Max Rashbrooke is a senior associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, and has recently published the report Bridges Both Ways: Transforming the openness of New Zealand government. This article sets out the last of the five ‘big ideas’ drawn from the report, and was originally published on Newsroom. One of…

One item in May’s Budget that slipped through without much discussion was the claim that the changes to income tax and Working for Families payments would lift 50,000 children out of poverty. At the time I was sceptical, and information released by the Treasury last month – some to the whole public and some to…

I have an interview up on the Spinoff today with Jeremy Waldron, one of the world’s most respected political and legal philosophers, on what he sees as the urgent need for more civility in public discussions. The full piece is here. This is perhaps the key passage: Civility, Waldron says, is about abiding by the…

Max Rashbrooke is a research associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, and has recently published the report Bridges Both Ways: Transforming the openness of New Zealand government. This article sets out the fourth of five ‘big ideas’ drawn from the report, with the final one to follow shortly. This article…

Today the Ministry of Social Development published its 270-page Household Incomes Report, the gold standard annual record of poverty and inequality in New Zealand. So what did it tell us? Below are four key conclusions I have drawn, based on pulling out a few key figures and graphs. The discussion is slightly technical, but as…

Max Rashbrooke is a research associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, and has recently published the report Bridges Both Ways: Transforming the openness of New Zealand government. This article sets out the third of five ‘big ideas’ drawn from the report, with the rest to follow in subsequent weeks….

Max Rashbrooke is a research associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, and has just published the report Bridges Both Ways: Transforming the openness of New Zealand government. This article sets out the second of five ‘big ideas’ drawn from the report, with the rest to follow in subsequent weeks. This article…

Max Rashbrooke is a research associate at Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, and has just published the report Bridges Both Ways: Transforming the openness of New Zealand government. This article sets out the first of five ‘big ideas’ drawn from the report, with the rest to follow in subsequent weeks….

I’ve been looking at donations to New Zealand political parties in recent years, for a variety of reasons. Party funding is one of the perennial topics of politics, mostly because of one pretty fundamental concern, which is that donations can buy influence and access. Modern political parties cost a lot of money to run, and…

New Zealand First has just announced that it wants a referendum – another one, but binding this time – on our anti-smacking laws. I’m not opposed to binding referenda in principle, although I do think they are the bluntest tool in the direct democracy toolbox, so you might think that I’d support this call. I…