Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014, after 16 years as a commercial litigation partner. Roger was executive director of the Legal Research Foundation, a charitable foundation associated with the University of Auckland, from 2001 to 2009, and was a member of the Council of the New Zealand Law Society, the governing body of the legal profession in New Zealand, from 2011 to 2015. He is a chartered member of the Institute of Directors, a member of the University of Auckland Business School advisory board, a member of the editorial board of the New Zealand Law Review and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman once quipped that David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage defined who counts as an economist. Because every economist understands comparative advantage and its related notion of "opportunity cost" and practically nobody else does. Read more
Every New Zealander has a stake in the performance of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. As we have seen this year, if the Bank gets monetary policy settings wrong, it can trigger inflation, pushing up the cost of living and causing stress for consumers and businesses alike. Read more
Like a slowly downloading webpage, is a whole-of-government strategy to solve the interminable housing crisis starting to take shape? Recent reports predict house prices nationwide could fall from their late 2021 peaks by up to 20%. Read more
Last month, Ireland taught the All Blacks a thing or two about rugby. Yet New Zealand has even more to learn from the Irish about productivity and prosperity. Read more
A time traveller from the end of the last millennium could be forgiven for thinking the 21st-century world has lost its way. At the end of last century, even the most uncharitable could only marvel at humanity's progress. Read more
New Zealand has been living with the prospect of a return to compulsory, sector-wide collective bargaining for nearly half a decade. Labour campaigned on its so-called ‘Fair Pay Agreement’ policy in 2017. Read more
The GFC had many casualties. In New Zealand, one was the former Securities Commission. Read more
Commercial regulatory agencies wield enormous power. They can take away a business’s licence to operate; impose restrictions on how it operates; and take enforcement action by exercising powers of interrogation, search and seizure that the police can only dream of. Read more
New research shows that businesses are losing faith in the Commerce Commission. Roger Partridge talks to Heather du Plessis-Allen on Newstalk ZB about his new report. Read more
In conversation with Oliver Hartwich, Roger Partridge explains the findings from his new report ‘Reassessing the Regulators – The good, the bad, and the Commerce Commission’. To listen to our latest podcasts, please subscribe to The New Zealand Initiative podcast on iTunes, Spotify or The Podcast App. Read more
Commercial regulatory agencies wield enormous power. They can take away a business’s licence to operate. Read more
The Commerce Commission is losing the respect of the business community and its system of governance needs overhauling, says the New Zealand Initiative think tank in a new report released this morning. To read more click here. Read more
Yesterday’s budget was not the only budget in town. It followed hot on the heels of Climate Change Minister James Shaw’s announcement on Monday of the Government’s $2.9 billion Emissions Reduction Plan. Read more
In making this submission, we have drawn on the research and recommendations in our report, Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour (July 2019) (our Report). A copy of our Report is appended to this submission. Read more
New Zealand’s border settings continue to confound. In November last year, even the cautious Ministry of Health advised the Government that MIQ no longer served any useful purpose. Read more