Dr Oliver Hartwich: Berlin used to be ‘poor and sexy’ – now it’s afraid

Last Wednesday, at 9.46am, an email reached the Berlin office of Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news magazine. Elif Eralp, the left-wing politician most likely to become Berlin’s next mayor, will wish it had never been sent.

Attached was the transcript of an interview two Spiegel journalists had conducted with her two days earlier. German papers like to run interviews as a straight exchange of questions and answers. The journalists tidy the conversation and cut it to fit the page.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Ten years for keeping quiet? NZ eyes end to right to silence

In April 1638, guards in London tied a young man to a cart and whipped him through the streets to Westminster. There they locked his head and hands in a wooden frame for all to see. When he kept talking to the crowd, they gagged him.

His name was John Lilburne, and the authorities had arrested him for spreading leaflets that attacked the church’s bishops. Yet the whipping was not punishment for the leaflets. It was for refusing to swear an oath demanded by the Star Chamber, a royal court that sat without a jury.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Losing sight of the lucky country – why we need a crisis to reform again

When I first visited Sydney in 1999, what struck me most were the cranes. They stood over the city in every direction, building towers, stadiums and rail lines for the Olympic Games. The future was being built, quite literally, in front of my eyes.

I had come partly to meet, at last, the South Australian penfriend I had been writing to since 1991 and whom I later married. Australia had always been my dream destination, but at least at the time I thought it would be a one-off holiday.

It felt refreshing to be in Australia. Back home, The Economist had just called Germany “the sick man of the euro”. Some four million Germans were out of work, and reforms were debated for years before being quietly shelved.

Australia back then was the opposite.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Judged by their peers

The Herald's 'Mood of the Boardroom' survey has become a fixture in New Zealand's media calendar. Once a year, the chief executives and chairs of the country's largest companies deliver their verdict on political leaders.

What has made the past years different is that they are passing judgement on a government led by one of their former peers. National's leader Christopher Luxon was CEO of Air New Zealand, and his deputy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis, was a senior Fonterra executive before they entered politics.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The false economy of aged care

Last week, we co-hosted a dinner with the Selwyn Foundation. Its chair, former Labour health minister David Cunliffe, led the Government's aged care advisory group and presented their report, A place to grow old.

The report describes an underfunded, fragmented system facing more than twice as many over-85s by 2047. It recommends paying providers enough to build beds, more home care, an independent pricing authority and higher contributions from people with assets.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ’s mixed-up electoral system threatens to blow results out of proportion

Here is a paradox that ought to trouble ministers more than any single threat named in the NZSIS’s 2026 Security Threat Environment report, released in August.

The New Zealand Government has never had more useful intelligence available to it than it does today. Yet it is not digesting that intelligence quickly enough to matter.

The problem is not what we know. It is how we decide.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Trump’s diesel squeeze leaves NZ dangerously exposed

Donald Trump’s second term has given Europe one fight after another. Tariffs, Greenland, Ukraine and Iran have all had their turn.

Last week, the Americans added one more: diesel. On Thursday, Reuters reported the Trump administration had told Germany and France to draw down their emergency diesel stocks “or face a potential US diesel export ban”. By Trump’s standards, it was a polite request.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Is NZ now saying ‘no’ to foreign investment?

When law firms advise foreign clients on investing in New Zealand, they usually include some version of the same paragraph. It describes the country as a stable democracy with independent courts, secure property rights and predictable politics, and for decades nobody had to think twice before writing it.

Last week, a lawyer at one of the leading firms told me his team is advising an overseas client on an investment here. They have just toned that paragraph down, he said, because it is no longer true. That is not because the law has changed, but because promises made by various parties during the campaign for the 7 November election would undermine property rights.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: NZ shows how not to run a census

Two thousand years ago, according to St Luke, Emperor Augustus decreed that all the world should be registered. A carpenter and his pregnant wife walked from Nazareth to Bethlehem to comply. Evidently, the Romans had little trouble with their census response rate.

