tourism industry they now need to become dairy farmers at the other end of the country I think you'll be surprised how quickly the country opens up again.
Maybe even tourists "from anywhere" could be allowed to visit if they just agree to isolate upon entry for N days first. Private hotels and resorts could offer isolation packages. For many tourists, travelling to New Zealand is already expensive so they usually come for longer because it's a once-in-a-lifetime trip... adding N days of isolation to the start of the trip might not be so bad, especially if there are good deals to be had.
For me, the biggest question is whether visitors will be able to get travel / health insurance to cover them in New Zealand. I suppose the New Zealand government could sell such insurance, or they could back a private insurer.
Or the NZ healthcare system could just cover visitors with the understanding that the benefit outweighs the cost?
But who knows, we could see a large upsurge in domestic tourism given our lack of foreign travel options - although that would require some pain in our tourism industry, as prices tend to be considered excessive by Kiwis.
That said, we have a strong software development scene, and I'd like to see that grow more.