Parliament’s Environment Committee is currently considering the Government’s woeful replacement Bills for the Resource Management Act. Eric Crampton and I appeared before the Committee last week to speak to the New Zealand Initiative’s submission on the Natural and Build Environment Bill and the Spatial Planning Bill. Read more

The UK Financial Times opined in late December that the biggest casualty of 2022 was the reputation of big central banks. Central banks failed to forecast the rise in inflation caused by easy money. Read more

How seriously does our Reserve Bank take monetary policy? There should be no doubt that it takes it very seriously indeed. Read more

Budget 2023 is an election year budget. Many voters want to be fed (bigger) hand-outs. Read more

The Auditor-General is deeply concerned “about a lack of transparency and accountability over the spending of public money”. On 14 November, he took the extraordinary step of writing to Parliament's Speaker, Adrian Rurawhe and the chairs of two select committees about the problem. Read more

This morning’s newspapers carried a full-page open letter from 42,576 signatories pointing out how undemocratic is one aspect of the Government’s three waters legislation. The Government’s Bill confiscates local communities’ investment in water assets without compensation, and wrecks their future governance. Read more

We at the New Zealand Initiative are aware of an ill-founded view that we are somewhat critical of our much-beloved government. Of course, this “alternative view” has no merit. Read more

The next incoming government will need to do its policy thinking beforehand if it is to tackle the current policy mess effectively. It will face serious problems in housing, health, education, social welfare, and environmental and planning laws, just to mention the biggest areas. Read more

In 2020, my report, Pharmac: The right prescription? for the New Zealand Initiative found much to compliment in Pharmac’s pursuit of its statutory duty to obtain the best reasonably achievable health outcomes for eligible people from pharmaceuticals within the subsidy budget. Read more

Accurate diagnosis is vital in medicine. Patients want better outcomes. Read more