Author Archives: Brian Easton

A Hubris Of Managers: when Corporate Takeovers Go Bad

This entry was posted in Business & Finance, Governance, Listener on by .

Listener 17 November, 2001.

Keywords Business & Finance; Governance

Why should New Zealanders be abused when a Singapore owned company closes down its Australian operations? That is what happened when Air New Zealand shut down Ansette Australia. Yet, when the New Zealand government privatized the company in 1989, nobody mentioned that there would still be such ongoing attachments. They were certainly ignored in the 1984 Treasury paper setting out the case for privatization of all government trading activities. That paper had a very narrow focus, justifying private ownership using a theory without empirical content and ignoring the practicalities of the real world. Like that Ansette workers disregarded that it was a mainly Singapore owned airline dumping them, and picketed the New Zealand prime minister.

Bruce Jesson: 1944-1999

This entry was posted in History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History on by .

This is the envoy of The Nationbuilders. The book is now out of print and the chapter is published with permission. Other items on Bruce on the website are as follows:
His Purpose is Clear: Reflecting a Life of Thought and Experience (February 1999)
Global Warning: What would have Bruce Jesson have said about APEC (September 1999)
Nationbuilding and the Textured Society (Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture, October 2001)

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

It would be wrong to end this book with the post-1984 colonials. But it is not easy to write about the new millennium nationbuilders for they are still alive and active. Some will try to revert to earlier versions of nationbuilding, with little recognition of the changes which have occurred which make its policies, if not its objectives, obsolete. The significant ones will be those who pursue the aspirations of their nationbuilding predecessors, but recognize the changing economic and social environment. It is for them to tell us about what they mean by their nationbuilding, although they are likely to do so – if their predecessors are any guide – by their actions rather than their words.

Building a Nation

This entry was posted in Listener, Political Economy & History on by .

Listener October 20, 2001

Keywords: Political Economy & History

That great New Zealand nationalist historian, Keith Sinclair called it the ‘LBW syndrome’. In his day it was ‘Leading-the-Bloody-World’, the attitude that New Zealanders claimed to be the best at everything that mattered. …

Going Down?: Terrorists Attacks and the Global Economy?

This entry was posted in Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on by .

Listener20 October, 2001

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money

There were two views on the world economy on September 10th. The optimistic conventional wisdom thought the world economy was about to enter a recession, and would be out of it by the end of this year. A smaller group, although in my view better informed and with a better recent track record of forecasting, thought the world economy was already in recession (although this is partly a matter of definition) and expected the slowdown to continue well into next year.

Low Politics: Local Government and Globalisation

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Governance, Listener on by .

Listener 13 October, 2001.

Keywords Governance, Globalisation & Trade

‘Subsidiarity’ is an ugly word. It comes from Germany where they designed their governmental institutions on the principle that decisions should always be taken at the lowest practical level in the hierarchy. It is now a central principle of the European Union, so that Brussels may not make decisions which can be left to the individual member states, just as the German Federal Republic devolves political power to its constituent Lander (states).

Copenhagen: Can We Ever Really Know?

This entry was posted in History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Listener, Literature and Culture, Miscellaneous on by .

Listener 29 September 2001.

Keywords History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Miscellaneous (Literature)

The ‘Copenhagen model’, developed in the 1920s, remains the foundation of the quantum mechanics account of the atom which physicists use to this day. Two of the revolutionary developers were Dane Niels Bohr, then about forty, and German Werner Heisenberg, in his twenties. …

Four Books on New Zealand Broadcasting (review)

This entry was posted in Political Economy & History on by .

Prometheus 2001, Vo1 19, No 3, p.265-6.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

P. Day, Voice and Vision: A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand, Volume Two (Auckland University Press in association with the Broadcasting Trust, 2000). 456pp.
P. Day, The Radio Years: A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand, Volume One (Auckland University Press in association with the Broadcasting Trust, 1994). 352pp.
B. Spicer, M. Powell & D. Emanuel, The Remaking of Television New Zealand: 1984-1992 (Auckland University Press in association with the Broadcasting Trust, 1996). 207pp.
I. Carter, Gadfly: The Life of James Shelly (Auckland University Press in association with the Broadcasting Trust, 1993). 339pp.

Auckland in a Globalised World

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation on by .

Presentation to the Sustainable Auckland Congress, 18-21 September 2001, published in The Proceedings of the Sustainable Auckland Congress. (Edited by M. Daly, B. Hill, L. Lucas, J. Salinger, & P. Spoonley, and published by the Sustainable Auckland Trust.)

Keywords Globalisation & Trade; Growth & Innovation

I want to begin with affirming one element of my basic framework. The dominant single feature of New Zealand over the last two centuries has been its ongoing interaction with the rest of the world. Unless one understands that principle, New Zealand’s history makes no sense. Unless one uses the principle one can neither understand the future, nor meet its challenge. Insulationist policies – either practically or indirectly by ignoring the principle are bound to fail.

Waltzing with Matilda

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Listener, Macroeconomics & Money on by .

