The Good Society is the home of my writing about how we can shape a better world together.
A detail from Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Renaissance fresco The Allegory of Good and Bad Government
The Post: The missed opportunities and unfinished business of solving child poverty
Ending hardship isn’t utopian, but will require more crusading zeal.
The Guardian: New Zealand needs a new vision for the social security system – not more flipflopping
A reversion to the mean helps no-one, beneficiaries least of all.
The Spinoff: Public-sector leakers are playing a dangerous game
Leaks are only justified in extreme circumstances.
The Post: Employment law changes all about who is in control
The “contractorisation” of the economy could strip away workers’ rights.
The Post: Backdowns on smokefree rules suggest tobacco lobbyists are in the House
National should stick to its Opposition pledges to regulate lobbyists properly.
The Post: Innovative, technologically savvy – not words you’d normally associate with councils
An on-demand public transport trial shows government can surprise us with its innovation.
The Post: How we progress by reaction and counter-reaction
Backwards steps can - and in history have been - the precursor to progress.
The Post: Time to hold the Government to account for the social costs of its spending decisions
It’s a major problem that financial deficits are highly visible, but social and environmental ones are not.
The Guardian: Labour failed but New Zealand can’t put a wealth tax ‘back in the bottle’
Debates over taxing assets divide the Labour Party.
The Post: Watch out for the rise of conservative conspiracy theories
This government’s problems will be of its own making, not the result of ‘the Blob’.