Beware! Personal Data Grab for Funding is Based on Dreadful Policy Design
The Privacy Commissioner is not mincing words on the issue of requiring social service providers to give citizens personal data to MSD in exchange for funding contracts. Words like “insufficient...
View ArticleDo we need a climate law to bring the future into focus?
Last week saw the launch of a bold new idea for climate change action: a law to get New Zealand to zero carbon by 2050 or sooner. Youth-led organisation Generation Zero has published a blueprint for a...
View Article5 Steps to Developing Evidenced-Based Immigration Policy
In the clear absence of reasoned discussion about New Zealand’s immigration policy of late, racism has reared its ugly head (though it is debatable whether it ever went away). Triggering the basest...
View ArticleHow much poo would you feel safe to swim in?
That might strike you as a strange question, but it’s a very real one at the heart of the debate on the Government’s proposed targets for swimmable rivers and lakes in its Clean Water 2017 package. The...
View ArticleWhen Good Intentions Are Not Enough: Smart Investment in Families Needs to...
As part of the pre budget announcements the Government has allocated $321million to a “social investment package” for vulnerable families and children. There are 14 initiatives in the package, and $69...
View ArticleYes, a zero carbon New Zealand is possible. But it won’t be easy. Here’s how
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world agreed on a key climate change goal: reducing greenhouse gas pollution to zero in the second half of the century. What does this mean for New Zealand, and what...
View ArticleChildren’s Mental Wellbeing is About Income, Wealth and Deprivation
Today the Child Poverty Action Group and The New Zealand Psychological Society has released its new report (Child Poverty and mental health: A literature review ) into the connection between children’s...
View ArticleHow charging for pollution can make NZ cleaner, fairer and more prosperous
This article was published in Progressive Thinking: Ten Perspectives on Tax, launched today by PSA. You can read the full book online here. For as long as the world has been earnestly attempting to...
View ArticleTrump pulls US out of Paris Agreement. Sad!
This morning, Donald Trump announced the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change. This might go down in history as the ultimate dick move. The thing is, Trump is not only...
View ArticleIt’s electrifying! Getting to zero carbon transport in New Zealand
Transport is one of NZ’s biggest opportunities when it comes to cutting carbon pollution. Today, we rely almost entirely on oil to move people and stuff around the country. Together, all those cars,...
View ArticleFailure looks like social policy that makes life harder for people
With the discussion we are having about social policy at the moment I thought it would be good to discuss the science of what happens to anyone who lives on a low income, especially over any prolonged...
View ArticleCouncils to consider national cat legislation
As part of the LGNZ’s AGM this week local councils will vote on a remit to improve the management of cats in New Zealand. If successful councils will lobby the Government for development of national...
View ArticleOur Low Bar for Household Economic Wellbeing Needs a Serious Rethink
Every year the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) using data collected by Statistics New Zealand reports on how New Zealand households are doing economically. We get a raft of data on household...
View ArticleIs Charitable Giving the Alternative to a Wealth Tax in New Zealand?
Recently a Fairfax journalist asked me, in my capacity as head of research at The Morgan Foundation about the annual rich list. As a public policy think tank, we have done quite a bit of research on...
View ArticleWhy Does No-one Understand Social Investment? Not Even Bill English
Its confusing, this Social Investment business, yet sometimes it sounds so very simple. For example Bill English made it sound very simple in the leaders debate when he said “…we will go to the social...
View ArticleBirdsong Returning to Wellington
How Kelvin Haste helped transform his suburb and his city. Have you heard what’s going on in Wellington? It’s a sound that is music to the ears of NEXT Predator Free Community Champion Kelvin Hastie...
View ArticleSouth Island Kaka thank DOC for its Efforts
See the stoat creating havoc in the Kaka’s nest in this video. Then look at the impact on nesting numbers after the aerial 1080 drop was completed – 30 times more nests! This is what the battle to save...
View ArticleWhy is the SPCA in New Zealand such a sick outfit?
If it only kept to its core business of preventing wanton cruelty to animals by those who get their jollies from such activity, the NZ SPCA would be worthy of respect. But it hasn’t done that for...
View ArticleName and Shame Time
I get pretty sick of faceless organisations whose senior people fail to stand up and face the music when they make blunders or outrageous claims. Despite unleashing its obscene affront to New Zealand’s...
View ArticleCullen’s Tax Working Group: High on politics of envy, low on economic literacy
Tax Working Group head, Michael Cullen, asserts that the capital gains tax (CGT) is best described as a “tax on capital income”. Since when have capital gains been income? Show me any country’s...
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