Playing the Long Game: Simon Bridges

New Zealand's biggest challenges, climate change, housing, infrastructure, an ageing population, and fiscal sustainability, all demand thinking in decades, not electoral cycles. Yet our political system is increasingly focused on the short term.

Our next guest is Hon Simon Bridges, the CEO of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and a former Leader of the National Party. As Minister of Transport in the mid-2010s, Simon was a key player responsible for getting Auckland’s City Rail Link - one of New Zealand’s largest-ever infrastructure projects - agreed and funded at a central government level.

Simon’s extensive, high-profile career as a politician, lawyer, broadcaster and business advocate gives him a unique perspective on policymaking in New Zealand.

Playing the Long Game is a new webinar series from the Helen Clark Foundation bringing together some of New Zealand's most experienced political, economic, and public-sector leaders to ask: how do we build policy that lasts?

Join Foundation director Murray Bruges for the next conversation in our series on how to get more long-term thinking and action into New Zealand’s politics and public policy.