Latest Posts

More political donations ideas

Opinion by Max Rashbrooke on March 19, 2020

Political donations are once more back in the news, and the Spinoff has been running a series looking at different ways to clean up this mess. I have two pieces in the series: an account of the history of donation scandals, and how we got here; and two ideas for building a much better system….

A wealth tax for New Zealand

Opinion by Max Rashbrooke on January 31, 2020

Tax Justice Aotearoa have just published my paper on the case for a net wealth tax in New Zealand. Below is a brief summary of the proposal. The idea A wealth tax would be a small annual levy, perhaps 1% or 2%, paid by individuals on the wealth they have above a certain threshold, perhaps…

Inequality and poverty: A summary of the 2019 Household Incomes in New Zealand report

Opinion by Max Rashbrooke on December 11, 2019

The Ministry of Social Development’s key annual report, ‘Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2018’, by Bryan Perry, makes for depressing if not surprising reading. Economic inequality remains at the very high level the country was left with in the late 1990s following 15 years of market-based…

Green shoots of open government

Opinion by Max Rashbrooke on November 20, 2019

One of the current government’s most famous commitments was Clare Curran’s statement that it would be the “most open, most transparent” administration ever. I think this is technically true, in the sense that it hasn’t unwound any previous open-government policies, problems like abuse of the Official Information Act are probably no worse than previously, and…