Expanding ACC to cover sickness
In December 2017, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Royal Commission report Compensation for Personal Injury in New Zealand, commonly known as the Woodhouse Report after its chair, the late Sir...
View ArticleHooked: Race for South Pacific tuna
Amidst the romance of creating one of the world’s largest marine protected area – New Zealand’s 620,000 square kilometre Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary – there is an overlooked unpleasant fact. Te Ohu...
View ArticleSquandering New Zealand’s water
Across New Zealand, people from many different backgrounds have a deep and passionate connection with their waterways. From children who grow up swimming and playing in and beside streams, rivers and...
View ArticleTrade unions and the climate change fight
We [unions] have to stop running away from the climate crisis, stop leaving it to the environmentalist, and look at it. Let ourselves absorb the fact that the industrial revolution that led to our...
View ArticleCOP21 and the race to stay below 1.5°C
The outcome of the COP21 climate talks in Paris last December was important and encouraging. It was the 21st annual United Nations meeting to discuss climate change and agree on what countries will do...
View ArticleFilling the land tax void
The tax system plays multiple roles. In addition to being a fundamental instrument to raise revenues that finances government expenditure, it also acts as an instrument to achieve the economic and...
View ArticleHouse-busters
This article first appeared in The Spinoff on 4 July 2016. In March 2016, the REINZ Auckland median house price reached $820,000. Four years previously, it was $495,000 – that’s a 66% increase in 4...
View ArticleThink Big: Auckland, immigration, and the absence of income growth
Of the biggest cities in each advanced economy, Auckland has been one of the fastest growing. Just in the last 15 years, Auckland’s population has grown by 30 per cent, while the population in the rest...
View ArticleSocial housing?
There has been a steady fall in the number of state houses since the change of government at the end of 2008, both in absolute numbers and in relation to our rapidly growing population. Like state...
View ArticleSocial versus state housing
‘It’s why we talk about “social housing” rather than “state housing”, because you no longer have to live in a state house to get a high level of government housing support. It’s an important change.’ –...
View ArticleOver-investing in housing
While housing obviously fills a need – people need somewhere to live – it also has an investment aspect. How this investment is treated by the tax system influences the housing market, and the...
View ArticleToo big, too often? Mergers and competition in New Zealand
The proposed merger between NZME (formerly Wilson & Horton) and Fairfax’s New Zealand media operations has brought us squarely into the middle of a growing international issue: are industries...
View ArticleThe South Auckland Experience under the Super City
With the Super City approaching its sixth year and Aucklanders about to go through their third elections for the unitary Auckland Council, how is South Auckland faring? The new Auckland Council...
View ArticleThe mess we are in: Why private firms won’t solve the housing affordability...
The Auckland housing market is a bubble. A bubble is ‘trade in an asset at a price or price range that strongly deviates from the corresponding asset’s intrinsic value’[1]. At the moment the...
View ArticleCost is not Price: impact of Productivity and Design in Housing Affordability
Circa 2005-2006 the Auckland housing market was dubbed ‘unsustainable’ and a ‘dangerous bubble’. Six years post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) we are in a very different place – in many ways a worse...
View ArticleNew Zealand’s tax system: Internal coherence is not enough
The New Zealand tax system is largely robust. It taxes most forms of income and consumption at rates that are by and large perceived as fair. The overall tax take sits at about 30% of GDP, a rate that...
View ArticleThe plight of the beneficiary
To be a beneficiary in New Zealand is to be innately separate from the rest of the population. It comes with connotations about who you are as a person, your motivations, your worth. This is the result...
View ArticleThe future for precarious and vulnerable workers
Why are vulnerable workers, vulnerable? This is a complex and heart wrenching question. Every day, I speak with people who are young and not so young, who have no economic stability and feel their...
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No silver bullet: Online voting and local elections
Local body election time is over for another three years, and even before polls closed, there were laments over low turnout. A low turnout undermines the legitimacy of the winners and can point to...
View Article‘Mental disorder’, autism and human rights
There is a well-known saying that a society can be judged by how it looks after its most vulnerable citizens. People with impairments are not inherently vulnerable but are at particular risk of...
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