Category Archives: Portraits

So Much to Do: Dr Sutch on Poverty and Progress

Commentary on Malcolm McKinnon’s Poverty and Progress in New Zealand: thoughts on WB Sutch’s work in historical and intellectual context. Stout Research Centre, 24 April, 2024 When Bill Sutch was first told by his physician that he had advanced terminal cancer, he responded ‘that can’t possibly be true, I have far too much to do’….
Continue reading this entry »

IN OPEN SEAS: PART III: Paddling (1986- )

Brian Easton (Journalist) Interviews Brian Easton (Economist) Part I is IN OPEN SEAS: PART I: On the Seashore: (1943-1970);  Part II is IN OPEN SEAS: Part II: Launched (1970-1986). Part II and Part III were  going to be published as a companion pieces in Asymmetric Information but there have been no issues since August 2021 Why did…
Continue reading this entry »

IN OPEN SEAS: Part II: Launched (1970-1986)

Brian Easton (Journalist) Interviews Brian Easton (Economist) Part I is IN OPEN SEAS: PART I: On the Seashore: (1943-1970) This was going to be published as a companion piece in Asymmetric Information but there have been no issues since August 2021 From Sussex University to Canterbury University? It was very different economics department in 1970…
Continue reading this entry »

David Ian Pool: The Father of Aotearoa New Zealand Demography: (22 November 1936 – 28 April 2022)

Waikato Times May 21 2022 The University of Waikato made an inspired choice when it appointed Ian Pool to a chair in sociology in 1978. Strictly, he was not a sociologist. His masters degree had been in geography at the Auckland University College; his 1964 PhD in Demography was at the Australian National University under…
Continue reading this entry »

Reviews of Autobiographies by Politicians

Jim Bolger Fridays with Jim (September 2021) Simon Bridges The Ambiguity of Labels (April 2020) Michael Cullen In Defence of Social Democracy (July 2021) Michael Cullen’s Policy Achievements (July 2021) Review of Michael Cullen’s Autobiography (November 2021) Chris Finlayson Liberal-Conservatives And Social Democrats: The Future Of Māori (September 2021)

Review of Michael Cullen’s Autobiography

New Zealand International Review November/December 2021 Vol 46, No 6 p.26-7. LABOUR SAVING: A Memoir by Michael Cullen (Allen and Unwin, Auckland, 432pp, $50) In the 40 years since Muldoon’s reign, the predominant form of national political leadership has been a dual premiership in which, broadly, the prime minister manages the politics and the co-premier…
Continue reading this entry »

FRIDAYS WITH JIM

Conversations about our country with Jim Bolger: David Cohen (Massey University Press, Auckland, 287pp, $45.) NZ International Review (September/October 2021) p.29-31 James Brendan Bolger presents a paradox. When he became prime minister, a Tom Scott cartoon presented him as a kind of Forrest Gump; in 2017 he outshone his other three panellists: Helen Clark, Geoffrey…
Continue reading this entry »

IN OPEN SEAS: Part I: On the Seashore: (1943-1970)

Brian Easton (Journalist) Interviews Brian Easton (Economist) Published in Asymmetric Information, Issue 71 August 2021. You grew up in Christchurch? In Somerfield, in the south of the city, in a state house the family bought. Dad was an electrician who in the middle of his life became a psychopaedic nurse. Mum was a clerical worker…
Continue reading this entry »

We Must Avoid Treating Māori As Living Fossils.

There are times when tikanga needs to be broken for tikanga to survive. I recently gave a presentation on Māori economic history based on my Not in Narrow Seas. Its most important message was that Māori proved to be a very adaptable people continually evolving as new opportunities arose. The European tradition recalls the Duke…
Continue reading this entry »

Good and Faithful Servant: Jas McKenzie 1939-2020

Policy Quarterly Vol 16 No 3 (2020) p.79-80. The earliest assessment of Jas that I recall is that he was ‘New Zealand’s John Stone’, referring to a towering secretary of the Australian Treasury. When I told Jas this, he was appalled because their political views were very different. I explained that the comparison arose because…
Continue reading this entry »

David Mayes: 1946–2017

David Mayes, Professor of Finance at the University of Auckland, died on November 30, 2017, aged 71. Asymetric Information No 61, April 2018, p.6 David studied for a PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at the University of Oxford, graduating in 1968, before completing his PhD at the University of Bristol in 1971. Much of his…
Continue reading this entry »

Those Who Shaped New Zealand Make an Impression.

An interview by Emma Beer, published in ‘The Wellingtonian’, 24 November, 2011. Keywords: Literature and Culture; Political Economy & History; What begins with Michael Joseph Savage and Gordon Coates and ends with Rob Muldoon and Roger Douglas? A new exhibition that catalogues 60 of the most important makers of modern New Zealand, curated by Wellington…
Continue reading this entry »