One in seven of New Zealand’s 15-year-olds cannot read at a level considered requisite for basic participation in society, according to the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. But does this simply reflect natural variation in ability levels and the left-end of the bell curve? Read more
Earlier this week, Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully announced that a further $2.975 million would be provided to the Filipino government in the aftermath of the devastatingly destructive Typhoon Haiyan. The additional funding will take New Zealand’s total contribution to the cause to more than $5 million. Read more
Life is frustrating for German savers. If they had 5,000 euros to invest and wanted to keep them in an instant access savings account, Deutsche Bank currently offers them an interest rate of 0.15 per cent, the Cologne Savings Bank 0.20 per cent and Postbank a whopping 0.7 percent. Read more
It is well recognised that New Zealand has a housing supply problem. Amid a growing population, shrinking household size, and increasing migration flows, the number of new homes built over the last three decades has failed to keep up with real demand. Read more
Wellington (18 November 2013): The government needs to urgently restructure financial incentives for local councils, shift the burden of water infrastructure costs, and create competition in planning if it wants to deliver affordable homes, according to The New Zealand Initiative’s third housing report. The report, Free to Build: Restoring New Zealand’s Housing Affordability, is the third in a series which explores how the housing market has lost its affordability since the 1970s, and how other countries have maintained stable house prices over the same period. Read more
This past week has been an interesting one for The New Zealand Initiative, having taken what we think are the best housing affordability policies from abroad, and presenting them to policymakers and bureaucrats on both sides of the beltway. They either agreed or disagreed with our recommendations depending on their ideological perspective, as you would expect, and for the most part the consultation was highly constructive (at least it was for us). Read more
As a businessman and philanthropist I get many requests – for funding, to be a keynote speaker, to support various projects. Unfortunately, I can’t do everything, but when I was asked to support an Auckland Council initiative to get young people into training and employment I was genuinely excited. Read more
This year, HSBC asked over 7,000 ex pats in 37 countries how they felt about the attractiveness of their host countries from a financial, quality of life and child-raising perspective. The results – many of which may seem surprising – were released early this month. Read more
The argument that we need to build more homes to tackle the housing affordability crisis was underscored this week by reports that suggest loan-to-value ratio (LVR) restrictions are having unintended – and negative – effects on the housing market. According to the Registered Master Builders Association, the number of enquiries into new homes has fallen by 30 per cent since the Reserve Bank’s limit on how much money retail banks can lend on low-equity mortgages kicked in at the start of October. Read more
It is a strange world. Even the most ardent defenders of the European Central Bank’s interest rate cut last week do not claim it will have any effect. Read more
Housing is shaping up to be one of the key battlegrounds in next year's election. Both National and Labour correctly sense that voters - particularly in Auckland, but in other parts of the country as well - are sufficiently fed up with the situation, and want to see the state step in and take action. Read more
The biggest surprise announcement out of Labour’s conference last weekend was the proposal to establish KiwiAssure, a new state-owned insurance company. Speaking to his party’s delegates, opposition leader David Cunliffe argued KiwiAssure would inject more competition into the insurance market. Read more
In his book, The Great Degeneration, Niall Ferguson describes how the West’s six ‘killer applications’ (competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism, and work ethic) are on the decline. "Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Read more