Reports & Media

When New Zealand First leader Winston Peters delivered his ‘Supercity of Sin’ speech last Friday, it was a frontal assault on Chinese migration. Despite his protestations that he and his party were not anti-China, or even anti-migration, the dog-whistling was all too clear. Read more

When New Zealand First leader Winston Peters delivered his ‘Supercity of Sin’ speech last Friday, it was a frontal assault on Chinese migration. Despite his protestations that he and his party were not anti-China, or even anti-migration, the dog-whistling was all too clear. Read more

It is a difficult time for social democrats. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and liberalisation programmes here and abroad, old school socialists and social democrats have struggled to come to terms with the changing tides of time. Read more

By now, householders must be used to being exhorted by politicians, economists, and international agencies to save more. Yet, some policies encourage them to borrow in order to save or invest. Read more

Education Minister Hekia Parata released a discussion paper with recommendations for reforming the New Zealand Teachers’ Council. The paper firmly acknowledges the importance of teachers. Read more

Since moving across the ditch to New Zealand last year, I have been astonished by how often a potential Trans-Tasman currency union is seriously discussed on this side of the Tasman. In Australia, the issue hardly seems to excite anyone – probably also because Australians have more important things to do than worry about New Zealand. Read more

A regular question in New Zealand and Australia is whether our respective nations succeed because of, or in spite of, our politicians. As both nations' Budgets were read this month, it was a story of two countries that have faced a vastly different set of circumstances over the past five years, and the choices both have made in light of that. Read more

At first glance, the glowing reports about Finnish education make it sound like a magical fairyland. Some of the myths surrounding the legend of Finland’s education system are that teachers’ work is easy and there are no high-stakes tests. Read more

It was difficult not to be underwhelmed after reading the government and Auckland Council’s Housing Accord released a couple of weeks ago. It was a manual of what has failed in almost every housing market in the world and showed one common problem: everyone agrees to build more houses and sets an arbitrary target without following through. Read more

The 2025 Taskforce’s 2009 report put New Zealand’s income gap with Australia (2008) at 35%. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest statistics for real GDP per capita show that the income gap with Australia increased to just under 41% in 2011. Read more

Sometimes it is worth quoting the European Treaty at length to understand what an utterly absurd machinery the European Union has become. So with apologies to the rules of clear and concise writing, here we go: “Resolved to mark a new stage in the process of European integration undertaken with the establishment of the European Communities, drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law, recalling the historic importance of the ending of the division of the European continent and the need to create firm bases for the construction of the future Europe, confirming their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of the rule of law…” After this preamble, it was really only a matter of time until the European Union would ban olive oil. Read more

A regular question in New Zealand and Australia is whether our respective nations succeed because of, or in spite of, our politicians. As both nations' Budgets were read this week, it was a story of two countries that have faced a vastly different set of circumstances over the past five years, and the choices both have made in light of that. Read more