Access to primary healthcare is as critical to a government's survival as keeping the lights on. Yet a quarter of a million Kiwis cannot even register with a local GP. Read more
New Zealand has one of the world’s more centralised governments. Most taxation, regulation, and spending happen at the central government level. Read more
Even if Labour had not banned offshore oil and gas exploration in 2018, it seems unlikely that exploration since then would have been delivering gas today. Gas reserves would have had to be discovered, then permits and equipment for drilling secured. Read more
Prime Minister Luxon declared at last weekend’s National Party conference that the country faces an educational crisis. New data from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study (CIPS) show that 78% of Year 8 students – nearly four out of every five – are behind curriculum expectations in maths. Read more
As an education academic, I taught the quantitative component of a research methods paper for the Master of Education programme. Most of the students undertaking that qualification were mid-career teachers. Read more
New Zealand's housing crisis has long been a bugbear for policymakers, affecting a wide range of policy areas beyond housing itself. Almost everyone sees a serious problem, but addressing it continues to be hampered by a fundamental misalignment of incentives between central and local government. Read more
In a stunning display of temporal gymnastics, Labour leader Chris Hipkins has unveiled a novel explanation for New Zealand’s maths education crisis. He’s blaming it on a policy that Labour scrapped over six years ago. Read more
Imagine a New Zealand where every major company is neatly divided between the North and South Islands. You would fill up at BP North Island or BP South Island, shop at The Warehouse North Island or The Warehouse South Island and get your mobile service from Spark North Island or Spark South Island. Read more
Last week’s prisoner exchange between Russia, Belarus and several Western nations offered a stark glimpse into the workings of modern autocracies. As such, it serves as a timely backdrop to Anne Applebaum’s new book, Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, which examines the collaborative efforts of authoritarian regimes to undermine liberal democracy globally. Read more
Erica Stanford has had a lot on her plate in her first year as a Minister. In her education portfolio, she has set a cracking pace, with work well underway on a knowledge-rich curriculum for primary and secondary schooling. Read more
For some time now free speech advocates in this country have been enviously following the passage of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act through the UK Parliament. The act gave teeth to the freedom of speech provisions in the 1986 Education Act by allowing students and academics whose free speech rights had been trampled on to seek redress though the courts, and also established a new ‘Free Speech Czar’ for English universities. Read more
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