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Nothing arouses the passions like a sport the whole country can get behind, a sport with such wide appeal it’s embraced by the masses and is accessible to anyone and everyone. I am, of course, talking about yachting. Read more
Government spending has been rising for the past one and a half centuries. The increase itself is startling, but even more worrying is the composition of government spending in the developed world. Read more
New Zealanders are an irascible lot when it comes to recreational fishing. Around 50,000 people have made submissions opposing options for tightening recreational snapper fishing limits. 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
The National-led government is introducing changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) and fears are being expressed that they will favour economic development ‘at the expense of the environment’. The Prime Minister implicitly acknowledged this fear last weekend when he referred to the need to strike the right ‘balance between our environmental responsibilities and our economic opportunities’. Read more
Remember the days when economic news coverage of Europe wasn’t about its impending collapse? After years of doom and gloom about the eurozone’s economy, figures released this week from Eurostat suggest that the dark stormy recession cloud may soon be lifted. Read more
Ever since the creation of the Auckland super city, murmurings have surfaced in Wellington about a greater Wellington council to include the Hutt Valley, Wairarapa and Kapiti. Intuitively, large councils seem undesirable; why take local governance further away from locals? Read more
Bad ideas have a habit of being spread. The Labour Party’s policy to ban foreigners (except those nice Australians) from buying houses in New Zealand is such an example. Read more
Following the 2011 election, part of the Confidence and Supply agreement between the National Party and the Maori Party was the formation of a Constitutional Advisory Panel (CAP). This panel of the good and the great is tasked with examining New Zealand’s constitutional structure, with an emphasis on the Treaty of Waitangi. Read more
Recently, I met a New Zealander who asked me how I, as a relatively newly arrived foreigner, experienced New Zealand. I returned the question straight back to him. Read more