The election manifesto Open, sovereign, built to last, delivers a decisive policy agenda to grow New Zealand's tech sector, strengthen national resilience, and improve economic returns.
Aotearoa New Zealand is projected to invest $13 billion in public sector technology over the next five years, which is a critical policy lever for national business continuity and digital self-determination.
"Every unquestioned default to offshore Big Tech is a deliberate choice. We are giving all political parties a concrete framework to choose a different path, one that uses open and sovereign technology, backed by local partners, to put New Zealand back in control of its own digital infrastructure,” says Christie.
“Aotearoa has accumulated a massive Big Tech dependency deficit for decades, creating a compounding fiscal, economic, innovation, and sovereignty problem,” Christie warns.
“Every time a government agency automatically relies on these offshore platforms out of inertia, public money leaves our economy, market competition stifles, and control of critical digital supply chains is handed to foreign jurisdictions.”
At the heart of untethering from this dependency is the manifesto's call for a comprehensive Sovereign Data Policy. This centrally enforced framework ensures sensitive citizen and government data is kept onshore, protecting national data sovereignty and self-determination.
This aligns New Zealand with an accelerating global movement toward digital self-determination, where leading jurisdictions are actively moving away from offshore Big Tech and closed solutions that limit a nation's choices. The United Kingdom mandates open source as the default for government procurement, the European Union operates under a formal Open Source Strategy, and earlier this year, France's national cybersecurity agency concluded that open code is fundamentally more trustworthy.
By securing its digital foundations, the government can clear a path to invest in the growth and capability of New Zealand's own tech ecosystem. To achieve this, the manifesto outlines targeted interventions in current procurement frameworks, including an immediate lift of the direct award threshold for New Zealand-owned technology businesses, and reporting on how much government technology spend stays onshore. Each of these changes are designed to increase choice and purchasing power, and keep taxpayer investment stimulating the New Zealand economy.
"Every dollar spent with a New Zealand-owned and operated company creates a local multiplier effect of 1:4. With $13 billion of public sector technology investment forecast over the next five years, the opportunity for the New Zealand economy is enormous, if the government makes the right choices now. As a nation, we can’t be willing to let inertia block resilience and returns.
“We are at a political inflexioln point, in that the decisions made in the coming decade will determine whether New Zealand's digital infrastructure is a generation-defining asset or a liability," concludes Christie.
