One of the joys of working at the Initiative is writing for the weekly Insights newsletter. As a think tanker it allows you to pick from a veritable smorgasbord of worthy topics and opine on them (hopefully in an insightful manner). Read more
New Zealand may never have a better chance of drawing top talent away from America. This week's changes to skilled migrant requirements will help but not as much as they should. Read more
Unless recreational fisheries management changes, fishers will face a steady decline in daily bag limits, increases in minimum legal sizes, and shorter fishing seasons. The recreational fishing experience will worsen, as will conflicts between the recreational and commercial fishing sectors. Read more
Wellington (19 April 2017): New Zealand’s management of recreational fisheries lags behind other fishing nations and risks our fishing future, according to the latest report from The New Zealand Initiative. Dr Randall Bess’ second report on fisheries management, The Overseas Catch: The state of recreational fisheries management abroad, shows how other nations have managed conflict between recreational and commercial fishers when fish become scarce, and how they have worked to replenish stocks to improve the fishing experience. Read more
The latest report in our fisheries project, The Overseas Catch: The state of recreational fisheries management abroad, was released today. Report author, Dr Randall Bess, discussed how recreational fisheries are manged in the four locations he visited (British Columbia, the Gulf of Mexico, northern California and Western Australia) on Newstalk ZB. Read more
The Initiative's fisheries Research Fellow Dr Randall Bess spoke on TV1's Breakfast show about the latest report in our fisheries project, The Overseas Catch: The state of recreational fisheries management abroad.
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The New Zealand Initiative has welcomed the Government’s changes to immigration policy, which were announced today, calling them a pragmatic way of ensuring businesses get access to the international skills and talent they need to compete. Under the changes, Government will for the first time allow the wages offered to overseas workers applying for permanent skilled and unskilled visas to count towards their immigration points total. Read more
Much ink has been spilled recently over Auckland Council’s decision to try recover tourism promotion costs from inner-city accommodation providers using a targeted rate. Judging by the temperature of the rhetoric, that ink is boiling hot. Read more
Among transport engineers, the consensus is roundabouts are preferable to crossroads. They reduce crash risks, improve traffic flow and are less expensive to maintain than traffic lights. Read more
Sir Douglas Myers, well known and respected for his business and philanthropic interests and recognised as such, died this last week at the age of 78 after a long battle with cancer. Sir Douglas was also known for his lifelong passion for fishing. Read more
You may be in a spot of trouble if you ever really wind up having to kill two birds with the throw of one stone. It is a tricky shot to pull off. Read more
George W Bush’s most famous quote is the one he got so fantastically wrong. Repeating an old Tennessee saying, he meant to say “fool me once, shame on you. Read more
When it comes to fisheries, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has been in the news for the wrong reasons. Over the past year, the public has learned both MPI and its predecessor have failed to cope with problems of misreporting and illegal discarding of commercial catches. Read more
There are election campaigns, there are weird election campaigns, and there are New Zealand election campaigns. I arrived in this beautiful country five years ago, having previously lived in Germany, the UK and Australia. Read more
What do you think is more harmful: Smoking a cigarette and inhaling the hundreds of toxic chemical by-products? Or inhaling a nicotine vapour without them? Read more