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.
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Local government is hard to defend. Rates are rising at more than three times inflation. Read more
This week, the Government moved to reassert Parliament’s authority over the courts. Two years ago, in Smith v Fonterra, the Supreme Court revived a climate change claim the Court of Appeal had unanimously struck out. Read more
Treasury projects public health spending will rise from 7.1 to 10 per cent of GDP by 2065. Over the same period, the ratio of working-age taxpayers to superannuitants will halve. Read more
Something happened in law schools in the closing decades of the twentieth century. It did not make the headlines. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY 1.1 This submission on the Commerce (Commerce Commission Reform) Amendment Bill (the Bill) is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. Read more
New Zealand’s housing crisis has causes everyone recognises – RMA restrictions, building consent delays, infrastructure that cannot keep pace with growth and building costs. All are real. Read more
The Reserve Bank keeps inflation in check, oversees the financial system, regulates banks and issues the country’s currency. These are important jobs, defined by Parliament. Read more
Critics of judicial overreach face an odd challenge. The most sophisticated response is not to defend the decisions – it is to deny that the constitutional limits exist at all. Read more
Winston Peters was in Westport on Sunday, announcing that a future NZ First government would return 50 per cent of all mining royalties to the regions where mining occurs. It is one of the more sensible growth ideas to emerge from this election campaign so far. Read more
Peter Smith asks a fair question. In Trump and the Paradox of American Power, I wrote that I had long favoured taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities – but not like this. Read more
When a story recently emerged about the government getting advice on carless days under the Petroleum Demand Restraint Act, older New Zealanders will have felt a warm flush of nostalgia. The 1979 restrictions brought coloured windscreen stickers announcing the weekday car owners had promised not to drive. Read more
Imagine a system in which those who understand it best see a problem developing – slowly, incrementally, case by case – but choose not to say so publicly. Not because they are forbidden to speak. Read more
Donald Trump promised the Iranian people their hour of freedom had arrived. Ten days later, the dead Supreme Leader’s son sits in his father’s chair, the Revolutionary Guard is still fighting, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil spiked above $100 a barrel and seven Americans are dead. Read more
Anyone who has visited Sydney recently will have seen what asset recycling built. New metro lines that transformed commuter rail. Read more
Last week, the Government confirmed it would spend up to $200 million buying new Genesis Energy shares. Three ministers lined up to explain the decision. Read more