Dr Eric Crampton: Forcing banks to offer services in small towns was always a non-starter

Sometimes, a consultation process makes me wonder just how the consultation document got out the door in the first place.

Submissions closed last week on the Reserve Bank’s Keeping Cash Local consultation process. It was a strange proposal, with a stranger process.

Let’s start with the underlying problem before getting to the Bank’s strange consultation.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 27/11/24

Peters pitches our Pacific-focused policy in a speech in Paris while Chinese envoy to NZ sounds a warning (or is it a threat?)

In this country, China’s ambassador Wang Xiaolong was warning of the political fallout if New Zealand were to join the AUKUS pact.

A decision by New Zealand to join AUKUS would ‘inevitably” have negative consequences for the country’s relationship with China, he said in an interview on 30′ With Guyon Espiner.

Kerre Woodham: Can pine forestry and livestock farming really coexist in this country?

This is one that has been discussed before and will no doubt be discussed again. Can pine forestry and livestock farming coexist in this country, or does one have to make way for the other?

For the last decade, there have been major concerns about productive farmland, not only being converted into subdivisions, but being converted into forests. These concerns were ramped up in recent times with the previous administration’s One Billion Trees project.

Point of Order: The rain came down.....

....and so did the debris from logging operations in the flood-damaged Gisborne region

Damien O’Connor, as Minister for Rural Communities, has broken his 2023 duck and issued his first press statement of the year to announce government support for flood-affected farmers and growers in the Gisborne region.

We have yet to hear from Forestry Minister Stuart Nash, but he is bound to have something to say – surely – about the mischief reportedly done by forest companies operating in that neck of the woods. The “slash” from their logging operations blocks rivers and exacerbates the flooding problems caused by heavy rain.

O’Connor’s statement, which kicked off with the language employed by earnest bureaucrats, was headed