By Brierley Penn Tourism New Zealand is leveraging the global profile of The Hobbit by promoting the Middle-earth fantasy as an attainable experience to prospective Chinese tourists. “New Zealand features on the bucket lists of many international travellers,” says TourismNZ chief executive Kevin Bowler. “The key is providing them with an incentive to actually make the trip, and the Middle-earth …

The 2012 report saw widespread praise for John Key’s “rightward turn” following the 2011 election, with a sense that the Prime Minister was beginning to govern in the interests of the country rather than the polls. Mixed-ownership models and asset sales featured prominently, while the age-old issues of infrastructure deficits and skills shortages reared their heads once more.

It was hard to suppress the image of a black-singleted John Clarke singing, “If it weren’t for your gumboots, where would ya be?” when I took part in a Federated Farmers debate on foreign ownership. The proposition that “if foreigners want to own dairy farms in New Zealand, they should put on their gumboots and come and live here”, got …