OPINION

The flagship policy in Labour’s ‘State of the Nation’ speech was the announcement to roll out three years of free tertiary education should Labour get in power at the next election. It is good politics since it will increase the party’s appeal to young people – and probably also to their parents. Read more

While traffic-bound Aucklanders celebrated the announcement last week that central government was bringing its funding for the City Rail Link (CRL) forward by two years, I could not help but feel that New Zealand has lost the infrastructure plot. Politically, this was a savvy move by Prime Minister John Key. Read more

Interest-free student loans have been very costly. The billions spent over the past decade subsidising student loans is only part of it. Read more

There are many things that are great about our cool little capital: Wellington’s wind, its regular earthquakes, and of course the Sevens. Though we can’t do much about the former two, at least we can destroy the latter. Read more

Is there anything in the world duller than cricket?* Cricket is one of those sports that is so painfully slow, that commentators have nothing to do but talk about the crowd. Or the weather. Read more

Last week, I wrote about the sorry state of Europe and the person most responsible for it: Angela Merkel (A mess of Merkel’s own making, January 28). This week, we will take a closer look at the German Chancellor, her record — and her prospects of staying in power. Read more

You may have heard last week that 62 individuals have the same wealth as the bottom half of humanity. That is, there are 62 people with the combined total wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people in the world. Read more

The Greens’ proposal that election campaign promises be costed has drawn the praise it is due: it is an excellent proposal. But it is a harder job than it might seem. Read more

There is nothing wrong with being an old grump. With a lifetime of disappointments to reflect on, old grumps have earned the right to grouse about how things used to be back in their day. Read more

Retirement savings, lavish family holidays or private dance lessons: these are some of what the cost of a private education in New Zealand could buy according to the New Zealand Herald's calculations. The paper ran a story last Sunday questioning why New Zealand parents choose private schools for their kids. Read more

Albert Einstein said, “for an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope.” If Einstein is right, there is hope for the Greens’ proposal to establish a new office to cost political parties’ new policies. It did not take long for the government to reject the Greens’ idea out of hand. Read more

‘Never let a good crisis go to waste.’ For a long time, this was the unofficial motto of the EU. Whatever challenges it faced, overcoming them often enabled it to progress with the process of political and economic integration. Read more

In the schooling world, the word ‘incentive’ may conjure all sorts of negative vibes. Particularly if the word implies receiving an external reward for doing something that one would otherwise do purely for intrinsic satisfaction. Read more

Oxfam does fantastic work in the developing world. It is one of the relatively few charities endorsed by The Life You Can Save: the Peter Singer-inspired NGO that ranks charities by their effectiveness. Read more

For all those who have set their New Year's resolutions, how’s that going? Will 2016 be the year you finally get slimmer, richer, and more attractive? Read more