Two years ago, when the New Zealand Business Roundtable merged with the New Zealand Institute to form The New Zealand Initiative, there were a fair share of people who wondered how these organisations would merge.

Both were research organisations that had been headed by well-respected economists, the late Roger Kerr and David Skilling, who were perceived to come from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum.

Quite rightly, many people questioned how the two would combine to form a pro-business, non-partisan organisation whose stated purpose was to produce evidence-based public policy research. The obvious answer, from our point of view, is through our research.

In the past 24-months, we have produced eight research reports examining how we can restore housing affordability in New Zealand, lift education performance by professionalising teaching, and grow the economy by opening the country up to foreign capital flows.

All three report series have been met with interest on both sides of the political line. On housing our research was part of the body of work that shifted the focus from demand mitigation to the real source of the problem: a lack of new home supply.

Our education reports were part of the body of work that the Government used to formulate its $359 million school leadership programme, which seeks to get the best teachers to share their skills and experiences with under-performing schools (a policy that was welcomed by teaching unions).

Next month the Initiative will launch its final report in the Foreign Direct Investment series, which will put forth policy recommendations to remedy the fact that our capital inflows dropped by 75 per cent last year according to United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) data.

Our commitment to non-partisanship, as shown by these reports, was validated today at our annual retreat, where both Prime Minister John Key and Labour Party Leader David Cunliffe took the opportunity to address the Initiative membership in a Chatham House Rules setting.

Furthermore, the leader of the opposition used the event to deliver his first speech on the economy in an election year.

Does this guarantee our impartiality in future? The answer is clearly no. However, we at the Initiative are taking this as a sign that our efforts to let the evidence lead us is paying off, and has put paid to some of the questions surrounding the merger.

We are not the sum of the parts of the Business Roundtable or the Institute any longer. We are The New Zealand Initiative.