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Insights 47: 12 December 2025
NZ Herald: Dr Oliver Hartwich on how the greyhound racing law change is legal overreach
 
The Platform: Dr Michael Johnston and Prof Kendall Clements on relativism's irony
 
Newsroom: Dr Oliver Hartwich on the local impact of the US ditching rules-based order
Finally, RMA replacement worth the name
Nick Clark | Senior Fellow | nick.clark@nzinitiative.org.nz
For over three decades, the Resource Management Act has been a significant hindrance to New Zealand's economic growth. It promised sustainable management but delivered housing crises, infrastructure delays, stifled productivity and environmental decline. Successive governments tinkered while the fundamental problems festered. 
 
This week, the Government introduced legislation to finally address the disease. 
 
The Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill represent the most significant planning reform since the RMA's enactment in 1991. The Initiative has advocated for many of these changes for over a decade: property rights as a guiding principle, a narrowed scope of regulable effects, standardised zones and rules, competitive urban land markets and higher thresholds for objections.  
 
Visual amenity, trade competition, retail distribution effects and private views are explicitly excluded from regulation. A new Planning Tribunal offers low-cost recourse against council overreach. 
 
The ‘funnel’ architecture is a strong feature. Under the current RMA, every decision can be relitigated at every level, including national policy statements, regional plans, district plans and consents. The new system locks decisions in at higher levels. Once national instruments determine how competing goals are balanced, councils will not be able to revisit those questions.  
 
This strong direction from the centre is inconsistent with our preference for localism, but should reduce uncertainty and delays plaguing development. The Government claims there will be a 46 percent reduction in consents required and $14.8 billion in savings over 30 years.  
 
The environmental limits framework is hard-edged - councils must avoid breaching limits once set. But Ministers will decide those limits. A future government could easily tighten them, transforming a permissive system into a restrictive one. 
 
The ‘regulatory relief’ framework is also concerning. Ministers have promised that councils will finally have to confront costs they impose on society. That is great intent, but the draft Bills are weak on this point, only allowing relief if there is ‘significant impact’. Relief should be available for any material reduction in land value caused by a new restriction imposed largely for the benefit of others or the community in general. 
 
Overall, the Bills are positive. But they are long and complex with plenty of devil in the detail. Meanwhile, their operational substance - environmental limits, national standards, planning methodologies – are still to come.  
 
Whether the new system enables growth or frustrates will depend heavily on getting all this right. And, crucially, for it all to stick.  
The story that didn't count
Dr Michael Johnston | Senior Fellow | michael.johnston@nzinitiative.org.nz
In many countries, an educational study claiming a radical improvement in mathematics learning would receive considerable media attention. But not, it seems, in New Zealand. 

Two weeks ago, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the results of a trial involving Year 7 and 8 students who were at least a year behind in maths. Nearly 1,400 such students received small-group tutoring four times a week for 12 weeks. In that time, they made an average of two years’ progress.  

Students in a control group did not receive the small-group tutoring. They were, however, taught using the new curriculum by teachers who had had professional development in teaching maths effectively. These students made an average of a year’s progress over the 12 weeks. 

On the day she announced the results, Stanford was interviewed on Newstalk ZB. On the following day, there were two articles on RNZ. Both featured criticism of the trial by an academic with a history of opposing Stanford’s reforms. The same academic was interviewed on RNZ’s Morning Report.  

That was it for mainstream media coverage. Nothing on television news. Nothing in the New Zealand Herald or on Stuff. 

It is surprising that the trial did not receive more attention. If it is credible, it signals a game-changer for maths education. If the trial was flawed, the public deserves to know that too. 

So, how confident can we be in the results? There were two plausible criticisms of the trial.  

First, only some aspects of the curriculum were taught and tested. The trial focused on number concepts, including multiplication, division, place value, proportions and fractions. It did not include algebra, geometry or statistics.   

If only some aspects of a curriculum are taught and tested over 12 weeks, students might be expected to make more than 12 weeks’ worth of progress on those specific aspects.  

Second, the students in the intervention group received special tutoring. Students given small group tutoring should be expected to make more progress than those learning in a business-as-usual classroom. 

These criticisms raise legitimate questions about the intervention's effects. But the control group students were taught in a normal way, albeit by upskilled teachers using the new curriculum. Yet they still made impressive progress. This is the real story, but journalists largely ignored it.  

The students in the trial caught up with the programme in just 12 weeks. How long will it take the media? 
A plan that isn’t really a plan
Roger Partridge | Chair and Senior Fellow | roger.partridge@nzinitiative.org.nz
A plan typically answers straightforward questions: what is needed, what should be done first, and why.  

This month, Ministers will receive the Infrastructure Commission’s 30-year National Infrastructure Plan. It will not answer those questions – although not because the Commission has failed. It will have done exactly what it was tasked with doing.  

When the Commission was created in 2019, Parliament gave it a telling mandate: to “co-ordinate, develop and promote an approach to infrastructure.” Note the verbs. Co-ordinate. Develop. Promote. Not “decide.” Not “prioritise". Successive governments have honoured those limitations scrupulously. 

The draft Plan, released in June, runs to 160 pages. It assesses long-term needs. It catalogues projects already in agency pipelines. It offers 19 recommendations on funding, delivery and asset management. “Maintenance” features prominently. All good stuff.  

After a round of submissions, the final Plan is on its way to the Beehive. But it will not identify which projects should proceed first. Or second. Or ever. 

The Commission has been refreshingly candid. Its Infrastructure Priorities Programme “should not be considered as a prioritised list.” The Plan “reflect[s] back what’s already happening, rather than proposing new projects.”  

It is like calling a stocktake a blueprint. 

Across the Tasman, Infrastructure NSW took a more old-fashioned approach. Its 2012 State Infrastructure Strategy was described as “the first ever prioritised and costed long-term infrastructure strategy” in the state’s history – mainly because it contained priorities and costs. 

The Infrastructure Commission has never been given that mandate. It can advise and assess. But it cannot say, “build this first.” That would stray into territory our system has chosen to avoid. 

Ministers have 180 days to respond. So do not expect answers until mid-2026. And even then, do not expect to be told what to build. At least not yet. 

Labour created a system that could not prioritise. National has preserved it. We have bipartisan consensus on not prioritising. What could be more Wellington?  

To be clear, the Commission should not decide what gets built. That is properly a political choice.  

But government should not have to navigate without a map. 

Infrastructure New Zealand suggested the Plan “needs to look more like a plan.” Minister Bishop has said he wants “the 30-year plan... to mirror what happens in Australia.” All that remains is to give the Commission the mandate to do this. 

A small step. Possibly even step one.
 
On The Record
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