There are perhaps three fundamental questions about inequality. What are its impacts, why should we care and what can we – as a country – do about it?

Wealth inequality is accompanied by negative consequences for both individuals and society, including the erosion of democracy. Concentrated wealth can generate unequal political influence that in turn leads to policies reinforcing both types of inequality; economic and political. Although so far spared the worst of these effects, New Zealand is by no means immune.

Max Rashbrooke – an author, journalist and academic who has written extensively on both subjects – will set out the challenges to equality and democracy and how they might be countered. He argues a much deeper democracy could deliver us the kind of government we need in the 21stcentury.

Monday, July 29, 6-7.30 PM, The Hilton Hotel (room TBC), $5 koha at door. Please register as seating will be limited, with tickets available through Catalyst Trust’s Eventbrite page from one month prior. Please bring your tickets (printed, emailed or Eventbrite app).

Max Rashbrooke - Bio

Max Rashbrooke has written and edited several works on income and wealth inequality in New Zealand, to help shape the growing debate on economic imbalances in this country. Inequality: a New Zealand Crisis, which he edited in 2013, was updated and republished late 2018. His most recent book - “Government for the Public Good: the Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action” - looks at the privatisation and outsourcing of recent decades and suggests changes that might serve New Zealanders better. Both published by Bridget Williams Books (BWB) in late 2018.

He is a senior associate of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. As a journalist, he has written for outlets in Britain and New Zealand including The Guardian, National Business Review and Metro. He has twice been the recipient of the Bruce Jesson Senior Journalism Award and was a 2015 Winston Churchill Fellow.