Last week, Eric Crampton made the case for passing the RMA replacement Bills, while noting some risks in their current form. Nick Clark argued that Parliament should pause them. Read more
It’s only going to get weirder from here, folks. Trump did not like existing social media platforms, so he launched his own, Truth Social, in 2022. Read more
New Zealanders have long seen university as the best educational route to the good life. Trades and industry training is seen as a second-best option. Read more
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
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
No country moves people the way New Zealand does. Nearly three in ten New Zealand residents were born overseas. 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
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
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
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
Wellington has its share of urban legends, most of them false. One of the more popular ones, and a recurring social media trope, claims that America’s Army Corps of Engineers was prepared to build a proper motorway between Wellington and Auckland after the Second World War. Read more
When the Commerce Commission was looking into retail grocery competition, my shop urged the Commission to check on something important. As best we could tell, it would be effectively impossible for a new large-format supermarket chain to open in New Zealand. Read more
When Oliver Hartwich suggested my next research note, I thought he was joking. It was a single question: What is a frigate? Read more
The Commerce Commission’s retail grocery competition inquiries always had the wrong focus. If there are enormous profits to be made in groceries, why is nobody else trying to steal them away? Read more