Dr Peter Winsley: How can more young people enter careers and fulfil their potential

Many young New Zealanders feel that a social contract has been breached. This tacit contract is that, if students worked and studied hard, the government would maintain through its institutions the macroeconomic stability and microeconomic flexibility that allow people to succeed with decisions on study and career choices.

However, young people are now expected to enter a weak labour market under tight fiscal constraints and with high uncertainty over the information learners can draw on. New Zealand has inherited multi-billion infrastructure deficits. It faces challenges in funding growing retirement and health liabilities. Its low domestic savings rates favour non-tradeable sectors and property rather than knowledge-intensive, export-orientated businesses.

Dr Peter Winsley: Ageing, NZS and new opportunities

The sustainability of New Zealand’s superannuation (NZS) system has long been in dispute. A recent Michael Littlewood paper based on Treasury data and OECD analyses challenges the assumption that NZS is unsustainable, given demographics.

NZS is a simple, universal scheme. This means it has low transaction costs and generates few behavioural distortions.

Dr Peter Winsley: Developing New Zealand’s advanced technology industries through Defence Budget appropriations

War is terrible, costly, and achieves nothing that could not be done more cheaply by peaceful means.

Yet world military expenditure reached US$2718 billion in 2024, an increase of 9.4 percent in real terms from 2023 and the sharpest year-on-year rise since the Cold War.

Dr Peter Winsley: The English Curriculum New Zealand schools need

In recent years the English curriculum has been weakened through the replacement of rich knowledge content with ill-defined “competencies.” Shakespeare disappeared. Identity politics coloured the 2007 National Curriculum, was strengthened in the 2022 Refreshed Curriculum, and continued in later documents. Little attention was paid to cognitive science “or the science of learning”.

Dr Peter Winsley: I too have been thinking about the future New Zealand economy

New Zealand was one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1950, New Zealand ranked third in the OECD for GDP per capita. However, New Zealand’s economic growth slowed after the mid-20th century and by the early 2000s, its GDP per capita was in the bottom half of developed countries.

Dr Peter Winsley: Tikanga, law and information asymmetry

Justice Joe Williams in his 2013 paper Lex Aoteoroa made a case for Māori tikanga being recognized as New Zealand’s “first law”. Tikanga existed prior to New Zealand’s development of a legal system based on the British model. Without written language pre-European Māori tikanga is not well documented. However, its customs and norms governed, for example, relationships between people and the environment, property ownership, and conflict resolution.

Dr Peter Winsley: The mask has slipped - now we can see tribalism’s true face

The mask has slipped - now we can see tribalism's true face (but things are looking better overall

In recent weeks the mask slipped, and we saw tribalism’s true face. Kiri Tamihere-Waititi delivered a declamatory call for Māori to overthrow the Government, declare sovereignty and do what the f##k they want.

AUT’s Dean of Law dismissed a legal practitioner as an old racist dinosaur who should slip away into the corner and die. Karen Chhour, Minister responsible for Oranga Tamariki, was attacked by others with Māori ancestry, essentially because she gave priority to children’s wellbeing rather than to cultural identity and whakapapa.

Dr Peter Winsley: New Zealand’s democracy, Te Tiriti and the Marine and Coastal Area Act

New Zealand is a democracy that is being challenged by race and tribal-based activism. A democracy implies universal suffrage, one person/one vote, votes being of equal value, the rule of law, and an open and educated society with freedom of speech.

New Zealand is still a well-functioning democracy compared, for example, with the United States. However, voters are not all treated equally. The Canterbury Regional Council (Ngāi Tahu Representation) Act 2022 empowers Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu to appoint up to two members of the Environment Canterbury Council with full decision-making powers. These members are unelected appointees. This sets an undemocratic precedent for the future.

Dr Peter Winsley: Biochar for productivity and climate change mitigation: What are we waiting for?

If you wanted to invent a country best placed to manage climate change it would look a lot like New Zealand. An island nation in the middle of a vast ocean, since oceans take the rough edges off some climate change extremes. Mountainous, with abundant water, hydropower resources and geothermal power. A high coastline to land area ratio and in the “Roaring Forties”, assuring high wind power capability. Low cost, high carbon wood to underpin new sustainable development opportunities.