New Zealand is likely to face increased concentrations of wealth, inequality and power in the twenty-first century, according to newly assembled data. Economist Geoff Bertram, in a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, where he is a senior associate, said data he had assembled showed New Zealand fitted the pattern of...
Read more →Wellington City Council looks set to become the country’s first Living Wage council following last night’s election. Last year it voted in principle to support the idea, and put aside $250,000 for it. Now, on the new fifteen-strong council (including the mayor), nine are in support. Six councillors who voted for the Living Wage...
Read more →Great news: Wellington City councillors have voted unanimously for a report on the Living Wage to be prepared, as follows: “to inform the annual plan deliberations on a proposed Council commitment to support a Living Wage. The report should advise on the following key points: · Whether Wellington city council should support the principle of a...
Read more →For well over a year now, I’ve been asking the Department of Corrections to give me its two full business cases for building the new public private partnership (PPP) prison at Wiri in South Auckland. And for well over a year, it’s been refusing. So the question is, why’s it holding things back? The...
Read more →The idea that most of the world’s failings are down to irresponsible poor people is a familiar one, but rarely has it been dealt with better than here. On a Stuff story about people failing to recycle, a commenter has somehow managed to wedge in their own angry views about feckless poor people, to...
Read more →A couple of recent reports have shown that even New Zealand’s pensioners – who do relatively well financially, compared to other age groups – are increasingly threatened by the spectre of inequality. The first, by Kay Saville-Smith of the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment, argues that many young people will not be...
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