Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters was wrong to criticise Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Anna Breman, ...

It is the professionalism – competence and integrity – of the doctors, nurses and technicians who provide the care which obscures the managerial failure. The column-blog, Otaihanga Second Opinion is ...

What are the economic and political implications if the New Zealand economy stagnates for five and more years? Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Morning Report that ‘We've got the worst recession* ...

We are failing to think though the interdependencies in an economy. We miss economist Bryan Philpott (1921-2000). I miss him personally – we used to have such great discussions – but this column is ...

The Minister of Finance says it is but, parochialism aside, are we doing anything to ensure it really is? One of the necessary skills of a politician is to hold on to at least two contradictory ...

New Zealand has ‘Scandinavian ambitions in terms of quality of life, but a US attitude to tax’: Lara Clark. One of the most perceptive remarks about New Zealand’s fiscal tension was made by former ...

Once upon a time many of us said ‘beware the smiling assassin’ when we talked about John Key. These days, the warning should be ‘beware the smiling clown’. David Seymour’s chirpy countenance masks a ...

Angus Deaton’s ‘Economics in America’ challenges the direction that economics has taken. In 2015 Angus Deaton was the sole awardee of the Bank of Sweden’s Prize in Honour of Alfred Nobel, for his ...

How to run a successful pressure group. In 2013 a group of idealists, led by Jordan Williams and David Farrar, established the Taxpayers’ Union. To celebrate its first decade as surely New Zealand’s ...

This column started out to explain how the proposed structural outsourcing of public surgery was partly a consequence of the peculiarities of our fiscal borrowing practices. In summary, the ...

Following the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families ...

Winning office is not the same as achieving change. A recent Economist columnist divided politicians and their political advisers into either ‘jock wankers’ or ‘nerd wankers’. It’s a distinction which ...