Zealand Initiative. Approach On its website, The New Zealand Initiative says its mission is "to help create a competitive, open and dynamic economy and a free, prosperous, fair, and cohesive society" and describes itself as "strictly non-partisan." It takes a more free-market perspective than the NZIER or BERL. Apart from its research activities, the New Zealand Initiative hosts a range of events. These include public forums, panel discussions, an annual debating tournament for university students, as well as events for its members. In May 2017, The Initiative organised a study tour of Switzerland for more than 30 senior New Zealand business leaders. Among the speakers hosted by The New Zealand Initiative are New Zealand Prime Ministers John Key and Bill English, Leaders of the Labour Party David Shearer, David Cunliffe and Andrew Little, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, former British Trade Secretary Peter Lilley as well as members of all parties represented in the New Zealand Parliament. The New Zealand Initiative released Manifesto 2017: What the next New Zealand Government Should Do, an overview of its policy recommendations from its first five years, in the lead-up to the 2017 general election. Policy positions and public reception Education In July 2017, the New Zealand Initiative has called for the performance measurement and management of teachers in New Zealand schools, a proposal that was cautiously welcomed by Minister of Education Nikki Kaye and rejected by the teachers' union Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA). In an earlier report, the Initiative had criticised the New Zealand government for introducing new teaching methods in mathematics that led to worsening numeracy of students. In September 2022, the NZ Initiative asked the Ministry of Education to provide evidence that large, open-plan classrooms helped improve students' learning. Housing and local government According to business columnist Pattrick Smellie in 2017, the New Zealand Initiative's main contribution to the housing debate was to point out the factors that were limiting housing supply: Along with high immigration, a sub-scale building industry, and dysfunctional planning law, the incentives for local councils to discourage rather than compete for new citizens was a big part of why Auckland's housing crisis existed. The NZ Initiative had been pointing out these growth-limiting settings almost since its creation five years earlier. In November 2015, Hartwich and the Labour Party's housing spokesperson Phil Twyford published a joint opinion piece advocating the abolition of height and density controls,