The New Zealand Initiative aims to create a country that brings opportunity, prosperity and happiness to all its people. It is an overarching goal that is not left, right or centre. It is a vision all New Zealanders can unite behind.

No matter your party-political leanings, we believe all housing should be affordable. We hold that our children deserve the best possible education. We want to see an economy that creates great products, sservices and jobs.

Over the course of 2018, we made concrete recommendations on some of our most pressing policy issues:

• We launched a joint initiative with Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) to explore pathways to a decentralised government. This coincided with the Productivity Commission's own inquiry into local government funding.
• We launched two seminal papers on education policy. Score! and Spoiled by Choice. We also hosted New Zealand's first ever researchED conference.
• We continued our campaign for an incentives-based scheme to address housing supply. We were delighted when the Government announced a project to construct 9,000 homes in Auckland by drawing on recommendations in our report, Free to Build.  

This Annual Report details our achievements over 2018.

"Regardless of the ups and downs of our political cycles, New Zealand needs smart long-run policy thinking on both the challenges and opportunities that New Zealand faces economically, socially and environmentally. The bottom line is New Zealand only does well in the world when we perform above the means and expectations of other countries of comparable size. Thus, the world-class and independent work of the NZ Initiative is critically important to provoke us collectively to innovate, experiment and embrace new thinking."

- Christopher Luxon, Chief Executive, Air New Zealand | Chair of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council