Christchurch's SpicyBoys make hot sauce. They’ve branched out into a chilli gin to sell alongside the sauce. Read more
Before anyone builds a house in New Zealand, someone must pay upfront for the pipes and the roads that connect a development to the city. Almost always, that someone is the council. Read more
For months, commentators had one demand of Labour: stop holding your fire and show us some policy. Last week, Labour obliged. Read more
There was no real escape from the dystopia that Terry Gilliam depicted in his excellent film, Brazil. In the film’s world, nothing could be done without the correctly numbered bureaucratic form. Read more
Before anyone can build a house in New Zealand, someone must pay for the pipes and the roads that connect a development to the city. While this seems like a minor detail, it is a central issue for housing affordability. Read more
When the European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates on 11 June, marking its first increase since 2023, the news was unwelcome across the eurozone. It was especially unwelcome in Germany. Read more
Warren Pyke is, by all accounts, a serious practitioner. Thirty-five years acting for the underprivileged, the vulnerable, the mentally ill, the villainous and a great many “ordinary folk” is real civil-liberties work. Read more
Across the Tasman, anger has propelled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation from a fringe outfit to the most popular party, on 31 percent in a recent poll, ahead of both Labor and the Coalition. Yet Australia’s preferential voting, which redistributes losing candidates’ votes, could still return a Labor government. Read more
In May 2025, University of Otago Vice-Chancellor Grant Robertson eloquently explained why universities, as institutions, should be neutral on matters of public and political debate. If universities take stances on political issues, he said, they place members of their communities with different views in a difficult position. Read more
Once a year, as the days shorten, a great migration begins. From the warm offices of Wellington and the cafes of central Auckland, the political class sets out for Mystery Creek, where the gates of Fieldays open and the country remembers that it has a countryside. Read more
When Victoria University of Wellington’s great little prediction market, iPredict, announced that it would be shutting down back in 2015, it had a couple hundred thousand dollars of traders’ deposited funds in the bank. It was a very small, very limited, academic enterprise. Read more
Canterbury's amalgamation debate has ignited. First up, Christchurch city councillor Sam MacDonald put the cat amongst the pigeons arguing that Selwyn and Waimakariri residents should be made to pay for Christchurch-funded facilities. Read more
When The New Zealand Initiative set out 235 recommendations for the next government last month, the one this paper chose for its headline was the proposal to pay younger workers less. The news sense was sound, because it is the recommendation that sounds least fair. Read more
It’s a pretty minor budget item all things considered. Thirty million dollars over four years, when the government plans on core government expenditure of over one hundred and fifty billion dollars in the 2026/2027 fiscal year, isn’t a huge sum. Read more
At last month’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, New Zealand’s Defence Minister Chris Penk told Bloomberg Television that the country might usefully consider nuclear propulsion, the reactors that drive warships, as something distinct from nuclear weapons. Within two days, his Prime Minister had killed the idea on talkback radio. Read more