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 pre-Christmas stoush between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and her 1990s predecessor Ruth Richardson has faded. The planned debate was cancelled. Read more
With the Government’s planning reforms dominating the pre-Christmas announcements, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk’s overhaul of the building consent system attracted less attention. That is a pity. Read more
If not military intervention, then what? And when is intervention justified?” Those were the challenges from readers of my recent essay arguing conservatives should not be too quick to praise President Trump’s removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Read more
Some ideas cost nothing to believe but a great deal to implement. Political commentator Rob Henderson calls them “luxury beliefs” – convictions that signal virtue among the comfortable while imposing very real costs on those with much less room to manoeuvre. Read more
There is something deeply satisfying about watching Nicolás Maduro being hauled from his palace and deposited in a Brooklyn jail cell. The man was a monster. Read more
A plan typically answers straightforward questions: what is needed, what should be done first, and why. This month, Ministers will receive the Infrastructure Commission’s 30-year National Infrastructure Plan. Read more
This week, Commissioner Richard Chambers announced new targets for trust and confidence in police. They will mean little if the organisation continues to treat deliberate dishonesty as a minor employment matter. Read more
A familiar lament has resurfaced in recent weeks: that Robert Muldoon’s decision to cancel Norm Kirk’s 1975 compulsory superannuation scheme cost New Zealand a trillion-dollar nest egg. The Government’s weekend signal of higher KiwiSaver contributions has given that argument new life, encouraging some to reach again for the comparison. Read more
Roger Partridge talked to Rob Forsyth on the Centre for Independent Studies podcast Liberalism in Question about his essay defending classical liberalism against critiques from Christian nationalists who argue liberal societies need "strong gods". Partridge argued that liberal democracy's ailments stem from policy failures in housing and education, institutional decay, postmodernism's corrosive influence, and inadequate civic education rather than from being too philosophically thin. Read more
Wellington has solved New Zealand’s 50-year productivity puzzle. According to a new 60-page joint briefing from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade, the answer is simple. Read more
When serious allegations threaten an institution’s reputation or its leader’s credibility, the temptation to bury them may be overwhelming. In New Zealand’s public institutions, a structural flaw makes this suppression not just tempting but rational. Read more
The Supreme Court’s Uber judgment (Rasier Operations BV v E Tū Inc [2025] NZSC 162) has delivered clarity of a sort. The Court dismissed Uber’s appeal, upholding the finding that drivers are employees when logged into the Uber app. Read more
In August 2025, the Government announced the biggest reform to New Zealand’s building consent system in two decades. The problem? Read more
For almost all of human history, life was a grind. Most people lived and died poor, generation after generation. Read more
This month’s Nobel Prize in Economics arrives at an opportune moment. The award to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for having explained innovation-driven economic growth provides a salutary reminder about what drives prosperity. Read more