Around the world, the boom in artificial intelligence is driving a parallel race between major tech companies to secure the physical infrastructure that enables it.

This race has now reached New Zealand, with Singapore-based Datagrid rolling ahead with plans to open the country’s first “AI factory” near Invercargill.

The scale of this major data centre, designed to power energy-hungry global AI systems, is substantial – both in its 78,000 square-metre size and its multi-billion-dollar cost.

It is not the only major investment by global players. Just last year, Amazon Web Services announced plans for a large new cluster of data centres in Auckland, billed as a NZ$7.5 billion investment in New Zealand’s digital infrastructure.

For smaller countries such as New Zealand, projects like these are often presented as wins – bringing jobs, investment and a pathway into the global AI economy.

But they also carry less visible consequences, many of which are more complicated than they first appear.

The hidden economics of AI infrastructure

Behind these projects sits a rapidly expanding global demand for computing infrastructure, driven by the growth of AI systems such as ChatGPT and Claude.

Increasingly, governments are leaning into this shift by competing to attract data centres as part of their approach to AI and the digital economy.

In New Zealand’s case, officials have pointed to the country’s renewable energy, cool climate, available land and political stability as reasons it could appeal to foreign investors. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has even suggested the country could become an “international data centre hub”.

Datagrid’s project has been presented as an early example of that opportunity. The company has described it as “the most significant upgrade to New Zealand’s digital infrastructure in a generation”.

Some of the potential downsides are straightforward.

These systems rely on powerful computer chips and so use far more energy than typical digital services.

The Datagrid facility, for instance, is expected to draw up to 280 megawatts of electricity, or around 6% of national demand – making it New Zealand’s second-largest electricity user after the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.

But other drawbacks are less obvious.

My research on data centre markets suggests that, while the infrastructure is built locally, the systems it supports usually operate across multiple countries.

Datagrid has indicated it expects to serve international AI and cloud providers, positioning New Zealand as a potential host for global AI workloads.

These workloads are likely to come from AI markets already dominated by a handful of big tech companies. This, in turn, raises questions about where value is created – and how much of it is retained locally.

Who builds the infrastructure – and who controls it?

For smaller economies like New Zealand, relying on large international investors is often seen as a practical necessity, given the scale of capital and market reach required to build and run these facilities.

But large data centre projects can also have significant impacts on the shape of local cloud service providers – companies that typically offer data storage, computing services and IT support to businesses and government.

These smaller domestic players often find it difficult to compete directly with global firms on price and influence.

As such, they are often forced to find new opportunities. As AI increases demand for land, power and connectivity, local firms are taking on roles in building and running the infrastructure that supports them.

This tends to shift them toward the physical side of the industry, securing sites, brokering access to energy supply, building facilities to overseas market specifications and meeting both local and international legal requirements.

Global companies such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google, meanwhile, provide the platforms and software that run on top, often by leasing capacity from local operators.

Recent developments in New Zealand’s own cloud sector illustrate how these arrangements can work in practice.

Amazon Web Services, for example, recently disclosed it had shifted away from plans for a large standalone Auckland data centre build, while continuing to expand its local cloud operations through co-location agreements with local data centre providers.

For countries hosting this infrastructure, the relationship can become uneven, with hosts supplying the land, energy and networks while key decisions about how these systems operate are often made elsewhere.

This raises broader questions for governments. If domestic firms are concentrated in infrastructure roles, how does that affect the development of higher-value capability over time?

And how should countries weigh immediate gains – jobs, investment and connectivity – against longer-term control and positioning in the digital economy, including what this means for where value is created and retained?

Projects like Datagrid’s will still deliver clear benefits. But their wider impact will depend on how trade-offs are managed, and how much influence countries retain over the systems they host.

Angus Dowell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

A person fleeing persecution may not travel with extensive documentation, legal advice or even a neatly ordered account of their situation.

Trauma, fear, language barriers, fragmented evidence and a distrust of authority can significantly shape how they share their story.

This is why New Zealand, like many other countries, has a refugee determination system to assess claims carefully and fairly against a backdrop of someone’s forced displacement.

New Zealand’s proposed Immigration (Enhanced Risk Management) Amendment Bill seeks to shift this system away from its humanitarian orientation and toward one built on suspicion and control.

