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Former New Zealand Prime Ministers Sir John Key and Helen Clark back current government’s position of open and honest dialogue with China, reports Graham Skellern The seventh China Business Summit in Auckland – jointly presented by NZ INC. and Auckland Business Chamber – carried the beguiling theme of “The New China Paradigm.” In a full house of 500 delegates, it didn’t …

John Blaxland, Australian National University Talk of war has become louder in recent days, but the “drumbeat” has been heard for some time now as China’s military capabilities have grown. China does not want war, at least not yet. It’s playing the long game and its evident intentions have become more unnerving. Scholars like Brendan Taylor have identified four flash …

Jacinda Ardern’s speech at the China Business Summit was a crowd-pleaser. Geoffrey Miller explains its role in the “rebalancing” of New Zealand’s orientation to China and the West. For critics who believed she had gone soft on China, Jacinda Ardern’s line that differences between China and New Zealand were becoming “harder to reconcile” will be interpreted as tough talk. They will see …

A new analysis by the Democracy Project of Nanaia Mahuta’s public statements and tweets over the past six months reveals some intriguing initial insights into her foreign policy agenda. By the end of Wednesday this week, Nanaia Mahuta had made 31 formal statements or speeches on foreign affairs in her time as minister. On Twitter, she had published 85 original tweets (i.e. excluding retweets …

Tim McCready Professor Sir Peter Gluckman told attendees at this morning’s ‘Kickstarting the New Zealand Economy’ session from the Trans-Tasman Business Circle that we won’t go back to ‘business as usual’ following the pandemic: “New Zealand needs to grow its R&D strategy, which is still designed for the 1980s and not for the 21st century.” He said our two biggest …

In the 2021 Project Auckland report we looked at how the construction sector has been navigating constraints from Covid-19, including border restrictions, workforce and materials supply. The report provided an update on Auckland’s housing supply issues and looked at the driving role of Kainga Ora in increasing the pace of development. We heard from Infrastructure and Transport Minister Grant Robertson …

Michael Plank, University of Canterbury; Shaun Hendy, University of Auckland, and Siouxsie Wiles, University of Auckland New Zealand’s latest community cases, the first to be infected with the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19, have a plausible link to the border through one person’s workplace at LSG Sky Chefs, a business that deals with laundry and catering from international flights. …

Richard Meade, Auckland University of Technology Faced with a COVID-19 pandemic of unknown severity and duration, governments around the world are looking for effective and sustainable ways to maintain economic confidence and employment. Even New Zealand, where lockdowns have been few and short-lived, is confronting the reality of repeated lockdowns, especially since the United Kingdom variant has now been detected …

David Welch, University of Auckland; Jemma Geoghegan, University of Otago; Joep de Ligt, ESR, and Nigel French, Massey University New variants of SARS-CoV-2 have now evaded New Zealand’s border protections twice to spread into the community. In the most recent outbreak, which placed Auckland into an alert level 3 lockdown, there are three active community cases of the more infectious …