The 2016 PIRLS results announced this week are bad. PIRLS (the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) compares the reading ability of Year 5 students. Read more
New Zealand’s drinking culture might be dying. Many signs are pointing that way. Read more
Government welfare must do a better job of breaking the cycle of disadvantage. That message was common cause amongst the audience at the launch this week of the New Zealand Initiative’s latest report Welfare, Work and Wellbeing: From Benefits to Better Lives. Read more
Government welfare must do a better job of breaking the cycle of disadvantage. That message was common cause amongst the audience at the launch this week of the New Zealand Initiative’s latest report Welfare, Work and Wellbeing: From Benefits to Better Lives. Read more
Voltaire wrote that one great use of words is to hide our thoughts. I remembered this when Grant Robertson said the tax working group would improve “fairness” in the tax system. Read more
Increasingly, we are hearing recreational fishers are frustrated about the depletion of some fisheries compared with what they experienced in the past. Also, tensions and conflicts between recreational, commercial and customary fishers are intensifying as they compete for limited fisheries resources. Read more
Imagine if the Government only saw us as dollar signs, where every government service we use increases that number and the taxes we pay reduce it. And the Government's only responsibility was to decrease those dollar signs looming over our heads. Read more
If this sounds like the beginning of a joke, that is because it is. Only it is not a very good one. Read more
Voltaire's satirical 1759 novella, Candide, contrasted ‘head-in-the-clouds’ complacency about this being the best of all possible worlds, despite its blemishes, with ‘feet-on-the-ground’ realism. Viewed loftily, New Zealand’s regulations look blissfully benign. Read more
Careful economics and careful carpentry have one thing in common. Building things level is not easy when the floor is a bit crooked. Read more
So far in this Parliament, our fresh-faced new ministers have succumbed to a bit of over-exuberance on GST reform, some misguided Vietnamese-whispers, and some contorting parliamentary questions. But if political amateur dramatics is what you are after there has been little to see here, despite our government’s relative inexperience. Read more
In the new cabinet, Phil Twyford stands out as the minister with the most challenging mandate. Combining housing and transport in one person has created a superminister in charge of all aspects of urban development. Read more
Signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the new government passed its first test on the international stage. If only all policy issues could be solved by just adding the words ‘comprehensive and progressive’ to their names. Read more
New Zealanders do not have a welfare system we can be proud of. Wellbeing research shows that involuntary unemployment is the pits for wellbeing. Read more
On 3 November I wrote about the Manukau DHB’s refusal to entertain the idea of a Ronald McDonald house at Middlemore Hospital. On further enquiry this decision becomes even more risible. Read more