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Insights 28: 1 August 2025
The Australian: Dr Oliver Hartwich on Europe's changing investment priorities
 
NZ Herald: Roger Partridge on NZ's butter dramas and its dangerous signal to investors
 
The Post: Dr Eric Crampton on cutting through confusion on drinking guidelines
When Government reckons with itself
Dr Benno Blaschke | Research Fellow | benno.blaschke@nzinitiative.org.nz
Minister Chris Bishop delivered an unprecedented message to local government leaders last month. At the LGNZ conference, he declared that New Zealanders question councils’ “licence to lead.” But his speech went further than typical government criticism of local authorities.

For the first time since I have worked in this area in government, a senior minister turned the spotlight on central government itself. Bishop acknowledged Wellington’s role in creating New Zealand’s planning dysfunction. “Central government has overseen the broken planning and infrastructure systems you've been operating within for 30 years,” he told delegates. “We have been a bad partner with you for a long time.”

This represents a watershed moment in New Zealand governance. The government finally understands it is part of the problem.

Media coverage missed the significance entirely. Stuff proclaimed, “the mood is tense because central government is about to tell local government how to do its job.” They failed to recognise Wellington was acknowledging its own responsibility for system failure.

For decades, the government treated resource management gridlock as a problem ‘out there.’ Council planners found creative ways to avoid complying with central government direction. Wellington invented new processes to make failing systems work or bypass them. Yet central government remained blind to its own role in perpetuating dysfunction.

This is why Bishop’s speech was such a breakthrough. He recognised that both levels of government are part of the problem. His speech commanded councils to halt normal planning processes except for the already underway adaptation work. He put every planning team on notice that the old playbook is over.

This marks genuine leadership accountability. Until leaders acknowledge their role in creating gridlock, solutions remain elusive. Previous RMA reform efforts failed because they treated planning dysfunction as an external problem requiring no government self-reflection.

The government’s Going for Housing Growth discussion document reveals the challenge ahead. While Bishop called for competitive land markets and a new planning paradigm, the document remains steeped in status quo thinking.

Bishop also announced immediate action. The government will stop unnecessary plan changes under the RMA to prevent councils from wasting resources on work incompatible with the coming system. A new regulation-making power will allow ministers to remove district plan provisions that block economic growth.

These measures signal government’s commitment to change. But the real test lies deeper. Can central government officials examine their role in perpetuating dysfunction? Can they embrace genuine institutional reform beyond technical fixes?

Bishop’s speech matters because it models the accountability required for successful reform. Without self-reflection from the institutions that designed our failing system, New Zealand will remain stuck with planning gridlock disguised as incremental improvement.
Hard trade-offs with social media age limits
Dr Eric Crampton | Chief Economist | eric.crampton@nzinitiative.org.nz
The government is worried about the harms some youths experience on social media.  

The Prime Minister has announced his support for age limits. Social media platforms would face penalties if those under 16 made it onto their sites. Parliament is now holding a broader inquiry.  

Trying to address real harms can create new problems. A ban, as compared to parental discretion, is fraught. 

First, government must decide what counts as social media. Any definition that seems adequate today might not hold up when kids switch to a different platform that lets them keep talking with their friends.  

But even leaving aside definitional questions, making platforms liable if teenagers find their way onto their site requires finding some balance across three problems.  

A system can be hard for kids to get around. It can be relatively easy for adults to navigate. And it can respect privacy. But it is likely impossible to do all three of these at the same time.  

Any system that is hard for kids to work around will be cumbersome for adults if it also respects privacy. There are versions of online age verification that respect privacy. But where kids have older friends as willing accomplices, those solutions require frequent checks to make sure that a fifteen-year-old hasn’t used an older friend’s ID for verification. Those checks would also affect people above the age limit. 

Making it less cumbersome for adults would require a one-off real identity verification with each platform, like a picture of your passport or driver’s license. Adults will have to prove that they are not teenagers – especially where platforms are up for fines if they get things wrong.  

But there are good, defensible, legitimate reasons for adults to write online under pen names or pseudonyms. If platforms know who you are, so will hackers. If you are posting from New Zealand and have family in China, this could be a problem.  

The UK’s recent online child protection legislation requires age verification for those wanting to see ‘sensitive content’, which currently even includes some speeches in Parliament. UK uptake of VPNs, which let you pretend to be in another country, has skyrocketed. And now the UK is considering bans on VPNs.  

The Simpsons character Helen Lovejoy is famous for asking, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”  

I wish more people would also think about the trade-offs. 
Two months to ask if kids can feed lambs?
Nick Clark | Senior Fellow | nick.clark@nzinitiative.org.nz
Woolly-headed regulations about farm kids feeding small animals, collecting eggs, and watering plants are up for review, but not before two months of chewing the cud. 
 
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is holding a targeted consultation on agricultural health and safety, including whether little Johnny can safely help Mum with light chores on the farm.  
 
Currently, health and safety regulations say no one under 15 should undertake tasks related to preparing goods for sale – rules that, on paper, could make a small egg-collecting chore a $50,000 affair.  
 
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden has heard from rural families worried they are unwitting outlaws. She wants to clarify the rules so that light, age-appropriate chores are legally okay. A practical solution to a silly problem. Egg-cellent. 
 
But a two-month consultation?  
 
Contrast that with the pace of change elsewhere. Like sweeping reforms to the Resource Management Act, legislation so complex it could give Kafka a headache, are being pushed through at speed.  
 
And then there is the use of urgency. At the end of May, Newsroom observed that 18 months into its term, the coalition government had passed more bills (24) through Parliament under urgency without a select committee process than any since at least 1987. Bills introduced and passed in less time than it takes to teach a kid to bottle-feed a calf. 
 
This matters because rushed, poor-quality advice and skipping steps increase the risk that legislation is ineffective or unworkable. 
 
There are real issues with health and safety on farms, and the review should focus on sensible rules that reflect genuine risk. But light farm chores? That calls for reflection, stakeholder input, and, presumably, a regulatory impact statement. At what cost to the taxpayer? 
 
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark weighed in on ‘X’: “Does anyone seriously think the Govt should waste its time consulting on whether children can collect eggs laid & feed their pet lambs? I grew up on a farm doing both for years to no ill effect. It’s not April Fool’s Day….” 
 
One must sympathise with the Minister. In a world where HR manuals need a risk assessment for sharing a cheese sandwich, perhaps it really does take her officials eight weeks of walking on eggshells to create a new regulation that will allow a child to water the beans.  
 
On The Record
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