Serial entrepreneur and visionary Elon Musk last week introduced the first truly disruptive technology in the domestic electricity markets since, well, the lightbulb. He unveiled the Powerwall, which is a simple idea: use a lithium-ion battery to store energy when electricity is cheap and then use the stored power when prices are high. Read more
Britain went to the polls yesterday but it could be a while until we know the result. It may take even longer until we know what the result means. Read more
For anyone interested in how the private sector may be involved in improving social outcomes, Corrections Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga’s interview on TV3’s The Nation is a must watch. The interview, which focussed on private prisons, is revealing. Read more
This week the price of an average house in Auckland reached the $800,000 mark. The housing problem must be solved and small children might just have the answers to achieve this. Read more
Should Australian residence visas be for sale? That is the question the Productivity Commission has to investigate now as outlined in a paper it released last week. Read more
Growing up in Canada, I often heard that profiting from illness was just wrong. Canada’s public health system generally banned private medicine. Read more
Early childhood education (ECE) has been under the spotlight. The New Zealand Herald’s Kirsty Johnston recently reported major quality issues, with 150 ECE providers rated by the Education Review Office (ERO) in 2014 as “requiring further development”. Read more
Since the free trade agreement with China came into effect in 2008, exports to China have soared. The trading relationship with China has been helping the New Zealand economy navigate through the past years of global uncertainty. Read more
If we took seriously the dozens of reports tallying the alleged costs of every social ill, the world would seem a pretty depressing place. I would be surprised if the sum of high-end costs reported in studies into alcohol abuse, obesity, incontinence and mental illness were much less than annual GDP. Read more
It would have been very interesting to see what the late Lee Kwan Yew would have made of this week’s Bali Nine executions. While we can only speculate, a retrospective glance at the hard-line stance that Singapore’s founding father took on foreigners committing crimes in his country suggests he would have sided with Indonesia’s decision to execute Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Read more
Early last week, a friend recounted to me in gruesome detail the vicious war wounds incurred during that weekend’s rugby match. The physiotherapist bills would be expensive. Read more
Imagine the following scenario. A large company’s 78-year-old chairman and former chief executive, who also happens to be a major shareholder, fails in his bid to oust the current chief executive. Read more
It’s easy to get reasonable people to agree that economic growth is a good thing, at least in principle. The New Zealand Initiative hosted a panel discussion on its recent report, by Jenesa Jeram and me, outlining the case for economic growth and dispelling a few myths around growth. Read more
The nearly unanimous verdict on Prime Minister John Key’s pre-budget speech last week is that it was completely underwhelming. In fact, some commentators have taken the speech as further evidence the government is running dry on fresh ideas. Read more
Talk about a capital gains tax (“CGT”) as a solution for the Auckland housing market has heated up again over the past couple of weeks. The Reserve Bank’s Deputy Governor, Grant Spencer, suggested that the tax treatment of housing needed to be changed. Read more