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When The New Zealand Initiative set out 235 recommendations for the next government last month, the one this paper chose for its headline was the proposal to pay younger workers less. The news sense was sound, because it is the recommendation that sounds least fair. Read more

Government is awash in consultation processes. So much so that “consultation fatigue” is a real term. Read more

The debate about New Zealand’s Supreme Court has been framed as a question about the current court – its composition, its appointments, its judicial philosophy. This column frames it differently: as a question about what the current court inherited, and from whom. Read more

If the country sees a few lucky breaks, Budget 2026 shows a return to surplus in 2029. The period of structural deficits will have lasted almost a decade. Read more

A German economist writing satire about New Zealand sounds like the opening line of a bad joke. The joke gets longer when you learn the plot: two Martian auditors land in the Wairarapa expecting humanity at its best, are promptly fined for parking without consent, and proceed on a reluctant tiki tour of the country in the company of a Wellington bureaucrat named Ben, who has quietly decided his career is over and he may as well help them. Read more