Author Archives: Brian Easton

A Tale Of Two Cities

This entry was posted in Governance, Listener on by .

Christchurch’s Economic Success is Associated with A Tradition of Civic Community. Wellington, Take Note.
Listener: 7 September, 1996.

Keywords: Governance;

The church hall was packed, and the audience angry. In a few days the Wellington city Council was going to decide what to do with its majority share in Capital Power, its local electricity supply authority (ESA). Everyone expected them to divest their control, despite the populace supporting the maintenance of the asset in public hands. A citizens’ jury had favoured public ownership, an opinion poll had supported them, everybody seemed against the divestment of control. Yet the decision seemed destined to go against the majority wishes. Just as a few years earlier the Council had agreed to sell a minority share to a private investor.

The Wild Bunch?: an Inquiry Is Needed to Restore Treasury’s Integrity

This entry was posted in Governance, Listener on by .

Listener: 24 August, 1996. (Published as Editorial)

Keywords: Governance;

The New Zealand public has just lost $328.4 million because of bad Treasury advice on the 1987 sale of New Zealand Steel to Equiticorp. The public lost that money because, during the sale process, the deal between the Crown and Equiticorp broke company law – section 62 of the Companies Act makes it illegal for a company to buy its own shares.

Philosopher-Kings and Public Intellectuals

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

Revised version of the Lecture to the 1996 Auckland University Winter Lecture Series, Still Fretful Sleepers: the Intellectual in New Zealand. 20 August, 1996.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Still fretful sleepers?(1) Has not New Zealand changed since Bill Pearson finished his “Sketch of New Zealand Behaviour and its Implication for the Artist” with that resounding call for the need to awaken New Zealanders from their fretful sleep?(2)

For Whom the Deal Tolls: (of Dogma and Dealers)

This entry was posted in Business & Finance on by .

Political Review July/August 1996., p.24-29. Also published in a symposium on The New Zealand Experiment: A World Model for Structural Adjustment by Jane Kelsey , published in the Electronic Journal of Radical Organization Theory (EJROT), (http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/leader/journal/ejrot.htm).

Keywords: Business & Finance;

It is sometimes hard to recognize the New Zealand which the enthusiasts for the recent economic reforms described by Kelsey portray.

BOOKSHOPS AND POLITICAL SHOPS

This entry was posted in Literature and Culture, Political Economy & History on by .

Paper for the Conference of Booksellers New Zealand, Auckland, July 30, 1996. Inner Wellington where I live is littered with bookshops. To start mid-city at Manners Mall, where Eileen’s Bookshop sells magazines, greeting cards, lotto tickets, but no books. A little way along is Unity, which sells only books except for a very few specialist…
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Productivity Puzzle

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

Everyone Assumed That Productivity Growth Would Increase with the Employments Contracts Act. But Check the Data: No Significant Change.

Listener: 27 July, 1996.

Keywords: Growth & Innovation; Labour Studies;

The non-ideological economist would have made three confident predictions about the effects of the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) introduced in May 1991. First, it would weaken the unions. True. Second, it would depress wages of low pay workers (because of the mass of unemployed with similar skills). True. Third, it would generate productivity increases (at least in the short term). False.

Elitism and the Election

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

Just How Out of Synch Are the Interests of the Political Party Elite with Those of the Voters?
Listener: 13 July, 1996.

Keywords: Political Economy & History;

Once upon a time voting for a party for many people was a marriage for life. Nowadays it is more like a one night stand, consummated once every three years. This loss of loyalty leads to considerable anxiety by parties about their image, and the potential clients’ beliefs. Some insight is thrown on the inconsistency in the book Towards Consensus, by a group of university political scientists, Jack Vowles, Peter Aimer, Helena Catt, Jim Lamare and Raymond Miller. Their research is based on a sample of nearly 3000 New Zealanders who responded to a lengthy questionnaire at the time of the 1993 election. The book is rich with fascinating insights about political behaviour, but here we look at only voter and party elite attitudes to welfare and economic issues.

Panic-mongers

This entry was posted in Business & Finance on by .

Politically Naive Dealers Could Cause Frenzy and Hysteria in the Financial Markets
Listener: 29 June, 1996.

Keywords: Business & Finance;

There is a real danger the financial dealers in our money markets will precipitate a serious financial crisis. Not all dealers, of course. The culprits are those who are comment in an uninformed and hysterical manner on political issues who are causing the increased market uncertainty. As I write they are frenzied about the possibility that Winston Peters may become prime minister, drawing parallels with Rob Muldoon.

Waiting for the Doctor

This entry was posted in Health on by .

Emphasis on Finance and Waiting Lists Helps Obscure the Real Problems in the Health System
Listener: 15 June, 1996.

Keywords: Health;

Bill English, just appointed Minister of Crown Health Enterprises (CHEs) commented “when we ask people what they mean by health reforms they say waiting lists. If we can limit the debate to waiting lists then we have essentially won the argument about the health reforms.” The minister seems to have meant that if the government can avoid having to defend its structural changes – such as the top heavy administration and requiring each CHE to be run for profit, then the government could pour money in to reduce waiting lists, and obtain political kudos.

from Welfare State to Civil Society: (review)

This entry was posted in Social Policy on by .