While the United States provides a clear example of how such a shift can unfold, it is not unique. Across a number of jurisdictions, asylum systems have increasingly been reframed through the language of risk and compliance, with greater emphasis on deterrence and enforcement.

In many countries, immigration policy has been increasingly organised around a preemptive logic – suspect first, verify later – enabled by expanded surveillance and reduced transparency.

New Zealand’s legislative language and political rhetoric about “risk”, “compliance”, and “system integrity” signal a similar shift. Asylum becomes less about protection and more a problem to manage.

Submissions on the Immigration Amendment Bill have now closed, with the select committee due to report by mid-August. But many organisations working within the refugee and asylum sector have said the proposed changes risk undermining fairness, proportionality and the core purpose of refugee protection.

Reduced humanitarian appeals

Some of the proposed changes are technical, but their implications are not.

One provision introduces the idea of “bad faith”, meaning a claim could be discounted if a person is seen to have contributed to their own risk, such as drawing attention to themselves through media or political activity.

This creates a paradox: remain invisible and your claim may lack evidence; become visible and your claim may be questioned.

The bill also narrows what people can do while they await a decision, often for extended periods. Someone who has found a job or formed a committed relationship would be unable to shift onto a work or partnership visa.

For people already living with uncertainty, this undermines efforts to rebuild stability and dignity.

Access to humanitarian appeals would be reduced. These appeals have functioned as an important safeguard, allowing decisions to be revisited when circumstances change. Limiting access narrows the system’s ability to correct itself.

Combined with faster processing and removal of a person from New Zealand, this leaves less room for error and can have potentially life-altering consequences.

This is particularly concerning given research demonstrates the Immigration and Protection Tribunal’s review function operates as a key safeguard, upholding human rights by preventing abrupt removals, or allowing more dignified transitions for those who have to leave.

‘Fortress New Zealand’

The government’s own analysis of the bill identifies a small number of asylum cases involving individuals with serious criminal histories, while acknowledging significant uncertainty in the data.

It notes the difficulty in distinguishing between claims that lack merit and ones that fall short of the legal threshold for establishing fears of persecution under refugee law.

In other words, the scale of the problem is not clearly established. Despite this, concerns about risk appear to have become the government’s central justification for pursuing such wide changes.

This is where the underlying policy logic matters. When uncertainty is treated as risk, and risk as something to be preemptively controlled, thresholds for intervention lower. Measures designed to manage outlier cases can reshape the entire system, affecting many legitimate claims.

Our research on 11,000 asylum claimants in New Zealand over 25 years shows how emphasis on credibility, risk and system integrity have resulted in a pattern we have described as “fortress New Zealand”.

These latest proposed changes are part of an incremental slide away from a protective orientation toward control, efficiency and risk management. It happens not through a single decisive reform but by cumulative adjustments that reshape the system’s character.

Policy drift

Now, National’s coalition partners are calling for tighter immigration controls in general. ACT has proposed extending deportation liability indefinitely, while NZ First leader Winston Peters used social media to say ACT’s proposal “doesn’t even touch the sides”.

This shift toward harsher, enforcement-first immigration settings is not unique to New Zealand. The US experience, particularly under the second Trump administration, illustrates how quickly a protection framework can change.

Deportations increase, access to asylum is constrained, enforcement capacity grows, and refugee admissions are reduced. At the same time, access to judges narrows, enforcement extends into everyday spaces, and personal data is repurposed for immigration control.

New Zealand is not there yet, but the direction of policy drift is recognisable.

At its core, the Immigration Amendment Bill poses a simple question: what kind of asylum system should Aotearoa New Zealand have? One that begins from a position of suspicion, where claims are treated as risks to be managed? Or one grounded in protection while addressing instances of misuse?

Public confidence and system integrity matter. But both depend on balance. When the system tilts too far toward enforcement, it risks undermining the principles it is meant to uphold.

Jay Marlowe received funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi (New Zealand) through a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, which supported the research informing this article.

Timothy Fadgen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

We know introduced honeybees as the ever-busy helpers of our gardens, farms and orchards.

In pollinating crops and fertilising fruit, they support more than a third of the food we eat and are worth billions of dollars to New Zealand’s economy.

