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2010 Seminars
2010 Seminars
A series of lunch time seminars presented by the School of Government and the Institute of Policy Studies.
Wednesday 15 December - Mexican Hat Dance or Tequila Sunrise?: The Global Climate Change Negotiations after Cancun
Dr Adrian Macey, John Carnegie and Mark Belton discussed the outcome and implications of the U.N Climate Change Conference in Cancun (COP)
Dr Adrian Macey was New Zealand's first climate change ambassador, from 2006-2010, responsible for international climate change negotiations, coordination of international policy and domestic outreach. In June 2010 he was elected to his current position of Vice Chair of the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol negotiations.
John Carnegie is the Manager Energy, Environment and Infrastructure at Business New Zealand
Mark Belton is Managing Director at Permanent Forests International Ltd.
Wednesday 8 December - Professor David Sockice - The Global Financial Crisis and its Implications for Macroeconomics
David Soskice is Research Professor of Comparative Political Economy, University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College. He has held Visiting Professorships at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Connell and Duke. His books include Macroeconomics: Imperfections, Institutions and Policies (with Wendy Carlin) (2006); Varieties of Capitalism: the Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (ed. with Peter A. Hall) (2001); Unions, Employers and Central Banks: Wage Bargaining and Macroeconomic Regimes in an Integrating Europe (ed. with Torben Iversen, and Jonas Pontusson) (2000); Institutional Frameworks and Labour Market Performance (ed. with Friedrich Buttler, Wolfgang Franz, and Ronald Schettkat) (1995) and Macroeconomics and the Wage Bargain: A Modern Approach to Employment, Inflation and Exchange Rates (with Wendy Carlin) (1990).
Friday 26 November - Welfare Reform: Alternative Views on the Options
In March this year the Government established an independent Welfare Working Group to undertake a fundamental review of New Zealand's welfare system. The review is examining three key questions: What is New Zealand doing to reduce long-term welfare dependency? Is the current welfare system's incentives structure appropriate? Is the welfare system delivering the social outcomes that taxpayers want, including sustainability, fairness and access? The review process comprises ongoing community consultation, and the preparation of both an Issues paper (August 2010) and an Options paper (November 2010), with a final recommendations report to the Government scheduled for February 2011.
The Institute of Policy Studies is hosting the Welfare Working Group and is facilitating wider debate on the welfare system through a range of public events. In this seminar four prominent analysts and advocates – several from the Alternative Welfare Working Group – provided commentary on the directions set out by the Welfare Working Group as well as presenting wider analysis of alternative approaches to reform.
Presenters
Professor Paul Dalziel, Lincoln University and Alternative Welfare Working Group, is science leader of the five-year FRST-funded research programme on education employment linkages. Download presentation here
Wendi Wicks is the national policy researcher for DPA (New Zealand) Inc. - the national organisation of disabled people in New Zealand, and is a member of the Alternative Welfare Working Group.
Dr Susan St John, University of Auckland, is Co-director of the Retirement Policy and Research Centre and is a Member of the editorial board of PensionReforms.
Download presentation here
Thursday 25 November - Hon David Cunliffe - Towards Tomorrow: Labour's New Economic Framework
Download entire speech here
Labour Finance Spokesperson Hon David Cunliffe detailed Labour's bold new economic policy narrative, building on the new direction announced by Labour Leader Phil Goff at the party's landmark 2010 conference. Mr Cunliffe outlined why the assumptions of the pre-GFC world need to be re-examined and how Labour's modern, active approach will lift growth and protect jobs for New Zealanders.
Hon David Cunliffe is Labour's Spokesperson for Finance. He is a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and Member of Parliament for New Lynn.
Thursday 18 November - John Whitehead - Macroeconomic Policy: Making it work for New Zealand
Download entire speech here
The speech reflected on macroeconomic policy in New Zealand, how the model has changed over time, and what lies ahead in the face of complex economic challenges.
