Reports & Media

Wellington (Tuesday, 28 April 2026) - A heavy diesel mechanic earns roughly the same as a policy analyst, qualifies in the same time and graduates with little or no debt. Yet most New Zealanders still regard university as superior to industry training and our school qualifications system has quietly reinforced that bias for decades. Read more

The guns have paused in the US-Iran conflict but Oliver Hartwich and John Howard argue New Zealand should take little comfort from that. All parties are struggling to find an off-ramp, damage to Qatar's refineries alone means a two-to-three-year rebuild, and New Zealand still lacks the energy strategy promised in 2024. Read more

Bob Davies joined the New Zealand Army at 16 and served 31 years, rising to Sergeant Major of the Army. He deployed to Vietnam in 1968, took shrapnel wounds, caught malaria twice, and was exposed to Agent Orange. Read more

Wellington (Thursday, 23 April 2026) - The Government’s 2025 Defence Capability Plan commits $12 billion over four years, including $9 billion of new spending. But without institutional reform, new money risks being absorbed into a system too slow and fragmented to deliver modern capability, a new report from The New Zealand Initiative warns. Read more

New Zealand's defence investment is landing the same way it always has: slowly, bureaucratically, and after the need has already been declared. In this webinar, retired Major General John Howard presents his new report God Defend New Zealand, which argues the country must move from an industrial-age acquisition model to one that operates at the speed of technological change. Read more

In this episode, Michael speaks with Professor Elizabeth Rata about the history of New Zealand's school system. The conversation challenges the contemporary narrative of 19th-century schools as authoritarian and oppressive. Read more