To most New Zealanders in 2026, slavery sounds like a relic of past centuries and faraway places. Unfortunately, it is not. Read more
In a meeting room on Lambton Quay, a paper is on its eleventh draft. It is about whether the public service should adopt AI. Read more
For forty years, New Zealanders have been told that fewer councils mean better government, and for forty years, the evidence has refused to oblige. Until 1989, New Zealand had around 850 elected local government bodies. Read more
When I read last week that Tony Blair had published a 5,600-word essay on everything that ails Britain, every instinct told me not to read it. But I could not help myself and read it anyway. Read more
The debate about New Zealand’s Supreme Court has been framed as a question about the current court – its composition, its appointments, its judicial philosophy. This column frames it differently: as a question about what the current court inherited, and from whom. Read more
This week’s Budget confirmed what most New Zealanders already suspected. The government’s finances are tight, the deficit persists, and there is no pot of money waiting to be spent on the country’s problems. Just as well, because government spending never delivers growth or prosperity. Read more
In an age of unprecedented technological upheaval — an upheaval more consequential than even the advent of fire or settled agriculture — we find ourselves standing — quite literally — at a crossroads. The question isn't whether AI will transform writing — it’s what we lose when we let it. Read more
If the country sees a few lucky breaks, Budget 2026 shows a return to surplus in 2029. The period of structural deficits will have lasted almost a decade. Read more
The worst-kept secret of this afternoon’s budget is that the entitlement to a fees-free year of tertiary study will be scrapped. On 8 May, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters ‘leaked’ the policy change on Newstalk ZB. Read more
The strongest protection tenants can have is plenty of other potential places to rent, from different landlords eager to rent them a home. When zoning rules make it very difficult to build new housing, existing landlords do not face much potential competition. Read more
Last year, Cabinet papers promised that New Zealand’s agricultural-product regulator would be required to use assessments from trusted overseas regulators. The Bills now before Parliament instead say the regulator must merely “have regard to” them. Read more
During the first reading of New Zealand’s Modern Slavery Bill last month, one member of parliament warned it would create perverse incentives to look the other way. Another raised the compliance cost from his experience on an Australian board. Read more
By 1974, at the Allensbach Institute she had founded a quarter-century earlier, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann had given a name to a puzzle first visible in her election research of the 1960s. West Germans would tell her pollsters one thing in private; in public they would say something else, or nothing at all. Read more
Housing targets have long been a political football – and an emotional subject. Would it not be better to take some of the heat out of the housing debate and ask more systematically how we could better plan for future housing supply? Read more
An alcohol licensing regime should have one big job: to ensure that licensed outlets operate responsibly, first by vetting applications and then by monitoring compliance. Its measures should be proportionate to the risks being addressed, and cost-effective. Read more