Stuff: A brief history of the many times I changed my mind

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A n​ew y​ear approaches, and so I start to think – as I’m sure everyone does at this time – about the philosopher Hannah Arendt, a noted analyst of totalitarianism but also of political life in general.

Arendt believed that the human capacity for change derived from our consciousness of the novelty of our own life: “Since we all come into the world by virtue of birth, as newcomers and beginnings, we are able to start something new.”

This capacity for self-renewal is on display every time that, in response to new facts or stronger arguments, we change our mind. Each alteration is a new dawn.

But such shifts are under-valued today. In a seemingly chaotic era, many people seek comfort in a rigid certainty, dividing the world into good and bad. Debate becomes an opportunity to win, not to listen.

Columnists, who often feel they must have C​orrect O​pinions if they are to justify their status, can find it hard to admit they’ve changed their mind. It creates a vulnerability. But what better way to model good public discussion? And what better time to do it than the new year?

Here, then, in the spirit of personal and public renewal, is a brief history of various things I have previously got wrong.

Marijuana legalisation

Strange to say, as a young man I was sceptical about legalising weed, partly because I bought the ‘’gateway drug’’ argument and partly because I believed that cannabis use caused psychosis. I now think the harms of our current approach outweigh any possible negatives from legalisation, and that some underlying third factor probably causes both dope-smoking and psychosis.

Mixed-tenure neighbourhoods

I once believed ardently that state-housing redevelopments should incorporate a large number of private rentals and owner-occupied homes, to stop them becoming ghettos. Then I read an evidence review that suggested mixed-tenure neighbourhoods, as they are called, often fail. The now-outnumbered state-house tenants feel marginalised, wealthier families dominate the residents’ associations, and local stores begin stocking more expensive products. Although I haven’t turned 180 degrees on this issue, I now mostly think that if there are problems with concentrated poverty, the issue is the poverty, not the concentration, and that we should fix the former.

The King Country

Embarrassing though it is to admit, I was well into my 30s before I discovered this area was named after the second Māori King, Tāwhiao, and not, as I had always assumed, one of the British monarchs. My only defence is that in the era (and area) in which I grew up, the teaching of Māori history was, to put it politely, minimal. Fortunately some self-study, through books like Vincent O’Malley’s The Great War for New Zealand, has since filled in the picture.

Equality of opportunity

I used to think this idea was a conservative subterfuge, deployed to downplay the need to tackle material poverty: “We need to focus on opportunities, not incomes!” Nowadays I agree that equality of opportunity is a core political goal. Lifting incomes remains essential, but as a means to something else – namely, enhancing individuals’ opportunities. After all, the government, whatever its policies and powers, can’t force people to live well; providing the foundation for those opportunities is all it can do. Of course, resources are still central to life chances. When rich and poor kids get such different upbringings, the latter are climbing the mountain of life wearing concrete overshoes. The data are unmistakeable: countries with smaller income imbalances have more equal opportunities. But that’s a subtler position than the one with which I started.

Having listed these changes, let me end with an uncertainty. As a researcher, I think a lot about the welfare system, on which there are two competing views.

The dominant one is that benefits should be conditional: in exchange for taxpayer support, people must do something, even if it just to look for paid work. In the other camp are the thinkers who argue benefits should be unconditional, given out as a mark of the recipient’s basic humanity and requiring nothing in return.

The latter argument appeals to powerful moral values; so too, however, does the conditional view. It embodies the reciprocity that sits at the heart of nearly all human relationships, even – I would argue – familial ones.

I go backwards and forwards on this question, and have reached no settled view. But so be it.

The poet John Keats praised something he called negative capability, the state “of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. Doubt is not a weakness but a strength. Without it, we would be locked in artificial certainty. And then we would have lost that most essential of human attributes, the capacity to change.

Stuff: The positive power of community connection

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If I told you that not being involved in a community group could be as bad for your health as becoming a smoker, you might think me deranged. But it’s true.

The insight stems from Robert Putnam’s classic American work Bowling Alone, which charted the decline of church groups, political parties, parent-teacher associations and even – as per the book’s title – bowling leagues. Because we are social animals, Putnam argued, our well-being relies heavily on positive, repeated contact with others. Community connections furnish emotional and financial support in tough times. Dwindling group membership thus spells bad news for people’s health.

Such facts seem relevant now, at the end of a strange year, as an increasingly divided New Zealand contemplates its frayed social fabric. February’s occupation of Parliament grounds has left a lingering disquiet and a sense that some people are splintering off from the rest of society – and indeed from the real world.

Research by the Helen Clark Foundation shows many New Zealanders are often lonely, especially the young and the poor. We are more atomised, too. Working from home, though a welcome revolution in many ways, has weakened office-based ties that were a major source of social connection.

Stronger communities could salve many of these wounds. Ironically, given the traditional distrust of the “mob mentality”, it is those with powerful community ties who are least likely to be picked off by dangerous, anti-democratic demagogues. Local bonds, whether tight or loose, can also fill in the gaps left by loneliness and help individuals find common ground.

It’s surprising, then, that mainstream politics has so little to say about community. If the word crops up in Jacinda Ardern’s speeches, for instance, it is as a token reference, shorn of real content.

Labour, supposedly the party of collective values, lacks a consistent vision for the life we might lead together, as opposed to what the party might do for individuals. Its Covid-fighting “team of five million” concept did useful work, but at a national not local level, and has in any case faded away in the post-lockdown era.