John Whitehead was appointed as Secretary to the Treasury in April 2003. In this role he is Chief Executive and heads the Treasury's Executive Leadership Team, supported by two deputy chief executives, Andrew Kibblewhite and Gabriel Makhlouf. John Whitehead has been a public servant for more than 30 years and has spent most of that time at the Treasury, which he joined in 1982. He has held senior positions at Treasury including tax policy, economics and macroeconomics.
Friday 12 November - Professor Peter Davis - Rectifying the 'quantitative deficit' in New Zealand social science: A modest proposal
Jointly presented by the School of Government, Institute of Policy Studies and the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations.
There is a significant "quantitative deficit" in the social sciences in New Zealand. For example, there are almost no sociology and political science departments in the country with more than one staff member having significant quantitative skills, and in almost all such departments students can get to honours level and beyond without ever having been exposed to any "non-qualitative" research skills. Yet, over the course of just five laboratory sessions spread over a standard semester in a Sociology honours class, we were able to get students with little or no previous methodological background to copy down international social survey data sets and present credible empirical analyses of issues of substance. We need to cooperate across disciplines and institutions to halt and reverse what is otherwise almost certainly a terminal decline in skills base for the social sciences.
Peter Davis is Professor, Sociology of Health and Well-Being, at The University of Auckland. He is Senior Editor (Health Policy), Social Science & Medicine. In 2003 Peter was the recipient of the New Zealand Medical Association's highest honour, the Chairman's Award for 2003. He also heads the COMPASS (Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences) Research Centre.
Friday 29 October - The Canterbury Earthquake: A Social, Economic and Risk Planning Stocktake
Four 15 minute presentations followed by a moderated interactive panel discussion of approximately one hour.
Professor Martha Savage - the geophysical aspects
Associate Professor Andrew Charleson - the implications for building design and building codes.
Professor John McClure - the behavioural aspects
Mr David Galt - the economic and fiscal impact
Martha Savage is Professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. Her interest is in seismology and its relation to tectonics and earthquake hazards, more specifically seismic anisotropy.
Associate Professor Andrew Charleson joined the staff of the School of Architecture at Victoria University in 1987 after extensive structural engineering experience in New Zealand and overseas.
John McClure is Professor at the School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington. He has a special interest in social judgment; for example, causal attributions (folk psychology); biases such as unrealistic optimism; and risk judgments, and the way these judgments affect helplessness and fatalism.
David Galt is Manager, Forecasting and Monitoring at the New Zealand Treasury.
Wednesday 27 October - Mai Chen - Government accountability and transparency
In association with Transparency International
Mai Chen spoke about the tools in the Public law toolbox to ensure government accountability and transparency. She discussed the further work that needs to be done to ensure that the Public law toolbox is efficient as well as effective and that there are no overlaps and gaps. What is the minimum public law toolbox a country needs to give its citizens confidence in government?
Mai Chen LLB (Hons) Otago LLM (Harvard) FNZIM is a partner in Chen Palmer New Zealand Public law Specialists, which has won the New Zealand Law Award for best Public Law Firm in 2007, 2008 and2009. She is writing a book on the Public Law Toolbox with LexisNexis for publication in December 2011.
Wednesday 29 September - Jim Wallis, Founder and CEO of the Sojourners Community - Can Public Policy be Christian and Should it Be?
An international commentator on faith, ethics and public life, Jim Wallis is founder and CEO of the Sojourners Community based in Washington DC. He is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, with a readership of more than 250,000 worldwide, and a regular columnist in major newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe. He has written ten books, the most well-known of which, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, changed the US political landscape and was on the New York Times bestseller list for four months. He has also taught a course at Harvard University's Divinity School and the Kennedy School of Government on 'Faith, Politics and Society'. He is a member of the White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighbourhood Partnerships.
Friday 1 October - Mr Alastair Bisley, Chair, Land and Water Forum - The Land and Water Forum: A collaborative governance process and its outcomes
The Land and Water Forum emerged as an initiative of a large number of stakeholders in the management of fresh water. Last year, it was asked by the government to propose a reform of freshwater management, and its report will be launched on 22 September by the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Agriculture.
