Reports & Media

Observers of European politics know Alternative for Germany as a right-wing populist party, probably extreme and certainly friendly to Russia. Less visible from the outside is that the AfD is not an ordinary opposition party that might win an election, govern badly and then be voted out. Read more

When Jim Chalmers stood up on budget night and announced the end of negative gearing on established properties, he assured Australians it was worth breaking a promise for “right and justifiable reasons.” Grant Robertson, New Zealand’s finance minister, said something remarkably similar in March 2021 when he broke his own promise not to extend the bright-line test on property. Robertson called his earlier commitment “too definitive.” A New Zealand Herald columnist observed that this sounded a lot like “too honest.” New Zealanders know how this story ends. Read more

Mike Smith, the climate activist suing six of New Zealand’s largest companies over greenhouse gas emissions, is unhappy. On Tuesday, the Government announced it will amend the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to stop cases like his and others like it. Read more

Ahead of New Zealand’s 2017 election, I floated the idea of a grand coalition between National and Labour in a few columns. The circumstances back then made it appealing. Read more

Centralisation has been New Zealand's answer to local government's problems for decades. It has not worked. Read more

Local government is hard to defend. Rates are rising at more than three times inflation. Read more

The name ‘Einstein’ is synonymous with intelligence. More than 70 years after the physicist’s death, if someone is called an Einstein, everyone knows they are incredibly smart. Read more

This week, the Government moved to reassert Parliament’s authority over the courts. Two years ago, in Smith v Fonterra, the Supreme Court revived a climate change claim the Court of Appeal had unanimously struck out. Read more

There’s always been a tension in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. The Act’s object has two parts. Read more

A bar in a rough neighbourhood has a few viable options. It can have a strict doorman checking every patron to make sure they suit the vibe the bar is trying to create. Read more

Treasury projects public health spending will rise from 7.1 to 10 per cent of GDP by 2065. Over the same period, the ratio of working-age taxpayers to superannuitants will halve. Read more

A German economist writing satire about New Zealand sounds like the opening line of a bad joke. The joke gets longer when you learn the plot: two Martian auditors land in the Wairarapa expecting humanity at its best, are promptly fined for parking without consent, and proceed on a reluctant tiki tour of the country in the company of a Wellington bureaucrat named Ben, who has quietly decided his career is over and he may as well help them. Read more