Författare: Alexander Gillespie Professor of Law University of Waikato

If it’s good enough for school and university students, it’s good enough for entire countries, too.

This report card provides a snapshot of how New Zealand fared across a wide range of international measures – where it did well, and where there’s room for improvement.

Of course, this isn’t definitive, and should be read with a degree of caution – measurements, metrics and numbers can only tell us so much. Nevertheless, it’s still possible to trace the nation’s ups and downs.

This has been a fractious year politically, and a challenging one financially for many New Zealanders. What follows might provide a wider perspective, spark debate, and even inspire some additional new year’s resolutions.

International pass marks

Civil liberty: global monitoring group Freedom House again gave New Zealand a near-perfect score of 99 out of 100 for political and civil liberties – second highest after Finland.

Corruption: Transparency International records another slip from second place last year to third place in 2024 for being relatively corruption-free.

Security: in the Global Peace Index, New Zealand maintained its fourth best place for safety and security, low domestic and international conflict, and degree of militarisation.

Gender equality: the Global Gender Gap index recorded New Zealand remained steady as the fourth most gender-equal country (although the gender pay gap is still significant at 8.2%).

Economic freedom: the Index for Economic Freedom, which covers everything from property rights to financial freedom, recorded New Zealand at sixth place, falling one position from last year.

Rule of law: we rose two places to be sixth in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index.

Happiness: New Zealanders are not quite as happy as they were, falling from 10th to 11th most-cheery nation in the World Happiness Report. Still good, but with a caveat: people aged over 60 were sixth happiest in the world, while those aged 30 and under we were only in 27th position.

Social progress: the Human Development Index saw New Zealand maintaining its 16th position for measurements including life expectancy and years spent in education.

Quality of urban life: the Economist’s Global Liveability Index has only one New Zealand city, Auckland, scraping into its top ten best cities.

Auckland made the top ten liveable cities list, but New Zealanders were a little less happy this year.
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Room for improvement

Press freedom: it was a terrible year for media companies, with closures and layoffs all year, and this is reflected in the Press Freedom Index showing another drop, down from 13th last year to 19th now.

Competitiveness and innovation: the country also continues to drop in the Global Competitiveness Report, now in 32nd position (an ongoing slide from 20th in 2021). But New Zealand did jump a couple of places in the Global Innovation index, to 25th position overall.

Environment: the Yale Environmental Performance Index continues to record a slow decline, with New Zealand falling from 19th in 2020 to 33rd now (based on data from 58 performance indicators for conservation and pollution).

Climate: on the largest environmental problem of all, the Climate Change Performance Index recorded a fall for New Zealand of seven places to rank 41st, remaining an overall “low performer”.

Foreign aid: the Aid Transparency Index says New Zealand’s foreign aid level is “good” but still dropped our ranking by four points to 30th position. This reflects a general decline in overseas development assistance, which is still less than half the recommended UN goal as a percentage of national income.

Terrorism: the official national terror threat level has remained “low”, defined as a terror attack being a “realistic possibility”. And the Global Terrorism Index ranked New Zealand 50th worst in the world (up slightly from 46th worst last year) – at lower risk than the United States and United Kingdom, but higher than both Australia and Canada.

Outward annual migration has hit an all-time high.
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Domestic ups and downs

Employment: unemployment is creeping up, with the latest quarterly figure at 4.8%, but this is still just beneath the OECD average.

Personal income: median weekly earnings from wages and salaries increased by NZ$70 (5.5%) to $1,343 in the year to June.

Inflation: the rate of inflation has more than halved since last year, now down to an annual rate of 2.2%. Relatedly, and good or bad news according to your perspective, the average house price is $902,231, down considerably from its peak at the turn of 2022.

Immigration and emigration: migration remains a high-speed merry-go-round, with a net migration gain to October 2024 of 53,800, based on 188,100 arrivals and 134,300 departures (the highest annual departure numbers on record).

Suicide: in the 2023–24 financial year, there were 617 suspected self-inflicted deaths, an age-adjusted rate of 11.2 per 100,000 people, minimally lower than the average rate over the past 15 years.

Prisons: incarceration rates are growing fast. As of the end of September, there were 9,924 people in full-time custody (up from a low of 7,500 in 2022).

Child poverty: figures from the beginning of the year show the percentage of children living in households with less than 50% of the median household income (before housing costs are taken into account) stable on 12.6%. But with housing costs included, it rose to 17.5% – up from 14.4% the previous year.

Housing: the stock of public housing continues to increase. As of October, there were 84,834 dwellings, an increase of 5,324 from July 2023.

Overall, while New Zealand remains a generally strong and steady performer, with a few areas of excellence, it is struggling in some key measures. The final verdict has to be the same as last year: a satisfactory to good effort, but considerable room for improvement. Läs mer…

Canada and New Zealand share an important approach to gun control: both countries view firearms as a privilege, not a right.

