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It does not happen every day that I find myself in agreement with the Ministry of Education. But their reasoning for introducing a New Zealand history curriculum is sound. Read more

UK political commentator Jeremy Driver put his finger on something important about his country’s failure to deal sensibly with Covid. It’s something that has also been rather easy to see from half-way around the world. Read more

When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. That is what it must be like for the government in the housing crisis. Read more

If you want to get into New Zealand during the pandemic, it’s not that hard. The government just needs to consider you to be a priority for a scarce managed isolation space. Read more

Suppose a tear in the spacetime continuum had delivered you a copy of December quarter 2020’s employment statistics one year early. You had received the key graphs on the employment rate, the unemployment rate, labour force participation rates and underutilisation rates for the year to come – but none of the accompanying discussion. Read more

Call me a tragic but even in my spare time, I am thinking about politics. Thus, over the summer holidays, I stumbled across a new computer game: Democracy 4. Read more

This week, the Climate Change Commission told the government it should take control of the economy to lower emissions. The Commission’s advice, part of its draft emissions budgets to 2035, was based on doubts that New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will be enough. Read more

If the goal of emissions policies is to cut emissions for the smallest loss of our prosperity, then the Climate Change Commission delivered a fiasco this week. Alongside its emissions budgets, the Commission has written the first draft of a plan for how New Zealand will lower its emissions over the next 15 years. Read more