At Aka Raupapa, the inaugural Freight & Supply Chain Superhui in Hamilton this month, I set out the demographic challenges our industry is facing. The answer should worry us – and it should also focus us. 

Professor Paul Spoonley has laid out the numbers, and they are stark. 

New Zealand’s fertility rate sat at 1.52 in 2024, well below the 2.1 needed just to replace ourselves. The Ministry of Education is already forecasting 30,000 fewer school leavers by 2032. And in 2023, 85% of our population growth came from net migration – led by India, the Philippines and China. 

This is not a distant trend. It is already here, and it is already reshaping who walks into our industry. 

Here’s what that means for road transport. The traditional workforce we have always relied on, home grown and raised in the cab alongside Dad, with diesel in the veins, is no longer a major source of our workforce. 

The trouble is, our licensing and compliance system was built for that world: trust-based, education-light, and full of assumptions about pre-existing New Zealand knowledge. For a workforce increasingly made up of people new to this country, that system is no longer fit for purpose. 

So here is our call to arms, in two parts.  

First, we must attract skilled drivers and logistics workers with a genuine pathway to citizenship. Every advanced economy is chasing the same shrinking pool of migrants; we cannot expect them to choose us if we do not compete.  

Second, once they arrive, we must set them up to succeed. This means repurposing our regulatory system so it educates rather than assumes, and builds compliance and safety performance from day one rather than taking it on trust. 

The future of our industry and the safety of everyone who works in it,  depends on getting this right. We must act now. 

Justin