As New Zealand heads toward another general election, political attention is naturally focused on the issues touching people’s lives right now.

The months ahead are sure to bring more pledged policies to ease the country’s cost of living crisis, housing unaffordability, high unemployment and health system pressures.

With so many families struggling to make ends meet, that’s hardly surprising. But focusing on today’s challenges risks ignoring, if not worsening, those of tomorrow.

Many of New Zealand’s “long problems” – including the economic and social implications of an ageing population, a changing climate and transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence – are fast coming to bear.

Others – such as an ongoing biodiversity crisis, infrastructure and housing shortages and low productivity – have long loomed in the background but increasingly also require durable and effective policy responses.

None of these problems can be solved quickly or easily. Meaningful progress requires policymakers to look beyond the next three-year parliamentary term and the short-term incentives of the electoral cycle.

Why promises are easier than persistence

Encouragingly, some campaign policies already announced do stand to address long problems. Understandably, the specific problems highlighted and the preferred solutions reflect the political philosophies of the respective........

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