Ani O'Brien: What ANZ's Sharon Zollner said about the economy

I went along to the Women Mean Business event at Perch in Britomart this week, where the guest speaker was ANZ’s Chief Economist, Sharon Zollner. She’s one of those rare economists who can tell you the truth without either sugar-coating it or descending entirely into doom and gloom. Her diagnosis of New Zealand’s current situation was clear: we’re in a stop/start recovery. The economy is sputtering along, lurching between brief moments of momentum and a lot of grind.

Duggan Flanakin: Russia flexing nuclear energy muscles in Africa

Through its state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, Russia under Vladimir Putin has extended its tentacles deep into Africa. Early in this century, Russia began escalating its outreach, offering its significant expertise in nuclear energy to emerging African nations eager to utilize the continent’s ample uranium resources to power their futures.

Dave Patterson: Trump and Putin Are Talking – But Are They Making Progress?

Not since 2015 has Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the United States.

The much-anticipated talks between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin finally happened. The Russian leader’s Ilyushin IL-96 aircraft touched down at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, about 30 minutes after Trump’s Air Force One landed on Friday, August 15. The pair of aircraft sat side-by-side as the two world leaders disembarked and walked red carpets to meet in front of Air Force One. As they moved to a low dais, Putin and Trump walked past F-22 Raptors, stealthy air superiority fighter aircraft, just as a B-2 Spirit strategic bomber with an F-22 and F-35 Lightning II escort flew over. Putin could not help looking up. It was pure pageantry to be sure – a pageant of power.

Dr James Kierstead: Grade expectations

‘Every five years or so, I crunch the numbers on college grades across the US and report what I’ve found,’ writes Stuart Rojstaczer modestly on his website.

What Rojstaczer, a former professor, has found is that grades are going up, and have been going up for quite some time. Until the 1960s, only around 20% of grades awarded at US colleges were As. The most common grade was a C.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Talking in code

At the Initiative, we read the latest economic research, so you do not have to. Sometimes we find studies that are clever. Sometimes they are useful. And sometimes they are just fun.

One recent paper in The Journal of Political Economy caught our attention: “Subversive Conversations.” The title sounds more like a spy novel than an economic investigation. But its idea is pure genius.

Roger Partridge: When the pipes are rationed

This week’s Herald reported the plight of an Ōrewa family hit with a 72% rates hike – more than $10,000 a year. The jump arises from rezoning, with new subdivisions now creeping up to their boundary. Yet Watercare has decreed the wastewater connection will not arrive until 2031 – leaving the land stranded and unsaleable.

Lushington Brady: Britain Has a Lot to Be Proud About

When the Empire led the world in stamping out slavery.

In his travelling lecture tour, Explorers: the Age of Discovery, James May makes an unfashionable point: the British Empire wasn’t all bad. In fact, it did an awful lot of good. Niall Ferguson makes the same point in his book, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. Like Ferguson, May doesn’t minimalise the evils of colonialism (although he oddly refrains from pointing out that it was the default mode of international relations for nearly 5000 years), but he rightly points out that the British did an awful lot of good. The Pax Britannica, enforced by the Royal Navy, for instance.

David Farrar: Beaton on NCEA

Jamie Beaton writes:

For too long, New Zealand’s education system has been content to drift in a sea of mediocrity. Everyone has known for a long time that NCEA is broken. Thirteen years ago, when I finished high school, it was widely recognised among my peers that the system was too easy, gameable, and a disservice to our students.

Sunday August 17, 2025 

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Net Zero Watch Samizdat: Orsted turmoil tops week of energy and industry unrest

UK

Tech giants to UK Ministers: relax Net Zero rules or miss out on AI

Tech giants have told ministers that Britain’s AI data-centre boom may require temporary on-site gas generation to overcome high energy costs and grid delays, highlighting tensions between the UK’s Net Zero goals and its ambition to be a global AI leader. Ministers say they aim to meet demand with clean power by 2030 but have not ruled out gas as a short-term fix.

Breaking Views Update: Week of 17.8.25

Sunday August 17, 2025 

News:
Māori coastal rights Supreme Court decision could set precedent - lawyer
A Treaty lawyer says today's Supreme Court judgement on Māori coastal rights could set a precedent for more Māori customary rights claims over riverbeds.

The court found riverbeds deemed to be part of the marine area, such as river mouths, can be included in Māori customary marine title orders, if other legal tests are meet.

Ani O'Brien: A week is a long time - 16 August 2025

Chipocrisy! Chris Hipkins spreads his legs and runs from accountability

It turns out the “team of five million” is coming together once again… this time to pay Chris Hipkins, Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, and Ayesha Verrall’s legal bill with our hard-earned taxes. The Four Horsepeople of the Covid-pocalypse have all lawyered up and refused to appear at a public Covid Commission hearing, declining to front up and answer hard questions in front of the people they locked down. Their spin is that public testimony would be “performative”… because there is nothing performative about holding daily press conferences in which you declare yourself the “single source of truth”.

DTNZ: Government moves to ban protests outside private homes

The Government is introducing a new law to curb targeted and disruptive protests outside people’s homes, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has announced.

Goldsmith said while the right to protest is a cornerstone of “New Zealand’s democracy”, recent incidents of demonstrations targeting private residences — particularly those of public figures such as MPs, judges, and officials — had raised concerns about privacy and safety.

John McLean: NZ's critically endangered school kids

How Woketearoa molds Minors into Marxists

“Te Whāriki” early childhood curriculum guidelines were first published in 1996. The inaugural Te Whāriki was published under a National Party-led Government, with Jim “Spud” Bolger as Prime Minister. There’s a misconception that the calamitous decline in New Zealand’s educational standards has been a Leftie subversion. The slow train wreck has received cross-party support.

Ele Ludemann: Women excluded 4 years on

Four years on from the Taliban’s seizure of power in Afghanistan the UN reports on the total exclusion of women:

Four years since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, waves of directives have stripped Afghan women and girls of their rights and dignity. These restrictions are not temporary; not one has been reversed. The Taliban is closer than ever to achieving its vision of a society that completely erases women from public life. The most severe women’s rights crisis in the world is at risk of becoming normalized.

Lushington Brady: Spanish Town Forbids Islamic Celebrations

Spaniards haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be ruled by Islam.

As Britain edges closer and closer to open rebellion from its indigenous peoples, indigenes in other European countries are growing increasingly vocal about the colonisation of their ancestral lands by waves of violent foreigners pushing an alien, supremacist, ideology.

David Farrar: Petrol tax goneburger

Chris Bishop announced:

Cabinet has agreed to a series of important legislative changes to enable the transition of New Zealand’s 3.5 million light vehicles to paying for our roading network through electronic road user charges, rather than petrol tax, says Transport Minister Chris Bishop.

Mike's Minute: Stop putting the bill on the taxpayer

It never takes long to find the bank of the taxpayer.

The Green Building Council has lined the Government up for Lord knows how many millions so we can all ditch our gas heaters, buy heat pumps, and save money and the gas industry.

Saturday August 16, 2025 

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Ryan Bridge: The real reason Kiwis are crossing the Tasman

What's the point in us having more affordable property prices for first home buyers if young workers are jetting off to Australia in search of a better tomorrow?

There's a perverse logic to this, but across the Tasman right now, where our flying Kiwis are headed, they're experiencing something of a property boom.

It's the opposite of the stagnant or falling prices we're seeing here, where homes in most regions are now considered, technically at least, affordable.