But they could also be unwittingly helping one of the worst natural threats facing Aotearoa’s native forests: myrtle rust.

By collecting spores as food, then carrying them from plant to plant, honeybees may be under-appreciated vectors of this recently-arrived fungal disease.

Our recently published research adds further weight to this idea, challenging the assumption that myrtle rust spreads mainly by wind alone.

How myrtle rust hitches a ride

Indigenous to Central and South America, myrtle rust was first detected in New Zealand in 2017. Since then, it has spread across much of the North Island and into parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands.

It attacks plants in the myrtle family, including treasured native species such as pōhutukawa, rātā and mānuka, as well as exotic species such as guava, feijoa, bottlebrush, lilly pilly and eucalyptus. It poses a particularly serious threat to vulnerable native plants such as ramarama and swamp maire.

As the disease has emerged in more places, researchers have been paying closer attention to the possible role of honeybees in helping move it between plants and across landscapes.

These famously efficient foragers constantly buzz between flowers, collecting nectar and pollen before returning to the hive with their furry bodies coated in yellow dust.

Myrtle rust spores closely resemble pollen grains: they are yellow, spherical and often found on flowers and infected leaves. That makes them easy for honeybees to take for a traditional food source.

To test whether this has been happening, we compared myrtle rust spores with familiar pollen sources such as kiwifruit and willow.

We found the spores themselves contained all the essential amino acids young bees need to grow, along with enough protein to support healthy colony development.

We also fed bee larvae royal jelly – a honey bee secretion used in the nutrition of larvae and adult queens – mixed with myrtle rust spores. The larvae developed just as well as those fed high-quality pollen from familiar sources such as kiwifruit and willow.

This suggests bees may not be collecting the spores by accident, but deliberately using them as a nutritious food source, which could increase the likelihood of repeated transport of spores.

We also tested whether the spores stayed alive after entering the hive. Honeybee colonies were placed near active myrtle rust outbreaks, and we sampled both returning bees and pollen stored inside the hive.

Spores were found on nearly half of returning bees and in almost half of the pollen cells. Further experiments showed those spores could remain viable inside colonies for at least nine days.

That means hives themselves may act as reservoirs for the disease, with managed hives potentially carrying infectious spores long distances when they are moved between sites.

Rethinking the risk

Our analysis suggests the very same behaviour that makes honeybees such invaluable pollinators may also make them highly effective carriers of myrtle rust.

The relationship may also represent what scientists call “invasional mutualism” – where two introduced species help each other succeed. In this case, the honeybee gains a new food source, while the fungus gains a powerful long-distance transport system.

That raises important biosecurity questions, not only for beekeepers but for the wider protection of native ecosystems.

Honeybees live in highly organised colonies and communicate with each other about good food sources. Once they find one, they recruit other workers and return to it repeatedly.

If myrtle rust spores are being treated like pollen, that means infected plants could become repeated targets, increasing the chances of spores being picked up and spread to new host plants.

There is also the issue of hive movement. Beekeepers often shift hives long distances to follow flowering crops and mānuka blooms, creating the possibility that spores could be transported far beyond the original outbreak.

If hives are moved from heavily infected areas into native forest or conservation land, they may unintentionally help trigger new outbreaks.

A stand-down period could potentially help reduce that risk, giving any spores carried back to the hive time to die off before bees are introduced near vulnerable native forest. Otherwise, infected hives could help drive more serious outbreaks in those ecosystems.

In Australia, myrtle rust has become a biological disaster, threatening at least 15 native species with extinction, while costing the nursery and lemon myrtle industries millions of dollars in annual management and lost production.

In Aotearoa, where taonga species are also under threat, the stakes are just as high.

Understanding how the disease moves – not just by wind, but potentially by bees as well – is essential if we want to slow its spread before irreversible damage is done to our native forests.

The authors acknowledge the contribution of Dr David Pattemore.

Sacchi Shin-Clayton received research funding from the New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Institute for Bioeconomy Science Limited, Plant & Food Research Group.

Jacqueline R Beggs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Consumption of ultra-processed foods – including soft drinks, snacks and ready meals – is growing worldwide, despite evidence they are unhealthy.

