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
When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. New Zealand's apparently record-low unemployment figures are a classic case. Read more
With the Auckland border coming down today, it is tempting to talk about Covid. There is certainly plenty still to say. Read more
The Prime Minister started the week looking ahead to the New Year. “It can’t always be Covid,” Ardern said in an interview on Monday. Read more
Our Chairman and Senior Fellow Roger Partridge joins Ben Craven to discuss the Initiative's latest education research and what can be done to reverse Kiwi students' poor literacy results. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Written language came to humanity relatively recently. Modern homo sapiens have walked the earth for at least 100,000 years. Read more
Earlier this week, epidemiologist and media personality Professor Michael Baker was reported saying, "It's hard to imagine any justification for lowering the alert level in Auckland." In case readers in Auckland think they have misread that, Baker didn't say, "It's a tight call, but on balance… ." The Professor said it's "hard to imagine any justification." Forget the hospitality businesses going to the wall. Or the hairdressers, beauticians and gym-owners defaulting on their mortgages. Read more
Kiwis desperate for a clear path forward on border restrictions last Friday had their hopes dashed. Those living in Auckland are no closer to knowing whether they will be allowed out of New Zealand's largest city for the Christmas break. Read more
On Newstalk ZB, Mike Hosking reviews and reads out parts of Roger Partridge's latest NZ Herald article "Covid Delta outbreak: An end to New Zealand exceptionalism". Roger says If Auckland takes the full eight weeks to work its way through the Government’s “three-step plan” for Alert Level 3, 1.6 million Kiwis will have endured amongst the world’s strictest restrictions for more than half a year. Read more
If Auckland takes the full eight weeks to work its way through the Government’s “three-step plan” for Alert Level 3, 1.6 million Kiwis will have endured one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns for more than half a year. Seven-and-a-half weeks at Levels 3 and 4 in March and April last year. Read more
As my hometown enters its 19th week of lockdown with no end in sight, it’s easy to feel a bit hard done by. But every pandemic has its silver lining. Read more
"For every economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist." Or so satirists of the economics profession claim. The truth is most economists agree on most of economics. Read more
The vaccination phase of the Covid pandemic raises some tricky conflicts. The Government is reluctant to make vaccinations compulsory. Read more
On Newstalk ZB, Mike Hosking reviews Roger Partridge's latest NZ Herald article "Should the Ministry of Health be responsible for pandemic policy?" Roger highlights various studies that have called for a dedicated agency to manage New Zealand's pandemic response. The NZ Herald article "Should the Ministry of Health be responsible for pandemic policy? Read more
Until a little over a year ago, questioning the Ministry of Health's handling of the pandemic was tantamount to heresy. The country had just celebrated 100 days without a case of Covid in the community. Read more
Mike Hosking reads out Roger Partridges' opinion piece (published in the NZ Herald) about why the Government can't drive covid strategy by looking backwards. Roger points out that looking back at what worked on the early part of the Covid journey may not help with what is in front of us now and looking backwards is a big part of New Zealand's current predicament. Read more