The New Zealand Initiative

In this episode, Jamuel talks with Oliver Hartwich about his report Half a Turnaround, which examines how ACC's outstanding claims liability more than doubled over a decade as more injured New Zealanders became stuck on long-term support. Oliver argues that ACC has halted the financial deterioration through tighter claim decisions, not yet through proven gains in rehabilitation, and sets out reforms including a 28-day rehabilitation guarantee to restore the scheme's original promise of getting injured people back to work.

New Zealand spends more on infrastructure than almost any developed country, yet still cannot build the pipes and roads new housing needs. Why? Oliver Hartwich and Benno Blaschke trace an idea the Initiative has followed for over a decade. It began in 2013 with a proposal drawn from how other countries fund the infrastructure needed to connect new suburbs to cities: let the people who move in pay for it, rather than loading the upfront cost onto existing ratepayers. At the time it seemed radical. Then the Initiative discovered New Zealand had done exactly this for most of the twentieth century. Communities could raise their own debt and build what they needed, without asking central government for money or permission, and funded more than half the country's local infrastructure that way, before the system was dismantled in the 1990s. The Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act 2020 began rebuilding it, but the government still sits at the centre, and six years on only three projects have used it. Benno sets out a ten to fifteen year pathway to developing institutions robust enough that communities can choose to fund their own growth, carry the risk themselves, and build without waiting on councils or central government for permission. When communities can stand on their own feet, the government can step back. The result would take the burden off ratepayers and taxpayers, and give a more responsive planning system the infrastructure it needs to make housing affordable.

Renowned urbanist Alain Bertaud has spent six decades studying cities: from working as a young draftsman in Chandigarh in 1963 to advising governments worldwide on urban land markets. His book Order Without Design has become a touchstone for New Zealand's housing reforms, cited by ministers on both sides of the aisle. In this episode, Eric and Benno are joined by Bertaud and Salim Furth of the Mercatus Centre to discuss why cities are labour markets first and infrastructure projects second, what happens when planners try to control things they cannot predict, why monitoring land prices may be the single most important thing a planning department can do, and how to make sure infrastructure investment and delivery serves the spontaneous order rather than the other way around. As both guests note, New Zealand has worked through so many of the foundational policy questions that the debate is now at the frontier: how to finance and deliver infrastructure under genuine uncertainty, in a system that lets cities grow flexibly. These are problems you only get to when the earlier questions have been answered well. The world is watching.

In this episode, Nick talks with Bryce about the government’s proposed replacement of the Resource Management Act and what it means for property rights. Bryce argues the bills fall short of the government’s stated commitment to property rights, lacking the economic disciplines needed to ensure regulation delivers net benefits for New Zealanders.

In this episode, Oliver talks to Roger Partridge about his new report, Renovating the Nation, which proposes selling around $25 billion worth of government-owned commercial assets and reinvesting the proceeds into critical public infrastructure. Drawing on the success of New South Wales's asset recycling programme, Roger argues the Crown has too much capital tied up in businesses it doesn't need to own, and that ring-fencing sale proceeds in an independently governed fund could deliver the roads, hospitals, and public transport New Zealand desperately needs.