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) make up about 70% of packaged food products on supermarket shelves, and even more in convenience stores.

In our new research, we explore how companies that produce these foods play on human nature to make such products seem the easiest, most rewarding and compelling option.

We show that UPFs are designed to make us crave them and eat more. They are marketed to all groups, particularly children, in a way that makes them seem the most delicious and convenient option, giving the best value-for-money, despite many health harms.

Our attraction to UPFs is no coincidence. UPF companies combine a range of tactics to drive up consumption. Many of these tactics exploit the ways we think, feel and behave.

Why we keep eating UPFs

UPFs are the most processed foods on the market. According to medical journal The Lancet, they are commercial formulations made from cheap ingredients extracted or derived from whole foods, combined with additives, but mostly containing little to no whole food in the end product.

UPFs are heavily branded and marketed, and most are produced by large international corporations.

But diets high in UPFs carry a risk of developing a wide range of serious health conditions, including excess weight or obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, chronic kidney disease and depression, as well as premature death.

Our research asked why we keep eating diets high in UPFs when we know how unhealthy they are. To answer this, we decided to zoom out and explore the system that develops, produces and markets UPFs, and investigate how human nature is caught up in it.

We reviewed a decade of published research on the food science and marketing of UPFs, and then worked with experts in these fields to create and refine system diagrams to visualise how it works.

These maps are called “causal loop diagrams”, and their power is in showing reinforcing (positive) feedback loops that drive the system towards its ultimate purpose: selling more UPFs.

We found the system is made up of many interconnected loops that capture parts of human behaviour and biology as key elements.

Products designed for maximum consumption

One feedback loop includes the use of addictive combinations of ingredients, particularly refined carbohydrates and fats. Biologically, carbohydrates (including but not limited to sugars) and fats activate different reward pathways between the gut and brain. When they are consumed together, their effects become addictive.

These ingredients can be combined in many different concentrations to hit sensory “sweet spots”. In other words, they maximise pleasure and craving responses while minimising negative responses.

Further strategies include processing methods that suppress peoples’ natural sense of being full or speed up digestion in order to give an immediate but quickly fading sense of “reward”, making us want more, sooner.

UPF marketing strategies

In terms of marketing, products are formulated to be easy and convenient to store and eat, and to appeal to our sense of getting good value.

Various promotional techniques aim to capture consumers’ attention and desire, as well as giving the illusion of healthiness. Strategies targeting children in particular employ popular culture associations with coolness or fun.

Another example of a feedback loop is how corporations collect large and complex data on our purchasing habits and our online lives, informing targeted digital marketing on social media platforms. This tends to be effective at driving purchases, providing more data to further refine these promotion strategies.

Overall we identified 11 different reinforcing feedback loops. Our research is the first study to show this web as part of the UPF system, designed to essentially trap people into buying and eating more and displacing healthier options in diets.

This product-level system also connects with feedback loops further up the supply chain in economic and financial spheres of the global UPF production.

This matters because unhealthy diets and excess body weight cause 18% of preventable premature death and disability in New Zealand. Both risk factors are linked to eating too much UPF.

Unfortunately, New Zealand hasn’t undertaken national nutrition surveys since the 2000s and we have to rely on data from similar countries such as Australia to estimate that UPFs make up about half of our energy intake.

What to do about it

Diets high in UPFs are not the result of people’s free personal choice or weak willpower, but of an intentionally designed system.

Our research shines light on how the UPF system is taking advantage, particularly of children. International experts have framed UPFs as a major global health issue, and advise strong government policy to regulate these products to counter some of these mechanisms.

Policy leadership already exists in other parts of the world, particularly in Latin America. New Zealand could follow other countries that have implemented taxes on UPFs and sugary drinks, regulations restricting advertising to children, strong front-of-pack labelling and transparency policies such as public disclosure of lobbying in government.

Complacency is not an option. The food system needs rebalancing so that it serves and nourishes people now and in the future.

The authors acknowledge the research contribution by Dr Joshua Clark.

Kelly Garton receives funding from the New Zealand Heart Foundation. She is affiliated with the advocacy group Health Coalition Aotearoa.

Boyd Swinburn is affiliated with the Health Coalition Aotearoa.

