New Zealand has an infrastructure deficit of at least $100 billion, a huge amount for a small country and a significant drag on productivity and economic growth. Not all of this can be financed from within New Zealand, meaning a need for overseas investment. Read more
1.1 This submission, in response to the Controller and Auditor-General’s report Making Infrastructure Investment Decisions Quickly (2023), is made by The New Zealand Initiative (the Initiative). The Initiative is a Wellington-based think tank supported primarily by major New Zealand businesses. Read more
Even today’s sharpest critics of economics should give economists credit for two substantial wins for liberalism over the past couple of centuries. In 1849, Thomas Carlyle called economics ‘the Dismal Science.” The name stuck, but most people using the term have forgotten why Carlyle gave us that name. Read more
Spare a thought for New Zealand’s Finance Minister, Nicola Willis as she prepares to deliver her first Budget later this month. The economic circumstances she has inherited from her predecessor, Grant Robertson, are the worst any Kiwi finance minister has faced since the tumultuous days of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson in the 1980s and early 1990s. Read more
