There are more whio (blue ducks; hymenolaimus malacorhynchos) on our banknotes than in the wild.
Read MoreThinking About the Property Rights in Resource Decisions As Well As Transaction Costs.
RMA
RMA: a cautionary tale
Once upon a time, in a land not very far away, there lived a king. True story.
Read MoreShould Environmentalists Care About Poverty?
Can an environmentalist focus solely on sustainability or are they drawn into wider issues such has how fairly the material product of the economy is distributed?
Read MoreTrading Water Resource Consents
‘Iwi leaders and the Government have agreed on a deadline to sort out Maori interests in fresh water by Waitangi Day 2016.’ (News: 5 February 2015)
Read MoreJust Do It
Policy announcements do not always reflect careful analysis. Too often the unstated political considerations have too much influence.
Read MoreHow high can you go?
Rules that stop you using your property as you see fit are bad. Rules that stop other people using their property ... are less so.
Read MoreSeabed mining: drums in the deep
The Environmental Protection Agency hearing into seabed mining for phosphate on the Chatham Rise is exposing questions about uncertainty - many big unknowns, including whether the applicant has done its job. If environment groups win this battle, what does it mean for the wider war?
Read MoreNot another column about the Labour leadership
Time to stop talking about the Opposition and focus on what will really effect us over the next three years: what will the National government do to protect Kiwis from another looming recession?
Read MoreKicking the tyres from beneath New Zealand
Government's gathering pace, in a way that ought to give us all serious pause - because it rips apart more than our constitutional fabric.
Read MoreHousing affordability is about inequality
Increasing the supply of housing is only part of the solution. Demand needs to be shored up. That means changing incentives so that wage earners can compete with investors.
Read MoreFirst they came for the trees ...
Look deeper into RMA reforms and you might find it's more exciting than you think: an Environment Minister taking her axe to urban trees, and the latest in a series of “democracy deficits” - this time affecting Auckland
Read MoreGround shifting under resource management
2012 in review: text of my piece for the Resource Management Journal on the changing legal landscape, and writing loudly on the political wall
Read MoreThe New Zealand story: 100% pooer!
In 2012, National Ministers’ environment choices left us 100% poorer - or pooer, in the case of our impure, faecally-contaminated rivers
Read More100% pure Middle Earth: mine not ours
Middle Earth, as my colleague quipped: it’s like that’s what we’re aiming for, one massive hole in the ground. Our legal landscape is changing, with mining in view. It’s not just the EEZ, or the RMA, or the Crown Minerals Act - it’s all of them. The ground is shifting under resource management.
Read MoreRMA at the heart of our nature
Even more significant than the government's former ideas about mining our national parks, a long-awaited government advisory group report would spell disaster for the Resource Management Act if it were implemented
Read MoreThe devil and the deep blue sea
What the Ministerial amendments proposed to the EEZ Bill tell us about RMA reform plans - or, how a few lines on a page could change New Zealand's natural world
Read MoreNational News Brief Wednesday, February 4
Government rolls out $1 billion economic recovery plan; changes to RMA to ease path for homeowners; Valerie Vili wins supreme Halberg Award--again; Waitaki River flush successful, for now; John Key's cast auctioned off for charity; and more
Read MoreWhat New Zealand would look like under a National-ACT-UF coalition
What changes would a centre-right coalition government make? Look for more roads, pieces of privatisation, and tougher prison sentences. Then there's bulk-funding...
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