Local Government New Zealand’s Mike Reid has an interesting piece in the latest Policy Quarterly about local council turnout. (Short version: it’s low largely because councils don’t have many powers, and this is set to get worse as central government reforms strip even more power from them.) One of the other factors behind low turnout,…

Gareth Morgan’s The Opportunities Party yesterday (re)announced its first policy, Morgan’s long-standing plan for a comprehensive capital income tax. In effect, the policy argues that all forms of wealth generate – or should generate – income, just like savings accumulate interest, and that that income should be taxed, just like interest is. Most controversially, the…

Stuff reported last week that young New Zealanders were “losing faith in democracy”, based on a journal article showing that only 29.3 percent of Kiwis born in the 1980s say it is “essential” to live in a democracy. The story adds: This is a dramatic drop off from those in older cohorts – almost half of…