Brian Easton

Listener 31 January 1998.

Keywords Health

The health reforms debate enters a new stage in 1998 with the indicative referendum that Government should increase its spending on health services to at least 7 percent of GDP, if necessary by increasing personal income tax. Over the last six years the government has taken the initiative. The referendum presents the people seizing the initiative in 1998.

Listener 31 January, 1998.

Keywords: Governance; Health;

The proposed roading reforms are a typical case of the identification of a problem – road congestion in Auckland and Wellington – and a policy solution which has nothing to do with the problem, but forces the sector to conform to “THE MODEL” of commercialising everything. Its report is obscured and confused: it even gives two different months for when it was published. We might predict the outcome if the policy goes ahead.

Listener 17 January, 1998.

Keywords: History of Ideas, Methodology & Philosophy;

The Anti Economist League (AEL) is an inevitable reaction to the state of New Zealand economics. Their objectives are (1) expose the invalidity of economists’ dogma, and (2) eliminate economists from public policy making. This columnist has no difficulty with the first aim but is understandably nervous about the second.