Prosperity and environmental quality are not opposites. Countries that grow richer generally clean up, and countries that stagnate generally do not.
What matters is how environmental goals are pursued. Where the objective is clear and property rights are well defined, prices and tradeable rights do the work more cheaply than rules, and they keep doing it without any official having to guess who should reduce what and by how much. Where the rights are vague, everybody litigates instead.
The Initiative applies that thinking across the environment. Emissions are capped and traded, so additional climate policies sitting under the cap add cost without cutting net emissions. Fisheries have shown that secure, tradeable quota can sustain a resource, and the same logic could settle the long-running argument between commercial and recreational fishers. Freshwater would be better served by tradeable catchment allocations than by uniform rules applied to unequal land. A planning system should name the effects that matter rather than require permission for everything. And a primary sector expected to earn the country's living needs regulators willing to approve proven technology and a biosecurity system funded before the incursion rather than after it.
New Zealanders can have a country that is both pristine and prosperous. The environment is too valuable to protect wastefully. Every dollar spent on an expensive way of securing one environmental gain is another gain the country never gets.
1. Introduction and Summary 1.1 This submission on the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Bill (the Bill) is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. Read more
Is New Zealand a country in decline or a quiet success story? A new report from The New Zealand Initiative argues it is neither. Read more
This is The New Zealand Initiative’s 2026 Prescription for Prosperity. Since 2017, the Initiative has prepared a briefing for the incoming government. Read more
This submission in response to the Severe Weather Emergency Recovery Legislation Bill is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. Read more
This submission in response to the Natural and Built Environment Bill is made by The New Zealand Initiative, a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. The Initiative has been deeply concerned about resource management policy and practice since its establishment in 2012. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talked to Heather Du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB about the government's $60 million payment to keep Golden Bay Cement's Northland plant open, which he described as a one-off that leaves the underlying problem in the Emissions Trading Scheme unresolved. Dr Crampton argued the scheme's industrial allocations are poorly designed for cement, and that setting them properly, whether by allocating credits that track how carbon intensive production is overseas or by applying a carbon border charge on imports, would remove the need for payments like this one. Read more
In this episode, Michael talks with Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative, about two new reports, New Zealand by Comparison and New Zealand by Numbers, which chart how New Zealand measures up against 28 other countries and how it has changed over recent decades. They discuss why a country that attracts migrants from around the world keeps losing so many of its own people, how Australia matches New Zealand on almost everything but the economy, the Eastern European economies closing in, and wellbeing rankings that still sit near the top of the world but are slipping. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 22 July 2026) – Two weeks ago, New Zealand by Numbers asked whether New Zealand was improving. A new report from The New Zealand Initiative asks a harder question: is it keeping up? Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 27 May 2026) – New Zealand can be a much more prosperous country, and the policy choices needed to get us there are well within reach, says The New Zealand Initiative’s Executive Director, Dr Oliver Hartwich. The Initiative today released Prescription for Prosperity 2026, its fourth briefing to an incoming government. Read more
The United Nations Environmental Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report was called “No more hot air … please!” Yesterday, I joined a panel at the Climate Change & Business Conference to talk about New Zealand’s Nationally Determined Contribution – our NDC. Under the Paris Agreement, countries must produce targets for emission reductions, set policies consistent with their targets, and report on their progress. Read more