OPINION

On Tuesday afternoon, the Environment Select Committee published its report on Shane Jones’ Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Bill in Parliament ahead of its second reading. Despite its many flaws – and an unprecedented chorus of disapproval (including full page advertisements in the media) – the Bill has emerged from the Select Committee largely unscathed. Read more

The Government’s plan to recover from the Covid-19 crisis has essentially been about finding new ways to spend. As a result, public debt is expected to increase from 19% of GDP in 2019 a whopping 54% by 2024 and remain elevated for decades after. Read more

New Zealand’s border is its first line of defence against Covid-19. The gross failures exhibited this week cannot be repeated and require a complete reversal of the Government’s border procedures. Read more

Germany is leading the way with a debate on its constitution, the Basic Law. After seven decades in operation, politicians of all parties want to remove racist elements from it. Read more

If you try to make a balloon smaller by squeezing it, you should be careful. It tends not to work well. Read more

Never have governments and central banks spent other people’s money more freely to support incomes and boost banking system liquidity. Never before have the world’s major central banks’ policy interest rates been clustered so close to zero, if not already in negative territory. Read more

A new publication about Jacinda Ardern is hardly remarkable these days. The Prime Minister’s global celebrity status has created a small avalanche of books and magazine covers. Read more

This week, Trade and Export Minister David Parker was exposed to one of the world’s worst ailments: trade protectionism. After nearly two years of negotiations, the EU leaked its agricultural “offer” to New Zealand to European media. Read more

For the last couple of decades, public debt and banking system liquidity has been ratcheting up around the world after each recession or market correction. But no one appears to have any credible plan for restoring public debt, liquidity or central bank policy rates to normal levels. Read more

Ten weeks later, the coronavirus has revealed the government’s tightrope of managing the deeper changes happening to New Zealand’s economy. Crises always show the cracks. Read more

A government is not a household and reasoning from wrong assumptions can lead to errors. In the last recourse, households cannot print their own currency. Read more

An Overseas Experience is almost a rite of passage for Kiwis. Unfortunately, Covid-19 is likely to keep borders mostly shut for another year or two. Read more

With Alert Level 1 approaching, there are few signs the Government has shifted its thinking towards capitalising on New Zealand’s coronavirus-free status. On Wednesday, Minister for Economic Development Phil Twyford fielded yet more criticism, this time for refusing to let an overseas fishing vessel undergo repairs at a Nelson shipyard. Read more

Minister for Climate Change James Shaw this week announced substantial strengthening of New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Total emissions will be capped, and carbon prices allowed to increase to help reduce New Zealand’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Read more

To understand the mindset of European elites, it is worth going back to the words of the founding godfather or European integration, Jean Monnet: “Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises." Monnet’s spirit of integration was alive in last week’s proposal to create a €750 billion fund to deal with the fallout of the coronavirus crisis. It is a gutsy move which pushes European fiscal integration to a new level. Read more