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Insights 10: 27 March 2026
Newsroom: Dr Oliver Hartwich on the great leap backwards for liberal democracy
 
Quadrant: Roger Partridge on the options for Iran that Trump rejected
 
NZ Herald: Dr Bryce Wilkinson on lessons learnt from the 1970s oil price policy traps
Just the opening act
Dr Oliver Hartwich | Executive Director | oliver.hartwich@nzinitiative.org.nz
The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Flights through the Middle East have been cancelled. Petrol has surged well past $3 a litre. 

Four thousand shipping containers of New Zealand meat and dairy sit stranded on rerouted vessels. Tourism operators are fielding mass cancellations. The Reserve Bank Governor gave an emergency speech to business leaders on Tuesday. 

The national conversation, understandably, is about issues such as fuel prices, interest rates and the May Budget. 

The closure of the Straits of Hormuz is just one symptom of a much more serious condition. 

Ukraine grinds on with a million casualties and no resolution. Pakistan is bombing Afghanistan. North Korea is testing missiles. Chinese and Philippine vessels face off in the South China Sea. 

In Cuba, the electricity grid has collapsed under the weight of American sanctions. The island may well be the next target of US intervention. From Venezuela to the Taiwan Strait, the old order is coming apart. 

For decades, New Zealand assumed that global markets would remain open, shipping lanes would remain secure and somebody somewhere would keep enforcing the rules. 

The post-Cold War order had been so stable for so long that it felt like a permanent condition rather than the historical anomaly it really is. 

We arranged the country on that basis. We let our foreign affairs coverage wither until the entire country had fewer journalists than the New York Times employs. 

We treated geopolitics as something for academics and diplomats, not for people who run businesses or set budgets. 

In 2018, the Ardern government banned offshore oil and gas exploration, convinced the energy transition would be orderly and that we would always be able to buy what we needed on international markets. 

That locked away billions of barrels of oil and gas in the Great South Basin alone. The ban has since been reversed, but the mentality that produced it has not. 

I have been arguing for years that New Zealand needs to take global affairs far more seriously. For most of that time, it was treated as a niche concern. It is not one anymore. 

The current crisis is not a temporary disruption to be weathered and forgotten, like a cyclone or an earthquake. It is the beginning of something longer and harder, and we are only seeing its earliest effects. 

We are still in the opening act. And we are not remotely prepared for what will follow. 
Another academic freedom case
Dr James Kierstead | Adjunct Fellow | insights@nzinitiative.org.nz
Academic freedom has become a major concern at universities across the English-speaking world in recent years. Speakers have been disinvited, papers retracted, and academics disciplined or even dismissed for things they have said or positions they have taken. My 2024 Initiative report on academic freedom at New Zealand universities demonstrated that academic freedom is also at risk here.  
 
I was reminded of this in the latest round of my legal case against Victoria University of Wellington, which disestablished my role as a Classics lecturer at the end of 2023, only a few months after my first report for the Initiative (on administrative bloat at our universities) was published.  
 
In a long-awaited response to my Official Information Act request, VUW sent me a number of documents. One of these was written by the professor who was Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences when I was made redundant and contains her recollections of the crucial meeting. (She claims that no notes were taken.) 
 
In this document, the former Dean says that my research was marked down due to my lack of ‘awareness of the university’s broader research goals.’ She also says that one of the ‘limitations’ the panel perceived in my teaching had to do with ‘incorporating Māori and Pasifika perspectives.’ 
 
How exactly I was supposed to incorporate ‘Māori and Pasifika perspectives’ into my courses on ancient Greece is still something of a mystery to me. But the important thing about these expectations is that they seem to fly in the face of academic freedom. 
 
Academic freedom means that academics have the right to conduct their own research and teaching without undue interference.  
 
Now, I do remember hearing a little bit about the university’s ‘broader research goals’ when I was at VUW. Unfortunately, I already had my own research goals, and the right – or so I thought – to pursue them. 
 
As for Māori and Pasifika perspectives, these are obviously important in some fields of enquiry. But what if my judgment as a scholar of ancient Greece is that they aren’t of much relevance to my subject? Am I allowed to think that without being marked down by my superiors? 
 
Apparently not, if the former Dean’s recollections of what was said at that meeting are accurate. That is yet more evidence that New Zealand universities are undermining academic freedom rather than protecting it.  

You can hear Dr James Kierstead and Dr Michael Johnston discuss this topic further on our podcast here. 
The immigrant's odyssey
Henry Olsen | Research Analyst | henry.olsen@nzinitiative.org.nz
Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey is expected to be a big hit this winter. Closer to home, Kiwis may want to discover another perilous journey: that of at least 80,000 foreign neighbours, through cumbersome bureaucracy, to reach these shores across the wine-dark Tasman Sea.

Tell us, O muse, of what it takes to acquire an Accredited Employer Work Visa!

As the name suggests, the journey begins with a firm applying for ‘accreditation’. If a firm decides that an international applicant is the best person for the job during their job advertisement, then ‘accreditation’ allows the firm to apply for a ‘job check’.

A successful ‘job check’ application enables the firm to send a migrant a job offer and a ‘job token’, a specialised online link from Immigration New Zealand through which the hopeful migrant can apply for the AEWV.

Simply put, the firm must apply for the right to apply for government approval for the migrant to apply for a visa.

With their veritable minotaur’s labyrinth of applications, INZ has perfected a way to quash the motivation of both firms and prospective migrants. Move over Lotus Eaters, you’ve got company.

Even if the migrant and the firm muster the requisite will, daunting challenges remain.

While Odysseus was away, his wife, Penelope, was harassed by uncouth suitors. Similarly, Kiwi firms must fend off INZ bureaucrats. For example, when the Initiative applied for accreditation, INZ asked the Initiative to obtain the identification information of everyone on its Board!

But perhaps INZ is more like Poseidon, seeking vengeance on migrants who actually manage to submit AEWV applications. After submitting, a prospective migrant must wait for an INZ letter requesting a medical examination. They use it to make an appointment with an approved physician in their home country.

Alas! As I learned when I applied for an AEWV, approved physicians are few and far between. There is only one approved office in the entire Washington, D.C. metro area. As if stuck on Calypso’s Island, I had to wait two weeks and pay $500 USD for the equivalent of an annual checkup.

If all these steps are completed, then the immigrant’s odyssey is at an end, having snuck into New Zealand on the belly of a sheep.
 
On The Record
Initiative Activities: ​
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