Chief Economist at The New Zealand Initiative Dr Eric Crampton is in the studio to talk economics. Tonight he's talking competition and antitrust laws. Read more
Hard times make for bad thinking. Inflation has been running at 7.3%, or at 7.8% if you remember how the petrol excise holiday works. Read more
In 2011 the Ministry of Education initiated a new school property strategy. Its aim was to replace New Zealand’s classrooms with ‘Modern Learning Environments’ (MLEs). Read more
Having attended too many public policy conferences, it was only a matter of time until they started haunting me in my sleep. So, one night, I woke up from a nightmare. Read more
Political theatre is not usually associated with Julius Vogel (1835-99), the chief architect of the radical expansion of New Zealand’s rail network in the 1870s. A poor speaker, Vogel was also partially deaf in one ear – no small handicap in the heyday of parliamentary debate. Read more
Mike Hosking discusses Roger Partridge's NZ Herald column on protecting highly productive soils. Read more
Mike Hosking from Newstalk ZB comments on Oliver Hartwich's recent Newsroom article about the possibility of Italy's most right-wing government since Mussolini. Read more
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman once quipped that David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage defined who counts as an economist. Because every economist understands comparative advantage and its related notion of "opportunity cost" and practically nobody else does. Read more
According to a quote sometimes attributed to George Orwell, “journalism is printing what someone else does not want published; everything else is public relations.” Whether Orwell actually said it or not, it is a useful definition. There are whole armies of PR and comms people trying to make you swallow their predetermined messages. Read more
There is no evidence Modern learning classrooms are effective. That is according to research by think tank The New Zealand Initiative that has found the Education Ministry's classroom experiment has not been based on evidence. Read more
In 2011 the Ministry of Education embarked on a ten-year strategy to rejuvenate New Zealand’s aging classroom estate. Part of this strategy involved establishing large, open plan classrooms, populated by many more children than are found in cellular classrooms. The Ministry conducted no research on the effects of these ‘Modern learning Environments’ on students’ learning prior to compelling schools to adopt them. Read more
Wellington (Tuesday, 20 September 2022) – Ideology rather than evidence is the basis for the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) ‘Modern Leaning Environments’, research by think tank The New Zealand Initiative reveals. The fact that a government ministry could not produce data to support its policy for mass conversion of New Zealand’s classrooms to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs), is the main finding of the Initiative’s new report, No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit – Lessons from the 'Modern Learning Environments' experiment. Read more
In 2011 the Ministry of Education embarked on a 10 year strategy to rejuvenate New Zealand's ageing classrooms. Millions of dollars were spent building open plan classrooms and implementing student led learning strategies. But in his report for The New Zealand Initiative, Dr Michael Johnston, found there was little evidence the policy has worked at all, and in some cases may be making learning even more difficult for some students. Read more
Ideology rather than evidence is the basis for the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) ‘Modern Leaning Environments’, research by The New Zealand Initiative has revealed. Dr Oliver Hartwich and Dr Michael Johnston discuss the fact that a government ministry could not produce data to support its policy for mass conversion of New Zealand’s classrooms to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) and other findings of the Initiative’s new report, "No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit – Lessons from the 'Modern Learning Environments' experiment". Read more
In October 1922, a young journalist and agitator from the hard right marched to Rome to seize political power. This month, a 45-year-old former journalist with far-right leanings is also running for office in Italy. Read more