As Marx once said, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.” Of course, this quote was from Groucho, not Karl. Read more
Last week I received my rates invoice from Christchurch City Council. To my dismay, I learnt that my rates for the city council and regional council combined have increased by 11%. Read more
New Zealand’s government sacked the entire board of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) last week, replacing it with a sole commissioner. The move marked more than just another shake-up in the country’s beleaguered health system. Read more
In 1968, ecologist Garrett Hardin argued that the “Tragedy of the Commons” is commonplace. If you wanted to deliberately engineer a commons problem, the management of the Conservation Estate would make for a pretty decent guidebook. Read more
It’s hard not to marvel at Silicon Valley’s technological innovations. But I’m dumbfounded by the social science experiment they’ve been working on. Read more
The record net migration loss of 60,100 New Zealand citizens in the year to May 2024 is an orange warning light for New Zealand. But fears that it represents a worrying brain drain are statistically premature. Read more
New Zealand’s most recent Public Services Commissioner announced his retirement in September 2023. He retired in February 2024. Read more
Health New Zealand has been quite economical lately. I don’t mean ‘economical’ in the fiscal sense, of course. Read more
In a dramatic move this week, the government replaced the board of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) with a commissioner. Dramatic but not much of a surprise. Read more
In the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, all eyes were on the Republican National Convention. While Trump’s formal nomination as the GOP’s presidential candidate was a foregone conclusion, his choice of running mate raised eyebrows: JD Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy. Read more
The government’s draft Emissions Budget gets a few important things right. It abandons measures like subsidies for electric vehicles that, perhaps counterintuitively, cannot reduce net national emissions. Read more
“And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.” Gandalf This week and last week, The Listener ran five articles revisiting New Zealand’s economic reforms from 1984 to 1993. Four of those articles had little good to say about them, or the people who led them with such clarity, courage and determination. Read more
This week, Stuff reported on a story that seemed so absurd, it caught our attention: the idea to fence a pool on a remote island, just meters away from the Pacific Ocean. On Motukawaiti Island, 3.5km off Northland’s coast, authorities have mandated that a small swimming pool be enclosed. Read more
New Zealand has long enjoyed its reputation as one of the world's most transparent and business-friendly nations. Does it deserve this reputation? Read more
Australians are accustomed to a much deeper and more diverse media landscape than New Zealanders. Across the ditch, the media ecosystem can be startlingly shallow. Read more