Yet most people, I think, thirst for a life that is rich in connections with others. By and large, they want to put down roots, know their neighbours, take part in community sports and festivals, and feel the growth of a dense web of bonds, ties and relations that can hold them in the warmth of others’ regard. These connections can be both a source of joy and a reservoir of strength.

While the decline of community life has probably been less precipitous here than in the US, we have still seen church, party and union membership dwindle under the influence of a market-based, hyper-individualised worldview. Nearly half of New Zealanders, official statistics show, have no supportive neighbours – even though that is overwhelmingly what they would like.

I see two main reasons why politics has failed to answer these needs. The first is the liberal fear that a community-promoting agenda might allow the many to dominate the one.

But the idea is not to force anyone into joining the local residents’ association against their will. If people want to stay home and watch Netflix, they can. The point is simply to enable community connection for those who want it.

The second obstacle is the belief that governments can’t create strong communities. And indeed they cannot. But they can lay the foundations.

Higher wages, for instance, would let people work fewer hours and take on more community commitments. Tougher regulation of the gig economy would give precarious workers more predictable shift patterns, helping them commit to coaching their children’s rugby team.

Greater security of tenure would allow renters to more confidently put down roots. Multigenerational housing would enable grandparents to live alongside grandchildren.

Such an agenda would respond to Māori ambitions to create communities oriented around whakapapa and manaakitanga. And it could be more broadly popular. Global polling shows people are happy to pay more tax for better public services – but they want the money spent locally.

The politics of community needn’t be hyper-partisan. The prime minister, who grew up in Morrinsville with a school-assistant mother and police-officer father, can speak convincingly about the virtue of small-town connections. But Chris Luxon can equally well testify to the solidarity that a religious community provides.

Either way, we need a positive vision for this politics – because it can also take on a darker hue. In the hands of the “trad wives” movement, for instance, it becomes a cover for a coercive, nostalgic vision, one based on supposedly ideal communities that in fact kept women and others firmly in their place.

Communities, after all, can oppress as well as support. So we need a politics that harnesses the latter, not the former. Because that desire for connection isn’t about to dissipate.

RNZ: Chief Ombudsman's OIA inquiry another pointer to govt's lack of transparency

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Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier's decision on Monday to investigate potential abuses of the Official Information Act (OIA) is yet another sign that all is not well when it comes to democracy in this country.

Boshier is concerned by journalists' claims that public agencies delay responding to their requests "as a bureaucratic tool to stifle the flow of information", and that when data is finally released, "it belongs in the history books rather than the headlines".

Journalists are not the only ones worried. Civil society groups are also up in arms at what they see as backsliding on transparency and openness.

For some of them, the latest straw has been the "national action plan" that ministers have put out for consultation until 12 December. The plan supposedly represents the commitment that Labour has made to the Open Government Partnership, a 77-country movement that requires member states to reduce secrecy, make themselves more accountable, and allow citizens to participate more deeply in their democracy.

As the name suggests, Open Government Partnership action plans are supposed to contain clear policies that will make a country's public processes profoundly more open. But our latest effort has been condemned by the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL) as "yet another in a series of weak national action plans".

The most tangible commitments, such as setting up a register of the true owners of New Zealand companies, are initiatives that were underway already but "repackaged" for the action plan. Another initiative was described by the NZCCL as "so weak as to be a joke".

At every step of the way, individuals taking part in open-government workshops suggested meaningful commitments - then found they had been watered down. NGOs asked for the government to enforce basic standards for how it consults: for instance, minimum consultation periods and the publication of all submissions received.

Instead, public agencies will be required to use a "policy community engagement tool" that has no teeth or power to enforce standards.

At workshops, individuals suggested New Zealand adopt forums that have been used overseas to profoundly change citizens' control over democratic decisions: for instance, participatory budgeting, where residents discuss and allocate a portion of local council budgets, or citizens' assemblies, where a representative group of ordinary individuals meet to examine, debate and make policy on key public issues.

Instead, the government will "identify" examples of these forums, in order to "capture lessons learnt and share these to build capability". Since some councils are already experimenting with these methods, the action plan - bizarrely - puts the government behind the pace of change that is already happening, rather than leading it.

Civil society groups also asked for a review of the 80-plus secrecy clauses in legislation that override the right to information contained in the OIA, with a view to removing as many of these clauses as possible. Instead, ministers will tighten up the guidance for agencies that are looking to insert more such clauses.

The "open government" action plan, in short, actively envisages greater secrecy in future.

These failings are all the more galling given ministers' fabled commitment to running "the most open, most transparent government that New Zealand has ever had", in the words of former minister Clare Curran. While some improvements have been made, including the publication of ministers' diaries and a greater number of Cabinet papers, these hardly represent the transformation that Curran's words seemed to promise.

Journalists report that abuses of the OIA are as bad as ever, if not worse, while Minister Andrew Little's 2020 pre-election promise to review and improve the Act was later quietly dropped.

The one spot of good news is that the latest action plan has improved fractionally from earlier drafts, and now boasts a plan to ensure that those unable to access digital public services do not miss out, as well as a commitment to embed the charter that governs the controversial algorithms increasingly used by public agencies.

NGOs, many of them left feeling burnt by the process of developing the action plan, are still hoping it can be further strengthened, either during the current consultation or by adding new commitments next year. But after years of underwhelming plans developed under both National- and Labour-led governments, some remain cynical about the value of New Zealand's membership of the Open Government Partnership - as the NZCCL's press release makes clear.

