The impacts of the 2015-16 Budget must be assessed in light of the previous Budget, which casts a long shadow. ACOSS estimates that, combined, the two budgets strip approximately $15 billion / 4 years from basic services and supports that affect low and middle income households. Analysis from NATSEM highlights that the Abbott Government’s Budget...

In 2011 the NZ government adopted from the Accident Compensation Corporation via the Welfare Working Group a programme of actuarially estimating the cost of someone staying long-term on a benefit and using that as the basis for defining the return from "investing" in action that deflected that person from a benefit into long-term work. The...

The Local Governance National Dialogue aims to develop a conversation based around research-informed discussion papers and a series of regional events to consider what type of local governance will best meet the needs of New Zealand’s many different communities over the coming years.

High quality grey literature too often gets lost in the large volume of reports that are produced. But there are ways of improving policy impact and bringing important research to the fore. In the butterfly effect theory, a single insect flapping its wings could start a chain of small changes that end up in cyclonic...

This paper finds that net rental loss, which is effectively the value of negative gearing, is not spread equally across electorates. Summary This report attempts to break the current political impasse by provide a range of politically pragmatic proposals that would reform negative gearing without abolishing it outright. In each of these scenarios, existing investors...