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by Jeff Hylton - Queenstown resident

Much recent talk on our flatlining economy starts and ends with a lack of productivity. New Zealand is one of the worst performers in the world.

Recent travels have confirmed this. In London, I witnessed construction big and small taking place all smoothly and continuously without cones and definitely no stop / go signs anywhere. Maybe one yellow-coated worker standing nearby to alert a distracted pedestrian.

In the USA, I saw a guy changing a lightbulb in a busy entrance way, by climbing up a big step ladder, with another guy holding the ladder. Job time 15 mins. In Japan, I witnessed icicles being removed from an eave by a couple of fellas whilst another watched for pedestrians. Job time 30 minutes.

In NZ? We would require a permit to occupy footpaths, a traffic plan, cones (of course), a stop -go person, assorted signs and barriers, and health and safety wouldn’t allow use of the ladder, so a scissor lift or scaffolding would be needed, with more cones. Job time 4 to 6 hours, plus travel, extra men and consents.

NZ has become almost unbearably over regulated and so expensive because of an overzealous government decision to control our every move, deciding for us that we have no common sense.

We cannot build homes or infrastructure to cater for our current population, let alone growth. To be productive in the trades the basic principle is to do the job correctly, efficiently and cost effectively. Bricks aren’t getting laid if the bricklayer isn’t laying them. A painter who isn’t applying paint is not actually working. It’s just insane the extra cost and unproductive time and money wasting that goes on here.

Here’s an example, a few months ago I saw a guy doing a good job, working hard, pride in his work, putting a simple little post and rail fence along the side of Butler Green in Arrowtown. Good, I thought, my rates dollars being well spent. Then I noticed a red truck over in the carpark by Bush Creek. The driver was glued to a cell phone. Traffic Safety. Surely these two are not connected. The fencing guy isn’t even working on the road. Unfortunately, they were. Why?

Nothing added, no purpose, just cost and some young guy being paid to sit in his bosses truck all day scrolling his social life. Not only does this piss me off, it does two things worse than my displeasure. The young guy thinks this is work and will be horrified when he must do some real work one day. The older guy out there doing the real work thinks he should charge more as he will know what we all know, the traffic safety costs would have been more than the whole fence, materials and labour. New Zealand has a long way to go.