Category: Economic Issues

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RCP 8.5: A recipe for endless waste

Too often, New Zealand planners and engineers ignore the core requirement to select one of the opposing scenarios and ignore the rest. Instead, they bundle them all together and then base their analysis on the “worst case” of 8.5.  Consequently, there is a better than 99% chance that their forecasts will turn out to be completely and expensively wrong.


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Moratorium on Coastal Claims

If the Marine and Coastal Area Act is not fixed Maori will become the legal owners of virtually of the entire coastline and Territorial Sea of New Zealand - including vast reserves of the invaluable minerals such as rare earths in the seabed.


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Investigating Covid

There's no question that NZ, like many other countries that used lockdowns and mRNA vaccines, has experienced “excess” deaths following the pandemic. Waikato University’s Economics Professor John Gibson has just published new research showing that in 2023, “the excess mortality rate corresponds to about 3,000 more deaths than would be expected.”


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PM Speech at Ratana

The Government will honour the Treaty. But unlike the Labour government, we will honour it without moving away from equal voting rights, without creating complex co-governance bodies and bureaucracies in Wellington to decide how central services should be delivered in the regions, and we will honour it while upholding the equality of all New Zealanders before the law.


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I, Pencil

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write. Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.


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Coalition Deals

We are witnessing a remarkable turnaround in New Zealand politics. The Coalition agreement entered into by National, ACT and New Zealand First reflects the first three-party coalition deal in our country’s history. Democracy can be seen to have prevailed, with MMP delivering what a majority of New Zealanders want.


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Aspirational Reform

The problem we face is that few political leaders have the vision or courage to introduce transformational reforms that will genuinely empower New Zealanders to build a brighter future for themselves and their families.


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Why a Lack of Imagination and Courage Threatens Our Future

The Ardern government, like the Key and Clark governments before them, tried to tax the nation to prosperity. The principal outcome being to cut productivity growth in the same way it has in the past.


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Court of Appeal Opens Coast to Maori Ownership

A Court of Appeal decision was released last week that will have a profound influence on the future of New Zealand. Poor drafting and a radical application of ‘tikanga’ by the judiciary has delivered the exact opposite outcome from what the public was promised.


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Final Thoughts on Election 2023

Since He Puapua transfers democratic rights and public resources to the tribal elite, it represents major constitutional change. But with Labour securing no public mandate for He Puapua, all policy enactments are illegitimate and should be scrapped. That includes the Maori Health Authority, Three Waters, and all commitments to co-governance.