When the government announced recently that it intended to lift exports from 30% to 40% of GDP by 2025, it was difficult not to roll your eyes. It was just another in a long series of targets whose utility was not explained, is unlikely to be reached, and doesn’t address underlying economic issues.

The government’s public sector performance targets are riddled with goals of dubious usefulness. In doing so, the public sector is being asked to achieve a vast number of outcomes that can be better achieved via private processes. What is really needed is for the public sector to improve its performance in its core tasks.

The latest target of 40% from the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment’s Business Growth Agenda report, Building Export Markets, was adopted because some other similar-sized countries export at that level.

Unfortunately, like many such reports, it is littered with fuzzy language, clichés and the obligatory indecipherable flow charts: “New Zealand” needs to “create a compelling New Zealand story”, “increase value for tourism”, and “strengthen high value manufacturing”, among others.

It is difficult to disagree with the desirability of these ideas, but they are just clichés, not initiatives.

New Zealand’s traded goods sector undoubtedly needs boosting, but that requires stopping the non-tradeables goods sector from outbidding it for resources (e.g. through unduly high public sector wage rates, taxes and government spending) – there is nothing about that in this report. New Zealand needs foreign investment to properly capitalise future export industries, provide knowhow, and help access foreign markets, yet our foreign investment regime is not mentioned.

It also seems no coincidence that the target year (2025) is well beyond the current electoral cycle.

Before you think I am just being negative, consider this: the Clark government’s highest priority economic goal was lifting New Zealand living standards to the top half of the OECD, with 2010 floated as a feasible date. The current government set up the 2025 Taskforce to bridge the wage gap with Australia.

Setting targets is no substitute for undertaking unpopular reforms for which the benefits only become apparent later. After all, if good government were as easy as setting arbitrary targets, the Soviet Union would still be going strong and China would not have adopted private enterprise.