Wild dreams and realistic visions: what restorative justice could look like in the next decade

In an ideal world, restorative justice could be the "main system" for dealing with crime and the harm it causes, with traditional court systems operating "as backup", one of the world\u27s leading scholars of restorative justice has argued. In a lecture to the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Howard Zehr of the US’s Eastern Mennonite University said restorative justice in its fullest form offered the chance to create "a new physics of how we live together". He defined restorative justice as " a value-based , relational approach to problems, conflicts and harms that focuses on needs and responsibilities and puts a premium on dialogue among stakeholders". It was already used in practices such as victim-offender dialogue and family group conferencing, which allowed different parties to come together to talk about the impact of crime, share stories, learn from the oth er people and discuss restitution. The traditional justice system , Zehr said, asked questions such as: what rule has been broken, who did it, and what do they deserve? In contrast, restorative justice was based on key concepts such as harm, which created certain needs, especially for victims; this in turn led to obligations, which had to be resolved through engagement. Setting out his "ideal" world, Zehr described a justice system "pyramid", with restorative justice making up the broad base of the system, deterrence a smaller second section and "incapacitation" (including prison) a very small apex. &nbsp

A Reform Architecture for Political Party Funding in Aotearoa New Zealand

We recently published a comprehensive report on political party funding in Aotearoa New Zealand (Rashbrooke and Marriott, 2022). This article documents some of the issues we discovered in the process of writing that report and some of the solutions we propose to address these issues. We recommend stronger donation regulation: capping annual donations at $15,000 and donor identification for donations above$1,500. We also recommend increased state funding: for approximately $2 per voter per annum, ‘big money’ can be eliminated from the political finance arena. This improves transparency and – crucially – can significantly reduce the perception of influence from large donations

Wealth Disparities in New Zealand: Preliminary Report Providing Updated Data from SOFIE

Over the period 2002 to 2010, Statistics New Zealand carried out a longitudinal survey known as the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE). Some eight waves of data were collected. Every second wave (2003/2004, 2005/2006, 2007/2008, and 2009/2010), respondents were asked questions about their wealth holdings. In 2007 Statistics New Zealand published a paper by Jit Cheung, Wealth Disparities in New Zealand, based on data from wave 2. That paper provided an overview of net worth disparity, giving information by mean and by median, and other distribution information including the Gini coefficient and other percentile-based information. Results were also analysed by age, by major ethnic group, by family type, and also by gender, personal income decile, and region. This preliminary paper is the initial part of a project to use data from those waves. The project has two principal purposes: 1. To update the Cheung 2007 paper to include data from waves 4, 6 and 8 of SoFIE; and in addition to extend the format of the results reported by Cheung based on wave 2 of SoFIE to include information as to the extent to which survey respondents in specified wealth subdivisions moved between such sub-divisions over the course of the survey. 2. To demonstrate the richness of the information gathered by SoFIE and to encourage further exploration of the survey’s wealth data

Bridges Both Ways. Transforming the Openness of New Zealand Government.

One of New Zealand’s great strengths is its easy-going, ‘she’ll be right’ attitude; but every strength can become a weakness. That is increasingly the case with the country’s record on public transparency, political participation, and anti-corruption policies. A long-standing record of scoring well on international rankings for integrity and openness has lulled New Zealand into a complacent attitude. While there is much to be proud of, there are also serious problems, as repeatedly highlighted by international surveys. Political donations are badly regulated, official information laws are being circumvented, and opportunities for deep citizen engagement with politics are limited. New Zealand is also passing up the chance to get on board the latest global push for greater openness, which is being impelled both by advances in technology and citizens’ growing expectations of greater transparency in many parts of their lives. New Zealand therefore faces an opportunity – to regain its leadership on openness, and to address some of the weaker parts of its record. With the 2017 general election just months away, now is the perfect time for a discussion on what kind of government New Zealanders want. This report therefore surveys a wide range of pro-openness policies as an aid, and stimulus, to that debate

Wealth Disparities in New Zealand: Final Report

Over the period 2002 to 2010, Statistics New Zealand carried out a longitudinal survey known as the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE). Some eight waves of data were collected. In every second wave (2003/2004, 2005/2006, 2007/2008 and 2009/2010), respondents were asked questions about their wealth holdings. In 2007 Statistics New Zealand published a paper by Jit Cheung, ‘Wealth Disparities in New Zealand’, based on data from wave 2 (2003/2004). This paper provided an overview of net worth disparity, giving information by mean and by median, and other distribution information including the Gini coefficient and other percentile-based information. Results were also analysed by age, by major ethnic group, by family type, and also by gender, personal income decile, and region. In November 2015, we published a paper, ‘Wealth Disparities in New Zealand: Preliminary Report Providing Updated Data from SOFIE’ (IGPS working paper 15/02), which updated the Cheung 2007 paper to include data from waves 4, 6 and 8 of SoFIE. As promised in that paper, we have now extended our research on wealth disparities by using the SoFIE data to investigate two further areas: 1. In Part 1, a longitudinal analysis looking at the extent to which survey respondents in specified wealth sub-divisions moved between such sub-divisions over the course of the survey; and 2. In Part 2, an asset class analysis looking at how wealth holdings across the spectrum are divided among the different classes, for both assets and liabilities. Note that the results presented here for wave 2 differ a little from the original results owing to changes made to SoFIE population weightings after 2007

Bridges Both Ways. Transforming the Openness of New Zealand Government.

