Benno is a Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative with a wide range of policy interests. He has worked on several ‘once in a lifetime’, ‘generational opportunity’ type reform programs across central and local government, covering the Urban Growth Agenda, the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act 2020, Three Waters reform, Resource Management reform, and Science, Innovation and Technology system reform.
Benno’s interest in policy was born after initially studying religion (BAHon), philosophy (MA) and psychology (GradDipSci) with a focus on consciousness, which culminated in a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington.
His subsequent policy career traced the problem definition of housing unaffordability to its roots, covering positions at The Treasury (urban planning and land markets), The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (infrastructure funding and financing) and Local Government New Zealand (three waters and constitutional underpinnings of alternative urban planning paradigms).
Most recently, he worked on how science, innovation and technology system reform could contribute to our global economic competitiveness and help turn around New Zealand’s long lasting productivity challenge.
One of Benno's emerging policy interests is meta-reform: reform directed not at any particular policy domain but at the architecture of government and the machinery of the public service, which are the institutional conditions that determine whether policy reform of any kind can be conceived, developed, and implemented effectively in genuine support of the government of the day.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
New Zealand has new planning laws. They passed in September and replace the Resource Management Act. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 23 September 2026) — Parliament has passed the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, ending the Resource Management Act's 35-year reign. The New Zealand Initiative says the Acts settle the system's architecture but defer almost every decision about how it will behave to national direction that does not yet exist, to be written by whoever is the Minister after next year's election. Read more
Imagine two paddocks at the edge of a city. They have the same soil and access to the same roads and pipes. Read more
Before anyone builds a house in New Zealand, someone must pay upfront for the pipes and the roads that connect a development to the city. Almost always, that someone is the council. Read more
Before anyone can build a house in New Zealand, someone must pay for the pipes and the roads that connect a development to the city. While this seems like a minor detail, it is a central issue for housing affordability. Read more
New Zealand spends more on infrastructure than almost any developed country, yet still cannot build the pipes and roads new housing needs. Why? Read more
New Zealand cannot build enough houses because councils cannot afford the pipes and roads that new suburbs need. That is the conclusion of a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 17 June 2026) – New Zealand cannot build enough houses because councils cannot afford the pipes and roads that new suburbs need. That is the conclusion of a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. Read more
In a meeting room on Lambton Quay, a paper is on its eleventh draft. It is about whether the public service should adopt AI. 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
In this episode, Eric talks with Dr Benno Blaschke and Chris Parker about why our current approach to housing supply, which is focused on housing targets and delivered through “predict and provide”, has consistently failed. The explore what a better system could look like by discussing Benno's proposed alternative, where an independent panel would use price-based indicators to evaluate council plans against the conditions of competitive urban land markets. Read more
Housing targets have long been a political football – and an emotional subject. Would it not be better to take some of the heat out of the housing debate and ask more systematically how we could better plan for future housing supply? Read more
Wellington (Thursday, 21 May 2026) – Housing targets have long been a political football. They are also an emotional political subject. Read more
Housing targets have long been a political football. They are also an emotional political subject. Read more
Dr Benno Blaschke talked to Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB about his research note Beyond Targets, arguing that housing targets alone are insufficient without addressing the planning rules and zoning that create artificial scarcity. Dr Blaschke proposed an independent expert panel, likening it to a financial adviser for cities, to help councils get the urban economics right rather than leaving housing affordability to political decision-making. Read more