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“Few ways are guaranteed to make yourself unpopular in New Zealand: try claiming that pavlova was an Australian invention; hating the All Blacks; or maybe expressing sympathy for local government.” This is the opening paragraph in our new publication #localismNZ: Bringing power to the people. We launched it yesterday at a joint symposium with Local Government New Zealand. Read more

Some folks take the wrong lesson from intermediate microeconomics – or never took the course in the first place. I worry that too many of them staff Wellington’s bureaus. Read more

“When equality is given to unequal things, the resultant will be unequal,” Plato once said. The ancient Greek philosopher would then have certainly condemned our local governance rules. Read more

Anybody even remotely connected with housing, housing research, the building industry – or with the ability to fog a mirror by breathing on it – had to know it was near-impossible for the government to meet its KiwiBuild promises on its 10-year schedule. Our current planning rules, infrastructure financing mechanisms, building materials supply regulations, council incentives, zoning, training of construction workers, rules around letting more construction workers into the country, rules around foreign builders being able to build here, rules around foreign financing of building projects, Resource Management Act processes – all of it made any non-trivial KiwiBuild impossible. Read more

KiwiBuild – the government programme to build or deliver 100,000 homes in 10 years – serves no useful public interest purpose and promises to endlessly distract and embarrass the government. That is the signal conclusion of KiwiBuild: Twyford’s Tar Baby, a research note released this week by The New Zealand Initiative. Read more

KiwiBuild – the government programme to deliver 100,000 down-sized homes in 10 years – is a waste of time and money. It serves no useful material public purpose and absorbs time and resources that would be far better devoted to addressing the real problem – housing affordability. Read more