Latest from the Policy Commons
A little compassion in an age of bullying
By Mike Webster - The University of Auckland's Dr Mike Webster takes a look at a slightly different approach to school and workplace bullying In the days that followed World Compassion Day last week, I couldn’t help but think about the increasing problem of...
Policy strategies for inclusive renewable energy in Aotearoa (New Zealand)
By Anna Berka, Julie MacArthur, Steve Matthewman, Stephen Poletti, and Maria Bargh - Introduction New Zealand faces a range of interconnected challenges in reorienting its energy infrastructure to address both climate mitigation and adaptation goals. These include...
Get real on transport – and improve all our lives
By Jess Berentson-Shaw - With the return of our evidence-driven Associate Minister for Transport Julie Anne Genter to Wellington it is timely to explore why transport is an area in which the evidence is so routinely ignored, even though implementation of what we...
Expanding End-of-Life Choice in New Zealand
By Justin Alsleben - Many people who are terminally ill, or otherwise suffer from serious and irremediable medical conditions, face prolonged and acute suffering at the end of their lives. These medical patients may experience a deteriorated quality of life because...
Some myths about NZ superannuation
By Susan St John - 'Let’s not mindlessly raise the age, argues Susan St John, but try to solve actual problems ordinary people face' Recently a prominent New Zealand weekly magazine ran the story “Fresh moves to raise the age of super to 67”. Yet the Labour-led...
How to Create a Youth-quake Fostering political engagement amongst young people in Aotearoa New Zealand
By Esme Hall - In this blog post I draw on insights from scholarship on political participation and analysis of the New Zealand Election Study from 2008 to 2017 to suggest ways of increasing youth engagement in the policy process. At every election there is a lot...
Swimming Against the Tide: New Zealand Revisits its Refugee Policy
By Dr Tim Fadgen - As local and regional conflicts persist around the globe, and as environmental disasters become more frequent and increasingly severe, refugees are on the move. Concurrently, many nations and states around the world have signalled that people...
CHILD POVERTY ACTION GROUP: Rethinking Social Welfare Summit 2018
By Mike O'Brien - In this, the 80th anniversary of the passage of the Social Security Act 1938, the annual Child Poverty Action Group summit in Wellington was a very good opportunity to review directions and future possibilities. Bringing together the wide range of...
Alan France: The poor stay poor and the rich get rich – everybody knows
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes, everybody knows...
A Better, But Not as Yet, Good Parliament: The UK House of Commons 2016-2018
Sarah Childs, Professor of Politics and Gender, Birkbeck College University of London and Distinguished Visiting Researcher, University of Auckland, discusses progress on implementing the recommendations of her report The Good Parliament two years on from its...
Equal pay starts with transparency
By Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy - If everyone knows what their peers are getting paid, it is much harder for women to remain underpaid relative to their male colleagues, argues the University of Auckland's Dr Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy Mary* first learned that her colleague...
Melinda Webber: Ethnic ‘mixedness’ on the rise
As ethnic 'mixedness' is on the rise, the message is that individuals must find their own way to become, be, and belong, writes Melinda Webber. The number of people who identify having multiple ethnicities is increasing, both in New Zealand and internationally....
PM’s Baby Is a Chance to Improve Parliament for Parents
By Jennifer Curtin - [At at a conference of Speakers and Clerks from Australia and the Pacific Islands last week, Labour MP Kiri Allan argued for a change in the travel cap for partners of MPs with young babies, and the National Party pushed back on a...
Evidence and the ‘Three Strikes’ law
By Len Cook - The ‘Three Strikes’ law exists because a majority of Members of Parliament want it, although there is no evidence which exists to justify or shape it. This is not an unusual situation, and there are many examples of legislation being weakly informed...
A new way to fix our housing bubble
By Susan St John - Susan St John says the Government's Tax Working Group will not find real answers for the housing market, and a new kind of tax on our net housing equity is needed. To say that New Zealand has been in the grips of an extraordinary speculative...
Thinking, Writing, Doing in the Humanities and Social Sciences: An Edited Collection.
By Thomas Basbøll, Rachel Cayley and Oliver March - *Reprinted with permission from the LSE Impact Blog. The act of writing and how it contributes to and shapes the practice of communicating research is a rich topic for consideration for scholars at every stage of...
Strange but true: Australia has a lot to teach us about renewable energy
By Karl Check - With the announcement that the Government will end offshore oil and gas exploration in New Zealand, and at the end of our four-yearly schooling by Australia in how to win medals, Vector’s Karl Check says parts of Australia are also making pretty...
Professor Susan Himmelweit: ‘Holding Government to Account on Gender Equality’ ▶️
‘Holding Government to Account on Gender Equality: The experience of the UK Women’s Budget Group’ Since 1989, the UK Women’s Budget Group (WBG), a group of academics, activists and trade unionists, has tried to hold successive UK governments to account for the...
NZ can learn from 40 years of climate change mitigation policies
By Anna Berka - Political and social science research on climate change shows some countries have been far more successful than others in orchestrating state-led transition to renewable energy over the past 40 years. Without exception, it is countries that have...
An emerging iron cage? Understanding the risks of increased use of big data applications in social policy
By Hamish Robertson and Joanne Travaglia - Big data technologies are increasingly being utilised in the field of social policy. Although big data methods and strategies are often preferred as a form of evidence-based policy development, big data techniques do not...
