Michael Reddell • Nov 12, 2019 •
A passing comment in a post the other day about the labour force participation rates of older people prompted me to pull down the fuller data and see what we could see about various participation rates over the decades since the HLFS began in 1986. As it happens, the unemployment rate in 1986 averaged 4.2 per cent, exactly the … Read More
Eric Crampton • Nov 11, 2019 •
The Herald reprints an Australian story on a couple of tragic deaths in Bali from drinking cocktails that had methanol in them. The story argues that methanol is likely the result of home distillation. But what the young tourists were experiencing was far from a hangover. They’d consumed a toxic cocktail laced with methanol hidden in their drink. Without taste … Read More
Duncan Steel • Nov 10, 2019 •
There will be a transit of Mercury – the planet Mercury will pass across the face of the Sun – taking place at sunrise in New Zealand on Tuesday, 12th November. It was by observing such an event 250 years ago that James Cook and his scientist colleagues were able to determine the longitude of NZ, and so put these … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Nov 09, 2019 •
Some days I sit and think, “what will I write…?” What do you say when you get to 1000 posts? Maybe you just start where you are, diverge to where this all began, then offer a collection of reader’s favourite posts, and a few of your own? (And throw in a few pictures.) Slow to fall This piece started a … Read More
Guest Author • Nov 01, 2019 •
Belinda Cridge I was reading my son a story last night. A great tale of derring-do of five mountaineers scaling the Matterhorn for the first time. One in the party had tried six times previously and failed, this was the last attempt before winter closed another season. They tried a new route, scaling from the north face. The route was … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 31, 2019 •
Paternalism is contentious. Arguments for state action to protect us from ourselves are fraught. I come down pretty heavily on the anti-paternalism side of the argument, but I’ve heard respectable defences of paternalism. But policy around vaccination is hardly paternalistic. There’s a clear market failure that could be pointed to in any sound Regulatory Impact Statement. In a place with … Read More
Public Health Expert • Oct 31, 2019 •
Prof Nick Wilson, A/Prof George Thomson, A/Prof Simon Hales, Prof Michael Baker The NZ Ministry for the Environment has produced a valuable discussion document with many good ideas for improving the health of waterways in New Zealand. But there are important gaps. In this blog we consider three big-ticket items to include in an integrated strategy to improve our waterways: … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Oct 24, 2019 •
A discussion document on our TIES legislation was introduced by the Conservation Minister recently. This Act is the main tool we use to as a party of the CITES treaty (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species 1973). The motivation for the proposed changes clearly comes from the dramatic decline in the elephant populations since 2009, generated in large … Read More
Guest Author • Oct 22, 2019 •
Justine Shaw, The University of Queensland and Vanessa Wong, Monash University This year, five of the seven Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science were awarded to women. While this is a welcome development, the great majority of awards and prizes for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in Australia still go to men. Our research has identified some of the key … Read More
Robert McLachlan • Oct 21, 2019 •
#NoFly: Walking the talk on climate change, by Shaun Hendy. BWB Texts, 2019. Reviewed by Robert McLachlan In June 2018, Swede Maja Rosén founded We stay on the ground with a pledge not to fly in 2019, and a goal of persuading 100,000 other Swedes to join her. In August, her compatriot Greta Thunberg began her school strike for … Read More