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Name and title

Dr Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director, The New Zealand Initiative

Short biography

Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative, a think tank in Wellington. Before moving to New Zealand in 2012, he worked at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney and at Policy Exchange in London. He writes a fortnightly column for The Australian, contributes to Newsroom and Quadrant and co-hosts the podcast Free to Disagree.

Long biography

Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative, the Wellington think tank he has led since 2012. The Initiative argues for free markets, limited government and institutions that work.

He grew up in the Ruhr area of Germany and studied economics and business administration at Ruhr University Bochum. His doctorate in law, also from Bochum, compared the German and Australian law of unfair competition and took him to Sydney as a visiting scholar. He then advised a Liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords, worked at Policy Exchange in London and joined the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.

His subjects include housing and cities, local government, money and central banks, Germany, Europe and the future of liberal democracy. He writes a fortnightly column for The Australian and contributes to Newsroom and Quadrant. With Damien Grant, he hosts the weekly podcast Free to Disagree. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote a weekly column on European affairs for Business Spectator. In more than two decades, he has published over 1,500 articles, reports and essays.

His books are Why Europe Failed (2015), Leonardo’s Legacy (2025), In the Meantime (2026) and the satirical novella The Martian Audit (2026). He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, speaks English and German and lives in Wellington.

Portrait

Download the portrait (PNG, 1024 x 747 pixels). It may be used with any report of my work or announcement of an event at which I speak.

What I speak about

I speak and give interviews on twelve subjects, in English and German. Each subject has a page that sets out what I believe and how I came to believe it.