Everyone knows that culture matters, at least in a vague sense. But showing how it matters has been like pinning jelly to a wall. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY 1.1 This submission on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Keeping Cash Local consultation is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. Read more
In this episode, Oliver talks with John Howard, senior fellow at the New Zealand Initiative, about why he sees no negotiated settlement over Iran in the next 30 to 60 days, and what prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz exposes about New Zealand's fuel and fertiliser supply. They also ask whether the increase in defence spending from 1.1 to 2 per cent of GDP is being converted into actual hardware and personnel, and assess Defence Minister Chris Penk's opening months in the job, including his $300 million announcement on attack drones. Read more
Last week, Eric Crampton made the case for passing the RMA replacement Bills, while noting some risks in their current form. Nick Clark argued that Parliament should pause them. Read more
It’s only going to get weirder from here, folks. Trump did not like existing social media platforms, so he launched his own, Truth Social, in 2022. Read more
New Zealanders have long seen university as the best educational route to the good life. Trades and industry training is seen as a second-best option. Read more
In 1987, on a school trip to the German countryside, my maths teacher made a prediction. Dr Müller had worked at IBM before turning to teaching in our industrial city, Essen. Read more
In this episode, Michael talks with Dr Helen Walls, who served on the ministerial advisory group on literacy and numeracy. Helen is generally supportive of New Zealand's primary literacy reforms but warns that pre-planned programmes, overuse of decodable books, slideshow-led lessons and pedantic grammar teaching can crowd out meaningful reading and writing. Read more
Major General John Howard talked to Ryan Bridge on Newstalk ZB about the Defence Minister's announcement that New Zealand will get long range, one-way strike drones, with the Minister wanting a New Zealand company to make them. Howard pointed to the size of New Zealand's exclusive economic zone and to cost in explaining why the drones are one way, and called it a great decision to invest in lower cost capabilities that deliver strategic effect and deterrence. Read more
Ask a well-informed European to name the Council of Europe's constitutional advisory body, and you will usually get a pause. I had to look it up myself last week, which is awkward for a Europe columnist, and worse for one with a doctorate in law. Read more
In this episode, Eric talks with Adam Jarvis, an Emergent Ventures fellow, about what happened when Anthropic held back the public release of its most powerful AI model, Mythos, and the US government then effectively banned non-US citizens from using the version it released instead, Fable. Adam argues that New Zealand is unusually well placed to host hyperscaler data centres, and that the binding constraint is not power or bandwidth but the country's inability to give investors a fast and certain answer. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 The New Zealand Initiative welcomes the opportunity to submit on the Draft Guidance on Regulations for Groups of Activities for Councils’ Planning and Reporting. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talked to Sean Plunket on The Platform about growing concern over data centres, arguing that much of the worry is founded on not understanding the scale of industrial water use and on misunderstanding the effects on electricity networks. Dr Crampton said a data centre proposed for Southland could take water comparable to almost two golf courses, or about a quarter of the average Canterbury irrigation consent, and he argued that fast consenting of new generation, particularly geothermal, would let data centres fund a build out of electricity that reduces overall cost rather than increasing it. Read more
Eric shows that, under the right ministers, the government’s replacement legislation should be an improvement on the existing RMA. But being better than the RMA is a very low bar. Read more
Oliver asked me to make the case for the government’s resource management legislation. It should be read in conjunction with Nick Clark’s critique below. Read more