Experts say failures of latest benefit changes show need for major reforms to labyrinthine welfare system.

Without the threat of going out of business, firms lack incentives to improve.

The wider prize is better-trained Kiwis available for better-paying jobs.

The core problem is that hatred is difficult to define, and any law risks being either so broad as to be dangerous, or so narrow as to be unusable.

The Ministry of Education has spent the last couple of years quietly working on compulsory literacy and numeracy standards – which sounds innocuous enough, until you realise it’s creating a test that four in 10 pupils might fail.

New Zealanders increasingly believe you need money and connections to get ahead in life.

If richer schools get better grades, it’s because they have richer students. It's got little to do with the standard of education.

The only way to really make a change in New Zealand is to raise the bottom more rapidly than the middle.

More needs to be done. But it feels like a corner has been turned.

For Robertson, being able to shout “surpluses, surpluses, surpluses” defused an array of National attacks.