Few things matter more to us than our eyesight. We fear losing it even more than some life-threatening conditions.

Yet for many New Zealanders, access to routine eye care remains out of reach. This is despite the wide-ranging impacts of vision loss for both individuals and society.

It limits opportunities for work and study, raises the risks of traffic accidents and falls, and is linked with higher rates of depression and dementia. Globally, the annual cost in lost productivity has been estimated at nearly NZ$700 billion.

What’s more, it is mostly avoidable. More than 90% of vision loss can be prevented or treated with simple, cost-effective care such as glasses or cataract surgery.

In dollar terms, providing funding for spectacles and eye examinations for New Zealanders could provide a $36 benefit for every $1 spent.

If Aotearoa matched Australia’s public funding policies for community eye care, allocating just 1.2% of its health budget could fund 2.4 million eye examinations and 60,500 pairs of glasses. Current funding delivers eye care services to 25,000 children for about 0.02% of the health budget.

With the government now deliberating its 2026 health budget, our preliminary research looks at what it could cost to make routine eye care a reality for all New Zealanders.

A plight out of sight

Anyone reading this article in New Zealand through a pair of $2 reading glasses isn’t alone in choosing cheap solutions to improve their vision. As many as one in four Kiwi patients may be skipping or delaying specialised eye care because of the cost.

Routine eye examinations and spectacles are delivered almost exclusively by optometrists in private practice, with very little public funding to offset the costs.

This places New Zealand behind other countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States, which fund routine eye care for some or all of their population.

For Kiwis needing financial support for eye care, options are limited. The children of Community Services Card holders can access up to $287.50 for an eye test and glasses via Enable New Zealand.

People on low-incomes can apply for a $280 loan from Work and Income New Zealand, which must be repaid. Spectacles are not currently available in the public sector. Despite advertised “$0 eye tests” and discounted spectacles, the reality is that eye examinations and spectacles remain unaffordable for many.

Optometry services provide more than a new pair of frames. Regular eye examinations are essential to detect and treat progressive conditions such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy which are asymptomatic in their early stages.

By excluding this preventative eye care from the public health agenda, New Zealand is leaving some communities to live with an avoidable burden.

In particular, eye care services are two to three times less accessible for Māori and Pacific people than for other New Zealanders.

One recent study found that in an inner-city Auckland community with a high Māori and Pacific population, half of residents with vision loss had never had an eye examination, while three-quarters had never been prescribed custom spectacles.

Should NZ adopt Australia’s model?

If New Zealand seeks a fairer model for eye health, policymakers have only to look across the Tasman.

In Australia, all citizens and permanent residents are eligible for Medicare-funded, comprehensive eye examinations delivered by optometrists.

Around one-third of its population uses these services every year. Uptake is highest among older adults, while additional policies target Indigenous Australians, for example via state-funded spectacle subsidies.

If New Zealand saw similar uptake, we estimate that adopting a comparable model would cost around $349 million a year, funding approximately 2.4 million eye examinations.

An additional $13 million would deliver around 60,500 spectacles to people who need them the most. Even this generous costing is comparable with other health investments, such as the Labour Government’s 2023 proposed investment of $390 million to extend free dental care to approximately 800,000 19–30 year olds.

Universal funding is not the only option: more targeted approaches could prioritise those at greatest risk of avoidable vision loss.

For instance, our analysis indicates that public investment of $89 million could subsidise approximately 760,000 examinations for Community Services Card holders who are most likely to need financial support.

Just $37 million would fund eye care for children under 15 years, aligning with universal dental and GP services for this age group. At the other end of the age spectrum, around $166 million per year would support eye care for older adults, who have the greatest need.

This investment would arguably be more effective than the $61 million proposed within the 2020 health budget to fund one-off “eye health checks”, for which there is no evidence of population-level benefit.

Healthy eyes should not be a luxury. New Zealand can and should include eye examinations and spectacles within its health expenditure.

Preventative eye care is a cost-saving investment that will reduce the societal and economic impacts of vision loss. For policymakers, it as an opportunity to invest in an area of health that has remained out of sight for too long.

Lucy Goodman receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

Jacqueline Ramke has received research funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, Buchanan Charitable Foundation and the New Zealand Association of Optometrists.

