Rates Reform
Recent and prospective rate increases have prompted a renewed debate in New Zealand about the financing of local government. The following article by Bryan Gould was published in the New Zealand Herald...
View ArticleThe Democracy Sham
In The Democracy Sham: How Globalisation Devalues Your Vote, Bryan Gould considers the impact of the global economy on the democratic process in a number of countries, including New Zealand and...
View ArticleThe Globalisation Bell Tolls for us All
The decision taken in New York to close the Colgate Palmolive factory in Petone and supply the New Zealand market from production in Australia and elsewhere is the latest demonstration of just how far...
View ArticleMy Vision for New Zealand
The following article is a commissioned contribution to be published in a book edited by Dave Breuer of Anew New Zealand. As most New Zealanders are quick to acknowledge, New Zealand has established –...
View ArticleSubmission to Select Committee Inquiry Into Monetary Policy
SUBMISSION FROM BRYAN GOULD TO THE FINANCE AND EXPENDITURE SELECT COMMITTEE’S INQUIRY INTO THE FUTURE MONETARY POLICY FRAMEWORK Introduction 1. The Select Committee is to be congratulated on...
View ArticleBeaches – for Cars or People?
The following article appeared in the New Zealand Herald on 11 January. “The Kiwi beach holiday used to be about picnics, sunburn, surf and games on the sand. Today, it is increasingly about the...
View ArticleA Fibre Optic Network – Twenty Years Earlier
One of the leading issues in today’s New Zealand news is the desirability of establishing a nationwide fibre optic cable network so that high-speed broadband can be extended to the whole country. The...
View ArticlePost-meltdown
The horror stories keep coming but – even so – it is doubtful whether we have yet grasped in New Zealand the scale and seriousness of what is happening in the global economy, and how greatly we will be...
View ArticleThe All Blacks – Just Another Team?
The All Whites’ success reminds us yet again of the remarkable sporting record achieved by this tiny country which has for much of its short life been only about half as big – in population terms – as...
View ArticleThey Might As Well Be In Zhejiang Province
The Chinese interest in buying up a significant chunk of New Zealand’s dairying real estate has hit the headlines over recent weeks. Hard-pressed dairy farmers, perhaps including the Crafars or their...
View ArticleWealthy Individuals Do Not Hold the Key to a Stronger Economy
As the smoke clears, and the mirrors are packed away for another year, we can now make a more considered judgment of the 2010 budget. It should straightaway be acknowledged that the budget was a...
View ArticleStanding Up for Ourselves
Prime Minister John Key was seen at his best in Nelspruit, South Africa, when the All Whites achieved their famous result against Italy. He was there supporting our team, celebrating their success,...
View ArticleWill We Ever Learn?
Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis The G20 meeting in Toronto in June was remarkable in only one respect. The familiar protests, the police in the streets, the hob-nobbing of the leaders were all...
View ArticleHolding Banks to Account
The dramatic and damaging collapse of the New Zealand finance company sector over the last three or four years has attracted a good deal of attention, largely because of the multi-billion losses that...
View ArticleThe World’s Best
We know that the All Blacks have again struck top form when overseas rugby writers start to talk about “peaking too soon” and to mutter darkly about “choking” at World Cup time. It is almost as though...
View ArticleIt’s The Economy, Stupid
A week, as Harold Wilson famously said, is a long time in politics, but the day-to-day ups and downs that hog the headlines rarely determine the outcome of elections. Voters’ preferences are usually...
View ArticleArise, Sir Robbie
Arise, Sir Robbie! The New Zealand Rugby Union has attracted its fair share of criticism over the years, so we should not begrudge it the plaudits for devising and then implementing a strategy that has...
View ArticleBridging the Teaching Divide
The recently published assessment that New Zealand has the best education system in the world is a valuable antidote to our predilection for beating ourselves up about our supposed failings in this...
View ArticleThe General Election Judgment
A three-year electoral cycle may have its detractors – and, many would say, with good reason – but it is usually popular with first-term governments. The record shows that three years is not really...
View ArticleCatching the Knowledge Wave?
The briefcase I use to carry my papers and laptop to meetings bears a multi-coloured logo and the words “Catching the Knowledge Wave”. As Fran O’Sullivan recalls, the outcomes produced by that...
View ArticleThe Maori Challenge
When I left New Zealand for the first time in 1962 to study at Oxford University, I took with me an LP (yes, real vinyl!) of the St Joseph’s Maori Girls Choir. I was amazed to discover over my years in...
View ArticleTime for A Step Change
Europe’s leaders are being taught lessons that they refuse to learn. The Greek economy was always too weak to join the euro zone; now that it is – as a consequence – flat on its back and weighed down...
View ArticleStanding Up for Ourselves
Charles de Gaulle was a pain in the neck. As the self-appointed leader of a defeated and occupied country, he had very few cards to play. But he nevertheless succeeded, through making a nuisance of...
View ArticleMore Than “A Decade of Dominance”
When the All Blacks play Scotland at Murrayfield next Monday, it will be just over ten years since they last lost to one of the Six Nations countries on their own ground (the 2007 loss to France was at...
View ArticleSubmission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Manufacturing
SUBMISSION FROM BRYAN GOULD TO THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO MANUFACTURING Introduction This inquiry is timely and important. I suggest that there are three main questions that should be addressed....
View ArticleThe Government’s Economic Report Card
As we enter the fifth year of this government’s term, and the sixth year of bumping along on the recessionary bottom, we now know enough to make an informed judgment of the government’s stewardship of...
View ArticleA Kiwi Haircut?
We have grown accustomed to treating crises in the euro zone as having little to do with us. So, there will have been a restrained response to the news of yet another crisis, even one that has provoked...
View ArticleNew Zealand’s Elective Dictatorship
It was the Tory MP and peer, Quintin Hogg, later Lord Hailsham, who coined the phrase “elective dictatorship” to describe a government that – once elected – proceeds to ignore the wishes of the voters...
View ArticleTipping the Balance
In his first term as Prime Minister, John Key made a determined effort to be all things to all men – and women. In his second term, however, he hasn’t bothered; he has clearly calculated that he can...
View ArticleAir New Zealand Shows the Way
In the ten years or so before my wife (English born and bred but now a proud Kiwi) and I returned to live in New Zealand, we flew back to New Zealand from Britain on many occasions. We always felt, as...
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