I wonder whether Media Minister Paul Goldsmith appreciates the problem that he has caused for the tech sector, for media companies, for himself, and for his government. Before the election, National Party spokesperson Melissa Lee condemned Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. Read more

If philosophy students remember one thing from their lectures on Immanuel Kant in undergraduate classes, it is his categorical imperative. It’s easy to remember because it’s an awful lot like the old Christian ‘Golden Rule’. Read more

There’s a style of conference talk that I loathe. A self-described visionary will spend twenty minutes, or worse - even longer, stringing together clichés about how change is happening faster than ever before, how it will take soft skills to navigate it, and how we need to be ready. Read more

Sometimes, only truly committed localists can see the polished diamond hiding inside the very rough stone. We can remind ourselves that decades of poor incentives facing councils don’t build strong organisations. Read more

Alcohol policy is always contentious – but let’s start with something that should be uncontroversial: If the government wants to reduce alcohol-related harm, it should aim for measures that do more good than harm overall. If a harm-reducing policy stacks up, it does so whether the overall social cost of alcohol is $10 billion, $1 billion, or $100 million. Read more

When Guyon Espiner reported on a police estimate of ‘$7.8b harm from booze’, I was curious whether the figure was the old BERL alcohol cost zombie back again from the dead to torment the living. The BERL number included drinkers’ spending on their own alcohol – not a ‘social cost’ by any reasonable standard. Read more

If a picture contains a thousand words, this column is going to run well over our normal word limit. But the charts do say a lot, so we’ll let the charts do most of the talking. Read more

And so, the state advances. Thirteen steps forward, four steps back, then onward again. Read more