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| Dr Michael Johnston | Senior Fellow | michael.johnston@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
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Cast in that light, Vote Education did well. While the ‘fees-free’ year for tertiary students was cancelled and, like most government departments, education agencies will have to trim about 12% of their spending over four years, education as a whole came out ahead. In addition to reallocated savings, about $1 billion in new money will be spent on educational essentials over four years. The fees-free policy was a failure on its own terms – it has done nothing to boost university enrolments for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And few educators will mourn cuts to their government agencies, especially when the savings, along with those from the fees-free scheme, will be reinvested in classrooms, teaching resources and professional development. Many schools have not seen significant investment in their buildings for decades. Most recent classroom builds are large, open-plan rooms designed to be used by multiple teachers and dozens of students working in groups. Their architecture makes whole-class teaching challenging. The budget allocated about $500 million for building new classrooms and modifying those not fit for purpose. Two other large allocations will support the government’s curriculum reforms. These are about $80 million for new curriculum resources and about $85 million for vocational education. A massive amount of work has gone into developing a new, knowledge-rich curriculum for New Zealand’s schools. But there is little point in writing a great curriculum if teachers can’t use it. The new resources will help them bring the new curriculum to life in their classrooms. An exciting feature of the new curriculum will be ‘industry-led’ subjects for Years 12 and 13. For the first time, secondary vocational education will have formal curricula. Spending on vocational education includes funding for Industry Skills Boards to develop those curricula. Trades Academies are partnerships between secondary schools and tertiary providers to provide secondary students with opportunities for vocational education that schools alone can’t offer. They will be instrumental in delivering industry-led subjects. Funding for Trades Academies was doubled in the budget. While the scheme remains capped, this is a big step in the right direction. In fiscally difficult times, it is great that the government is still investing in the future. |
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| Dr Oliver Hartwich | Executive Director | oliver.hartwich@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
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Forced labour, trafficking and debt bondage still trap millions worldwide, often in countries we trade with, from the cotton fields of Xinjiang to the fishing boats of South-East Asia. Wanting to do something about such injustices is understandable. That said, good intentions do not automatically make good law. The Modern Slavery Bill, introduced by Labour’s Camilla Belich and National’s Greg Fleming and backed by most of the House at first reading, proves it. The Bill would require firms earning over $100 million to report annually on slavery in their supply chains and publish the reports on a public register. If you miss the deadline, or file a thin statement, the fines reach $200,000. The directors could be held personally liable, too, not for the slavery, but for failing to report it. So, what is wrong with that? For a start, the Bill rewards staying ignorant. A company that finds slavery in its supply chain must disclose it and publish it for all to read. A company that looks no further than its front door finds nothing to report, and a clean statement keeps it in the clear. One might have thought a law against slavery would go after slavers themselves. This one goes after the wrong people. The earnings threshold would catch only the biggest, most visible firms. But in New Zealand, slavery is usually the work of small operators preying on migrant workers in restaurants, on fishing boats and in massage parlours. None of those businesses would need to file statements under this Bill. We would not be the first to try to fight modern slavery with new laws. Britain passed its Modern Slavery Act in 2015. Its official review found box-ticking statements and no clear evidence that the Act has freed anyone. Australia followed anyway in 2018. Its review reached the same verdict. That did not stop Germany from going further still, passing a due-diligence law in 2021. But it was such a bureaucratic disaster, the new Government is gutting it. None of these failed examples has deterred our Parliament. Passing a law against modern slavery is easy. Making it work for the people it should protect is the hard part. So far, not one country that has tried has managed it. And with this Bill, New Zealand will not be the first. Dr Oliver Hartwich's submission, Modern Slavery Bill, was lodged on 27 May 2026. |
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| Dr Benno Blaschke | Research Fellow | benno.blaschke@nzinitiative.org.nz | ||||||||||||
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On the wall, a screen is open to the agency’s approved AI model. The model performs like the free version of its frontier competitors. Nobody has asked it anything for some time. There are eight people around the table: a privacy specialist, a subject matter expert, a manager, two directors, two deputy chief executives and someone whose role is hard to summarise but who has views. Each has left tracked changes and competing comments. The junior analyst, Hannah, will be working through yet another night reconciling them. The group reasons that the juice is not worth the squeeze: studies on AI productivity show only modest gains, of 10 to 20 percent, drawn from settings unlike a policy shop. Yet the Public Service Commissioner, asked recently about AI adoption, said the Public Service has “lost its way”. Their paper does not mention this. Hannah meets two friends for coffee. Sarah owns a salon and muses over having hired a second stylist on the back of the time AI has freed up. Mike is a financial adviser. Sarah mentions Hannah’s paper and asks them about the government’s plan to cut 8,700 public servants by 2029, around 14 per cent of the workforce. “10 to 20 percent productivity gain would deliver those cuts, no?” Mike says. “And most of those studies are about customer-facing stuff. I’m using it a lot more than that for analysis, even writing. AI drafts and redrafts my advice now, in minutes. I just review.” “My books are basically doing themselves,” Sarah says. “That’s how I could afford Maria.” Mike laughs. “I was up last night redrafting my paper,” Hannah groans. “I can’t believe you policy peeps are still manually writing papers,” Mike replies. Hannah does not say anything. Hannah is back in the meeting room. The paper is on its twelfth draft. The screen on the wall is still open. She has not been told whether she is allowed to ask it anything. Late that night, working through the new tracked changes, she thinks about Sarah’s extra free time and Mike drafting and redrafting in minutes. “AI could be doing this,” she thinks. After a moment, “Maybe I should go work for Mike.” She opens a tab and pays for an AI account. The night’s reconciliation takes twenty minutes. The paper still needs a thirteenth review. |
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| On The Record | ||||||||||||
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