Ever since those times, countries have counted their populations. For those filling in the forms, it is a nuisance, to be sure. But governments need reliable figures to plan public services.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Why we spoke up

Over the past couple of months, we have heard mounting alarm from business leaders about this election campaign. They are asking whether New Zealand still welcomes people willing to invest here. The concern comes from a broad range of industries.

Those conversations prompted an open letter, now signed by 51 business leaders. It asks all political parties to respect private property and the agreements people make.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: An auction of stolen goods

“Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods,” H.L. Mencken wrote in 1936. Never has it been truer than in this campaign.

The parties are outdoing each other with ideas about what to take, from whom, and to whom to give it. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is another way of putting it.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Hobbiton or space nation? NZ can’t seem to decide

New Zealand is barely a military power. It has had no combat aircraft for 25 years, and its ageing frigates need replacing. Lifting defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP passes for ambition. The country comes across as a real-world Hobbiton: peaceful, friendly and not very capable.

Yet one capability puts New Zealand in the club of superpowers, and it is the last one anyone would expect. Last year, only the United States and China saw more rockets leave their soil. New Zealand, with 17 launches, matched Russia.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Town planners will finally have to answer for land prices

What is politics? According to Max Weber’s classic definition, politics is “a strong and slow boring of hard boards.”

Having worked around politics for over two decades has given me a good idea of what Weber meant by that. Achieving proper policy change is a tough business indeed.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Birds of a feather

Voting opens today in the most important election of 2026. And no, this is not the General Election.

I am talking about Forest & Bird’s ‘Bird of the Year’. Run annually since 2005, it has become a fixture in New Zealand’s calendar.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The New Mandarinate

In November 2018, officials at Immigration New Zealand began work on replacing the ageing biometric systems that verify identities and manage immigration risk. Seven years later it was dead, having delivered no measurable benefit. Nobody can yet say what it cost.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Balancing the books is only half the job

Over the past couple of weeks, the two major parties have told us about their fiscal policies. Both promise to return the budget to surplus before the end of the decade.

National aims to bring down government spending to 30% of GDP, while Labour wants to stabilise it around 33% of GDP. National has pledged not to introduce any new taxes, while Labour is campaigning on a new capital gains tax.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: A bad tax is not a down payment on a good one

On Monday evening, I sat on a panel at Foxglove on Queens Wharf in Wellington, where I was expected to play the neoliberal villain.

The Institute for Democratic and Economic Analysis is a think tank devoted to fighting poverty and political exclusion. It launched a new report on capital gains taxes, including the one Labour has proposed, and invited me to be one of the discussants.

A centre-left think tank, a Wellington audience and a Labour tax policy sounded like a home game for the tax. And I was presumably cast to declare that a capital gains tax would wreck the economy.

However, the evening did not follow that script.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Spurred by heat from Trump, Iceland votes on reopening frozen EU talks

I have always liked Iceland. My first visit was on a cruise ship in the mid-1990s. Reykjavík felt like a town that had grown from a fishing village, and the country behind was mostly empty.

A few years later, I returned for a proper holiday. It confirmed that earlier impression and added more peculiar observations like tiny but ridiculously priced hotel rooms or spotting puffin on the menu of a restaurant in the capital. In the end, I passed on that and had the most expensive pizza in my life instead.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: New Zealand needs asset recycling to fund its infrastructure future

A fortnight ago, the government agreed a sale worth $702 million. Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop sold the loans the Crown made to Chorus to help build the ultrafast broadband network, for $60 million above book value.

The money, we were told, will go to the Cambridge to Piarere expressway, hospital upgrades and new classrooms.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: If I were PM - Fix the machine before the policies

On my first morning as Prime Minister, I would deliver a speech. It would contain no slogans or platitudes about becoming the best country in the world. Instead, it would be a stocktake, and it would not be a pleasant one.

I would tell New Zealanders what they already sense: the country has been slipping down the income rankings of the developed world for decades. The government’s books have been in deficit for years, and an ageing population will make both problems worse.