Reports & Media

David Cameron was furious. The report just released by his favourite think tank was “insane”, "barmy" and “rubbish from start to finish”. Read more

Plans to overhaul the school funding system were rehashed by the Minister of Education at a recent secondary teachers' union conference. Details for the new model are scant but the Minister stated that school performance will be included as a factor in funding decisions. Read more

To offset the greenhouse impact of an economy round-trip flight between New York and London, you would have to recycle approximately 40,000 plastic bottles. Fly first-class, however, and that number increases to a whopping 100,000 bottles. Read more

With all the excitement around the Volkswagen affair, the refugee crisis and UK Labour’s return to socialism, the euro crisis has been relegated from the front pages. (It is still ongoing.) But at last, there are positive signs of a change. Read more

Large tracts of farmland, Kiwi-managed and Kiwi-owned, are a matter of national pride, which is why selling such assets, especially rural land, to foreign interests is equated with a loss of sovereignty and often met with strong local resistance. It is an issue of real concern to many New Zealanders, who fear foreign direct investment (FDI) could exploit domestic employees and the environment, or that Kiwis will become tenants in their own land. Read more

The saying that if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail seems particularly apt when describing central government’s approach to local government reform. Staring some pretty daunting challenges in the face, like the wave of infrastructure that needs to be refreshed off an ageing ratepayer base over the next 30 years, central government’s preferred solution so far has been to amalgamate councils into bigger structures. Read more

As far as corporate scandals go, they do not come bigger than the Volkswagen affair. Yes, other companies make mistakes too. Read more

There is a perplexing thing that continues to challenge the education sector, where a deluge of new teachers enter the market and yet many principals report difficulties filling vacancies. This may seem improbable, but there is one likely explanation for it: weak quality signals. Read more

Since the third position here at Insights is usually reserved for a light-hearted take on the events of the day, let me play devil’s advocate, taking the opposite side to two of Oliver’s recent arguments. Oliver is almost certainly correct, and if the Initiative has a position on anything, it is his. Read more

The Volkswagen emissions cheating affair is only the last in a long row of German corporate scandals, as I wrote last week (The fallout from the Volkswagen fiasco, 24 September). But it is not just a corporate scandal we are witnessing, what is on display is also a piece of crony (or at least cosy) capitalism. Read more

Dr Oliver Hartwich from The New Zealand Initiative explains that, while they might make homeowners feel richer, high home prices are not a cause for celebration. It’s time to remember what a home’s true function is and why unaffordability is problematic. Read more

Should the owner of Lochinver Station, the Stevenson Group, have the right to sell it to the Crown at the Shanghai Pengxin bid price of $88 million? In that case, the Crown could (and should) immediately sell the station to the highest bid from a New Zealander. Read more