Reports & Media

Germany and Switzerland have long been famous for exporting cars, machinery and chemicals to all parts of the world. They are now becoming well-known as exporters of their dual education model. Read more

New Zealand schools enjoy relative freedom. Some teach 21st century skills, others a knowledge-rich curriculum. In some classrooms devices are integral, in others they are banned. Some treated last week’s Climate Change March as part of the curriculum, others labelled it truancy. Generally, freedom works. But the Tomorrow’s Schools independent taskforce wants to change the balance between freedom and control. It wants to create new regional education hubs responsible for everything from employing teachers to advising on curriculum and pedagogy. Read more

Last week feels like it was a year ago. And the past week has made the world feel a little smaller. Last night, the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada from 2006 through 2015, addressed members and guests of the Initiative at our annual retreat. We found that Laureen, Prime Minister Harper’s wife, had lived in Christchurch as a young woman. Streets and buildings that stood as backdrop in news scenes playing in international media, for the second... Read more

I keep coming back to one tweet. Amid a steady stream of rage driven by pain and sorrow, a note of grace. Twitter stalwart and all-round decent bloke Lew Stoddart wrote: Read more

The political discourse in the United States is in dangerous territory. Ideological hate, partisan hostility, and policy brinkmanship are becoming a real national crisis. Read more

“A regional outbreak of an infectious disease requires emergency mass vaccinations of about 125,000 people.” What sounds like a report from the distant past or a developing country happened only this week, in New Zealand. Measles is back. Over the past few days, the Canterbury District Health Board confirmed 27 cases of measles. Considering that measles takes about two weeks to incubate, the disease is likely to further spread. It could take several weeks until the outbreak is under control. Read more

There is a lot to like about New Zealand’s labour laws. At 80.9%, our labour market participation rate is among the highest in the world. This rate compares extremely well with Australia at 77.4% and the OECD average of only 72.1%. Our unemployment rate is also commendably low. At 4.3%, unemployment in New Zealand undercuts Australia’s 5.2% and the European Union’s laggardly 6.8%. Regardless, the coalition government is eager to re-write our industrial relations rule-book by introducing so-called “Fair Pay Agreements”. Read more

Wellington is a small place. Everybody complains they’re always running into people they know, that it’s hard for young people to date people who haven’t been dated by their friends already, and that it’s impossible to have an impromptu coffee at Astoria without being recognised by some journalist. Maybe that’s what’s behind the hipster drive for anonymity through identical non-conformity. Two weeks ago, MIT Technology Review wrote a piece explaining an older research article claiming to show why non-conformists, hipsters... Read more

When Queenstown Lakes District council announced a referendum last week on imposing a levy on visitors to the tourist hub, it made headlines around Otago. In fact, the proposal potentially has implications for infrastructure and tax reform across New Zealand. Read more

There’s an old joke about the neighbourhood dog that loved to chase cars down the road – what would it ever do if it caught one? Read more

Partisanship is a powerful and deadly drug. Canada is the latest in a too-lengthy list of places badly in need of rehab. In response to harsh criticism of his involvement in and handling of a corruption scandal, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told his Party’s supporters this week his policy agenda is too important to risk. Canadian political parties have been too quick to identify the good of the party with the good of the country. Read more

The government is hyping Budget 2019 as a world-leading “Wellbeing Budget”. The December 2018 Budget Policy Statement proclaims the government’s key focus on improving the wellbeing and living standards of New Zealanders. Do the public have any real evidence of any substance behind such froth? It appears not. Government policies can be expected to improve overall community wellbeing if an authoritative analysis demonstrates that the benefits will exceed the costs to those affected, in some overall sense. Read more

Benjamin Franklyn is famously credited with writing “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”.That may be true, but a cynic might retort that at least death does not get worse every time governments look for extra funding.So it was with trepidation that I read the Tax Working Group’s recently released Future of Tax report.As I chewed through the 200-plus pages of the report, I muttered to myself: “What future?!”. Read more