The similarities don’t end there, either. Both have strong and legitimate firearms-owning communities, and both have problems with self-harm and rapidly changing technologies.

They also face similar threats, including young people and violent extremism, and rising firearm violence in general. Both have a tragic history of mass shootings.

But both can learn from each other. Canada’s recent Mass Casualty Commission, which followed an armed rampage in Nova Scotia in 2020 that left 22 people dead, highlighted the dangers of ignoring warning signs of gender-based violence and the need for better community policing.

Similarly, New Zealand’s royal commission inquiry into the 2019 Christchurch terror attacks has lessons for Canada around the challenges of identity-based extremism.

With amendments to New Zealand’s firearms control laws before parliament now, here are five broad aspects of the Canadian experience New Zealand policymakers should consider.

A robust gun registry

One thing made clear to me from visits to multiple Canadian police agencies was the need for New Zealand’s gun registration system to rise above politics.

Registration of restricted firearms has been a long-standing practice in Canada. But following the horrific École Polytechnique massacre in 1989, when 14 women were killed, the registry was extended to include “long guns” (rifles and other non-pistol types).

But budget problems and debates about its merits saw the long-gun registry canned in 2012 – despite police agencies accessing records over 17,000 times a day.

The loss now makes it harder for police to assess risks when responding to calls, distinguish between legal and illegal firearms, trace the source of registered firearms found at crime scenes, and identify and return stolen and lost firearms to their owners.

The lesson for New Zealand, which is currently rebuilding a comprehensive firearms registry, is that a transparent and efficient registry is essential for the safety of the public and frontline police officers.

People mark the anniversary of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montréal.
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Mandatory reporting

The province of Quebec is unique not only for its language and culture, but for its approach to firearms regulation. It is also bucking wider trends, with a violent gun crime rate below other provinces.

Quebec has invested the equivalent of more than NZ$100 million in Operation Centaur, a dedicated initiative between law enforcement, community agencies and researchers, focused on reducing gun violence.

The province maintains its own comprehensive firearms register. But it also introduced legislation known as “Anastasia’s Law” after the death of 18-year-old Anastasia De Sousa in a shooting incident.

The law created gun-free zones, prohibiting them from all educational institutions and public transport.

Medical and other professionals concerned about the behaviour of someone with access to a firearm can report them to authorities without fear of repercussion. And, unlike in New Zealand, it became mandatory for health providers to report all firearms injuries to the authorities.

Finally, the law says anyone responsible for a shooting club or range “must immediately report to the police any behaviour of a member or user with a firearm that may compromise the safety of that person or another person”.

As New Zealand writes new laws around its gun ranges and clubs, Anastasia’s Law has particular relevance. The gunman responsible for De Sousa’s death was an active member of a gun club prior to the attack, as was the Christchurch terrorist before his attack.

Gang pathologies

Gang members are responsible for 23% of all firearms-related crime in New Zealand. Canada, too, has seen more firearms violence in public spaces linked to gangs, more projectiles being shot, and younger ages of gang members involved.

But the two countries are approaching the problem differently. New Zealand is pursuing a “big stick” policy, banning gang patches, dispersing gatherings of gang members in public places, and prohibiting firearms from being licenced to gang members.

Canada, however, has committed significant and dedicated funding to understanding and potentially breaking the links between gangs and guns.

A 2022 Canadian parliamentary report shows a focus on strong laws and stiff penalties for gun violence. But it also aims to establish evidential and systemic explanations for the problem and its cultural context, and to encourage greater cooperation between public safety agencies.

Within this, there is a strong emphasis on focused deterrence programmes to divert or exit young adults from gang life and violence before it’s too late.

Ghost guns: 3D-printed pistols are increasingly easy to make but hard to detect.
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‘Ghost gun’ regulation

So-called “ghost guns” are a looming crisis: privately and anonymously manufactured firearms, untraceable and often undetectable by security systems, including 3D-printed guns.

New Zealand has really only just begun to address the problem with new but somewhat generic laws governing “offences relating to illegal manufacturing of certain arms items”.

The Canadians have gone further, with recent changes to firearms law making it a crime to access or download manufacturing plans or graphics. Knowingly sharing or selling such data online for manufacturing or trafficking is also a crime, with penalties of up to ten years in prison.

The new rules also require licences to import or acquire parts and accessories that could be used to illegally manufacture firearms.

Limits on pistols

Canada has just introduced a national freeze on the sale, purchase and transfer of handguns. Also, as a general rule, the maximum magazine capacity for most handguns is ten cartridges.

The same applies in Australia, but New Zealand has neither a freeze on handguns nor maximum magazine capacity rules.

As the government rewrites firearms law, it can learn from its Commonwealth cousin’s experiences – both good and bad – to help craft robust rules that make everyone safer.

The author thanks Clementine Annabell for assisting with the research for this article. Läs mer…