"After four failed efforts to produce action plans that provide real benefits to the public from greater openness," it reads, "the council concludes that the New Zealand government is like a person who pays for their gym membership, but then wonders why their fitness doesn't improve when they don't actually do any exercise at the gym".

Spinoff: Campaigning on economic security sounds dull, but it might be Labour’s best option

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I was once told, by someone who would know, that there are only two political campaigns: “time for change” and “don’t put it all at risk”. Every opposition campaign boils down to the former; every incumbent campaign, the latter.

Labour, as it looks towards a general election next year, has struggled to tell voters a convincing story about what they would be putting “at risk” if they switch to Christopher Luxon’s National. In recent months, though, a clear theme has begun to emerge: economic security. Delivering her party conference speech last month, Jacinda Ardern claimed that “the question” next year would be, “Who is best to help New Zealand navigate these tough times? Who can provide the security and certainty New Zealanders need?” In a recent newsletter to constituents, finance minister Grant Robertson wrote: “Our economic plan can be summed up in one sentence: to grow a high wage, low emissions economy that provides security in good and bad times.”

Compared to such rallying cries as “freedom” and “equal rights”, this appeal to economic stability can sound like dull stuff. But it has a strong pedigree in the Labour movement – and among reforming governments more generally.

For well over a century, New Zealanders have been acutely aware of the threat that economic instability poses to their well-being. Living in such a small country, buffeted by global economic winds like a rowboat in a thunderstorm, and possessing few organisations of any scale, we have often looked to the state to cushion economic shocks.

While the left tends to frame its past victories, including the world-leading introduction of tax-funded pensions in 1898, as triumphs of rights or equality, those achievements make just as much sense viewed through the lens of security. The first Labour government could hardly have made its intentions clearer when naming its landmark 1938 legislation the Social Security Act. Turning a patchwork of benefits into the foundations of a recognisably modern welfare state, and offering state support “from the cradle to the grave”, it was a direct response to the devastating economic precarity of the Great Depression.

Tapping a similar source of inspiration, one of the era’s leading intellectuals, the nation-building public servant Bill Sutch, titled his 1942 history The Quest for Security in New Zealand. Through an active state, the country had, Sutch argued, “do[ne] more in providing social and employment security than any other Western parliamentary democracy”. The historian W. H. Oliver, writing some decades later, described the growth of “a national social security consciousness … at two critical periods shortly prior to 1898 and 1938 when the country was recovering from, and still had memories of, very severe economic crises”.

Because the state is now far better at managing such crises, Covid has wreaked nothing like the havoc of the Great Depression or the little-remembered Long Depression of the 1880s and 90s. Nonetheless, Ardern and her team clearly spy a chance to tell a similar story: Labour brought you, the voter, safely through Covid, and can do so again; Luxon, with nothing similar on his resumé, represents a risk.

As an overarching theme, economic security has intuitive appeal. In a world wracked by war and menaced by climate change, it is clearly something voters crave. Rhetorically, it would unite otherwise disparate Labour achievements and plans – notably, Fair Pay Agreements and Social Insurance – into a coherent story about the state being there for families in tough times, preserving wages and guaranteeing peace of mind. It could also serve as an organising theme for other initiatives Labour might launch as it targets swing voters: policies to mitigate climate change, for instance, or boosts to early childhood education – a crucial element of parents’ return to the paid workforce and thus their economic security.

Potential pitfalls await, however. One Labour activist canvassing voters in the Hamilton West by-election says the mood is not one of gratitude for the government’s Covid stewardship but anger at still having to deal with the virus, despite all the sacrifices made. Much of the public felt secure during the pandemic, but that sensation may be a little like one’s virginity, irrecoverable once lost. The cost-of-living crisis, whoever is to blame, adds to a sense of instability.

To ensure the security theme resonated, Labour would have to stop committing political own goals and ruthlessly divest itself of off-message policies. Only then could it turn the spotlight onto National. Luxon has already demonstrated toughness by ditching his deeply unpopular policy of abolishing the 39% top tax rate. But for as long as he equivocates on his other policies – including tax breaks for landlords and property speculators – he will remain vulnerable to a “don’t put it all at risk” message. If his tax cuts, which would cost billions of dollars each year, remain on the table, Labour will argue that he can’t square things off just by cutting the examples of government “waste” National has identified: he’ll have to carve deeply into core services like health, education and welfare, or borrow more.

It’s open to Luxon, of course, to prove otherwise; but until he publishes a set of fully costed policies, Robertson will happily repeat the “Bermuda Triangle” attack that resonated at the last election: National can’t simultaneously maintain services, cut taxes and pay down debt, so its economic plans are fundamentally suspect.

Labour’s base would undoubtedly prefer a more activist and inspiring campaign than an appeal to security. But Robertson has signalled that budgets will be tight; meanwhile, public stimulus becomes harder to justify in times of high inflation, and – crucially – some of the government’s poorly targeted spending has left voters cynical about big-ticket, high-cost packages. Economic security isn’t sexy, but it might, to a Labour strategist, seem like the best option left.

Stuff: The jewellery tax ruse that gives people a free holiday

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I was in a Wellington jewellers yesterday, pretending to be interested in diamonds, when a shop assistant made an intriguing proposition. “We do offer a tax-free service,” she said.

I had, admittedly, solicited this response: I’d asked if it was true that, as friends had told me, one could avoid paying GST on jewellery – provided one was holidaying overseas.

The ruse, as described to me, takes advantage of the fact that GST isn’t levied on exports, as it’s designed to tax only those items consumed within the country. And for genuine exports, this makes sense.

