Facing Up to Our Future: Housing, Energy and Sustainability

New Zealand's biggest long-term challenges are written into the places we live: a natural environment in decline, an energy system still tethered to imported fossil fuels, a housing market that has locked out a generation, and a largest city performing below its potential. In each case, the harder problem is not a shortage of ideas but the difficulty of holding a course, when settings are introduced by one government and reversed by the next.

Moderated by Sarah Sinclair, this webinar brings together four contributors to Facing Up to Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand to examine the structural choices in front of us. Dr Greg Severinsen on reversing environmental decline through binding limits rather than voluntary rules; Dr Rod Carr on an energy transition he argues is now a political choice, not a technological one; Emeritus Professor Peter Davis on a housing system in structural failure rather than cyclical shortage; and Mark Thomas on why Auckland's underperformance is a national penalty, not a regional issue.

Each of the four chapters returns to the same core message: the timescales of climate, infrastructure and the natural environment far outrun the electoral cycle that shapes our response to them. This session explores the practical steps available to New Zealand, and how to embed them so they endure beyond any one term.