Do we treat the government finances with the common sense that household’s manage theirs? It is a commonly held view that we should treat the government as if it is a prudent household. We don’t when it comes to its debt. Currently the government says it wants to constrain its net debt to between 20…
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Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour Government, Vernon Small, refers to the…
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Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she reported the (Treasury) ‘books’…
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What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions. I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it was too small and…
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The Government says it will give localities more control over healthcare decisions. But how? New Zealand’s political reflex is that any problem can be resolved by further centralisation. Students will be officially banned from having cell phones at school from Term 2. The decision could have been left to individual schools. Each knows a lot…
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Not so much from a lack of nominal income but from rising mortgage interest rates The just released Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) estimates child poverty for the year ending June 2023 show the proportions of children on nine different poverty measures are higher than they were in the June 2022 ending year. SNZ warns that…
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The Sorry Story of Earthquake-Prone Buildings. The Treasury requires that when new or amended legislation is proposed, a Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) be provided – ‘a high-level summary of the problem being addressed, the options and their associated costs and benefits, the consultation undertaken, and the proposed arrangements for implementation and review’. In its hurry…
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Centralising the Public Health System The proposed health redisorganisation seeks to markedly centralise the health system. Is this grab for power justified; will it work? The Cabinet paper’s justification of the proposed changes is sevenfold. The first two are about Maori issues. One is constitutional, arguing that the ‘public health system does not meet the…
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The recognition that there is a media problem is correct, but the chosen solution is likely to be disastrous. Whether it intends or not, the government is embarked on a course to undermine Radio New Zealand. It wants to merge TVNZ and RNZ in order, it says, to strengthen the media. ‘Merge’ is a weasel…
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Now is about the time that the Government is getting its Budget Strategy together In the week before the budget – the 2021 one is to be delivered on Thursday 20 May – there is a strange ritual in which all the commentariat and lobbyists (who are not necessarily distinct from one another) tell us…
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Whatever the damage, especially to the British economy, Brexit has done us a service by illustrating the complexity of trade. Brexit is the only example we have of two closely integrated sophisticated economies severing trading ties. The European Union and Britain still do not have tariffs or import quotas between them – the stuff of…
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The government’s recent housing package may work; will it do enough? Trick Question: Does New Zealand have a capital gains tax on housing? If you ask the Prime Minister she will say not. It is true that her government is increasing the scope of the ‘bright-line test’ on non-family homes to ten years. That means…
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The Climate Change Commission should immediately publish the details of its economic models and enable the public to access them. There is something strange going on with the Climate Change Commission. In its draft report the CCC said ‘We have looked at the impacts which our budgets could have on the economy and society…
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Migration patterns provide further evidence that wellbeing is not simply measured by income. New Zealand’s GDP per person is about 20 percent lower than Australia’s. Some think that the difference arises because our economic policies have been inferior. They then leaps to arguing for new policies based on ideology rather than evidence. Frequently those policies…
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Social philosophy in New Zealand is muddled and incomplete. This year, 2021, is the fiftieth anniversary of John Rawls’ The Theory of Justice, described as the most important book on political philosophy written in the twentieth century. As you might expect it is a big book (587 pages with a follow-up one of 464 pages)…
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How Can We Make Wellbeing at the Centre of Public Policy If We Dont Measure It? When the Minister of Finance announced in the 2018 budget that in the future economic policy would focus more on wellbeing, many saw a glimmer of hope that we were moving away from the mechanical thinking which underpinned Rogernomics/neoliberalism….
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There are times when tikanga needs to be broken for tikanga to survive. I recently gave a presentation on Māori economic history based on my Not in Narrow Seas. Its most important message was that Māori proved to be a very adaptable people continually evolving as new opportunities arose. The European tradition recalls the Duke…
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The burning of books has a long history. That it no reason why we should add to it. If you want to get Burning of the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack from the National Library you may have to hurry. It is in the overseas nonfiction section; many books of which are being…
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Building more houses is not going to reduce house prices much (although it will help more people to be decently housed). The inflation driver is financial speculation based on leveraged borrowing. Until that is addressed, house prices will continue to boom. Policies based on theories which do not fit the facts are not going to…
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While many readers will say ‘the king is certainly not above the law’, not everyone believes that, especially if they are in power. The term ‘democracy’ is complicated and often used misleadingly. For instance, the ‘German Democratic Republic’ (a.k.a. East Germany), which was a part of the Soviet Empire, had one male in four reporting…
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