Reports & Media

The Tomorrow's Schools Independent Taskforce sees competition and self-governance as bad, collaboration and ministry management as good. It is seductive stuff, if a little Orwellian. Read more

Wellington is starting to empty, the morning commute is getting shorter, and the capital is finally feeling like summer – all signs that Christmas is not far away. And so it is the time of the year to thank you, our readers, for your interest in the Initiative’s work. From a policy perspective, New Zealand’s 2018 was not quite as eventful as most observers predicted. The (now no longer) new Government established so many inquiries and working groups that we... Read more

It’s hard to make young people care about New Zealand Superannuation. Read more

After the tumultuous years of the Euro crisis (2010–15), Europe seemed to have returned to more normal conditions. Gone were the riots in Athens, the stock market rollercoasters and the immediate threat of monetary union collapse. Read more

Meet Jim. Jim first started paying taxes when he was 12 years old and picked up a lawn mowing job. Jim has paid taxes throughout his working life, with the expectation that some of those taxes would go toward his pension. Jim sees NZ Super as an entitlement to what has always been rightfully his. Read more

Few countries centralise government power as much as New Zealand. In most areas of public life, Wellington calls the shots, makes the rules, and holds the purse strings. Yet, at least in one area of public policy, New Zealand is much devolved: education. Since the rollout of Tomorrow’s Schools in 1989, our schools have enjoyed relative autonomy and self-governance. That may end if the Government implements recommendations from the Tomorrow's Schools Review taskforce. Read more

New Zealand is world leading in many aspects, most notably for Sir Edmund Hillary’s triumph on Mt Everest, Ernest Rutherford’s breakthrough in nuclear physics, and women’s suffrage. We can also be proud of leading the world in integrated data, a process that combines data from different sources and displays results in a unified view to users. Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) in 2011 started integrating data from all government agencies in New Zealand in what is now called the Integrated Data... Read more

We have to take the flower by the thorns and cut the animalism out of our everyday language. That is the message this week from PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Good on them. More ethical treatment of millions of humans in totalitarian countries would be a good thing, too. So when you want to motivate your colleagues to real action, PETA does not want you to talk about taking the bull by the horns. Read more

It was during the discussions of measuring spiritual capital that the ghost of Sir John James Cowperthwaite hovered near. The shade whispered in my ear, “When I was Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, I refused to collect economic statistics for London. Why? For fear that I might be forced to do something about them.” Read more

Community sponsorship helps Canada accept far more refugees than the government’s quota could accommodate on its own. And it looks promising for New Zealand as well. But scaling the programme to its full potential may require sponsoring communities to pick up a greater share of the cost.During the 2015–16 Syrian refugee crisis, Kiwis wanting to help were stymied by restrictions on the number of refugees allowed into the country. Read more

Like many young people, I have long been told that New Zealand Superannuation (NZS) is unaffordable, and to prepare for a future without it. Yet both major political parties have avoided touching the issue.On Tuesday, The New Zealand Initiative released its latest report, Embracing a Super model: The superannuation sky is not falling, which explains why this is so.Embracing a Super model finds many things to celebrate about the superannuation model. Read more

Life is unfair, especially as you get older. That is what Dutchman Emile Ratelband must have thought when the court of Arnhem rejected his request to lower his age by 20 years.Arguing that being 69 was a disadvantage on online dating site Tinder, he wanted to reduce his official age to his ‘felt’ age.To no avail. The judge ruled that the grey-haired TV personality, motivational coach and former politician could feel as old as he likes. Read more

Reason has taken us a long way. For thousands of years subsistence was the human condition. Then in the late 18th century, prosperity suddenly erupted in Western Europe. And since then it has embraced the bulk of humanity. Read more