People in Wellington and beyond can help to kick-start a much-needed critical examination of our democracy on August 1 and 2. Public Good and the St Andrews Trust for the Study of Religion and Society (SATRS) are hosting Democracy, Ethics and the Public Good which will open the debate and seed ideas about future approaches […]
Conference registration launched
Democracy, ethics and the public good. kickstarting a serious conversation about the quality of our democracy In recent years we have seen a deterioration in the quality of some aspects of our democracy. On one hand we can celebrate MMP and the diverse set of representatives for our communities. The 2013 Transparency International report identified […]
Party Policies and get out the vote campaigns
The purpose of this page is to help ensure: that people get out and vote that they can find the party policies and manifestos easily It contains information for voters and links to party manifesto and policy information Our mini-conference Democracy, Ethics and the Public Good is taking place in the leadup to the election. […]
Book review: Glenn Greenwald No place to hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the surveillance state
Tomorrow it’s a year to the day since we learnt about the NSA tracking of Verizon telephone customers and on the 6th June the Prism project appeared in the UK Guardian. Glenn Greenwald’s book was published on May 15 and recounts the events and the follow up as well as comprehensive information about what was […]
The Entrepreneurial State
The Entrepreneurial State: A book review Mariana Mazzucato is a UK economist who has worked at Demos, the UK thinktank and is a professor at the University of Sussex. Her latest book The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking public vs private sector myths is written from the viewpoint that the state is the major, but often invisible, […]
The Social Contract
The Social Contract is an old philosophical idea that people consent to be governed.
Effectively this means that people give up some freedoms but benefit from the fairness and order provided by the government. Implicit in the idea is that people have the maximum freedoms consistent with the Social Contract. However there are limits to the powers of government. This is the case especially for democratic governments which are made up of our elected representatives who make decisions on our behalf.
Valuing the Commons – What we don’t own but need
Often it’s hard to acknowledge the value of the things that we do not pay for directly like clean air, water,public spaces and public assets like libraries and recreation opportunities. The Idea of the Commons… This comes historically comes from small farmers sharing grazing land with rules to ensure it is not over-exploited. Valuing the […]
National’s proposed public spending to GDP ratio – the election’s clear blue line
The real story of the coming election in neither corruption nor perceptions of corruption but rather what was revealed in Bill English’s reported pre-budget speech to the National Party’s Southern Region conference at the weekend. He signalled an intention to reduce the proportion of government spending to 26% of GDP over the next 6 to […]
Democracy, Ethics and the Public Good
CONFERENCE Friday 1 August 2014 6.30 registration for 7,00–9pm Saturday 2 August 8.30 registration for 9:00am–4.30pm St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Wellington
Historic Places Trust changes demonstrate the devaluing of public institutions.
On Friday NZ Historic Places Trust members received a letter telling them that NZHPT is to be renamed Heritage New Zealand from Monday April 14 even before the legislation which authorises the name change passes through Parliament. This represents appallingly poor process. The Bill has progressed extremely slowly since it was introduced to Parliament 2 […]
Protecting and extending democratic rights
Do we need a conversation about the quality of democracy in New Zealand? Here are a few thoughts about what New Zealand needs to do improve its democratic arrangements. We think that democracy is about more than ensuring that our electoral system can add us to the voter register and count our votes accurately. Can […]
Corporate style boards in public institutions have passed their sell by date
Corporate style boards in public institutions have passed their sell by date Jan Rivers, Convenor of public good (publicgood.org.nz), today asked for documents under the Official Information Act so that public good could make public the evidence that the Minister for Tertiary Education, Steven Joyce, used to help him decide that university and wananga boards […]
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