Reports & Media

The New Zealand Initiative has welcomed the National Party’s announcement of its housing policy and legislation. “Housing affordability is all about supply. Read more

Tuesday’s announcement of new housing policies from the Government has just made New Zealand a far riskier place to do business, warns a policy paper released today by The New Zealand Initiative. A risky place to do business, written by Dr Eric Crampton and Dr Bryce Wilkinson does not assess the effects of these policies, rather it warns of the consequences of this approach to policy-making. Read more

The Climate Change Commission has made no convincing case for its sweeping economic reforms to reduce emissions, says Matt Burgess, Senior Economist at The New Zealand Initiative. Analysis by the Climate Change Commission shows current policies, including the Emissions Trading Scheme (“ETS”), will deliver New Zealand’s emissions targets. Read more

A well-functioning education system is vital to equip our children for life. However, a new report from The New Zealand Initiative says it is not clear whether the education system is serving our children as well as it should. Read more

The New Zealand Initiative welcomes today’s call from business leaders for greater clarity about the border. The Initiative also urges the government to further strengthen the testing regime at the border. Read more

The Government’s announcement of a review into Pharmac declares that its budget, and the total amount allocated to pharmaceuticals, will be out of scope. This ignores the most serious weakness with current arrangements: that no one really knows whether they are improving health outcomes, let alone the well-being of New Zealanders, according to a substantial report, Pharmac: The right prescription? Read more

Wellington, 22 February 2021 – If New Zealand politicians thought the housing crisis in 2020 was bad, the worst is yet to come, warns a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. In The Need to Build: The demographic drivers of housing demand, Research Assistant Leonard Hong modelled 36 scenarios and found that New Zealand’s population gets older and larger by 2038. Read more

Wellington, 15 January 2021 - The New Zealand Initiative welcomes today’s announcement of quarantine-free travel to New Zealand from the Cook Islands. Initiative Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton said, “About 80,000 Cook Islanders live in New Zealand. Read more

Wellington, 10 December 2020 - Thanks to the work of successive climate change ministers from David Parker to James Shaw, New Zealand has a world-leading Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). We should rely on it to drive down our carbon emissions, argues the Initiative’s executive director Dr Oliver Hartwich. Read more

Wellington, 3 December 2020 - Calls to lift the minimum wage will not fix inequality and could end up hurting the most vulnerable – particularly during a recession, according to a new report by the New Zealand Initiative. The report is a response to a joint paper released last week by the Helen Clark Foundation and the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research which suggested lifting the minimum wage (presently set at $18.90) to a “living wage” of $22.10, among other proposals. Read more

Wellington, 12 November 2020 - The prime minister is wrong to just blame returning Kiwis for rising house prices, according to a research note by the New Zealand Initiative. During an interview with Mike Hosking last week, prime minister Jacinda Ardern said New Zealanders coming home after Covid-19 was a major factor in record levels of home lending. Read more

Wellington, 7 October 2020 – Over the next few years, New Zealand will face an immense challenge to keep Kiwi’s employed, get the economy growing again and rein in debt. According to a report by The New Zealand Initiative, there is also an important opportunity to fix the worst social and economic ills that have plagued this country for decades. Read more

Wellington, 6 October 2020 – New Zealand’s education system is a mess, riddled with unscientific ideas and seduced by child-centred orthodoxy, according to a new report by The New Zealand Initiative. Falling from its height as the envy of the world just twenty years ago, the Ministry of Education has let New Zealand’s education system unravel by turning the focus away from teaching knowledge and on to 21st-century “competencies.” In a comprehensive new report, New Zealand’s Education Delusion: How bad ideas ruined a once world-leading school system, author Briar Lipson traces how the country’s schooling system lost its way and provides solutions for correcting the dangerous path. Read more

Wellington, 7 October 2020 - If the major political parties were taking climate change seriously, they would rely on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) not add wasteful targets, says The New Zealand Initiative chief economist Dr Eric Crampton. Today, the Labour party unveiled its promise to mandate zero-emission buses by 2025 and to ban some new coal-fired boilers. Read more

Wellington, 11 September 2020 – The Government’s commitment to 100% renewable electricity by 2030 goes against the advice of its own independent experts, says the New Zealand Initiative. In April 2019, the Government’s Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) found the 100% renewables policy will: raise the price of electricity by 14% for households and 39% for industry effectively raise emissions by preventing greater emissions reductions elsewhere hit low-income households hardest, and make blackouts up to 100 times more likely. Read more