The Forum was a collaborative governance process, and its report reflects a consensus of the representatives of major stakeholders from the primary sector, environmental NGOs, power generators, tourism and iwi.
Alastair Bisley, who was the Forum's independent Chair, will speak about the nature of the Forum's report, its recommendations, and the process by which it was arrived at.
Friday 24 September - Derek Gill, Institute of Policy Studies, VUW - Organisational Performance Management in the New Zealand Public Sector
This Seminar will cover some of the major research findings from a forthcoming IPS Book – The Iron Cage Revisited - on the performance management of NZ state organisations.
Derek Gill is a Senior Fellow at Victoria University’s Institute of Policy Studies. Currently he is leading the Public Management stream of the Emerging Issues Project, focusing on engaging user/ citizens in the design of public services and managing for performance. Derek has wide-ranging policy interests but with a particular focus on Public Administration and Management based on his work at MSD (CYF), State Services Commission and the Treasury. He has also been seconded to the OECD to work on public governance issues and earlier in his career worked in the NZ Embassy in Washington DC.
Friday 17 September - Professor Martin Manning, Climate Change Research Institute, VUW - A growing need for links between society, policy and research on climate change
To those of us who are climate scientists, the last few years seem to have shown that some aspects of our climate are starting to change either faster or by more than we had expected. At the same time, the media are often portraying a society with increasing dubiousness about this science, while policymakers seem to be faced with increasing inertia for establishing any significant collective response. There is increasing recognition that we do have to adapt in a changing world, but is our environment now moving more rapidly than humanity can?
Dr Martin Manning is the Inaugural Director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University. He has worked as a Theoretical Nuclear Physicist in Canada, the UK and New Zealand, but became progressively involved in atmospheric and climate change science from 1980 onward. He led research programs in NIWA covering atmospheric chemistry and the carbon cycle and represented New Zealand on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Thursday 16 September - Professor Evert Lindquist, VUW (Visiting Professor ANU/ANZSOG) - The Moran Report: An outsider's reflections on public management reforms across the ditch
The Review of Australian Government Administration was initiated and approved by the Rudd governments as a framework for public service reform. Both Prime Minister Gillard and Opposition Leader Abbott indicated that they would de-fund this initiative. But does this mean that the reform is dead? Or are the strategic posture and directions as well as the specific initiatives emerging from the Moran review more salient than ever?
Dr. Evert Lindquist (PhD Berkley) is a Professor and Director at the University of Victoria's School of Public Administration. During 2010 Professor Lindquist will hold the ANU/ANZSOG Chair in Applied Public Management at the Australian National University and working with ANZSOG on research related to public sector reform issues. He has published widely on topics relating to public sector reform, governance and decision-making, policy capability, central agencies and initiatives, think tanks, and consultation.
Tuesday 14 September - Dr Todd Bridgman, Victoria Management School - The Global Financial Crisis: A Crisis of Relevance for Universities?
This seminar reported on an empirical study which finds academics in New Zealand to have been largely absent from the public conversation on the GFC, despite universities having a statutory obligation under the Education Act (1989) to be the ‘critic and conscience of society’. The dominant public voices on the GFC have been experts who are not academics, which raises questions about the distinctive contribution of universities to a public understanding of major societal issues. In an environment where universities face increasing demands from stakeholders to demonstrate their relevance, their public role warrants consideration.
Todd Bridgman is a senior lecturer in organisational behaviour in the Victoria Management School and a former journalist. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge and and has recently edited The Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies (Oxford University Press, 2009) with Mats Alvesson and Hugh Willmott.
Tuesday 7 September - Professor James Tooley, Professor of Education Policy at Newcastle University, UK - The Beautiful Tree: How the world's poorest people are educating themselves
James Tooley recounted stories of people who are harnessing their creativity and ingenuity to provide quality education to some of the poorest children in the world. He built a case for education not rooted in a bureaucratic system, but in the communities that it serves, providing lessons for developed countries. James Tooley is professor of education policy at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. He has won numerous awards for his ground-breaking research into private education for the poor in India, China and Africa.