But jewellers have found a clever, and enduring, loophole. Anyone heading away for a long weekend in Sydney, or a winter break in Bali, can pick up their ring or necklace “airside” – at, for instance, Auckland Airport’s Collection Point. Taking it overseas with them, and thus notionally “consuming” it outside the country, they need pay GST neither on pick-up nor – except in rare circumstances – on their return.

It is, if you do the sums, a nice little scheme. On a $4500 ring, the GST saved is $675, enough for a return flight to Sydney. On a $10,000 necklace, it’s $1500 – an airfare to Bali and back.

And, as it turns out, I needn’t have asked a sales assistant, because firms promote the loophole online. The Village Goldsmith tells customers they have to pay GST if they want to give a gemstone to their partner in New Zealand, but not if they do it overseas. The Diamond Shop says, cheerily, “Many of our customers take advantage of these tax savings, which help pay for their holidays. Can you think of a more romantic way to save money?”

Probably not – but I can think of fairer ones. Someone who scrimps and saves to buy their fiancée a present, but lacks the time or money to cover all the expenses of an overseas jaunt, will pay full price; a wealthy couple heading to the United States get 15% off and free flights. And in the latter case, the tax take is lower than it should be.

For all that, I don’t really blame people for using this loophole, especially when it’s perfectly legal and so widely advertised. It’s also very small fry in the greater scheme of things. I just think the loophole should be closed. And we can expect that it will be, since our tax authorities have a proud record of tackling far larger problems.

That, in fact, is much the most interesting story here. Many people fear that tax loopholes – especially the genuinely troubling ones that reap the hyper-wealthy millions of dollars – will always be with us. But not so. Holes in tax law are closed all the time.

Sometimes the schemes in question are clearly legal but shouldn’t be, so the law has to be changed. Sometimes it simply has to be enforced.

In 2009, the big four Australian-owned banks – ANZ, BNZ, ASB and Westpac – had to cough up $2.2b for having run so-called structured-finance transactions that created artificial “losses” to offset against their tax bill. The banks got absolutely monstered by Inland Revenue, and rightly so.

A few years later, two Christchurch-based orthopaedic surgeons, Ian Penny and Gary Hooper, were likewise found guilty of tax avoidance. They had, in essence, claimed that their income was corporate profit, which would have been taxed at 33%, rather than – as it actually was – personal income taxable at 39%.

The history of our tax system is, in short, a history of people thinking they’ve found ways to avoid paying their fair share, and then being trounced in court. While the authorities aren’t always successful, three out of every four cases is a victory, according to Inland Revenue. For each $1 spent on investigations, the agency finds $9.88 in evasion – surely one of the best investments in the history of government.

Such investigations remain necessary. Inland Revenue estimates New Zealand still loses at least $1.1b each year in evasion; the global Tax Justice Network thinks it could be as high as $7b. That would buy a lot of extra cancer drugs or new school buildings.

Consider, too, the business dealings of the Wright family, controversial Rich Listers who in 2015 “sold” their chain of childcare centres for $332m to a charity they control. The chain’s profits now go to the charity, untaxed, but are then sent to the Wrights as repayment for the “sale”.

Effectively the family will, until 2030, bank the profits, but without having to pay millions of dollars in tax they would otherwise owe.

Although this is eminently legal, experts like tax professor Craig Elliffe ​have questioned whether it’s an appropriate use of charitable status. It certainly looks to me like a loophole. And there’s no reason we couldn’t close it. After all, we’ve done that time and again.

Money for Something: major report published on political donations reform

With my colleague Lisa Marriott, I’ve just published Money for Something, a major report into the financing of political parties in New Zealand, and how it could be reformed.

The report can be found here, and its Executive Summary here.

Further information about the project can be found on the Victoria University of Wellington site.

The text of the Executive Summary and Summary of Recommendations are also below.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The problem

Democracy relies on equality between citizens. When some people have greater influence on key decisions, or greater access to people who have influence, democracy is undermined. However, in New Zealand, over several decades, political parties’ memberships have waned dramatically, and income and wealth have become more concentrated at the top. Meanwhile the cost of campaigning has risen.

All this has made parties ever-more dependent on wealthy donors, leaving the door open for those donors to win favours in return. Our research highlights an accelerating pace of scandals caused by the movement of money between wealthy donors and decision-makers.

In this report we detail:

1. Parties failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from industries whose fortunes the party could substantially influence;

2. Repeated instances of parties obscuring the sources of their funding, through sham donors, complex corporate structures and other methods;

3. Widespread acknowledgement that the current rules are being circumvented;

4. A sense that the system is “an accident waiting to happen”, overly reliant on individuals’ ethics rather than enforcement and with too many opportunities to get around rules;

5. Party leaders and MPs getting deeply involved in soliciting donations, heightening the opportunities for undue influence;

6. Donors acknowledging that their donations are to advance a particular cause or their own interests, rather than simply to “support democracy”, as is sometimes claimed;

7. A growing volume of corrupt appeals to political parties from would-be donors explicitly seeking favours in return;

8. Envelopes with cash being presented to party leaders at public events;

9. Political parties openly selling access to politicians to large donors;

10. Donors reporting that giving tens of thousands of dollars “makes it easier to get a meeting” with ministers;

11. Donors getting repeated home visits from prime ministers and party leaders, far beyond anything an ordinary voter could expect;

12. MPs intervening in citizenship applications and police investigations on donors’ behalf;

13. A long history of scandals that has resulted in just one successful prosecution;

14. Indications that the fear of upsetting donors may circumscribe parties’ policies, or at least a perception that this is so;

15. A widespread view that the Electoral Commission is badly under-powered when it comes to detecting donations fraud.

These issues are already significant and, if unchecked, could lead New Zealand to resemble a country like the US, where politics is permeated by money. Before the influence of money becomes entrenched, we should take precautionary action to ensure the integrity of our political system.

