Australia

Insights

New Zealand’s quiet achievers

05/12/2014
New Zealand’s future prosperity depends on the degree to which public opinion will support productivity-enhancing reforms and on the quality of political leadership in building constituencies for reform and implementing acceptable reforms. The same can be said about Australia, where reforms are much more urgent now.

[…]

Business Spectator

New Zealand’s lessons for Australia

05/12/2014
New Zealand proves that reforms, even in mature democracies, are still possible. They should be possible in Australia as well where they are much needed. For any political leaders wishing to embark on a process of economic reform, whether in Australia or in Europe, a look at New Zealand may well be inspirational.

[…]

Research reports

Quiet Achievers: The New Zealand Path to Reform

02/12/2014
Do today’s politicians have the courage to make hard choices? Or has the furious pace of modern politics put an end to the age of reform? While Australia has been avoiding difficult decisions, the New Zealanders have been silently forging ahead.

[…]

The Australian

PM should follow Kiwi path to reform

01/12/2014
Ultimately, Australia’s future prosperity depends on Abbott’s succeeding in just that. The adoption of the New Zealand method of quiet, incremental radicalism may be Australia’s best hope of rediscovering the art of reform.

[…]

Insights

Don’t mention the War?

15/08/2014
“Don’t mention the War” was not just a Fawlty Towers quote – it was my experience growing up in Germany. Against this background, the colourful ways in which the wars a remembered in the Commonwealth still strike me as odd.

[…]

Stuff.co.nz

Clean, ethical and poor

29/10/2013
When people meet under Chatham House rules, you cannot disclose afterwards who said what. That’s the drawback. The advantage is that you find out what people really believe when they do not
have to hold back. And that can be most telling.

[…]

Uncategorised

Diary

12/10/2013
It is hard to follow the Cameron chameleon and make sense of his latest mimesis. Suddenly he believes in tax cuts, reducing benefits, cutting the budget and fighting the EU . He now actually sounds like a, well, Tory.

[…]

National Business Review

Mind the trans-Tasman tax gap

20/09/2013
Plans to increase the top rate of income tax may be good populist policy – they may even win elections. But they would be a sure disaster for the New Zealand economy by robbing us of one of our key competitive advantages over Australia.

[…]

Uncategorised

Tony Abbott’s German moment

13/09/2013
If Australia wanted to draw any conclusions from the German turnaround of the past decade, there are a few. To trigger a wave of economic modernisation, it either takes a conviction politician such as Margaret Thatcher or it takes an economic crisis to force it onto the agenda, as happened to Gerhard Schröder.

[…]