Reports & Media

Lately, a lot of people have been calling Social Development Minister Paula Bennett a beneficiary basher. Beneficiary bashing involves anything that sours public perceptions of beneficiaries, thereby justifying benefit cuts, limitations and restrictions. Read more

Inequality is the buzzword this election year. The usual vernacular is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Read more

When searching for quotations about government, one thing quickly becomes clear: very few of them are positive. Thomas Jefferson, for example, put it this way: “History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.” Or take Thomas Paine: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” And these two quotes are actually some of the nicer ones you can find. Read more

In that faraway wonderland that it is the eurozone, nothing is quite what it seems. It is a strange place where half-bankrupt governments can plan a return to capital markets at moderate yields, and a central bank is able to impress analysts by talking about things it cannot do. Both instances are patently absurd, but just because something is absurd has never stopped it from happening in Europe. Read more

If we want to grow our businesses, whether by market share, profit, or offering customers better value, we need to grow our people - and growing people means growing big brains. Management guru Tom Peters, speaking at the New Zealand Initiative's annual retreat dinner recently, gave a resounding and impassioned speech on the importance to business of investing in people, first and foremost. Read more

If you are familiar with Harry Enfield’s legendary BBC television series, there was a character called Jürgen the German. A tourist to London, he started every conversation with an apology “for my country’s disgraceful behaviour during ze war” – only to then rant on about what’s wrong with Britain. Read more

This week the New Zealand Herald reported that Selwyn College has completely turned their figures around, lifting their NCEA Level 1 pass rate from 39 per cent in 2007, to 93 per cent in 2013. But could this relentless focus on figures – be it NCEA, National Standards, or Pisa – be ignoring what is most important? Read more

For professional reasons, Rachel Smalley may have had to quickly retract her unfortunate on-air slip, where she labelled New Zealand women ‘heifers’ and ‘lardos’, but the facts speak for themselves. According to the Ministry of Health, one-in-three adults in New Zealand is obese, with a Body Mass Index reading of 30 or more. Read more

Trying to explain economic freedom to someone living in an economically free country is like trying to explain to a fish what water is. Like a fish in water, when we are free we rarely stop to consider what freedom is, why it is important to our livelihood, and what would happen if it was ever taken away. Read more

By all measures, it was a defeat of historic proportions for President François Hollande and his Socialist Party. Last weekend’s French local elections have turned the country upside down, or rather shifted it to the political right. Read more

One of the principal arguments put forward for the development of Auckland into an international-sized city is that urban economies of scale generate better outcomes. This is called an agglomeration benefit, or rather the economic advantage that firms and people get from being situated closer to markets, suppliers and places of work. Read more

The first management book I ever read, back in the late 1980s, was the sequel to In Search of Excellence, the book that established Tom Peters as the world’s leading management guru. A friend had given it to me. Read more