Our recommendations

We encourage the Treasury to consider the overall purpose and place of the long-term fiscal statement and long-term insights briefing within the public financial management system.

We recommend that the Treasury:

1. review its current process for preparing long-term fiscal statements and long-term insights briefings to identify future improvements, including:
   • whether to continue to integrate the two documents;
   • how it can more effectively incorporate public feedback into their preparation; and
   • how these documents will support and connect to the long-term insights briefings of other departments;
2. continue to develop its modelling approaches and projections:
   • to test their sensitivity and reliability, and ensure that the two models’ assumptions and projections align with other elements of the public financial management system; and
   • better reflect the impact of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund assets in the calculation of net debt;
3. consider a wider and more integrated range of scenarios that could take place in different time periods within the 40-year horizon to provide more realism and relevance; and
4. broaden the measurement and analysis of financial sustainability and consider in more depth how it relates to other dimensions of well-being.