OPINION

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

Government is awash in consultation processes. So much so that “consultation fatigue” is a real term. Read more

Budget 2026 was not a typical election year budget. Instead of breaking out the pork barrel, Finance Minister Nicola Willis brought forward New Zealand’s projected return to surplus by a year, even if the projection rests on some bold assumptions. Read more

To most New Zealanders in 2026, slavery sounds like a relic of past centuries and faraway places. Unfortunately, it is not. Read more

In a meeting room on Lambton Quay, a paper is on its eleventh draft. It is about whether the public service should adopt AI. Read more

For forty years, New Zealanders have been told that fewer councils mean better government, and for forty years, the evidence has refused to oblige. Until 1989, New Zealand had around 850 elected local government bodies. Read more

When I read last week that Tony Blair had published a 5,600-word essay on everything that ails Britain, every instinct told me not to read it. But I could not help myself and read it anyway. Read more

The debate about New Zealand’s Supreme Court has been framed as a question about the current court – its composition, its appointments, its judicial philosophy. This column frames it differently: as a question about what the current court inherited, and from whom. Read more

This week’s Budget confirmed what most New Zealanders already suspected. The government’s finances are tight, the deficit persists, and there is no pot of money waiting to be spent on the country’s problems. Just as well, because government spending never delivers growth or prosperity. Read more