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  • Should the Reserve Bank target unemployment as well as inflation? Will the new government abolish the dual mandate?

    nonaBack in 1989 – near the end of the fourth Labour government – the inflation-busting Reserve Bank Act was passed. Labour has shifted well away from the Rogernomics of that decade, and in 2021 Grant Robertson added maximum sustainable employment to the bank’s mandate - with the support of coalition partner NZ First.

    Read more: Should the Reserve Bank target unemployment as well as inflation? Will the new government abolish...

  • The next three years – the job ahead for Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori

    The Fabians had a session on Nov 14th reflecting on the elections. Our panel of Simon Wilson, Senior Writer at NZ Herald, Bridie Witton, Stuff Press Gallery Reporter and Ollie Neas, freelance writer used the election results as a springboard to target some of the key issues for Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori as they head into opposition.

    Coverage can be found here

  • Rob Campbell on Pae Ora Health Reforms

    Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Pae Ora health reforms with you.

    Since I was sacked by the Health Minister I have taken time to reflect on the experience and to make a considered assessment of what I learned in the process. My intention tonight is to share that with you, making the assumption that we share common ground in wanting to have an effective, efficient, excellent and equitable public health service.

    If anyone does not want that, I don’t really have anything useful to share with you.

    Read more: Rob Campbell on Pae Ora Health Reforms

  • Interview transcript: Ambassador Wang Xiaolong with NZ Fabian Society

    Hello, my name is Mike Smith, from the New Zealand Fabian Society. It's my great pleasure today to interview Ambassador Wang Xiaolong from the People's Republic of China to talk with us about China's values. I heard Ambassador Wang speak at a meeting convened by the Institute of International RelationsNZIIA last year and in the course of that meeting, he addressed the question of China's values and said, "China's choice for values, social system and path to modernity is made by our own people, based on our own history, culture and realities. All these choices have proven to be suitable and effective to solve China's problems and meet the needs of the Chinese people".

    Read more: Interview transcript: Ambassador Wang Xiaolong with NZ Fabian Society

GBPikettyWellington's Connolly Hall was packed full last week for Geoff Bertram's brilliant lecture on Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. Geoff will repeat the lecture in Auckland next month.

Piketty's book has become an international best-seller, unusual for a treatise on economics. Dr Geoff Bertram summarises it as follows - The economic logic of a capitalist market system with private wealth plus inheritance leads to a highly unequal, but stable, social order with a patrimonial rentier class at the top. Whether this social order is compatible with democracy depends on what a democratic society is prepared to tolerate. If the capitalist distributional equilibrium does not lie within the boundaries of democratic tolerance, one or the other has to give.

Geoff will expand on this summary and explain why he thinks the work will earn Piketty a Nobel Prize. 6:30pm, Monday 1 September, University of Auckland. You can register here.

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