Towards Welfare that Works in New Zealand by David Green.
First published in New Zealand Books Issue 23, June 1996, as “The Bankruptcy of the New Fundamentalism”. Republished in Under Review: A Selection from New Zealand Books 1991-1996 (ed Lauris Edmond, Harry Ricketts & Bill Sewell) p.179-184.

Keywords: Social Policy;

In Making a Difference, Ruth Richardson says that she was “more likely than Jim [Bolger] to talk about the [1991] benefit cuts in moralistic terms.” Leaving aside the fragging of her prime minister, which seems to be one of the main purposes of her auto-hagiography, there is an interest in what the ex-minister of finance meant by “moralistic terms”. I think she means, for Richardson finds it easier to claim the high ground than to climb it, that dependency on the state is wrong, although the fog descends as we try to unravel what she thinks is right. In practice she was not so much on a hilltop, but on a wharf surrounded by people struggling in the water almost afloat by state owned lifebuoys. Her strategy is to withdraw the public buoyancy. She seems delighted to see a handful of the survivors learning to swim, while the sinking rest are ignored. This morality, which costs the moralist nothing, is complicated by policies which make it more difficult to climb onto the wharf: fearsomely high effective marginal tax rates on the poor (which the moralist’s policies raised), and rising unemployment (for there were 10 percent more unemployed when she left office than when she began it, plus higher disguised unemployment).

Future Vision

This entry was posted in Governance, Listener on by .

The Government’s Plans for Our Future Are Well-meant, But Contain Some Glaring Omissions.
Listener: 1 June 1996.

Keywords: Governance;

At the foot of this column are the government’s “Strategic Result Areas”. They may not seem important to the public, but they are certainly prominent in the mind of the government advisers, who are likely to pop the acronym SRA into their conversations. SRAs aim to “bring a more coherent strategic approach to managing government”, and “build an understanding of what the Government intends to accomplish, and how it plans to go about using its agencies.” They set out “the contribution that the public sector will make to achieving the Government’s strategic vision for New Zealand.” Practically a public servant concerned with a policy development checks to see whether a proposal is within the SRAs. If not, the government is likely to look unfavourably on the policy. No wonder officials anxiously discuss SRAs.

Psst, Have You Heard?

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

The Rich: A New Zealand History by Stevan Eldred-Grigg (Penguin, $34.95)
Listener: 25 May, 1996.

Keywords: Distributional Economics; Political Economy & History;

Is this book anything more than tattle-tale? Significantly it ends with the words”What, above all, would I have done with Felicity Ferret?” Admittedly The Rich does not descend to assisting the semi-literate by putting names in bold: the better schooled may dip into the index of around one thousand names.

Ex-Fortex

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

Newspaper commentators failed to reveal that the former company of the year was in dire straights.
Listener 18 May, 1996.

Keywords: Business & Finance; Macroeconomics & Money;

The Fortex Group, a South Island meat company went into receivership in March 1994. Two years later its managing director, Graham Thompson, was jailed for six and a half years. General manager Michael Mullin had been jailed for four years. The newspaper files which record how the company became the darling of meat industry commentators, give little hint that the company was in trouble, until right at the end. (Unsourced quotations come from journalists, who would prefer not to be remembered.)

Risky Retirement

This entry was posted in Listener, Retirement & Savings, Social Policy on by .

What You Get Out is What You Put in is A Worrying Principle for A Retiement Scheme.
Listener: 4 May, 1996.

Keywords: Social Policy;

When I began preparing this column the political party ACT had a well established policy, based on principles with which if one did not agree, at least one could understand. They have since changed their leader who has announced that parts of the policy would be changed to make them electorally attractive. Thus far their policy on retirement has not been altered, but it may be. However I am more interested in the principles. Because the ACT proposal is (or was) the most extreme scheme, it nicely illustrates key issues.

500 Years Late: the Effects Of a Decision by a Chinese Emperor in 1432

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

Listener April 20, 1996

Keywords: Political Economy & History

The most important single date in New Zealand’s history is 1432, when Emperor Xuan De of China forbade the building of ships greater than 30 metres in length. A few years earlier a fleet commanded by Zheng He, with much bigger ships, had explored as far as Madagascar. The prohibition to build such ships prevented the Chinese exploration of Australasia, and their settlement of South East Asia to New Zealand. When Captain Cook arrived here 337 years later the population he met had brown rather than yellow faces. Today, 227 years after Cook, New Zealand is primarily a settlement of peoples of Polynesian and European descent.

In the Balance

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

There Has Not Been A Balance of Payments Crisis for Over A Decade. Will Our Luck Run Out?
Listener: 6 April, 1996.

Keywords: Macroeconomics & Money;

It is that time in the economic cycle when the more experienced economists begin muttering “balance of payments crisis”, albeit with a question mark. Such crises occur when the current revenue the country obtains overseas (mainly from exports) is much less than the current payments the country makes (for imports and foreign debt servicing) to the extent that foreigners are no longer willing to lend sufficient capital to cover the deficit.