Reports & Media

When Auckland topped the Global Liveability Index in 2021, something seemed wrong. The report's authors had clearly never tried to buy a house in the City of Sails. Read more

There’s a fundamental arbitrariness to almost any voting age. Except one. Read more

This morning’s newspapers carried a full-page open letter from 42,576 signatories pointing out how undemocratic is one aspect of the Government’s three waters legislation. The Government’s Bill confiscates local communities’ investment in water assets without compensation, and wrecks their future governance. Read more

At the risk of losing a few readers in this first paragraph, let’s start with a quote by a lawyer. To make it worse: by a German judge. Read more

There are years in which little happens. Then there are years in which everything seems to happen at once. Read more

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. Even still, it is hard to see how policy could be less friendly to entry by grocers like Aldi or Lidl if it were intentional. Read more

According to Greek legend, the Chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature with three heads. It is usually depicted as a lion with the head of a goat protruding from its back and a tail with the head of a snake. Read more

A funny thing happened in the Supreme Court this week. The Court found that the Bill of Rights breached… the Bill of Rights. Read more

Is it enough to have good intentions? Or is it better to focus on the outcomes of one’s actions? Read more

History is replete with war motivated by religious disagreement. One example is the centuries-long clash between the Catholic and Protestant variants of Christianity. Read more

There was a time, not so long ago, when countries in the common law tradition had comparable legal systems. Yes, there had always been differences between, say, the law of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Still, their basic approaches to legal matters were similar. Read more