Friday 27 August - Fei Tevi, Pacific Conference of Churches and Barry Coates, Oxfam New Zealand - Better connecting Pacific trade and sustainable economic development to poverty reduction
Trade and sustainable economic development is vitally important for the Pacific's development and well-being. But the rules on trade need to be fair, promote sustainable development and cultural diversity, and help the Pacific to provide jobs and opportunities, especially for the growing numbers of youth. If sustainable economic development is to be linked with poverty reduction, as the New Zealand government mandate and policy focus for NZAID states, then it must generate broad-based equitable benefits that reach vulnerable, rural Pacific communities.
Fei Tevi and Barry Coates discussed aspects of Pacific trade and sustainable development that will lead to improvements that are hugely important for the Pacific peoples and economies. This seminar coincided with the recent launch of Oxfam's original research, 'Learning from experience: Sustainable economic development in the Pacific',(http://www.oxfam.org.nz/resources/onlinereports/learning-from-experience6.pdf to download) that provides valuable insights into the strategies that enabled some Pacific enterprises to successfully make the leap into overseas markets while generating broad based equitable benefits, appropriate to the local culture, and scalable, to make a significant contribution to the region's development.
Fe'iloakitau Kaho Tevi is General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, a fellowship of churches and national councils of churches covering 5.5 million of the Pacific region's population of 8 million Pacific Islanders.
Barry Coates is Executive Director of Oxfam New Zealand, an affiliate of Oxfam International. Oxfam New Zealand links practical grassroots development projects, mainly focused on the Pacific and Asia, with campaigns to address the root causes of poverty, insecurity and social injustice.
Tuesday 24 August - Franz Litz, World Resources Institute - Climate Change: A View for the U.S
Prospects for Global Action to Tackle Climate Change: a View from the United States
Current Developments in U.S. Climate Change Policy
In association with the US Embassy
Now that the dust has settled on the Accord reached by international climate change negotiators in Copenhagen, what are the prospects for concerted global action to fend off the worse effects of climate change? The non-binding Copenhagen Accord relies on a country-by-country approach to emissions reductions, coupled with a framework for measuring, monitoring and verifying those reductions. This bottom-up approach was made necessary in part by the domestic political context within the United States—the largest contributor to climate change pollution and perhaps the slowest major economy to take concerted national action to reduce emissions. But can a bottom-up approach be successful?
Dr Franz Litz, Senior Fellow with the Washington, DC-based environmental think tank, the World Resources Institute, will speak on the prospects for effective global climate change action and the likelihood that the United States will step up to the challenge of climate change.
20 August - Public Management for the 21st Century: The Public Sphere Redux Associate Professor Bill Ryan, School of Government, Victoria University
17 August - The Coming Carbon Crunch Dr Geoff Bertram, Senior Researcher, IPS and CCRI and Simon Terry, Executive Director of the Sustainability Council
The Carbon Challenge - A quick summary of the book
6 August - New Ways of Viewing Official Statistics Prof Sharleen Forbes, Ad Prof of Official Statistics, SoG, Victoria University
16 July Leadership, political parties and parliamentary performance in the Pacific Islands - Assoc Prof Graham Hassall
9 July Managing Personal Relationship Conflicts of Interest in the Public Sector
Dr Russell Harding
25 June Politics and Ecology: Case Studies in Negotiating Ecology in Conservation, Preservation and Restoration Policymaking Dr Mike McGinnis
18 June - Partisan Appointees and Public Servants: An International Analysis of the Role of the Political Advisor Dr Chris Eichbaum
4 June - Measuring Wellbeing: International Developments and the New Zealand Experience Conal Smith
21 May - Perspectives on the 2010 Budget Brenda Pilott, Shamubeel Eaqub and Dr Geoff Bertram
14 May - the British General Election and the Prospects for Electoral Reform
Jacob Rowbottom
30 April - Taking Governance Seriously: Reform of Public Sector Audit Committees in New South Wales Dr Michael Di Francesco
16 April - Participatory Policy Analysis
Dr Valentina Dinica
9 April - Adding Value to Policy Analysis and Advice Professor Claudia Scott