2025 marked a turning point for The New Zealand Initiative’s mission to build a more prosperous country. Ideas we have championed for years moved from research papers into the Government’s reform programme.
After more than a decade of advocacy, housing reform finally arrived. Minister Chris Bishop outlined changes that would improve property rights, abolish rural-urban boundaries and establish a planning system that favours development. It is the most significant challenge to restrictive planning rules in a generation.
Education reform continued to advance. Minister Erica Stanford’s mandate for structured literacy is bringing proven teaching methods into every primary classroom, while the new knowledge-rich curriculum begins reshaping what students learn. Our Senior Fellow, Professor Barbara Oakley, and Senior Fellow, Dr Michael Johnston, spent five months touring New Zealand
schools, working directly with teachers to transform their approach to education.
The Government also committed to replacing fuel excise with distance-based road charging, a fairer and more stable system that the Initiative has long proposed. Competition policy advanced with the fast-tracking of supermarket entry. Foreign investment rules continue to be liberalised.
Our research programme examined challenges from government structure to university standards. Studies ranged from electoral reform after 30 years of MMP to grade inflation in our universities and the future of Kāinga Ora.
Direct engagement with decision-makers remained strong. We hosted Ministers Nicola Willis, Erica Stanford, Chris Bishop, David Seymour, Scott Simpson, Tama Potaka and Brooke van Velden, along with Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins, at member events throughout the year.
In June, we took 40 business and civic leaders to the Netherlands to understand how a small, open economy can be around 50 percent more productive than New Zealand. The lessons were humbling. Dutch success stems not from clever legislation but from culture: practical problem-solving, trust between people and government, and measuring what works.
The Initiative’s research and analysis reached a broad audience through our podcasts, newsletters and media commentary. This engagement helped ensure evidence-based policy discussions on the issues that matter.
This year, New Zealanders will debate the future direction of their country, and we look forward to contributing our ideas to those debates.
We thank our members for their continued support. Their engagement enables our independence and impact in promoting policies for a more prosperous New Zealand.
The year demonstrated what persistent, evidence-based advocacy can achieve. The reforms now underway will take years to deliver results, but the direction is set. Thanks to work like the Initiative’s, the path forward is
clearer than before.
