Dr Oliver Hartwich: From blueprints to building

After many difficult years, 2025 felt different. It was not easier. The economy remained stagnant and the reform agenda demanded hard choices. But attitudes shifted. New Zealand stopped merely diagnosing its problems and started taking practical steps to solve them.

Dr Bryce Wilkinson: Attracting overseas investment - A step forward, but not far enough

The government’s Overseas Investment (Amendment) Bill is more good than bad. It is more welcoming of incoming overseas investment.

That is good for several reasons. First, billions of dollars need to be invested in infrastructure. Second, New Zealanders need higher wage rates, but that requires higher labour productivity. Productivity could be higher if it were easier for firms to invest more capital per worker. Third, overseas investment can bring know-how, access to overseas markets and proprietary technologies

Bruce Cotterill: Infrastructure summit - NZ must harness local funds for growth, not just foreign investment

It’s early days but the Government’s first infrastructure investment summit appears to have been well received. There was good representation from the investment community, some visible presence from the international investment funds, and a Prime Minister who was “on song” with the business audience with which he would naturally feel more comfortable.

David Farrar: O’Sullivan on Luxon

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

It’s been interesting to read all the repetitive columns predicting Luxon’s demise – either imminently as my friend Matthew Hooton reckons or at the endpoint of a long, slow march to oblivion as my colleague Simon Wilson avers.

To paraphrase an old joke about economists and recessions, Matthew has predicted the demise of nine of the last five Prime Ministers!

Professor Robert MacCulloch: PM Luxon Trashes the NZ Passport.....

PM Luxon Trashes the NZ Passport. His Investor Visa Announcement is a Con-Job as NZ already has 4th highest level of Net Foreign Investment in OECD.

When will the PM and his Finance Minister give up the marketing-PR-comms con-jobs they have embarked upon of late that only remind us of the Jacinda Ardern-Chris Hipkins con-jobs? Yesterday the PM told the country that NZ needs more foreign investment - that it is desperately short of these funds. So he's got into the business of selling residency and NZ passports at bargain basement prices. We've joined a bunch of poverty stricken Caribbean islands that run similar schemes.

Dan Brunskill: The Coalition Government promises an economic growth plan within weeks.....

The Coalition Government promises an economic growth plan within weeks, but can it deliver results?

It is awkward for a Government, elected to get the economy back on track, to have spent its first full year in office watching output shrink almost $2 billion in inflation adjusted prices.

2024 was a year of recession by any definition of the word, although a more useful definition would show the New Zealand economy has been in a recession since September 2022.

Dr Eric Crampton: Opening to investment

BusinessDesk’s Pattrick Smellie had the best synopsis of New Zealand First’s announcement on foreign direct investment this weekend: “it was less important for what it said than for the fact that Peters said it.”

The Overseas Investment Act has placed New Zealand among the developed world’s least hospitable climates for foreign investment.

Bryce Wilkinson: The case for attracting foreign investment

New Zealand’s current legislative approach to overseas investment is a mess.

It is a mess because it does not focus on what is important – facilitating strong connections to the rest of the world while protecting New Zealand’s sovereignty.

New Zealand’s prosperity depends on its ability to access overseas markets, technologies, knowhow, and capital. We must compete for export markets and capital, and not just with Australia.