New Zealand is increasingly an outlier among developed countries, owing to its weak regulation of political donations. Compared to other nations, New Zealand has relatively little transparency about the sources of parties’ funding: most developed countries require donors to disclose their identity once they give over NZ$5,000 or even $1,500, but here the threshold is $15,000. Two-thirds of developed countries place limits on the very large amounts that can be donated to parties: New Zealand has none. Many countries allow donations only from citizens, not companies or unions: New Zealand imposes no such restrictions. In short, a wide range of tools that can enhance transparency and curb undue influence are largely unused in New Zealand.

This situation clearly causes public disquiet. Nearly three-quarters of New Zealanders distrust the current system of funding political parties. Polling presented in this report shows that, of the New Zealanders with definite views, between half and two-thirds want donations capped at $10,000-15,000. They also seek greater transparency.

However, for all the issues raised by big money in politics, it is not the case that parties should be starved of funds. As New Zealanders, we have a shared interest in political parties being well-funded, so they can develop thoughtful policies and communicate them to the electorate, in a vibrant political contest.

If, however, one party, or one side of politics, raises larger sums of money from big donors, it may be better able to get its message out to voters. Our research demonstrates significant funding imbalances between New Zealand political parties. And the international evidence suggests that more money, all other things being equal, means more votes. This allows wealthy donors an outsized influence over which political messages are most successful.

The solution

Based on evidence collected for this research, we argue that regulations should be designed so that, when political parties are seeking funds, they are encouraged to reconnect with the wider voting public. Party funding should be egalitarian, voter-centric, and generated where possible from a large number of small donations from ordinary New Zealanders, rather than a small number of large donations from the wealthy.

We argue that large donations should be more tightly regulated, to remove opportunities for undue influence, while preserving individuals’ freedom to support the party of their choice. We also argue that New Zealand should join its developed-country counterparts and provide greater state funding for parties. This can be done in a way that, as above, fosters a more engaged political democracy and enhances equality of political influence.

Polling carried out for this report shows most New Zealanders accept the idea of at least some state funding. Our modelling suggests the cost would be minimal, at around $6-8 million per annum. For an annual $2 per voter, New Zealanders could eliminate big money and its attendant opportunities for undue influence. In its place, a large number of small donations would ensure well-funded parties operated in a transparent system that merited citizens’ trust. Parties would be at least as well-funded as before, but their funding would shift significantly from large donors to small.

Our core recommendations are:

1. Donors’ identities disclosed when they give over $1,500;

2. An annual cap on donations at $15,000;

3. Donations allowed only from eligible voters, not organisations;

4. Stronger powers for the Electoral Commission to pursue donations fraud; and

5. A system of state subsidies for small donations, democracy vouchers to allow voters to allocate state-provided campaign funds, and lump-sum payments to all parties.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS

These recommendations must be seen as a whole, each of them reinforcing the other. Implementing one without the others could have negative unintended consequences.

Key Recommendation No. 1: The identity of all donors giving over $1,500 must be disclosed.

This would strike the right balance between ensuring privacy for donors of relatively small sums and increasing transparency for larger donors. The $1,500 threshold is chosen because it is approximately the sum that appears to buy access in New Zealand politics, is in line with global best practice, has public legitimacy, and would make donation-splitting (breaking a donation into several parts to disguise the true donor’s identity) much more difficult.

Key Recommendation No. 2: No individual may give a party more than $15,000 in a 12-month period.

Large donations clearly purchase access, on the evidence examined for this report, and may purchase influence. Soliciting large donations places party leaders in compromising situations and leads to an unhealthy familiarity between donors and politicians. It can also bias politics towards the interests of the wealthy as a whole. Accordingly we recommend that donations be limited to $15,000 per person, per party, per year. This threshold has public legitimacy and preserves the freedom to donate while enhancing political equality.

Key Recommendation No. 3: Only eligible voters can donate.

Voting in elections is a privilege reserved for citizens, and donating – which can profoundly influence the course of those elections – should be likewise. In addition, removing the ability to donate from corporations, trusts and other organisations would greatly enhance transparency and limit the scope of donation-splitting and other circumventions of donation rules.

Key Recommendation No. 4: The Electoral Commission should be given greater powers to detect donations fraud.

Currently, the exposure of donations fraud relies almost solely on whistleblowers, suggesting that cases are going undetected. The Electoral Commission is not currently empowered to detect wrongdoing, lacking many key powers. It should have the power to audit parties and demand to see documents, among other things. The act that it administers, the Electoral Act, should also be strengthened to limit the opportunities for donations fraud.

Key Recommendation No. 5: State funding should be introduced in the form of tax credits and democracy vouchers, plus lump-sum payments to smaller parties.

Since well-resourced political parties, able to train candidates and put forward considered policies, are part of the public good, there is a case for the state to provide modest extra funding to help them carry out their duties. This would also be necessary if the above curbs on donations limited their fundraising ability. Political parties should receive state funding, at a total rate of roughly $6-8 million a year, through tax credits (reimbursements) provided to people giving up to $1,500. Democracy vouchers, in which citizens are sent state-funded vouchers to spend on the political party of their choice, would be used to allocate approximately $4 million of campaign funding (formerly the broadcasting allocation) in election years. In addition, every party registering over 2% of the vote should receive a $100,000 annual lump sum, to defray costs imposed by the state and encourage a greater diversity of political parties.

