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If there’s one line in the 1967 classic film The Graduate that has aged poorly, it might be Mr McGuire’s advice to a young Dustin Hoffman to find his future in plastics. Now, just over 50 years later, plastics are more commonly cast as retro at best, and an environmental menace otherwise. Read more
If we could fixing the tangled mess of regulation stymieing new home construction, it would help alleviate real misery. The housing shortage leads directly to rents that take up too much of our paycheques, to overcrowding, and potentially to poor health. Read more
Heritage buildings are in the spotlight after a devastating fire at Christchurch's 110-year-old Antonio Hall. The owners had not done any maintenance to it for more than 20 years and this led to calls for tougher rules for owners of heritage properties to take more care of their buildings. Read more
Can local community growth pay for itself? In other words, can economic growth itself pay for the community’s required infrastructure expansion (e.g. Read more
Parables, biblical or otherwise, are excellent instruction. They warn of the dangers of getting what you wish for. Read more
Wellington (7 July 2019): The New Zealand Initiative is proud to support the release of Local Government New Zealand’s (LGNZ) localism discussion paper, Reinvigorating local democracy, which was launched today at the 2019 LGNZ Conference in Wellington. The discussion paper outlines a gradual process for New Zealand to move from being one of the world’s most centralised countries in the developed world to one that is prepared to trust its communities to play a meaningful role in our social, economic and cultural development. Read more
Wellington (4 July 2019): The New Zealand Initiative commends the New Zealand Productivity Commission’s draft report on local government funding and financing. “The report stresses the importance of high performing local government for community wellbeing. Read more
Cabinet shuffles provide great journalistic set-pieces. For the politics-as-sport contingent, it provides all the narrative arc of changes to the Black Caps line-up for the World Cup: winners and losers, who’s in and who’s out, and whether the changes will do more to help the team score political runs or to defend against the Opposition’s bowling attack. Read more
Politicians have a lot of privileges, but one privilege that regular folks have over them is the freedom to change our minds. In an interview with Meet the Press in 1970, economist Paul Samuelson explained his changing views on inflation to a journalist by saying, “Well when events change, I change my mind. Read more
Economists, or at least economists of a policy-bent, like to distinguish between outputs and outcomes. Focusing on the former comes too easily at the expense of the latter, especially in the case of KiwiBuild and the Government’s overall housing supply agenda. Read more