Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has promised everything his government does this year will focus on creating growth. That is great. Read more
I. Introduction We appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Australian Government’s (“Government”) consultation on the implementation of a new digital competition regime.1 As we outline in our comments, the Government’s proposal rests on the assumption that there exists a broad global consensus on the need for ex-ante rules for digital platforms. This purported consensus is, however, largely overstated. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY 1.1 This submission on the discussion document Promoting competition in New Zealand – A targeted review of the Commerce Act 1986 is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses, and the International Center for Law & Economics [ICLE]. Read more
It is hard to believe today, but a TV interview about genetic modification (GM) once upended an election campaign. That interview cast a long shadow over the use of GM in New Zealand. Read more
When a councillor in New Zealand’s Carterton District was elected on a platform of fiscal responsibility, she could not have expected to be barred from participating in budget deliberations. Yet that is exactly what happened when council bureaucrats deemed her campaign promises a “conflict of interest” that disqualified her from key financial decisions. Read more
Wellington (Thursday, 13 February 2025) - The New Zealand Initiative welcomes Minister Willis’s commitment to enabling new grocery entrants into the New Zealand market but warns against politicising KiwiSaver. Initiative Executive Director Dr Oliver Hartwich said, “We have long argued that New Zealand’s restrictive planning and consenting frameworks have made it unnecessarily difficult for new entrants to establish a viable presence in the supermarket sector. Read more
Perhaps geography is still destiny after all. The closer a Pacific nation sits to American shores, the more Washington seems to care about Chinese influence. Read more
Some essays are timeless. In 1964, Richard Hofstadter diagnosed what he called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Read more
It wasn’t that long ago that New Zealand’s housing market made international news because of its insanity. In 2016, The Guardian tagged Auckland as the “hottest property market in the world” – and part of a housing crisis. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY 1.1 This submission on the Resource Management (Consents and Other Systems Changes) Amendment Bill is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. Read more
Jordan Peterson’s recent keynote at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in Sydney laid bare a critical divide within classical liberalism. Peterson champions individual responsibility and free markets. Read more
I didn’t think it was going to go like this. But here we are. Read more
A few years ago, when I was still a classics lecturer, I started to notice a disturbing trend. Scholars were being denounced on Twitter (RIP) for wrongthink. Read more
I’m Barbara Oakley, and I’m delighted to be spending nearly six months with The New Zealand Initiative. My husband, Phil and I are thrilled to return to New Zealand. Read more
Waitangi day debates about New Zealand’s sovereignty often fixate on a single moment: the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. This focus is understandable, given the Treaty’s significance to both Māori and the Crown. Read more