Social Policy NZ

Flight of the Kiwi: Addressing the Brain Drain

Andrew Patterson, David Kirk, Don Turkington, Luke Malpass

27 March 2012 | PF22

In early 2009, the NZ government established the 2025 Taskforce to provide recommendations on closing the income gap with Australia, lift New Zealand’s living standards to those in Australia and to retain New Zealand talent and entice it back home. This is obviously a difficult…

Alcohol Policy and the Politics of Moral Panic

Luke Malpass

26 May 2011 | PM118

Liquor reform has become a political hot potato in New Zealand. Social problems caused by alcohol have meant successive governments have come under pressure to regulate sale and consumption of alcohol. One factor driving public outrage has been reports that give outrageously high ‘social costs’…

Ending No. 8 Wire Welfare: Why New Zealand is Lagging Behind

Luke Malpass

02 April 2009 | IA109

In the lead up to the last election, the National Party released its new welfare policy. The work-first policy received unwarranted criticism from many quarters despite New Zealand still lagging behind international best practice in welfare policy. The National Party now leads the government. Policies…

Reinventing New Zealand’s Welfare State

Peter Saunders

27 March 2007 | IA85

Government in New Zealand keeps expanding. The main driver has been the inexorable increase in spending on the welfare state. New Zealanders are much richer than when the welfare state was founded. People’s incomes should therefore be sufficient for them to buy many of the…

State of the Nation New Zealand 2003

Jennifer Buckingham

05 April 2003 | SP05

The report, State of the Nation New Zealand, traces and analyses the profound social and economic changes occurring over the past century, to paint a definitive picture of life on the island today, and show where opportunities for reform lie.          

The tragedy across the Tasman

Tom Switzer

27 October 2017 | Ideas@TheCentre

The tragedy of New Zealand’s election outcome is not just that a stable and successful nine-year government has lost power, despite scoring more than 8% more votes than the Labour…

New Zealand’s spending binge

Luke Malpass

18 November 2011

Most of New Zealand’s general election campaign is being dominated by squabbling over the Crown selling a minority stake in four state-owned assets while ignoring serious issues such as the…

Why bother?

26 August 2011

Privatisation in New Zealand is a political swear-word. Its very mention is meant to invoke some scary image of marauding foreign merchant bankers, here to rip off hard working New…

New Zealand’s great regression

Luke Malpass

20 October 2010 | The American, Journal of the American Enterprise Institute

Over a year ago in Auckland, the humorist P.J. O’Rourke gave a dinner lecture for the Centre for Independent Studies titled “Invisible Hand vs. Visible Fist: Securing the Future Wealth…

Humdinger of a political argument

18 June 2010

A storm is brewing in New Zealand, casting a frostier-than-usual shroud over the nation’s capital. Last week in Wellington, the Key government’s Welfare Working Group hosted a two-day meeting of…