Listener 15 September, 2002.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade; Macroeconomics & Money

A hundred years ago, New Zealand turned down the chance to federate with Australia – to become one of its states, rather remain than an independent nation. Ten years earlier there was a groundswell in favour, but the prosperity and the social consolidation of the 1890s gave us the confidence to go it alone. How different it is today. A survey of the New Zealand elite, by Bob Cately, professor of political studies at the University of Otago, found 88 percent believing that New Zealand would benefit from a single economic union with Australia, and 55 percent that economic amalgamation would lead to political union. (His book Waltzing with Matilda describes the elite as parliamentarians, ‘businesses, business organizations, trade unions and some media outlets.’ He does not mention senior public servants but my impression is that they would have responded similarly.)

The Knowledge Ripple: Where Were the Academics?

This entry was posted in Growth & Innovation, Listener on by .

Listener 1 September, 2001

Keywords: Growth & Innovation

The 1928 National Industrial Conference was the first of a long line of national conferences to address the economic problems of the day. Initiated by Prime Minister Gordon Coates, the 64 delegates included the businessmen, representatives of commercial groups, unionists and civil servants of the day. ….

New Zealand in a Globalised World

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy on by .

Presentation to the Wellington Labour Party Conference on Globalisation 1 September, 2001.

Keywords Globalisation & Trade; History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy

I begin by affirming the central tenet of any realistic and fundamental analysis of New Zealand: The dominant single feature of New Zealand over the last two centuries has been its ongoing engagement with the rest of the world. Unless one understands that principle, New Zealand’s history makes no sense. Unless one uses the principle one cannot think realistically about the future, nor meet its challenge. Isolationist strategies are bound to fail. There have been isolationists of the Left, who have tried to isolate New Zealand from the world by a self-sufficient economy. But like the rest of us, their ideas came from overseas, they used imports unobtainable in New Zealand, and they travel overseas. There have also been isolationists of the right, the most recent of whom were the Rogernomes, who thought they could ignore the external sector, and by fiddling the financial sector gain us prosperity. They failed.

Something Rotten: The Ship Of State Keeps Striking Leaks.

This entry was posted in Governance, Listener on by .

Listener 18 August, 2001.

Keywords: Governance

A recent Treasury working paper Review of Evidence on Broad Outcome of Public Sector Management Regime reveals that despite the upheaval in the public sector of the last twelve years, there has been surprisingly little evaluation of the changes, and the little of which there is has not been of very high quality. Even more striking is the almost complete absence of the public’s perceptive in the evaluations. The assumption is that no-one was worse off as a result of the changes, although every ordinary member of the public has tales to the contrary. The official studies implicitly reflect an arrogant antipathy to New Zealanders, as if the state sector is only for the state servants and their political masters, and the public are just an irrelevant nuisance.

Global Players: The Secret Of Some New Zealand Businesses’ Success.

This entry was posted in Business & Finance, Growth & Innovation, Listener on by .

Listener 4 August 2001

Keywords Business & Finance; Growth & Innovation

Despite being used as a text book in some business schools in the 1990s, Theory K: The Key to Excellence in New Zealand Management was always a bit of a joke, for the crash of October 1987 put an end to some of its best examples of ‘excellent’ New Zealand businesses. The book devotes most space to Equiticorp (although a number of other did-not-survives were also praised). One is left wondering how a firm founded only two years before the book was published could be given such prominence. (You will find part of the answer in Ollie Newman’s “Lost Property”, which explains how public relations had a key role in gulling the investor public. )

International Guidelines for Estimating the Costs Of Substance Abuse: (2 Ed)

This entry was posted in Health on by .

Report prepared for the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse by Eric Single (coordinator–Canada), David Collins (Australia), Brian Easton (New Zealand), Henrick Harwood (United States), Helen Lapsley (Australia), Pierre Kopp (France) and Ernesto Wilson (Colombia).

This report was published by the World Health Organisation in September 2003.

Keywords: Health Economics

This revised edition of these guidelines represent modifications and additions to the first edition of the International Guidelines on Estimating the Social and Economic Costs of Substance Abuse, based on discussions held at the Third International Symposium on Estimating the Economic and Social Costs of Substance Abuse, held in Banff, Alberta, Canada, in 2000.

Executive Summary

Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy by Shaun Goldfinch

This entry was posted in History of Ideas, Methodology, Philosophy, Political Economy & History on by .

New Zealand Books August 2001, p.8-9.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy; Political Economy & History;

Shaun Goldfinch’s Remaking New Zealand and Australian Policy: Ideas, Institutions, and Policy Communities is the latest version of what is becoming the standard account of the origins, implementation, and outcomes of the economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s. It goes something like this.

Globalisation: the Consequences in the Reductions in the Cost Of Distance

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

Quo Vadis (Trinity Methodist Church, Pakuranga, 2001) p.33-44. Revised version of the text of Brian Easton’s message at Trinity Church in July, 2001.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

I originally undertook to talk about commercialization, but I have recently been working on another, although closely related, question – globalisation. I hope you will forgive me if that is what I talk about today, because it is very much on my mind. I will start by defining globalisation; then talk about two earlier periods of globalisation to see what lessons we can learn from those; then I will talk about some of the current issues.