In 1987, on a school trip to the German countryside, my maths teacher made a prediction. Dr Müller had worked at IBM before turning to teaching in our industrial city, Essen. Read more
In this episode, Michael talks with Dr Helen Walls, who served on the ministerial advisory group on literacy and numeracy. Helen is generally supportive of New Zealand's primary literacy reforms but warns that pre-planned programmes, overuse of decodable books, slideshow-led lessons and pedantic grammar teaching can crowd out meaningful reading and writing. Read more
Major General John Howard talked to Ryan Bridge on Newstalk ZB about the Defence Minister's announcement that New Zealand will get long range, one-way strike drones, with the Minister wanting a New Zealand company to make them. Howard pointed to the size of New Zealand's exclusive economic zone and to cost in explaining why the drones are one way, and called it a great decision to invest in lower cost capabilities that deliver strategic effect and deterrence. Read more
Ask a well-informed European to name the Council of Europe’s constitutional advisory body, and you will usually get a pause. I had to look it up myself last week, which is awkward for a Europe columnist, and worse for one with a doctorate in law. Read more
In this episode, Eric talks with Adam Jarvis, an Emergent Ventures fellow, about what happened when Anthropic held back the public release of its most powerful AI model, Mythos, and the US government then effectively banned non-US citizens from using the version it released instead, Fable. Adam argues that New Zealand is unusually well placed to host hyperscaler data centres, and that the binding constraint is not power or bandwidth but the country's inability to give investors a fast and certain answer. Read more
1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 The New Zealand Initiative welcomes the opportunity to submit on the Draft Guidance on Regulations for Groups of Activities for Councils’ Planning and Reporting. Read more
Dr Eric Crampton talked to Sean Plunket on The Platform about growing concern over data centres, arguing that much of the worry is founded on not understanding the scale of industrial water use and on misunderstanding the effects on electricity networks. Dr Crampton said a data centre proposed for Southland could take water comparable to almost two golf courses, or about a quarter of the average Canterbury irrigation consent, and he argued that fast consenting of new generation, particularly geothermal, would let data centres fund a build out of electricity that reduces overall cost rather than increasing it. Read more
The North American World Cup ended Monday, with Spain defeating Argentina in a 1-0 snoozefest. Argentina decided to recreate their Dirty War on the pitch, tallying five yellow cards, one red, and one yet-to-be-disciplined chokehold. Read more
As an economics student in Germany in the 1990s, I kept encountering two countries at the other end of the world. Whenever a professor wanted to prove that reform was possible, the examples were Australia and New Zealand. Read more
Eric shows that, under the right ministers, the government’s replacement legislation should be an improvement on the existing RMA. But being better than the RMA is a very low bar. Read more
Oliver asked me to make the case for the government’s resource management legislation. It should be read in conjunction with Nick Clark’s critique below. Read more
No country moves people the way New Zealand does. Nearly three in ten New Zealand residents were born overseas. Read more
A fortnight ago, I wrote in these pages about the fall in New Zealand’s road toll, from 843 deaths in 1973 to a provisional 271 last year. I thought it was an achievement worth celebrating. Read more
In this episode, Michael talks with Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director of the New Zealand Initiative, about two new reports, New Zealand by Comparison and New Zealand by Numbers, which chart how New Zealand measures up against 28 other countries and how it has changed over recent decades. They discuss why a country that attracts migrants from around the world keeps losing so many of its own people, how Australia matches New Zealand on almost everything but the economy, the Eastern European economies closing in, and wellbeing rankings that still sit near the top of the world but are slipping. Read more
Wellington (Wednesday, 22 July 2026) – Two weeks ago, New Zealand by Numbers asked whether New Zealand was improving. A new report from The New Zealand Initiative asks a harder question: is it keeping up? Read more