Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He is a regular commentator in the media on public policy and constitutional law. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014, after 16 years as a commercial litigation partner. He is an honorary fellow of the Legal Research Foundation, a charitable foundation associated with the University of Auckland and was its executive director from 2001 to 2009. He is a member of the editorial board of the New Zealand Law Review and was a member of the Council of the New Zealand Law Society, the governing body of the legal profession in New Zealand, from 2011 to 2015. He is a former chartered member of the Institute of Directors, a member of the University of Auckland Business School advisory board, and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
Australia’s banking royal commission did not pull any punches in its final report released last month. Most of them were directed at Australia’s financial services sector. Read more
Canadian psychologist Dr Jordan Peterson has a lot to answer for. At least he does according to Auckland Peace Action spokesman Iris Krzyzosiak. Read more
Readers will be familiar with that exasperating feeling of looking for something and not finding it. You know it should be there, but it is missing. Read more
The Reserve Bank is an unusual entity. It has a board that is not a board, and a governor who is also a chief executive. Read more
Read The New Zealand Initiative's submission to the Independent Expert Advisory Panel on Phase 2 of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act Review. Read more
Reason has taken us a long way. For thousands of years subsistence was the human condition. Read more
If you were not already alarmed about the state of education in New Zealand, two stories in the media last week should shake you from any complacency. The first story was about a commonplace word, trivial. Read more
The American mid-term elections were brutal. Indeed, no liberal democracy may have ever witnessed an electoral campaign so characterised by lies, racism and hate. Read more
Auckland’s first KiwiBuild winners could hardly keep the smiles off their faces. And who could blame them? Read more
In the media they say if it bleeds it leads. That may be so, but last Friday I took the unusual step of writing a column about some good news. Read more
Something of enormous global significance has just occurred but it has slipped past almost without notice. According to a report just released by the Brookings Institute, for the first time in history a majority of humanity is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty. Read more
It would take a humbug not to feel proud seeing our Prime Minister on the world stage last week. Coinciding with the 125th anniversary of New Zealand becoming the first country in the world to grant women the vote, her appearance was a profound affirmation of New Zealand’s openness, diversity and inclusiveness. Read more
As every law student learns, a rescuer owes a duty of care to a victim not to worsen the victim’s plight. The same principle applies in medical ethics. Read more
“Productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it is almost everything,” observed economist Paul Krugman. “A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise output per worker.” This is bad news for New Zealand. Read more
In Greek mythology, the Cyclops were a race of giants, each with great power yet with only a single eye. According to legend, the Cyclops traded their second eye for the gift of prophecy. Read more