Alternative: If democracy vouchers are seen as too experimental, the current broadcasting allocation should be revised and a pilot of democracy vouchers carried out.

Lightening the Load: the case for free healthcare in New Zealand

Lightening the Load, a report commissioned by the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, sets out the case for removing the primary healthcare charges that form a barrier between people and the treatment they need. The cost of doing so, which would shift the burden from individuals to the general taxpayer, would be roughly $3bn a year, if dentistry is included. But this should be seen less as a cost and more as investment in our collective well-being, one that will reap large dividends in future. The report is available here.

Stuff: The half-hour trip that robs some Kiwis of 10 years

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Yesterday I embarked on the most depressing road trip imaginable. It began in hilly Wadestown, one of Wellington’s wealthiest suburbs, where serene white-painted villas, each one a picture of colonial confidence, fetch an average of $1.5 million at auction.

The suburb’s inhabitants, who like its houses tend to be white, enjoy rich lives – and long ones, too. As Wadestown is in the wealthiest tenth of New Zealand neighbourhoods, boys born there will, according to official statistics, live to 85 on average, and girls to 88. I mention this because my road trip was, at heart, a meditation on one of the most basic and alarming forms of inequality known to humankind: the disparity in the time we have on this earth.

Life expectancy is shaped by many forces, including ethnicity: Māori live on average seven-and-a-half years fewer than Pākehā. That gap is closing, albeit so slowly that parity will not be attained until 2090. Worse still is the life-expectancy gap between rich and poor, which is not just large, but widening.

Every New Zealander carries with them a mental map of the country: the hills and valleys, the crenellated outlines of the coast. On that map can be overlaid something that public health specialists call an Atlas of Inequality. It is created by totting up the markers of poverty in each area: how many people are claiming benefits, turning off heaters to save power, wearing shoes with holes because they can’t afford new ones.

The volume of these shortfalls gives an area its deprivation ranking. In the resulting atlas, the least deprived are coloured off-white. Among them is Wadestown, its cadastral pallor recalling the Double Alabaster and Eighth Parchment paint-hues that adorn the suburb’s houses.

Public health experts often talk about social gradients, the way that health declines along with income. My trip was marked, too, by an unmistakeable slope. As I drove along the winding road from Wadestown, passing the private hospitals of prosperous Crofton Downs and the Ngaio residents walking their white poodles, through leafy Khandallah’s Empire-themed streets and down towards commuter-belt Johnsonville, I could see in my mind’s eye the Atlas of Inequality changing hue, shading from white into yellow-orange as the level of deprivation slowly rose.

In Johnsonville, the quintessential Kiwi suburb, modern and comparatively modest houses were selling for a mere $1m on average. Just 10 minutes into my journey, life expectancy had already fallen: boys born here might expect to live to 81, girls to 84, several years less than their wealthier counterparts.

From there I continued north, shadowing the train line down to sprawling Tawa, reportedly home to more churches than any New Zealand suburb. Like Johnsonville, it was a sea of yellow-orange zones of middling affluence, spotted with small islands of deprivation marked in the red that, in the atlas, denotes the most deprived tenth of neighbourhoods. Tawa’s life expectancy was, on average, fair, if a shade lower than it had been back down the road.

By the time I reached Porirua, crossing over the highway and entering the city’s east, the atlas in my mind was a blotch of angry scarlet. Islands of deprivation had become a sea. And life expectancy had plummeted, to 74 for boys and 78 for girls. From Wadestown to Waitangirua, in a trip that took just half an hour, 10 years of expected life had ebbed away.

As I sat in my car, parked outside Waitangirua’s strip of roller-door shops, I thought about all the barriers that society puts in the way of poorer families trying to live well. The racism. The underfunded schools. The health system that charges people to see a GP. The mouldy homes that send kids to hospital with respiratory diseases. The cost of a bag of oranges at the local superette ($4.90) versus a loaf of white bread ($1.90).

I thought about the way that poverty leaves scars – worse school results, damaged heart valves – that later affluence often can’t erase. I thought about how, in an interview, Porirua College principal Ragne Maxwell had described a community proud of its strengths, its whānau and aiga connections, but also habituated to people dying well before their time. “It’s a killer,” she had told me. “Poverty, in this community, is a killer.”

I thought, too, about how easy it is to ignore these disparities when they work to one’s advantage; how challenging – yet how enlightening – it would be for people to take that 30-minute drive, to widen their sphere of empathy.

And I thought, finally, about the urgent need to close such gaping disparities in a nation that still calls itself egalitarian. So many hopes, triumphs, joys – and yes, tears – are packed into a year; yet poverty robs people of 10 times that. We have only one life, and it is the most awful injustice that some get so much less of it than others.

Stuff: Climate and inequality – How a rising tide can sink the smallest boats

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The classic defence of economic inequality has always been that a rising tide lifts all boats: as long as the economy is growing, everyone will benefit, and it doesn’t matter that some benefit more than others.

Contemplating the threat of climate change, some commentators are now reversing this metaphor. As the world warms and storms become more frequent, smaller boats may be overwhelmed while larger ones emerge unscathed. A rising tide may, metaphorically, sink some boats.