Pushkar Silwal has received funding from Health Research Council of New Zealand.

In New Zealand’s long and storied romance with the property market, the “mum and dad” investor has always been a central character.

With equity ready to draw on, they’ve traditionally accounted for between a third and half of all residential sales – driving a flow of bank credit, but also a steady rise in house prices.

In 2026, however, there are strong signs these market movers are sticking to the sidelines, or getting out of the game altogether.

A recent survey of 200 mum-and-dad landlords by independent economist Tony Alexander points to a sharp shift in sentiment, with a record number (38%) planning to sell and relatively few (12%) seeking to buy.

The latest Cotality data suggests they’re still somewhat active in the market – investors with mortgages were behind a quarter of national sales in the first quarter of the year – but not at the levels seen in the past.

At the same time, various pressures have been changing the economics of property investment.

Those 200 surveyed investors singled out concerns about higher running costs, rising council rates, ongoing challenges in securing reliable tenants and economic uncertainty over the Iran war.

That uncertainty is further illustrated by new figures showing sellers have been slashing asking prices by tens of thousands of dollars, with some still trying to offload houses they bought at the market’s 2021 peak.

For many smaller investors, it appears the model that once relied on steady capital gains is becoming harder to sustain.

Credit, costs and a changing market

In New Zealand and around the world, arguably the single biggest driver of housing markets is bank credit, or debt.

Real estate values depend not only on supply and demand, but also on the purchasing power of buyers. As few people have enough cash to purchase property outright, most rely on bank credit.

Housing market commentators often benchmark New Zealand prices against their peak in late 2021. This happened to coincide with amendments to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, which tightened how banks assess lending affordability.

Although politicians reversed course six months later, the restriction in housing credit reduced homebuyers’ aggregate purchasing power. House prices have yet to recover to their 2021 highs.

Another squeeze on housing credit came with the Reserve Bank’s debt serviceability restrictions, called debt-to-income limits. These cap how much borrowers can take on relative to their income: six times income for owner-occupiers and seven times for investors.

While these limits weren’t formally introduced until mid-2024, they were added to the Reserve Bank’s policy toolkit during the market’s June 2021 peak, with banks phasing them in gradually.

At the same time, two-year fixed mortgage rates more than doubled, from 3.46% in April 2021 to 7.60% in October 2023. Right now, they’re sitting closer to the mid-5% range, easing from their peak – but still well above recent lows, with a risk of further hikes.

With the housing boom now fading into the distance, many New Zealanders are confronting an uncomfortable reality: house prices do not always rise, and capital gains are not guaranteed.

That caution is already showing up in the data.

Recent figures point to softer sales volumes and subdued buyer activity, with rising borrowing costs and wider economic uncertainty – including the prospect of further inflationary pressure from the Middle East crisis – weighing heavily on confidence.

The current market malaise affects everyone, but mum-and-dad investors arguably face the toughest conditions. Without capital gains, rental property can be a poor investment given the risks involved.

A reset for the housing market?

For investors having to top up mortgage payments out of their own income because rent no longer covers the costs, the warning signs are clear.

Because these investors are major users of mortgage lending – often borrowing against existing equity to buy more property – a large-scale exit would slow the flow of housing credit that has long underpinned rising prices.

That would be disruptive and destabilising to what has long been a key plank of New Zealand’s economy. Yet a pullback by small-scale investors could also have positive effects elsewhere in the market.

New Zealand is grappling with deepening housing inequality, with a widening divide between those who own property and those locked out of it.

Average house prices may have fallen over recent years, but they still sit at around 7.2 times the median household income. In some regions, such as Queenstown Lakes and Thames-Coromandel, price-to-income ratios remain well into double digits.

With fewer investors competing for existing homes, price pressures could ease, improving access for first-home buyers, encouraging more stable, institutional build-to-rent developments and shifting the market away from speculative gains.

There may also be opportunities to redirect capital into more productive uses.

Funds withdrawn from housing could instead flow into lower-risk, income-generating assets such as Kiwi Bonds or other government-backed investment vehicles, offering steadier returns while supporting broader public investment.

That kind of shift could provide investors with steadier returns, while helping rebalance a housing system that has long relied on ever rising prices.

Michael Rehm has received research funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.