What NZ and Australia learned from handling COVID

The New Zealand Initiative

In this episode, Dr Eric Crampton and Prof Steven Hamilton explore why New Zealand and Australia's COVID responses shared similar successes and failures despite their different paths. Their conversation draws from Hamilton's new book "Australia's Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race," examining how both countries excelled at initial elimination and wage subsidies but stumbled with testing regulations and vaccine procurement, ultimately revealing important lessons about institutional capacity and adaptable policy responses for future pandemics.