Climate change is, after many decades of delay, being taken seriously by policy-makers. However, some academics believe the connections with economic disparities have not been sufficiently explored in New Zealand. “I can’t think of much in that respect at all,” says David Hall, an Auckland University of Technology climate change researcher – the possible exception being Auckland’s regional fuel tax debates, which emphasised the tax’s impact on the poorest.

Internationally, researchers point to World Bank data showing that the wealthiest countries – including the United States, Canada, Japan and much of western Europe – account for just 12% of the current global population but 50% of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1850. Last year, the New York Times quoted Sonam Wangdi, chair of the 47-strong Least Developed Countries bloc, as saying: “We have contributed the least to this problem, yet we suffer disproportionately.”

Taking the global population as a whole, the top 10% of individual emitters, whichever country they live in, contribute nearly half of all carbon dioxide emissions. This data is derived by taking information on households’ consumption and attributing emissions to them based on the items they purchase. And as shown in this year’s World Inequality Report, compiled by a French-led team of economists, some social groups are already doing their bit for the climate – but others are making it worse.

The report argues that the per-person emissions of poorer people in rich countries have actually decreased in recent decades. If the world’s 2030 targets for cutting emissions are calculated on a per-person basis, effectively allocating each individual a carbon budget, the poorest half of the population in rich countries is already at or near those 2030 climate targets.

But, as the report notes, “This is not the case for the top half of the population [in rich countries].” Indeed, emissions for that group “have increased substantially” in recent decades.

These inequalities can be seen in Oxfam data that examine the disparity between emissions for the rich and poor in wealthier countries. Most notably, the richest Americans’ emissions are many times those of their poorer counterparts.

Emerging evidence suggests that similar patterns exist in New Zealand. According to the World Inequality Database, the average New Zealander’s annual carbon dioxide emissions are roughly 15 tonnes. For someone in the richest 10%, that figure is roughly 45 tonnes – three times higher. This fits with previous research showing that higher-income households tend to have larger homes, use more energy, catch more international flights, eat more meat and drive more.

Keeping up with the Joneses

It is not just that the wealthy emit more carbon, however: economic disparities themselves can contribute to climate change. A growing body of research indicates that the more unequal a country’s distribution of income or wealth, the greater its overall emissions.

One explanation for this phenomenon was advanced back in 2010 in the book The Spirit Level, by British scientists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, who argued that “a great deal of what drives consumption is status competition”. In order to maintain their social position and “keep up with the Joneses”, people spent more on material goods, inducing greater emissions.

That competition, in turn, became more important the larger the economic disparities between households. “As inequality increases status competition,” Wilkinson and Pickett wrote, “we have to struggle harder to keep up … inequality ratchets up the competitive pressure to consume.”

This argument has been corroborated by more recent research. Earlier this year, Chinese scholars found that greater wealth inequality leads to greater per-person carbon emissions. In more unequal societies, they argued, “The middle and lower classes are inspired to copy the consumption patterns of the rich, who tend to overconsume and prefer carbon-intensive products, such as central air conditioning.”

Inequality may worsen emissions in other ways. Some researchers argue that a more unequal society will have larger numbers of people living in poverty, who may feel isolated from mainstream society and oppose environmental policies that they see as either an irrelevance to their lives, an indulgence for wealthier voters, or simply an unfair imposition. These arguments are relevant to New Zealand, which had the developed world’s largest increase in income inequality between 1985 and 2005. The wealthiest 1% hold one-quarter of all assets, while the poorest half have just 2%.

Not only are the causes of global warming unequally distributed, the impacts will also be disproportionately felt by disadvantaged households. Globally, it is widely acknowledged – by a diverse cast of figures that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, the Pope and the World Bank – that the poorest will be most affected by rising sea levels, increased natural disasters and failing crops. As one international NGO, Global Citizen, reports, “Climate change is going to amplify the already existing divide between those who have resources and those who do not.”

In New Zealand, recent research shows that one child in 10 is both living in poverty and likely to be hard hit by an increase in natural disasters.

Save the Children’s Jacqui Southey says the many Kiwi families already unable to afford essentials “will struggle most in the face of extreme climate events” and will need extra support – such as emergency funds, shelter and food – when major climate events occur. Inequality and climate change are, on this reading, in a negative feedback loop: inequality raises emissions; higher emissions then lead to greater inequality.

Impact on Māori

Responding to these concerns, the New Zealand Government has endorsed the idea of a ”just transition”, in which the shift to a low-carbon economy protects the fortunes of low-income individuals, who may be more likely to work in carbon-intensive “sunset” industries. However, some academics fear the tools currently mooted to mitigate global warming are not in line with such ambitions.

Writing earlier this year, AUT’s Hall and Massey University’s Robert McLachlan warned that simply imposing a price on carbon through the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) – akin to a flat-rate tax for every tonne of carbon emitted – would disproportionately affect poorer households.

“Emissions-intensive goods constitute a higher proportion of household spending for low-income households,” they wrote in the journal Policy Quarterly. “With fewer resources, lower income households will have lower ability to change behaviour or invest to reduce their exposure to emissions prices.”

Hall and McLachlan also noted that Māori “are disproportionally exposed to this regressive impact". Along similar lines, a 2021 ETS consultation document suggested that putting the price of carbon up to $100 “would increase the weekly spend of low-income households by 1.3% while raising the weekly spend of the highest income households by just 0.5%”.

A price on emissions, Hall adds, is also unlikely to change the high-polluting lifestyles of wealthier New Zealanders. The costs they would pay through the ETS “would be marginal for wealthier people – I don’t think they will take any notice”.

