Last week the Initiative took aim at those presiding over the country’s education system. For nearly two decades Kiwi students have suffered a steady decline in performance. Read more

The rise of automation, artificial intelligence and pressures from developing economies are threatening low-skilled and unskilled jobs. Never has the need for school leavers to be well-educated been more important than today. Read more

New Zealand looks to have won its second battle against Covid-19. The country should brace itself for another round of self-congratulatory backslapping. Read more

Judging by the length of Labour’s manifesto proposals for workplace relations reform, you might think New Zealand’s labour markets were not working well for workers. If re-elected, Labour will persist with plans of former Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Ian Lees-Galloway to introduce compulsory industry-wide collective bargaining (dubbed ‘Fair Pay Agreements’). Read more

In mid-April, German sewerage experts were allowed through New Zealand’s tightly controlled border with the country still locked down at Alert Level 4. At the time, Wellington ratepayers were paying nearly $100,000 a day to ferry wastewater by truck from the city's Moa Point treatment plant to a landfill. Read more

After a Covid-free century of days since the country’s last case, 11 August will be remembered as the day the lustre wore off New Zealand’s triumph over the coronavirus. With Auckland at Alert Level 3, nearly two fifths of the “team of five million” is back in lockdown. Read more

With the number of Auckland’s Covid cases increasing exponentially, there is every chance the Government will extend the city’s Alert Level 3 lockdown for several weeks. How we got here and the lessons we can learn are questions for another day. Read more

Over the past fortnight the border issue troubling politicians and the media has been whether Kiwis returning from overseas should contribute to the costs of their managed isolation. But even with its half-billion-dollar price-tag, the cost of quarantining returning Kiwis is the least of the country's border concerns. Read more

Last week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern decided the conduct of her Workplace Relations and Safety Minister showed a “lack of judgment.” Whether Iain Lees-Galloway’s indiscretions justified him being thrown out of cabinet is open to question. But the weaknesses of his labour market reform agenda are not so debatable. Read more

A good project manager knows that unnecessary bells and whistles endanger a project's aims. Gold-plating a specification wastes resources and threatens a venture’s viability. The same is also true of public policy. Read more

The proverb “All that glitters is not gold” is a line from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Any doubts about the Bard’s wisdom were dispelled this month when New Zealand’s “gold standard” quarantining was shown to be fool’s gold. Read more