Wellington (Wednesday, 23 September 2026) — Parliament has passed the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, ending the Resource Management Act's 35-year reign. The New Zealand Initiative says the Acts settle the system's architecture but defer almost every decision about how it will behave to national direction that does not yet exist, to be written by whoever is the Minister after next year's election. Read more

In this episode, Nick talks with Oliver Hartwich about how the 2026 election could break MMP from two sides. Oliver's latest research note traces Te Pāti Māori's call for supporters to split their votes, why current polling could leave National with an overhang, and how the absence of compensation for overhang seats in New Zealand, unlike the German system it copied, could produce a Parliament that does not match the popular vote. Read more

In this episode, Oliver talks with Nick Clark about the Government's Head Start process, which asks councils to put forward their own reorganisation proposals or have changes imposed on them. Nick draws on his report Head Start Done Right to question whether the amalgamation the process points towards would deliver the efficiencies the Government expects, and argues instead for subsidiarity, keeping decisions at the most local level rather than consolidating them upwards. Read more

Wellington (Tuesday, 30 June 2026) – The Government wants to merge New Zealand’s councils into a smaller number of big councils. A new report from The New Zealand Initiative says this is the wrong fix. Read more