Book puts farming at the centre of New Zealand’s history.
That William Soltau Davidson does not appear more prominently in our general histories reflects their neglect of the central role of farming.
Category Archives: Political Economy & History
Debunking the Egalitarian Myth
An edited extract from Brian Easton’s new book ‘Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand’.
Introduction to Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand
Published in The VUP Home Reader 2020 p.131-143
Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand
To be published by Victoria University Press in May 2020 Here is the publisher’s announcement. Here is the publisher’s description of the author.
Engaging with Alan Duff
A Conversation with My Country by Alan Duff
What Happened to Egalitarian New Zealand?
Bob Scott Lecture Series on Inequality, 25 June 2019. (See also Have We Abandoned the Egalitarian Society?) What I want to do this evening is examine egalitarianism. In particular, New Zealand is a less egalitarian society today than it was when I was growing up in the 1950s. Why? How? The structure of the paper…
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What is Meant by Wellbeing?
A discussion on ‘Nights’ with Bryan Crump. 28 May, 2019 The audio is here. See also here.
Eyewitness on the 1966 Wool Shock
Justin Gregory’s “Eyewitness” account of the 1996 Wool Price Shock used a lot of material from me. Here is the audio. I’ve republished the text (which is a little different in structure) to enable the search facility on the website to be used. If you’d asked them at the start of the year, most Kiwis…
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Brexit: A View from Down Under
This was submitted to a British news publication in late December, but was not published. Brexit is a great puzzle to New Zealanders. Britain and New Zealand are affectionate cousins with common ancestors back in the nineteenth century. We have gone our own ways; even so we have views of the other’s ways. New Zealand’s…
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Maori have been trapped in a poverty cycle
Dale Husband | May 15, 2018 This was published in e-tangata. Brian Easton is a 75-year-old economist, statistician, academic, historian, columnist, and author. For much of his career, he’s made a specialty of explaining to New Zealanders what’s going right and what’s going wrong in our economy. In his latest book, Heke Tangata, which was commissioned…
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The Fallacy of the Uninformed Celebrity Opinion
Too much of our public discussion is led by those who are have strong opinions based on prejudice and ignorance rather than thorough research and understanding Bill Gallagher (he’s a knight), chief executive of the Gallagher Group, claimed that the ‘Treaty [of Waitangi] papers on display at Te Papa were fraudulent documents’ as well as…
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How far right is New Zealand?
I prepared this for a US audience; hence its more American perspective. Ben Mack’s ‘How the far right is poisoning New Zealand’ was such a distorted account of New Zealand politics that it was initially considered satire. That it was serious makes its many wild assertions difficult to deal with in a short response. One…
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How Have We Changed?
Rogernomics wanted to change us culturally. Has it succeeded? Prime Minister Jacinda Arden is younger than any member of the outgoing National cabinet and is the youngest in the new one, even if you include the Greens. In contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is older than any other member of the two cabinets. (The…
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Remembering Holodomor; The Great Ukrainian Famine
The connection between famines and democracy may not be obvious. but each sheds light upon the other. The fourth Saturday in each November is Holodomor Remembrance Day which recalls the great Ukrainian famine of 1932-3 in which 2.4m to 7m died in a population of about 30m. The intensity of the distress and suffering was…
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Whither Coalition Government?
Coalition governments are a consequence of MMP. They may better reflect us and our democratic aspirations than the Winner-Takes-All ones of the past. The public understanding of election outcomes remains dominated by a misunderstood account of the old electoral system which was not based on proportional representation. One commentator said confidently that the party with…
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Sue Bradford: Constant Radical
How effective are those who pursue change outside the parliamentary system? My first memory of Sue Bradford is a feisty speech she gave to the 1984 Economic Summit Conference pleading for a greater commitment be given to the people she worked with – those on the margins of society: the unemployed, the poor, the mentally…
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Why Voters Will Be Disappointed by the Election Outcome
New Zealand’s electoral system gives it a parliament which represents voters. Its winner-takes-all executive government, however, remains unrepresentative.* (This is a follow on from the earlier column on coalitions.) This paper tries to evaluate various coalitions on the basis of their political ideologies. It uses the scores given to parties by the TVNZ website Vote-Compass,…
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The Future of New Zealand Capitalism?
AUT Briefing PapersOctober 31, 2017 ‘Far too many New Zealanders have come to view today’s capitalism, not as their friend, but as their foe. And they are not all wrong. That is why we believe that capitalism must regain its responsible – its human face.’ Winston Peters. Announcing that he was going with Labour, Winston…
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Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows
What follows is a series of quantitative thoughts on the election outcome. It is based on the 2017 election night vote. Specials are likely to change precise voting shares and even seats. However potential changes do invalidate the column’s overall conclusions. Summary (which is less numerically challenging) – The share of the left has returned…
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In Praise of Public Servants
This was written before the election outcome is known. It looks at the part of the executive which is not elected: the public servants and advisors. Steven Joyce, National’s campaign manager, must have thought he had Labour out cold when he claimed that its spending plans announced during the election were enormous and unsustainable. He…
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