Roger Partridge is chairman and a co-founder of The New Zealand Initiative and is a senior member of its research team. He led law firm Bell Gully as executive chairman from 2007 to 2014, after 16 years as a commercial litigation partner. Roger was executive director of the Legal Research Foundation, a charitable foundation associated with the University of Auckland, from 2001 to 2009, and was a member of the Council of the New Zealand Law Society, the governing body of the legal profession in New Zealand, from 2011 to 2015. He is a chartered member of the Institute of Directors, a member of the University of Auckland Business School advisory board, a member of the editorial board of the New Zealand Law Review and a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Latest reports:
Reassessing the Regulators: The good, the bad and the Commerce Commission (2022)
Submission: Opposing fair pay agreements (2022)
Research Note: Nothing costs nothing: Why unjustified dismissal laws should not apply to the highly paid (2021)
Submission: Aotearoa New Zealand Histories in the New Zealand Curriculum (2021)
Submission: The third consultation round of phase 2 of The Reserve Bank Act review (2020)
Roadmap for Recovery: Briefing to the Incoming Government (2020)
Policy Point: Extra quarantine capacity for 'critical workers' is critical (2020)
Research Note: The rule of law or the law of rulers (2020)
Submission: Better protections for contractors (2020)
Work in Progress: Why Fair Pay Agreements would be bad for labour (2019)
Who guards the guards? Regulatory governance in New Zealand (2018)
Scroll down to read the rest of Roger's work.
Phone: +64 4 499 0790
If you were not already alarmed about the state of education in New Zealand, two stories in the media last week should shake you from any complacency. The first story was about a commonplace word, trivial. Read more
The American mid-term elections were brutal. Indeed, no liberal democracy may have ever witnessed an electoral campaign so characterised by lies, racism and hate. Read more
Auckland’s first KiwiBuild winners could hardly keep the smiles off their faces. And who could blame them? Read more
In the media they say if it bleeds it leads. That may be so, but last Friday I took the unusual step of writing a column about some good news. Read more
Something of enormous global significance has just occurred but it has slipped past almost without notice. According to a report just released by the Brookings Institute, for the first time in history a majority of humanity is no longer poor or vulnerable to falling into poverty. Read more
It would take a humbug not to feel proud seeing our Prime Minister on the world stage last week. Coinciding with the 125th anniversary of New Zealand becoming the first country in the world to grant women the vote, her appearance was a profound affirmation of New Zealand’s openness, diversity and inclusiveness. Read more
As every law student learns, a rescuer owes a duty of care to a victim not to worsen the victim’s plight. The same principle applies in medical ethics. Read more
“Productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it is almost everything,” observed economist Paul Krugman. “A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise output per worker.” This is bad news for New Zealand. Read more
In Greek mythology, the Cyclops were a race of giants, each with great power yet with only a single eye. According to legend, the Cyclops traded their second eye for the gift of prophecy. Read more
Last month France celebrated the storming of the Bastille, an assault that became a flashpoint for the French Revolution. As a fortress and prison, the Bastille was emblematic of the French monarchy. Read more
While New Zealand is in political Neverland, I am taking refuge in rural France. Just an hour north of the vineyards of Bordeaux, it is no great hardship. Read more
After 11 years as a cowboy in America’s wild west, Clark Stanley claimed to have created a medical cure-all from secrets learned from a Hopi medicine man. He began marketing his Snake Oil Liniment in the early 1900s. Read more
Literacy rates in New Zealand present a paradox. Our renowned Reading Recovery programme is an international export success. Read more
Is it possible to have too both too much and too little of something at the same time? This may sound like a problem posed by quantum physics but the question arises with something much more prosaic: bus drivers. Read more
“Local competition” is among factors cited by dairy owners for wildly varying prices for every-day grocery items like baked beans. The issue came to light in a leaked email from a dairy-owner in the lower North Island to her partner. Read more