OPINION

It is legal to buy books. Obviously. Read more

The New Zealand Law Society’s new report, Strengthening the Rule of Law in Aotearoa New Zealand, runs to more than eighty pages, includes seventy-eight recommendations, and reflects a considerable investment of time and goodwill. Its aims are noble: to bolster constitutional integrity, improve access to justice, and promote respect for the rule of law. Read more

A peculiar economic paradox appears to govern infrastructure development in modern New Zealand: the more we spend on infrastructure, the less we seem to get for it. This uncomfortable reality was a key takeaway from last week’s launch of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission’s Draft National Infrastructure Plan. Read more

Parliament is supreme but it is not infallible. Governments often propose policies that are wrong in principle. Read more

How should a select committee respond to a deluge of submissions? Does it matter if many submissions are part of a campaign playing on whipped up fears? Read more

Philosophers love to dream up strange scenarios to get us thinking. They call these scenarios ‘thought experiments.’ In 1980, philosopher John Searle published his ‘Chinese room’ thought experiment. Read more

Late night ‘situation monitoring’ on Twitter when Israel and America are bombing Iranian nuclear weapons facilities is not ideal for a good night’s sleep. Possible outcomes seemed to range from a happy and peaceful shift to a more liberal Iranian government, through to serious regional or broader war with a nuclear-armed Iran. Read more

This year, the Government will spend nearly $190 billion. Yet we know remarkably little about whether those billions represent value-for-money. Read more

Next week, The New Zealand Initiative will take more than three dozen business leaders to the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? Read more

For two decades, New Zealand’s school education system has been in a death spiral. In 2007, the Ministry of Education adopted a curriculum bereft of knowledge. Read more

Minister Chris Bishop has swung his ministerial wrecking ball at Wellington. He will strip the Gordon Wilson Flats of its heritage protection. Read more

Something odd is happening in New Zealand. The government wants to pass a law that would require ministers to explain their regulatory decisions. Read more

Imagine that you owned a vacant piece of land. You were trying to decide whether to put solar panels on it to generate electricity or to plant trees on it to sequester carbon and earn carbon credits. Read more

There are already too many reasons for international supermarket chains to decide our small set of islands far from everywhere are not worth bothering about. Adding one more seems bad if government has prioritised retail grocery competition. Read more

What happens when elected officials cannot understand the issues well enough to make good decisions? Local councillors often receive hundreds of pages of complex reports just days before critical votes, covering financial modelling, engineering specifications and legal implications. Read more