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
Does it matter if businesses do not respect their regulators? According to Finance Minister Grant Robertson, it does. Read more
Confidence in the guardians of 21st century commerce really matters. If consumer confidence is misplaced, it can have disastrous consequences. Read more
Next week Parliament will have its first chance to debate Commerce Minister Kris Faafoi’s new Commerce Amendment Bill. If passed, the Bill will grant the Commission’s wish - and allow it to use its powers of compulsion to undertake ‘market studies’ into the state of competition in any market. Read more
Read The New Zealand Initiative's submission to the Education and Workforce Select Committee on the Education Poverty Reduction Bill. Read more
In Franz Kafka’s The Trial the chief cashier of a bank, Josef K, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. At one level, The Trial is a satire of bureaucracy. Read more
This submission on the Commerce (Criminalisation of Cartels) Amendment Bill (the Bill) is made by The New Zealand Initiative, a think tank supported primarily by chief executives of major New Zealand businesses. In combination, our members’ revenues account for one third of New Zealand’s economy and provide employment to more than 150,000 people in New Zealand. Read more
“I know an old lady who swallowed a fly” is a nonsensical story that has delighted children for decades. Its tale of an old woman, who swallowed increasingly large animals, each to catch the previous one, is as humorous as it is absurd. Read more
If monetary policy is the Reserve Bank’s smash hit, its prudential regulation of financial markets is its B-side track. Yet the bank’s role as prudential regulator deserves scrutiny. Read more
Sunday's "Save our charter schools march" was a moving experience. It wasn't just the hundreds of people who turned up in torrential rain to protest. Read more
Read The New Zealand Initiative's submission to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. Read more
I am delighted for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. There is surely no more enriching experience than parenthood. Read more
If this sounds like the beginning of a joke, that is because it is. Only it is not a very good one. Read more
During the election campaign, newly sworn-in Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern named climate change as the challenge of her generation. If it is, lifting labour productivity is a close second. Read more
For those of us who think elections should be about policies and not about politics, MMP presents a special kind of purgatory. It is one day short of a fortnight since the election but are we any closer to knowing the result? Read more
Once it was a colour combination frowned upon in the world of fashion (or so I am told). But apparently haute couture has moved on. Read more