When I first visited Sydney in 1999, what struck me most were the cranes. They stood over the city in every direction, building towers, stadiums and rail lines for the Olympic Games. Read more
Last week, we co-hosted a dinner with the Selwyn Foundation. Its chair, former Labour health minister David Cunliffe, led the Government's aged care advisory group and presented their report, A place to grow old. Read more
Chris Bishop passed the new Planning Act with one working day to spare, and may not be in the next Parliament to see it work. Damien accused him of regulatory capture earlier this year and now says he has achieved more in three years than most politicians manage in a career. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY 1.1 The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the illustrative National Policy Direction (NPD) for the new planning system. Read more
Greater Manchester's 2014 devolution agreement included powers over transport, housing and skills, with matching funding. That was my model for New Zealand two years ago, in a research note for The New Zealand Initiative. Read more
We hear a great deal about the Bank of Mum and Dad. The Bank of the children gets rather less attention, although we have been drawing on it for years. Read more
Here is a paradox that ought to trouble ministers more than any single threat named in the NZSIS’s 2026 Security Threat Environment report, released in August. The New Zealand Government has never had more useful intelligence available to it than it does today. Read more
It is election time in New Zealand and as such, political tragics like myself cannot have any meetings without the conversation turning to the question “And, who will win on 7 November?” But something is different this year. Not just because the election is so tight with both the centre-left and the centre-right bloc neck and neck in the polls. Read more
Here is a paradox that ought to trouble ministers more than any single threat named in the NZSIS’s 2026 Security Threat Environment report, released in August. The New Zealand Government has never had more useful intelligence available to it than it does today. Read more
Our Senior Fellow Dr Bryce Wilkinson, a former Treasury director, joined Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB to make sense of the fiscal plans dominating the election campaign. He read National’s numbers as a continuation of its effort since 2024 to return to surplus: holding the line on spending despite rising interest costs and an ageing population, and relying on economic growth to lift revenues and close the gap. Read more
Unless you’ve been living under a rock and avoiding the internet entirely (and really who could blame you in an election year) you’ll have seen the controversy about Kiwibank’s new mascot. The problem isn’t the mascot itself – a cute little sheep named Buck. Read more
Virtuous and vicious cycles in policy are both entirely possible. Sometimes at the same time. Read more
Three polls landed this week, with National under 30 per cent on the party vote while holding 44 electorate seats, and Opportunity sitting either side of the threshold depending on which poll you read. The question is whether National’s voters have gone tactical or left the party altogether. Read more
Human beings have a tendency to blame and punish others for their misfortunes. The ancient Greeks turned this tendency into a ritual called pharmakos. Read more
This year's NZSIS Security Threat Environment report lists many threats facing New Zealand. But one of the biggest is not on its list: the Government has more useful intelligence than ever before, yet it is not digesting that intelligence fast enough to matter. Read more