Reports & Media

Taken at face value, the government’s zero-carbon bill is a toothless façade. On closer examination, it looks more like a Trojan Horse for dictatorial government by decree. Read more

As Karl Marx taught us, history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. With Brexit we are long past these two separate stages. Read more

A Twitter-storm has raged over the last week about Auckland Council’s rules requiring community consultation before private developers can name new roads. Apparently, some Aucklanders believe that holding up housing projects while developers comply with council road-naming requirements is unacceptable red tape. Read more

I don’t know if anyone ever really believed manufacturing televisions in New Zealand made sense. Controls in place until New Zealand’s reforms prohibited importing fully assembled televisions, to encourage manufacture and assembly in New Zealand. Read more

Two developments this week on the Government’s flagship Zero Carbon Bill. First, Parliament’s Environment Committee sent its report recommending changes back to the House, having waded through more than 10,000 public submissions. Read more

Suppose I told you that anticompetitive activity right here in New Zealand was behind a transfer of wealth amounting to, at the very least, hundreds of billions of dollars. The victims of the cartel are New Zealand’s poorest, who have had to endure hardship so substantial that its effects are directly visible in New Zealand’s poverty and material deprivation statistics. Read more

If your doctor thinks you may be suffering from a serious illness but the test results suggest you are in the clear, that will seem like good news. But your prognosis will depend on whether your doctor has tested for the right thing. Read more

Imagine, for a moment, the government were about to pass a Zero Carbon bill that takes the most direct path to success on our emissions targets. What would it look like? Read more

“Our goal is to make sure the fight against poverty is based on scientific evidence,” Esther Duflo said shortly after becoming the second woman (and also the youngest economist, at 46) to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. Duflo, along with her husband, Abhijit Banerjee, and Michael Kremer, received this year’s top economics award “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty”. Read more

Despite all your predictions to the contrary, the children still have not colluded against me. On finding out that the Crampton household’s way of divvying up the chores is somewhat nonstandard, I reported on it in a May 2018 Insights column in case others might find it helpful. Read more

A common saying about the various stages of social acceptance is: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win." A decade after Bitcoin was born, cryptocurrencies are about to enter the "fight" phase in their quest to become a mainstream means of payment. That is all due to Libra, a new global digital currency that a Facebook-led coalition plans to launch as early as next year. Read more

This week, all eyes will be on Brexit – again. With the Halloween deadline just a couple of weeks away, the coming days will be crucial for the future of Britain, the European Union and their relationship with each other. Read more

While holidaying in Taupo, we visited the Huka Prawn Park. There, powered by recycled thermal energy from the power station next door, Giant Malaysian river prawns are raised in 26⁰C warm water. Read more

This week, the church of climate change was consecrated in New Zealand. Through widespread face-painting, chanting and dressing-up our newest saviour was born. Read more