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Among the problems leading to the Government’s proposed Three Waters reforms were councils loading up their balance sheets with dubious debt. So it seems odd that the Government plans on loading up the balance sheets of amalgamated water service entities with dubious debt. Read more

A friend who worked in one of the Ministries years ago called it “Hiding the cheese”. It’s a fun game for the Ministries, hiding the cheese. Read more

Politicians are recently pushing for a large-scale adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEV; currently <1% of vehicles in NZ) to reduce the emissions generated by the transport sector. The emissions reduction plan supports this with $1.2bn of spending, of which $569m are used for the “Clean Car Upgrade” programme. Read more

In Douglas Adams’s classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Wonko the Sane realised that the world had gone mad. He had seen the instructions on the side of a packet of toothpicks. Read more

It isn’t crazy to claim that New Zealand’s school system lacks ambition. Or, if it is, our shop has been crazy for a while. Read more

Hades, God of the Greek underworld, decreed that Sisyphus, for trying to cheat death, must forever push a heavy boulder up a hill. It would roll back down again every time. Read more

A lot of problems have no good solutions – just ones that are bad in different ways. Pricing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture is important, and every way of doing it is going to have problems. This week, the agricultural sector put up its proposed solution. Read more

Visitors to New Zealand would have heard of the “land of the long white cloud”. But as they drive around its two large main islands, they will soon think of it as the land of the three waters. Read more