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In his book, The Great Degeneration, Niall Ferguson describes how the West’s six ‘killer applications’ (competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism, and work ethic) are on the decline. "Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Read more

This week the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) released their report Benefit Sanctions: Creating an Invisible Underclass of Children, which focussed on the sanctions on beneficiaries who failed to meet certain obligations. The report was critical of the National Party’s ‘ideologically driven’ policy of forcing parents into paid employment (among other social obligations). Read more

Recently the government announced it would fund KickStart, a breakfast-in-schools programme designed specifically for decile 1 to 4 schools. The announcement was generally well received but did raise an uncomfortable question: is it the state’s role to feed people’s kids? Read more

The 2025 Taskforce’s 2009 report put New Zealand’s income gap with Australia (2008) at 35%. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest statistics for real GDP per capita show that the income gap with Australia increased to just under 41% in 2011. Read more

Last Thursday night, former Australian Prime Minister Hon John Howard spoke at The New Zealand Initiative's inaugural retreat in Auckland. Below is an edited excerpt of his speech in which shared his views on think tanks and how they influenced him during his time as a politician. Read more

Last night, former Australian Prime Minister Hon John Howard OM AC spoke to guests of the Initiative on 'Trans-Tasman Relations in the Pacific Century'. Today we have an excerpt from our chairman's welcome speech, and next week we will publish an excerpt from Mr Howard's speech. Read more

This week, the Dominion Post ran an article under the rather optimistic headline, ‘Fulltime work lined up to keep prisoners happy’. It quoted Prime Minister John Key talking about a “working prisons” proposal designed to get prisoners working full-time in the prison system. Read more

Police statistics released this week show crime rates dropping to their lowest since 1988–89. Recorded offences dropped to 394,522 in 2011–12, down by 21,802 or 5.2% from 2010–11. Read more

A disclosure: I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. Indeed, I abhor the smell of tobacco and pestered my parents into giving up smoking when I was child. Read more