Politicians of whatever stripe seem to want to associate themselves with “technology”. It was then British Labour Party leader – and Opposition leader – Harold Wilson who 57 years ago gave the speech where he talked of the new economy he looked to, referring to the “white heat of technology”. Perhaps it was the same in the 19th century too, but we certainly see and hear a lot about it in 21st century New Zealand. The economy continues to underperform, while same strange alliance of industry lobbyists and politicians want to talk up “technology” and so-called technology industries. I don’t think there is much difference between National and Labour on this one, but National is in Opposition, and yesterday Judith Collins was at it again.

As reported here, she wants to “double New Zealand’s technology sector in a decade, and specifically to double “New Zealand’s technology exports” to “$16 billion by 2030”, complete with talk of the sector being bigger than dairy 10-15 years hence.. Oh, and there was lots of money being flung around, and to top it all off National is promising a Minister for Technology. Presumably, that will be just one more title some other Minister would add to his or her list and – for better or worse – MBIE would carry on providing policy advice much as it does now.

Much of the political rhetoric in this area is fuelled by the annual TIN (“Technology Investment Network) report, a collaboration between MBIE and some private sector groups with an interest in talking up the sector. I took a sceptical look at this report in a post back in 2017. They seem to be the source of the idea that “technology exports” are currently around $8 billion per annum – the sort of line that led former minister in the current government, Clare Curran, to suggest a year or two back that technology was now our third largest export.

But the $8 billion (or thereabouts) is not a measure of exports from New Zealand – and certainly not in the sense that any serious economic analyst or national accounts statistician would recognise. Rather, it is the total foreign sales of the group of companies the TIN report put on their list. Exports, by contrast, are things produced the country concerned. ANZ is an Australian-owned and controlled bank, with significant operations in New Zealand. Last year its total revenue in New Zealand was about $7 billion, but no one thinks of that – or counts it as – an Australian export. But that is the sort of thing the TIN people lead people to do – TIN themselves tend to draft a little more carefully, but in ways that they know will lead people to talk of this revenue as somehow New Zealand exports. Last time I looked, for example, both Fisher and Paykel Appliances and Fisher and Paykel Healthcare were on the list. The former is not even New Zealand owned any more and both companies have substantial overseas operations – Healthcare, for example, does much of its manufacturing in Mexico, selling into the US. That makes it a successful New Zealand business, but those sales from Mexico to the US are Mexican exports not New Zealand ones.

It is difficult to get any sort of precise sense of the scale of (what one might reasonably think of us) “technology” exports from New Zealand, not least because technology is embedded, to a greater or less extent, in so much that is sold, whether locally or internationally.

But in my earlier post, I took a couple of proxies to try and get a sense of trends. I’ve updated some of those.

In the TIN report, for example, many of the companies are in “high-tech manufacturing”. But here is a “elaborately transformed manufactures” have done as a share of New Zealand merchandise exports.

And from services exports I worked out the share of the total made up of

Services; Exports; Charges for the use of intellectual property nei

Services; Exports; Telecommunications, computer, and information services

Services; Exports; Other business services

Services; Exports; Personal, cultural, and recreational services

The latter because the largest component of it appears to be film and TV exports (Weta workshops, Peter Jackson etc). “Other business services” is going to be quite a grab-bag, but it does include (for example) research and development services.

Here is how those services have done as a share of total services exports

That series seemed to be doing quite well for a while, but unfortunately the last few years have not been very impressive and the latest observations are lower than those for, say, 2009. (Of course, there was a surge in education and tourism exports for a while, boosting the denominator.)

So what if we combine these two series and look at them as a share of New Zealand’s GDP?

Perhaps I’m missing some important series. But I went looking and I couldn’t spot anything obvious. Perhaps you are thinking of Xero for example, but wherever any of its export revenues from New Zealand might have been, the category of services of exports that mentions “accounting services” has shrunk hugely in real terms over the last 15-20 years. I’m sure there must be some other items some would reasonably label “technology exports” but if they were game-changing they should be easy enough to find.

We can all name various individual successful technology-based companies founded by New Zealanders. Some are even still owned, controlled, and/or based in New Zealand. And there is plenty of technology embedded in many of other exports – including dairy, the one they all seem to hope to rival.

But the overall picture really isn’t very encouraging at all. That is most unlikely to be “fixed” by flinging more scarce public money at the industry, or more visas. And we can be pretty confident that appointing a Minister of Technology would make no difference at all. In fact, if we keep on with the economic policies with run for the last 20 years, perhaps the main role for a Minister of Technology might be to front up to Parliament to explain why transformational change still hasn’t happened, hand in hand with the then Minister of Finance explaining why no progress has yet been made – perhaps another decade on – in reversing New Zealand’s longrunning relative productivity decline.

Of course, there is something of hint that the political parties aren’t really serious in the scale of the promise. National talked of doubling “technology exports” in a decade, which is akin to an average annual growth rate of about 7 per cent. For any really serious technology success story that would be a derisorily low rate of growth. Who knows: perhaps those worldwide sales of the TIN companies will grow 7 per cent per annum over the next decade – when nominal GDP is probably forecast to grow 4-5 per cent per annum – but even if that happens, it is unlikely to be the makings of a seriously stronger New Zealand economy.