OPINION

A peculiar economic paradox appears to govern infrastructure development in modern New Zealand: the more we spend on infrastructure, the less we seem to get for it. This uncomfortable reality was a key takeaway from last week’s launch of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission’s Draft National Infrastructure Plan. Read more

Parliament is supreme but it is not infallible. Governments often propose policies that are wrong in principle. Read more

How should a select committee respond to a deluge of submissions? Does it matter if many submissions are part of a campaign playing on whipped up fears? Read more

Philosophers love to dream up strange scenarios to get us thinking. They call these scenarios ‘thought experiments.’ In 1980, philosopher John Searle published his ‘Chinese room’ thought experiment. Read more

Late night ‘situation monitoring’ on Twitter when Israel and America are bombing Iranian nuclear weapons facilities is not ideal for a good night’s sleep. Possible outcomes seemed to range from a happy and peaceful shift to a more liberal Iranian government, through to serious regional or broader war with a nuclear-armed Iran. Read more

This year, the Government will spend nearly $190 billion. Yet we know remarkably little about whether those billions represent value-for-money. Read more

Next week, The New Zealand Initiative will take more than three dozen business leaders to the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? Read more

For two decades, New Zealand’s school education system has been in a death spiral. In 2007, the Ministry of Education adopted a curriculum bereft of knowledge. Read more

Minister Chris Bishop has swung his ministerial wrecking ball at Wellington. He will strip the Gordon Wilson Flats of its heritage protection. Read more

Something odd is happening in New Zealand. The government wants to pass a law that would require ministers to explain their regulatory decisions. Read more

Imagine that you owned a vacant piece of land. You were trying to decide whether to put solar panels on it to generate electricity or to plant trees on it to sequester carbon and earn carbon credits. Read more

There are already too many reasons for international supermarket chains to decide our small set of islands far from everywhere are not worth bothering about. Adding one more seems bad if government has prioritised retail grocery competition. Read more

What happens when elected officials cannot understand the issues well enough to make good decisions? Local councillors often receive hundreds of pages of complex reports just days before critical votes, covering financial modelling, engineering specifications and legal implications. Read more

At midnight last night, submissions closed on the Education and Training Amendment Bill (No. 2). The bill would introduce new measures to protect academic freedom, which is defined in the Education and Training Act as ‘the freedom of academic staff and students, within the law, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas, and to state controversial or unpopular opinions.’ These measures are sorely needed. Read more

Few ideas haunt economic debate as relentlessly as “trickle-down.” Perhaps it’s the appeal of attacking something that no one has ever argued. The theory supposedly claims that making the rich richer benefits everyone as wealth “trickles down.” It sounds plausible and feels unfair – making it the perfect villain. Read more