William Taylor • Oct 04, 2014 •
Duncan Garner is a bit of a stirrer, but he pulled out some interesting numbers in his article yesterday arguing the Greens should move to the centre: The Greens talk poverty and social justice, but the poor aren’t listening – and they’re certainly not voting for them. Look at these telling statistics from the poorest electorates in […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • Sep 30, 2014 •
There is an excellent post about the Green party, and considering how to frame itself over here – I recommend reading it. Within the post, a lot was made about the term “sustainability” and the inappropriate nature of the “left-right” divide. However, there is something I’d like to add. The “left vs centre” debate going […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • Aug 19, 2014 •
I have been remiss talking about this election – as I am a touch bogged down. My apologies – I’ll try to write about things when I see them. As a result, here is the Green’s plan to increase the level of income redistribution. From the Stuff article: 3 per cent – of taxpayers affected […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • Jun 04, 2014 •
Today I wrote a brief post on the Green announcement of a carbon tax. I do support the carbon tax, but just wanted to raise some specific issues to think about. However, a number of people on twitter were unhappy with me saying that, without Kyoto, we didn’t have an externality here – and I […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • Jun 04, 2014 •
I see that the Greens have announced a carbon tax to replace the emissions trading scheme (with details and analysis by BERL here). The authors of TVHE have long been a fan of this type of switch when discussing the issue (eg here and here). And the idea of pricing an externality and using it […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • May 16, 2014 •
There is excellent commentary on the Budget here (Kiwiblog, Economics NZ) and really cool visualisations by Keith Ng here (his post here). I suggest looking at those, it is much better than anything I can offer here. However, I can’t help talking. And looking through the budget documents I felt that something has been confirmed for […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • May 15, 2014 •
I realise people are probably pretty excited about the Budget later today – as that is something some people tend to get excited about. I remember my family used to buy copies of the Budget documents, and go on and on about them – although I’m fairly sure I never saw them actually read them […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • May 14, 2014 •
I suppose that this was Labour’s alternative budget. They’ve taken the policy documents they’ve put together recently and stuck them together in a blog post. Fair enough, it is a good idea to put together policy documents so why not – I really like the idea of detailed policy documents by the opposition as well, […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • May 14, 2014 •
As of now I’ve only seen one alternative budget come out prior to Thursday’s Budget – the ACT party’s one (Stuff,NBR). Good on them for releasing an alternative budget, I like to see that sort of thing. However, I have to admit I was a little more than ‘very disappointed’ with the quality of the […] … Read More
Matt Nolan • May 13, 2014 •
The Green party has announced a “Green Investment Bank” to help facilitate investment in green industries (release, discussion, paper). I am not against it per se, and given they are saying that in the first year they will have a working group to determine the details there isn’t too much I can dig my teeth […] … Read More