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2020ANNUAL Report ANNUAL REport 2020 NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020_COVER.indd 1-3 9/03/21 3:36 PM The New Zealand Initiative Annual Report 2020 © The New Zealand Initiative 2021 Published by The New Zealand Initiative PO Box 10147 Wellington 6143 New Zealand www.nzinitiative.org.nz Designed by Angela Whitney, www.angelawhitney.com Printed by True North New Zealand Ltd NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020_COVER.indd 4-6 9/03/21 3:36 PM Contents Foreword 03 Highlights of our year 24 What we stand for 04 Our team 38 Our principles 05 Our board 41 Our research & submissions 06 Our members 43 Our engagement 16 Engagement with members 17 Events 18 Media 22 The New Zealand Initiative — 01 NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 1 9/03/21 4:16 PM 02 — The New Zealand Initiative NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 2 9/03/21 4:16 PM Foreword The year 2020 was one none of us will notes, essays and books, we made relevant, education opportunities for our children? forget in a hurry. Lives were put on hold. timely and impactful contributions to How to make housing aordable for people Borders were closed. International travel policy decisions. on all incomes? How to create a vibrant was stopped. Businesses got disrupted. business environment? Despite the dark shadow of Covid-19 Like all other New Zealand organisations, dominating the year, we also continued The Initiative will be working on these the Initiative had to operate out of our work on other issues with long-term questions with the same dedication to bedrooms, living rooms and studies for a implications for this country’s future. sound research as in the past. And we will couple of months. incorporate the lessons from the turbulent The Initiative’s most significant non-Covid year that was 2020. But as a public policy think tank, we had contribution was in education policy. the additional task of finding solutions to Our innovative model of using data to novel issues: How to preserve jobs when monitor and improve school performance the country was locked down? How to yielded new results from comparing safely restart the economy? How to restore dierent school types. Meanwhile, our international connectivity without risking critique of student-centred pedagogy, public health? New Zealand’s Education Delusion, was a seminal contribution to explaining how The crisis that gripped New Zealand and our education system operates. the world unfolded apace surrounded by enormous uncertainties. Policy The pandemic is not yet over, but the start Roger Partridge Dr Oliver Hartwich deliberations, which under normal of vaccinations globally gives us hope that Chairman Executive Director circumstances would have taken years, New Zealand and the world will soon find were compressed into days. a path to a ‘new normal.’ Our team at the Initiative took up the What this ‘new normal’ will look like is challenge and delivered unprecedented anybody’s guess. But we strongly suspect output last year in research, commentary it will require good policy thinking – and and advocacy. From short papers on most likely on questions that have also specific and urgent questions to research troubled us in the past: How to create good The New Zealand Initiative — 03 NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 3 9/03/21 4:16 PM What we stand for The New Zealand Initiative What truly sets us apart is Our vision is to contribute to is a unique organisation, and while most think tanks are a prosperous, free and fair not just by New Zealand only loosely ailiated with society with a competitive, standards. their donors, we take the open and dynamic economy. opposite approach. We are a non-partisan think We believe our goals and tank, we are an association We are proud to have values are similar – if not of business leaders, we some of New Zealand’s identical – to what most are an evidence-based highest profile business New Zealanders want to research institute, and we leaders among our diverse see achieved: are independent. We believe membership. Our members these are not contradictions. bring a wide range of interests, experiences and ideas. A good Aordable An open A free and A sustainable A sound fiscal A stable education housing economy democratic natural environment oversight currency system society and heritage 04 — The New Zealand Initiative NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 4 9/03/21 4:16 PM Our principles The challenge in public policy is often not to define what you want to achieve, but to find workable ways of achieving widely shared goals based on solid foundations. We pledge that: We are credible. We are evidence-based. We are non-partisan. We are independent. We are committed. Our research is based Our recommendations We engage with We promote good Our members and on a sound theoretical are supported by parties from across the public policy, not the the Initiative team framework and is empirical, and often political spectrum. interests of individual strive to build a better peer-reviewed. international, evidence. businesses or industries. New Zealand. The New Zealand Initiative — 05 NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 5 9/03/21 4:16 PM OUR RESEARCH & SUBMISSIONS NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 6 9/03/21 4:16 PM Our research Dr Oliver Hartwich spoke about the background from the contribution of Pricing Out findings on The AM Show, Radio NZ, each school. Congestion: Newstalk ZB and Newshub 6pm News. Experiences Insights and Excellence demonstrated that from abroad the Ministry of Education has a world-first Dr Patrick Carvalho opportunity to identify high-performing schools – regardless of decile – and get Insights and the best educational outcomes for every Excellence: In January, we released the second Kiwi student. We believe this information School success in report in our transport series. Research should be made available to all school New Zealand Fellow Dr Patrick Carvalho described in principals and boards of trustees. Joel Hernandez Pricing Out Congestion how cities around Chief Economist Dr Eric Crampton the world are turning to decades of appeared on TVNZ Breakfast to discuss scientific and empirical research on using In March, we released Insights and this research and findings. Newshub, congestion charging to manage chronic Excellence about our ground-breaking Newstalk ZB and The New Zealand Herald road overuse. tool for measuring school performance also covered the report. From the first congestion charging objectively and fairly. The report implementation in Singapore in 1975 to demonstrated the valuable analysis about London, Stockholm and Dubai in the New Zealand schools that could one day 2000s to the expected 2021 New York be given to every parent and principal. Cannabis Reform in the City launch, a myriad of road pricing United States Policy Analyst Joel Hernandez showed schemes have been successfully The New Zealand Initiative how three secondary schools performed harnessing the power of the markets to over ten years relative to themselves Given the dearth of solid country-level fix road overcrowding – and providing and every other secondary school in data about the eects of cannabis valuable lessons along the way. the country. legalisation here, the Initiative took an in- Congestion charging clearly works. depth look at each state in the US. Using data from Statistics New Zealand’s New Zealand should learn from such Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), Joel We presented data on all fifty states in international experiences to tailor a uncovered some unique insights into an interactive HTML map of the country. pricing scheme that is right for us. the true state of education performance The project collected the headline Patrick also provided further insights into by separating the contribution of each outcomes of cannabis legalisation from creating a more rational, updated and student’s family and socioeconomic the states that had passed such laws and sustainable urban transport system. The New Zealand Initiative — 07 NZIJ0195_Annual_report_2020.indd 7 9/03/21 4:16 PM oered a snapshot of all relevant laws achieve, no one can tell if the budget is He found that while private schools were and regulatory settings across the US. too big, too little or providing value for generally more expensive, state-integrated money. Funding from taxation is costly for schools delivered a better student outcome For Kiwis considering their position on households that could fund their normal at a cheaper rate while public schools the referendum, the interactive project requirements directly, with or without continued to perform poorly. was a useful addition to the policy space. private insurance, and with greater We encouraged the Ministry of Education choice. Targeting subsidies at those in to figure out what goes on in those financial need would spread the subsidy well-performing state-integrated and dollar further. Those are the prime state schools and share their insights questions about the Pharmac system that and practices across the sector to government needs to address. lift the education attainment of all New Zealand students. The State of Schooling Democracy in Joel Hernandez the Dark Pharmac: The right Dr Eric Crampton prescription? Dr Bryce Wilkinson In cooperation with The New Zealand Herald, Policy Analyst Joel Hernandez Democracy in the Dark captured the state used the Initiative’s school performance of civics knowledge in New Zealand. While the Crown entity, Pharmac, has database to assess the three types of It also showed wide gaps in the public’s drastically lowered prices of many schools in New Zealand (state, state- understanding of New Zealand’s political pharmaceutical medicines for Kiwis, integrated and private). The results were and civic institutions. Senior Fellow Dr Bryce Wilkinson found published in The State of Schooling. in Pharmac: The right prescription? that the The report drew on both previously If university entrance is a desired goal biggest weakness in current arrangements published surveys and a survey of for education, then state-integrated was the lack of clarity about what the 1,000 voting-age New Zealanders schools appear to oer the best value problem was for which the government commissioned by the Initiative: for money.
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