Reports & Media

Rotterdam's port moves 460 million tonnes of cargo each year. That is roughly equivalent to shifting the entire population of Earth sixty times over. Read more

It is legal to buy books. Obviously. Read more

The New Zealand Law Society’s new report, Strengthening the Rule of Law in Aotearoa New Zealand, runs to more than eighty pages, includes seventy-eight recommendations, and reflects a considerable investment of time and goodwill. Its aims are noble: to bolster constitutional integrity, improve access to justice, and promote respect for the rule of law. Read more

The New Zealand Association of Economists’ annual conference is unlike other academic conferences and better for it. The Association’s membership spans academics, officials, consultants and a few think-tankers. Read more

Parliament is supreme but it is not infallible. Governments often propose policies that are wrong in principle. Read more

A peculiar economic paradox appears to govern infrastructure development in modern New Zealand: the more we spend on infrastructure, the less we seem to get for it. This uncomfortable reality was a key takeaway from last week’s launch of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission’s Draft National Infrastructure Plan. Read more

Philosophers love to dream up strange scenarios to get us thinking. They call these scenarios ‘thought experiments.’ In 1980, philosopher John Searle published his ‘Chinese room’ thought experiment. Read more

How should a select committee respond to a deluge of submissions? Does it matter if many submissions are part of a campaign playing on whipped up fears? Read more

Late night ‘situation monitoring’ on Twitter when Israel and America are bombing Iranian nuclear weapons facilities is not ideal for a good night’s sleep. Possible outcomes seemed to range from a happy and peaceful shift to a more liberal Iranian government, through to serious regional or broader war with a nuclear-armed Iran. Read more

This year, the Government will spend nearly $190 billion. Yet we know remarkably little about whether those billions represent value-for-money. Read more

For two decades, New Zealand’s school education system has been in a death spiral. In 2007, the Ministry of Education adopted a curriculum bereft of knowledge. Read more