• News

    No evidence that bigger councils are better, says expert

    by  • February 19, 2015 • News • 1 Comment

    Experts have clashed over whether Wellington should emulate Auckland and amalgamate its local councils, in a public seminar jointly hosted by Victoria University’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies and the Centre for Accounting, Governance and Taxation Research. Introducing the debate, Graham Sansom, an adjunct professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, noted that...

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    Treasury contemplates turning SOEs into co-ops

    by  • December 4, 2014 • Articles, News • 0 Comments

    I was at a conference recently about co-operatives and their role in the twenty-first century, and heard something interesting from Girol Karacaoglu, the Treasury’s chief economist. Karacaoglu, who used to run what is now the Co-operative Bank and has been a big supporter of this conference, was chairing a session entitled ‘Cooperatives as an...

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    Community-based public services can simply put govt workers out of jobs, academic says

    by  • November 6, 2014 • News • 2 Comments

    Novel community-based methods of delivering public services can have the “perverse incentive” of replacing paid public sector staff with volunteers. That was the message of a lecture delivered by Dr Jonathan Scott, head of the Centre for Strategy and Leadership at Teesside University (UK), in a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy...

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    New Zealand must take a lead on transparency

    by  • June 11, 2014 • News • 1 Comment

    New Zealand should be taking a leadership role in international efforts to promote open and transparent government, Dr Michael Macaulay said in a talk to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies. Macaulay, the institute’s incoming director, attended a recent Asia-Pacific Summit for the Open Government Partnership, which was launched in 2011 with eight...

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    Voluntary pledges way forward on climate change

    by  • April 23, 2014 • Articles, News • 2 Comments

    Progress on a new global treaty on climate change will happen through countries making voluntary pledges instead of signing up to mandated emissions cuts, according to Dr Christina Hood of the International Energy Agency. Giving a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Hood said the next big step in international climate...

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