That’s not to say that the rich are all bad news when it comes to the climate. “Wealthier people, by making consumption decisions around purchasing electric vehicles and making their own homes energy self-sufficient, will be contributing to the economies of scale for some of those new technologies,” Hall says.

Wealthy early adopters, in other words, drive prices down for everyone else. They may also help build support for collective infrastructure like EV charging points. “They can use their wealth for the collective good,” Hall says.

Revenue from the ETS could also be distributed to lower-income households, in what is sometimes called a “climate dividend”. Some commentators, meanwhile, are arguing for measures to reduce economic inequalities directly – and, in the process, generate revenue for pro-environmental policies like free public transport.

Jo Spratt, Oxfam Aotearoa’s communications director, views this as a potential win-win. For instance, a windfall tax, levied on supermarkets and other companies enjoying “excess” profits, could be used to support lower-income households and implement climate-friendly policies.

“Tax is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight inequality,” Spratt said in a statement earlier this month. “Excess profits and windfall tax revenues can help tackle the biggest challenges of our times, like the explosion in inequality and the climate crisis.”

Hall, meanwhile, believes that as the impacts of climate change become ever starker, wealthier New Zealanders may be asked to shoulder a greater share of the response. Taxes on luxury items and emissions from long-haul flights – currently given a free pass by the ETS – may well be put on the table. “I just think that’s quite likely,” he says.

This article was published with the support of Boomers for Real Climate Measures, a charity that pays for research into climate change solutions. The charity took no part in writing or editing the article.

Stuff: Democracy may be in trouble, but the answer is more of it, not less

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There’s a middle-class fantasy of authoritarianism that I hear more and more these days, and which needs to be stopped in its tracks.

One premise of this fantasy is that democracy has failed us: people are stupid, politicians short-sighted, and between them they’re ruining the planet. Climate change is out of control, nuclear war looms.

Another premise, separate but related, is that democracy is fine as an ideal but has been catastrophically captured by elites – principally, at the local level, by old white home-owners who swamp consultation meetings and block anything vaguely progressive, be it cycleways or denser housing.

But whether the economic elites or the masses are to blame, either way the answer is, apparently, to make our democracy less democratic: to have, as much as possible, the “experts” in charge. This is why I call it a middle-class fantasy: the “meritocratic authoritarian” sought in this scenario is not an abrasive populist, a Mussolini or a Trump, but a coterie of well-educated, sensible, far-sighted people who – just by chance! – have identical social backgrounds and views to the people articulating this dream.

According to the 2020 World Values Survey, nearly four in 10 Kiwis (38.5%) think it would be good to have “experts, not governments, make decisions”. And you can see this impulse play out everywhere.

Earlier this year, Wellington city councillors, apparently afraid that well-off locals would delay progress through the courts, tried to slash public input into their next District Plan, empowering unelected commissioners and leaving residents largely powerless over key calls on infrastructure, hazardous substances disposal and significant natural area (SNA) designations. Most of this Government’s centralising reforms take some power from local communities and hand it to technocrats.

On environmental issues, some greenies bizarrely argue that the Climate Change Commission should be empowered not just to recommend low-carbon policies but to mandate them. Since climate change will require us to rethink the way we eat, move around, build houses and pay taxes, this would hand control over almost every aspect of our lives to eight unelected technocrats.

Let me say at this point that I understand the concerns underlying this middle-class authoritarianism. Not all is well with democracy; some of the above-mentioned dangers are real. Increased economic inequality has left certain people much better resourced than others to participate in public processes – and more confident in doing so. But the answer must be to improve democracy, not scrap it.

As the legendary American political scientist Robert Dahl pointed out decades ago, expert rule would work only if those experts knew what was good for the public, wanted to implement it, and were able to do so. But the textbook rule-by-expert examples are the vast tower blocks built in postwar America and Britain, which planners had decided were where ordinary people “wanted” to live.

Destructive of pre-existing communities, unfriendly and often fundamentally unliveable, many of these tower blocks had to be torn down within years. The knowledge of experts is always constrained by their discipline and indeed their background, invariably an elite one.

Climate-change activists indulging in a little light authoritarianism should also consider that the evidence is not on their side. In the Intergenerational Solidarity Index, a measure of how well governments consider the interests of future citizens, nearly all the top performers – 21 out of 25 – are democracies. On the flipside, autocrats fill 21 of the 25 bottom spots.

Of course, democracies could work better. The rest of the world could emulate the Welsh Assembly, whose future generations commissioner speaks up on behalf of those not yet born, and whose advocacy helped halt a sweeping road-construction programme that would have turbo-charged emissions.

We can surely find ways to engage the public early and well, so that infrastructure is built quickly but also democratically. We can prevent elite capture, too. For all around us are the green shoots of a new, bottom-up democracy.

In Auckland, Watercare and the Koi Tū Centre have just run a citizens’ assembly in which 37 residents, picked to be demographically representative of the city, spent time deeply discussing future water source options, landing eventually on recycling wastewater for drinking. This process used experts the right way: as guides for the residents, not as their masters.

In Porirua, Ngāti Toa is working with others on a talanoa and wānanga-based system that would likewise empower residents to lead local decision-making. And the Future of Local Government Review, which reported last week, contained countless ideas for reinvigorating democracy and ending the participation imbalance.

Letting communities allocate some council funds directly, lowering the voting age, a greater role for iwi: we already have the ideas we need to make democracy work better. And we should get on with implementing them, rather than indulging in fantasies.