There are renewed calls for New Zealand to have an Independent Fiscal Institute (IFI) to scrutinise the financial fitness of political party policies.
More than 80 percent of OECD countries have such institutes to evaluate public finances and fiscal policies - providing less optimistic forecasts.
The Government at the time announced it would establish an IFI in 2018. However, those plans were hindered by the failure of political parties to agree, then-Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in 2021.
Prominent independent economist Cameron Bagrie has now renewed calls for the establishment of an IFI.
"This is an institution that we need to put back on the table. The reality is the era of what we call 'fiscal influence' and tough decisions - it's here," Bagrie told AM on Tuesday.
He also said the OECD evidence supporting an IFI was "very clear".
"You get an institution in place to keep a bit of an eye on the fiscal situation, you tend to see less optimistic forecasts; you tend to see lower deficits on average and you tend to see what's called less 'pro-cyclical policy' - so you tend to see a little bit less spraying around of the money."
He said setting up such an entity would help with "some pretty critical decisions" New Zealand will face in the coming decades.
Bagrie said that included the fiscal cost of the country's ageing population.
"We're now spending more on New Zealand Superannuation than what we're spending across the entire operation spend of the entire education budget and that gap between the two is going to get progressively wider over the next 10 to 20 years."
An IFI was first proposed by the New Zealand Initiative think tank in 2014. Such a watchdog, a Parliamentary Budget Office, has been in place in Australia since 2012.
In 2019, it was estimated an IFI would cost between $2 million and $3 million in an election year $1-2 million every other year.
