There are times when tikanga needs to be broken for tikanga to survive. I recently gave a presentation on Māori economic history based on my Not in Narrow Seas. Its most important message was that Māori proved to be a very adaptable people continually evolving as new opportunities arose. The European tradition recalls the Duke…
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The burning of books has a long history. That it no reason why we should add to it. If you want to get Burning of the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack from the National Library you may have to hurry. It is in the overseas nonfiction section; many books of which are being…
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Building more houses is not going to reduce house prices much (although it will help more people to be decently housed). The inflation driver is financial speculation based on leveraged borrowing. Until that is addressed, house prices will continue to boom. Policies based on theories which do not fit the facts are not going to…
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While many readers will say ‘the king is certainly not above the law’, not everyone believes that, especially if they are in power. The term ‘democracy’ is complicated and often used misleadingly. For instance, the ‘German Democratic Republic’ (a.k.a. East Germany), which was a part of the Soviet Empire, had one male in four reporting…
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The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them as horoscopes which is usually…
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All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways. The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views of Robert Muldoon, prime…
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Does the US need to strike a grand bargain with like-minded countries to pool their efforts? What does this tell us about today’s global politics? Perhaps the most remarkable editorial of last year was the cover leader of the London Economist on 19 November 2020. Shortly after Joe Biden was elected president, that stalwart of…
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The deed is done, the doers undone Had I been a Brit, I would have voted ‘Remain’ rather than Brexit (or ‘Leave’). Instead, I have been bemused by the comic theatre of British politics, fascinated by what the Brits actual think and professionally interested by the revelations of the complexity of the interactions between Britain…
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The US senate has given trade promotion authority to the President. What next? Will the TPP agreement be acceptable, and to whom? Unfortunately trade negotiations are riddled with acronyms. I have listed the ones used here at the end of the article. The US Senate has finally passed the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). This is…
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The 2015 Budget did not deal with children’s poverty but it did put a down payment. (This is based on a presentation to a Child Poverty Action Group Post-budget Breakfast.) The budget begins by identifying five ‘fiscal priorities’. Three are about the fiscal deficit and the track of the fiscal debt, one is about ACC…
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There is a lot of chatter about the government’s budget deficit but, politics aside, why does it matter? Rob Muldoon famously remarked that the typical New Zealander would not know a budget deficit if he or she tripped over it in the street. Knowing a little bit about it I have puzzled as to how…
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You may have been surprised at the outcome of the recent British elections, but New Zealand’s experience shows you should not have been surprised that you were surprised While writing my history of New Zealand, I wondered about whether it would be possible to assess people’s attitudes before there were surveys. Writers often impose their…
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Arts and cultural policy seems to be going backward at the moment. Why? Does it matter? In his 1852 inaugural speech as Canterbury’s first superintendent, James Fitzgerald – later to be New Zealand’s first premier – said, ‘There is something to my mind awful in the prospect of the great mass of the community rapidly…
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Why does the Minister of Finance say this is is hardest budget ever? The economy may be doing moderately well, but it is by no means performing outstandingly. In 1993 the New Zealand economy began to show signs of an upswing after the seven years of Rogernomics Stagnation. In a public comment I remarked that…
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Can an environmentalist focus solely on sustainability or are they drawn into wider issues such has how fairly the material product of the economy is distributed? Perhaps heightened by the leadership contest in the Green Party, there appears to be a debate going on about where environmentalism fits into the political spectrum. I am not…
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Sharp movements in exchange rates often reflect sophisticated speculation. Is there much we can do about it? While the near parity of the Australian and New Zealand dollars got a lot of breathless attention recently, there was little analysis of why it was happening. Explaining the exchange rate depends upon the time horizon. In the…
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How come we tolerated such appalling working conditions for so long? (And a tick for crusading journalism.) Charles Dickens would be appalled. So would Fredrick Engels who wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England, as would New Zealand’s Sweating Commission of 1890. Even Simon Legree, the slave owner in Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, would…
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Are we paying enough attention to bureaucracy? Are the current bureaucratic pressures changing the nature of society — and are they doing so for the public good? David Graeber may be best remembered for coining Occupy Wall Street’s ‘We are the 99 percent’. In the literary world the LSE-based anthropologist is well known for his Debt,…
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Perhaps New Zealand’s acceptance of the TPPA will depend upon the outcome of the Northland by-election Prime Minister John Key shortened his trip to Japan and Korea in order to spend more time campaigning in the Northland by-election. Domestic affairs trumped international ones – for a short time anyway. He said he was going north…
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The Northland by-election demonstrates we do not have a regional development policy. Should we? What might it look like? The government’s announcement that it would be upgrading ten one-way bridges in Northland was a response inspired by the forthcoming by-election. Whatever the politics, it well illustrated the feeble state of regional development policy in New…
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