Last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius was supposed to be about Ukraine’s needs and whether they would be met. Zelenskiy wanted guarantees for future NATO membership and the military alliance wanted to present a united front to Putin. Read more
New Zealand’s roads are in the political headlights, as opposing camps clash over the delicate balance between road safety and road efficiency – think of it as the policy equivalent of Ford vs Holden. Advocates of greater efficiency point out that potholes have turned our state highway network into a lunar landscape, a phenomenon I had the opportunity to acquaint myself intimately with during a road trip to Gisborne over Matariki. Read more
It was a perfectly executed transition from one Prime Minister to another. When Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation in January, it took the New Zealand Labour Party only a few days to anoint her successor, Chris Hipkins. Read more
The early decades of the 21st century may be remembered as the great age of misinformation. From false assertions about the size of the 45th President’s inauguration crowd to science-free claims about nano-technology, 5G cell phone towers and COVID-19, fake news abounds. Read more
One bit of the Climate Commission’s draft advice, released in March, seemed particularly strange. The Commission worried that a surge in forest planting over the coming years would bring about a collapse in ETS prices in the 2030s and put New Zealand’s net zero commitments beyond 2050 at risk. Read more
According to American folklore, Irish gold miners were notorious for striking it lucky. Yet, historian Edward O’Donnell claims the phrase ‘The luck of the Irish’ comes with a hint of derision. Read more
The Prime Minister has ruled out a wealth tax so long as he is leader of the Labour Party. The promise may have been driven by recent polling, but it is sound economics nevertheless. Read more
NZQA would like help deciding what excellence means. The trouble is, too many students have been achieving it. Read more
Experimental psychology was a bit wild in the 1960s. Scientists would run experiments on beagles, giving them painful shocks. Read more
Sometimes, a debate over the school curriculum gets so heated, it is dubbed a ‘curriculum war’. A new draft science curriculum has been the subject of a national conversation over the past week or so. Read more
It’s a sad running gag that the best way for a Kiwi to get noticed at home is to be successful abroad. The keynote lecture at this year’s New Zealand Economics Association conference was downright depressing. Read more
In an increasingly tumultuous geopolitical landscape, New Zealand's role on the international stage is increasing in importance. New Zealand, along with many others, has been invited to attend next week’s 2023 NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. Read more
Background Yesterday the Treasury hosted a seminar on New Zealand’s lagging productivity growth rate. It shared the slot with the New Zealand Productivity Commission (NZPC) and Motu, a Wellington-based research institute. Read more
The New Zealand Economics Association annual meetings are a great way of keeping abreast of what the country’s economists are working on. And sometimes they’re downright depressing. Read more
Seeking Ireland’s secrets Few countries feel so similar as New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland. We are both island nations with much larger neighbours. Read more