One of New Zealand’s great strengths is its easy-going, ‘she’ll be right’ attitude; but every strength can become a weakness. That is increasingly the case with the country’s record on public transparency, political participation, and anti-corruption policies. A long-standing record of scoring well on international rankings for integrity and openness has lulled New Zealand into a complacent attitude. While there is much to be proud of, there are also serious problems, as repeatedly highlighted by international surveys. Political donations are badly regulated, official information laws are being circumvented, and opportunities for deep citizen engagement with politics are limited. New Zealand is also passing up the chance to get on board the latest global push for greater openness, which is being impelled both by advances in technology and citizens’ growing expectations of greater transparency in many parts of their lives. New Zealand therefore faces an opportunity – to regain its leadership on openness, and to address some of the weaker parts of its record. With the 2017 general election just months away, now is the perfect time for a discussion on what kind of government New Zealanders want. This report therefore surveys a wide range of pro-openness policies as an aid, and stimulus, to that debate

Wealth Disparities in New Zealand: Preliminary Report Providing Updated Data from SOFIE

Over the period 2002 to 2010, Statistics New Zealand carried out a longitudinal survey known as the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE). Some eight waves of data were collected. Every second wave (2003/2004, 2005/2006, 2007/2008, and 2009/2010), respondents were asked questions about their wealth holdings. In 2007 Statistics New Zealand published a paper by Jit Cheung, Wealth Disparities in New Zealand, based on data from wave 2. That paper provided an overview of net worth disparity, giving information by mean and by median, and other distribution information including the Gini coefficient and other percentile-based information. Results were also analysed by age, by major ethnic group, by family type, and also by gender, personal income decile, and region. This preliminary paper is the initial part of a project to use data from those waves. The project has two principal purposes: 1. To update the Cheung 2007 paper to include data from waves 4, 6 and 8 of SoFIE; and in addition to extend the format of the results reported by Cheung based on wave 2 of SoFIE to include information as to the extent to which survey respondents in specified wealth subdivisions moved between such sub-divisions over the course of the survey. 2. To demonstrate the richness of the information gathered by SoFIE and to encourage further exploration of the survey’s wealth data

Why income gaps matter: the treasury and the tricky issue of inequality

The income gap between rich and poor, which is now much larger in most developed countries than it was 30 years ago, has become one of the more pressing problems facing both the public and policy makers. One approach to this problem of (in)equality is to argue that the income gaps themselves are concerning, and should be narrowed. If we think of the income distribution as a ladder, this is the equivalent of saying that the rungs on the ladder are too far apart. A second approach, however, is to say that income gaps per se are not of concern; what matters is whether people can move freely between those different incomes – whether they can jump, as it were, from one rung to another. There are still other approaches, of course, but the contrast between these two is very revealing and merits closer scrutiny. Policy Quarterly – Volume 10, Issue 1 – February 201

Wealth disparities in NZ

Introduction Over the period 2002 to 2010, Statistics New Zealand carried out a longitudinal survey known as the Survey of Family, Income and Employment (SoFIE). Some eight waves of data were collected. Every second wave (2003/2004, 2005/2006, 2007/2008, and 2009/2010), respondents were asked questions about their wealth holdings. In 2007 Statistics New Zealand published a paper by Jit Cheung, Wealth Disparities in New Zealand, based on data from wave 2. That paper provided an overview of net worth disparity, giving information by mean and by median, and other distribution information including the Gini coefficient and other percentile-based information. Results were also analysed by age, by major ethnic group, by family type, and also by gender, personal income decile, and region. This preliminary paper is the initial part of a project to use data from those waves. The project has two principal purposes: To update the Cheung 2007 paper to include data from waves 4, 6 and 8 of SoFIE; and in addition to extend the format of the results reported by Cheung based on wave 2 of SoFIE to include information as to the extent to which survey respondents in specified wealth sub- divisions moved between such sub-divisions over the course of the survey. To demonstrate the richness of the information gathered by SoFIE and to encourage further exploration of the survey’s wealth data. In view of interest already expressed in the project, this preliminary paper provides updates to the main tables provided in the 2007 Cheung paper, using data from all four waves. As a departure from the usual approach for IGPS working papers, little interpretation of results is given; this will be contained in the final paper. Researchers are invited to take the results provided in this preliminary paper as a starting point for discussion of policy issues pertaining to the distribution of wealth, and to make their own in-depth investigations to illuminate the disparate processes of wealth accumulation. The authors welcome feedback as to particular areas of analysis suggested by the data in this paper. The final paper will include the longitudinal analysis mentioned above. This will be based on the data for the surviving respondents in wave 8, and analyse movement between quintiles in their net wealth holdings over the survey period, according to their wave 8 ethnicity, family type, age group, income quintile, gender and region. We plan to include some simple analysis of those who dropped out between waves, to the extent this is feasible. Finally, please note that the results presented here for wave 2 differ a little from the original results as the result of changes made to SoFIE population weightings after 2007. Also, the separate analysis in the 2007 paper of the position of individuals with negative net worth has not been repeated; we took the view that to be useful, this had to be done in more depth than was possible in the 2007 paper format