Articles by Dr Don Brash

There are two pieces of legislation wending their way through Parliament at the moment designed to further entrench the crazy notion that the Treaty of Waitangi created an obligation on governments nearly 200 years later to treat anybody with a Maori ancestor in some kind of preferential way. One is the Public Service Bill, introduced to Parliament last month and now being…

A few years ago, when I wrote my autobiography, I included a chapter called “The challenge of making economic policy in a democracy”. In that chapter, I tried to debunk a lot of commonly held myths about economic policy. There are lots of them: “Government should control what private landlords charge for rental accommodation to protect low income people”. “Import controls and…

Regular readers of “elocal” will think I have a fixation about house prices. I’ve written on the subject twice already this year, most recently just two months ago. But several things have prompted me to write on the subject again. First, despite all the hand-wringing about the unaffordability of housing, and the political commitments to make housing more affordable, house…

A few weeks ago, the Government announced that as from 2022 teaching New Zealand history would be a mandatory part of the school curriculum, at both primary and secondary level. As somebody who was an historian before he was an economist, I was delighted. It is important that all New Zealanders, whether born here or born overseas, have an understanding of where we have come from…

Several months ago, it was abundantly clear that KiwiBuild was a complete failure. In the 2017 election campaign, the Labour Party’s biggest promise was to “deliver 100,000 quality, affordable houses for first home buyers over the next decade”. It was recognised that it would take some time to crank up the programme to achieve this, but the initial aim was to build 16,000…

One of the issues almost guaranteed to provoke a strong reaction at many a social gathering in New Zealand is any suggestion that New Zealand should be exporting more bottled water. There have been noisy demonstrations in public, well covered by television news channels, strongly opposed to such exports. One of the commitments made by the incoming Labour-New Zealand First-Green…

A few weeks ago, the New Zealand Herald carried an article by Dr Douglas Fairgray which seemed to argue that, when it comes to determining the price of houses, supply doesn’t matter. He didn’t put it quite like that, but that was what he appeared to be saying. He noted that the Minister for Urban Development, Phil Twyford, was seeking to reduce urban land prices by “flooding the…

Driving around Auckland the other day, I saw that one of the candidates for the Auckland mayoralty is promising to sack the board of Auckland Transport. He’s got my vote was my immediate reaction! Of course, I know that the performance of Auckland Transport is not the only important issue in this local body election, but for me it is arguably the most important single issue. …

Like many of you I suspect, I was distressed reading the account of the attempt by Oranga Tamariki, the fashionable name for the Ministry for Children, to remove a new-born baby from its 19-year-old mother in Hawke’s Bay a few weeks ago. Then I read that three Maori babies are taken into state custody every week around the country, and that in the particular Hawke’s Bay case, the…

Last year, there was a lively debate in New Zealand about what should, and on the other hand what should not, be banned. This was triggered initially by Phil Goff’s attempt to prevent two Canadian speakers from speaking in Auckland. It turned out that, on being challenged by the hastily constituted Free Speech Coalition (of which I am proud to be one of the initial members), Mr…

I have no difficulty understanding why many people are strongly in favour of a capital gains tax. They see a minority of New Zealanders enjoying the very good life, living in a luxurious home, going on international trips every year, driving a late model Lexus. They suspect that much of this wealth comes from “unearned” and untaxed capital gains, often on housing investment as a…

A few months ago, I wrote a column highlighting some of the serious things which are going on under our collective noses to provide, or in some cases, continue to provide special privileges to those New Zealanders who chance to have at least one Maori ancestor – along with ancestors of other ethnicities in every case. I listed the continued existence of separate Maori electorates…

Last month, I wrote about some common misconceptions about the profitability of the banks operating in New Zealand, and noted that the Big Four Aussie banks, while quite profitable compared with banks elsewhere in the world, are not wildly profitable in comparison to many other listed companies in New Zealand. I noted that other banks in New Zealand are not nearly as profitable,…

Every now and then, there’s a surge of concern, sometimes even anger, at the banks. They make too much money. Their profits go overseas. They no longer provide services in country towns. Their culture needs watching carefully by the regulators, lest they exploit their customers. They should be subject to more controls. I’m a bit hesitant to discuss these issues because I can…

Six months ago, I wrote a column about the five local referenda which defeated the attempt of five district councils to foist separate Maori wards on their districts. And about the open letter which Local Government New Zealand had written to the Government urging it to change the law so that citizens would no longer have the right to have a say on this issue. I decided to give…

In recent months, we have seen a rash of strikes – teachers and nurses in particular, with other sectors suggesting that they may strike also unless the people who work in those sectors get a substantial wage or salary increase. Of course, people say, that’s what you’d expect when we have a Labour- New Zealand First Coalition Government. They’re a worker-friendly government, so…