Ryan Bridge: Standing still is not a strategy

We've got another report from another ratings agency, Moody's.

They've taken a look at our credit, they've taken a look at our economy, much the same as the S & P one we spoke about last week.

But here's a few things this country cannot afford to forget.

We are a trading nation; we have a small population.

Unless we sell stuff to the rest of the world, which the world then pays us for, we are a backwater.

We are a money go round; we are a low-income poor cousin at the bottom of the Pacific.

Dairy, meat, kiwifruit, honey, you name it.

If we don't have strong export industries, we're basically buggered. We need more of them, of course.

We have tourism, let's not whinge too much about the campervans.

The world's cooked at times and there'll be another Hormuz before long.

Hell, the current Hormuz isn't over yet and that means we need storage for diesel, which we're doing, but we need more of, for gas, which Genesis is looking at, and Todd and Uncle Shane are trying to find, and data centres.

I know they're controversial, I know people hate them, but they shouldn't be.

If done well, and by well, I mean they wash their own faces, then tick tick.

The other thing we desperately need are roads that don't wash out when it rains. Petrol taxes pay for that, so let's maybe not cut our nose off to spite our face in that regard.

It's pretty simple really, we need to keep doing what we're doing, we need roads to get our stuff to port, we need oil to keep the country moving, we need ships coming and going and we need something new on the horizon always.

Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.