If New Zealand needed another timely reminder about the opportunity to sell our natural resources to the increasingly wealthy Chinese, it came this week from The Economist, which took note of the country’s water crisis. According to the magazine, water scarcity means the average person in China only uses about 400 cubic metres a year, approximately a quarter of what the average American uses, and well under the international definition of water stress. Read more

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Oil and gas exploration is one of the most polarising issues being debated right now as judged by the number of "don't drill" signs popping up in the front yards of neighbourhoods across the country. That's probably because, as an issue, it's easy to polarise. Read more

Safely perched in the obscurity of Wellington, it’s with a strange combination of boredom and fascination that I’m watching the US budgetary showdown, a bid by the Republicans to force the Obama administration to dial back state healthcare spending. This is because as a former markets reporter, I know almost with a certainty that one side will blink before too long. Read more

The shifts in the political landscape with the anointment of David Cunliffe have sparked a flurry of ‘what if Labour and Greens get in?’ policy speculation recently, and unsurprisingly the electricity sector has been spotlight. Since it was first mooted earlier this year, the electricity industry and business sector have been at pains to call for a thorough economic analysis before policymakers dismantle the free market system currently used and move to a single buyer model. Read more

It was both unsurprising but interesting to open the paper this week and see the proposed Otaki Expressway in the headlines again. Unsurprising because the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) is currently having its resource consent heard for the proposed road, but interesting because of the way the NZTA lawyers are pitching the project. Read more

The Productivity Commission’s stinging slap to the face of working New Zealanders reveals we spend more time at the grindstone but achieve less. By the numbers, we work about 15% longer than the OECD average but produce 20% less when measured on an output per hour basis. Read more

Looking at government's bid to overhaul the country's health and safety laws, it's tempting to look at the matter and say any measure - no matter how radical - that makes the workplace less dangerous is a good thing. It's even easier when the particular legislative sea change is fronted by a tragedy. Read more

Let's play a game of guess the city: What major Australasian metropolitan area has house prices that are rising twice as fast as inflation and average wage thanks to low interest rates and a lack of supply? Got a good fix on which city I'm talking about? Read more

If you listened closely on Wednesday morning at about 10am, when the World Economic Forum released its Global Competitiveness Index, you might have heard the sound of large quantities of air being gulped down as chests across the country filled with pride. The report showed New Zealand is ranked as the 18th most competitive economy in the world, up five places on last year, but more importantly – at least from a patriotic point of view - three places ahead of Australia, which dropped out of the top 20 for the first time ever. Read more

One of the pleasures of the friendly rivalry enjoyed between New Zealand and Australia is the ability to gently rub the opposition’s face in the mud when they’re on a losing streak (in a good natured way of course). This year’s resounding Bledisloe Cup thrashing was just such a chance, but we’re also extending our lead in a more fundamental arena, namely the economy. Read more

Rightly or wrongly, Britain and its former Antipodean colonies are obsessed with property – it’s imperative that you get that critical first step on the housing ladder. Given this level of obsession, it’s easy to see why housing has become a political football in all three countries, with politicians regularly trotting out new policies to help people buy a first home. Read more

If there is one word that best describes the current state-owned asset sales programme, it would probably be ‘compromise’. In 2008, when the Government was faced with the challenge of tackling rising levels of public debt (projected at 36 per cent of GDP for 2013) in a low-growth economy, all the while nursing a balance sheet heavily overweight on A-rated electricity assets, the choice was clear: sell one to pay the other. Read more