Reports & Media

Wellington (16 July 2019): The New Zealand Initiative has welcomed the decision by Minister of Energy and Resources Hon Megan Woods to accept the Interim Climate Change Committee’s recommendation to shift focus away from 100% renewable electricity to other more effective and less expensive emissions policies. The Interim Committee found the Government’s 100% renewables policy would increase power prices by up to 39% and could effectively raise New Zealand’s emissions by preventing a transition off fossil fuels to electricity in transport and parts of industry. Read more

Heritage buildings are in the spotlight after a devastating fire at Christchurch's 110-year-old Antonio Hall. The owners had not done any maintenance to it for more than 20 years and this led to calls for tougher rules for owners of heritage properties to take more care of their buildings. Read more

The Government must reject the recommendations made by former Prime Minister Jim Bolger’s Fair Pay Agreements Working Group (FPAWG) or face harming economic growth and productivity and the interests of workers, the unemployed and consumers, says public policy think tank The New Zealand Initiative. The Initiative’s new report Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour, reveals that the Bolger report misrepresents New Zealand’s labour market record. Read more

The Government must reject the recommendations made by former Prime Minister Jim Bolger’s Fair Pay Agreements Working Group (FPAWG) or face harming economic growth and productivity and the interests of workers, the unemployed and consumers, says public policy think tank The New Zealand Initiative. The Initiative’s new report Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour, reveals that the Bolger report misrepresents New Zealand’s labour market record. Read more

Our report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour, was released on Tuesday, 9 July. Chairman, and co-author of the report Roger Partridge spoke on TVNZ Breakfast to discuss how our research has found that the case for the recommendations of the Fair Pay Agreement Working Group (FPAWG) in pursuit of the government's goal of a highly-skilled and innovative workforce and an economy that delivers well-paid, decent jobs and broad-based gains from economic growth and productivity, does not stack up. Read more

Wellington (7 July 2019): The New Zealand Initiative is proud to support the release of Local Government New Zealand’s (LGNZ) localism discussion paper, Reinvigorating local democracy, which was launched today at the 2019 LGNZ Conference in Wellington. The discussion paper outlines a gradual process for New Zealand to move from being one of the world’s most centralised countries in the developed world to one that is prepared to trust its communities to play a meaningful role in our social, economic and cultural development. Read more