Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He is a regular commentator in the media on public policy and constitutional law. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014, after 16 years as a commercial litigation partner. He is an honorary fellow of the Legal Research Foundation, a charitable foundation associated with the University of Auckland and was its executive director from 2001 to 2009. He is a member of the editorial board of the New Zealand Law Review and was a member of the Council of the New Zealand Law Society, the governing body of the legal profession in New Zealand, from 2011 to 2015. He is a former chartered member of the Institute of Directors, a member of the University of Auckland Business School advisory board, and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
The Commerce Commission is losing the respect of the business community and its system of governance needs overhauling, says the New Zealand Initiative think tank in a new report released this morning. To read more click here. Read more
Commercial regulatory agencies wield enormous power. They can take away a business’s licence to operate; impose restrictions on how it operates; and take enforcement action by exercising powers of interrogation, search and seizure that the police can only dream of. Read more
Yesterday’s budget was not the only budget in town. It followed hot on the heels of Climate Change Minister James Shaw’s announcement on Monday of the Government’s $2.9 billion Emissions Reduction Plan. Read more
In making this submission, we have drawn on the research and recommendations in our report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour (July 2019) (our Report). A copy of our Report is appended to this submission. Read more
New Zealand’s border settings continue to confound. In November last year, even the cautious Ministry of Health advised the Government that MIQ no longer served any useful purpose. Read more
American businessman Bert Lance is credited with popularising the phrase, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ Lee served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter. He would have scratched his head at Labour back-bencher Duncan Webb’s Companies (Directors Duties) Amendment Bill. Read more
A week is not just a long time in politics. It is a long time for democracy. Read more
They may not know it, but unsuspecting Kiwis will soon be protected from unregistered log traders and forestry advisers. What a relief that should be. Read more
Is a van driver who delivers shopping ordered online a member of the transport industry or the retail industry? Either way, why would you want to know? Read more
Double jeopardy is a defence that prevents a person being tried twice for the same offence. Unfortunately for the Government, the defence is not available for bad public policy decisions. Read more
The future is notoriously hard to forecast. Just dial the clock back two years and try finding an expert predicting a year after the start of the pandemic that New Zealand would be suffering labour shortages. Read more
Two years ago, the coronavirus pandemic took most of the world by surprise. Twenty-four months later, Russia's invasion of Ukraine caught us equally off-guard. Read more
Flushed with success from restricting the distribution of Rapid Antigen Tests, the Ministry of Health is considering regulating other 'at home' medical testing devices. "The household thermometer is an obvious candidate," Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said. Read more
Since last week’s announcement, Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s proposed social unemployment insurance has been criticised across the political divide. Some complaints relate simply to timing. Read more
The OECD’s country report for New Zealand always reveals sobering home truths. This year’s was no exception. Read more