The Green Party has declared its wealth tax will be a red line in any coalition negotiations. Read more
The Government’s plan to recover from the Covid-19 crisis has essentially been about finding new ways to spend. As a result, public debt is expected to increase from 19% of GDP in 2019 to a whopping 54% by 2024 and remain elevated for decades to come. Read more
The Green Party’s “Poverty Action Plan” is all about tackling poverty, although the outcomes may differ from what the party expects. Read more
As a Millennial, a worrying new trend among my generation is to simply cancel what you don’t like. Read more
Some conversations are difficult, but critical. This week, Sir Peter Gluckman, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, and Rob Fyfe released a short ‘conversation paper’ called Re-engaging New Zealand with the World. Read more
The proverb “All that glitters is not gold” is a line from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Any doubts about the Bard’s wisdom were dispelled this month when New Zealand’s “gold standard” quarantining was shown to be fool’s gold. Read more
We all know the analogy about barring gates after the horse has bolted from the barn. It speaks to the futility of doing something too late solve a problem. Read more
When Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled on the legality of the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme on 5 May, it sent shockwaves through financial markets. Read more
When in the US earlier this year, I came across many souvenirs mocking the country’s leader, including a card game called, Trump Cards: The Wackiest Game of Fake News. It looked like a fun party card game in which players tried to pick out 'Fake News' from real quotes by President Donald Trump. A player receives one point for a correct answer and zero for incorrect answers. So, let’s break out the card game and test your abilities. Read more
It says a lot about this economic crisis when a forecast of -4.5% annual growth is regarded as good news. Yet that was the forecast the International Monetary Fund released yesterday. Unfortunately, it was not for New Zealand but for Australia. In New Zealand’s case, the IMF kept its 2020 forecast at -7.2%. That is worse than Australia and the global GDP forecast at -4.9%. At least it is better than the -10.2% predicted for the Eurozone. Read more
The public health system is a political football. Every change of administration is an opportunity to boot the ball at a different set of goalposts. Occasionally, all it takes is a change of Minister. Professor Robin Gauld, director of the University of Otago’s Centre of Health Systems and Technology, has published at least two books and a substantial academic article on the structural instability of New Zealand’s healthcare system since the 1980s. Read more
It’s been hard to get a decent night’s sleep lately. Read more
The Cold War is mainly history today with more people remembering the spies than the ideological warfare. But at its heart, it was an ideological battle, which makes comparisons with today’s tensions between China and the West natural.Superficially, this makes it an appropriate comparison for today’s tensions between China and the West. However, the differences between then and now is that rather than confronting the Eastern challenge, Western liberal democracy is mainly at war with itself.The old Cold War was... Read more
On Tuesday afternoon, the Environment Select Committee published its report on Shane Jones’ Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Bill in Parliament ahead of its second reading. Read more
The Government’s plan to recover from the Covid-19 crisis has essentially been about finding new ways to spend. Read more