This week the price of a New Zealand Unit of carbon credit passed $50 for the first time. Ben Craven speaks to Matt Burgess about why this happened, and what the increase in price will mean for consumers, emitters, and New Zealand’s environmental commitments. Read more
House prices have risen to all-time highs. According to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, prices have risen by 30.6 percent in the last year. Read more
Mike Hosking reads out Roger Partridges' opinion piece (published in the NZ Herald) about why the Government can't drive covid strategy by looking backwards. Roger points out that looking back at what worked on the early part of the Covid journey may not help with what is in front of us now and looking backwards is a big part of New Zealand's current predicament. Read more
Individualised Funding, or IF, is a funding model for disability support. IF gives money directly to individuals so they can hire their own support staff. Read more
Unless you're reversing, the rear-view mirror won't help you navigate the conditions in front of you. Instead, you must look ahead. Read more
As Auckland struggles, hopefully successfully, to bring the current Delta outbreak under control, let us imagine a future variant – the Iota variant. This hypothetical variant is identical to Delta, except for one detail. Read more
Eric Crampton talks to Wallace Chapman on Radio NZ - The Panel about a Universal Basic Income for young people to help them get started in life.
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Today, the New Zealand Initiative launches a new report on a powerful social services innovation: personal budgets. The idea is simple. Read more
Government policies should be judged by the outcomes they deliver for people who need public support. This report has described a fundamentally different funding model for public services which gives control and responsibility to recipients of support services. Read more
Wellington (Friday, 27 August 2021): A new report by the New Zealand Initiative says personal budgets are a social services innovation that is creating new opportunities and changing how disabled Kiwis live. The report, titled The Power of Freedom: How personal budgets for social services are transforming lives, compares outcomes from traditional support services to the Individualised Funding (“IF”) model for disability support. Read more
Freshwater politics is a nightmare. Long-term improvements in water quality depend on the development of systems that can withstand government and policy changes. Read more
I do not want to write about the Crowne Plaza exercise area. Or the glacial pace of immunisation rollout. Read more
As the anniversary of the first Covid lockdown approached, the Ministry of Health had some time on its hands. It had issued a new consultation paper and was looking for feedback. Read more
This submission in response to the Commerce Commission’s (Commission) Market study into the retail grocery sector draft report, is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative), a think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. In combination, our members employ more than 150,000 people. Read more
Carl Hansen, the former Chief Executive of the Electricity Authority between 2010 and 2018, joins Matt Burgess to discuss what happened on the evening of 9 August when 35,000 homes lost power on the coldest night of the year. Carl explains how the blackout happened and the response to the event by the government. Read more