The annual Bruce Jesson lecture is being held in Auckland tomorrow. This year its Professor Paul Dalziel on "Recreating Full Employment":
Bruce Jesson’s last book, Only Their Purpose is Mad, tracked the destructive impacts of what he termed “the open slather approach to economic reform”. Twenty years after the reforms, New Zealand still lives with the legacy of that period in the form of unemployment and poverty. The government’s response is to blame the social welfare system and to propose policy reforms that will take us along the same failed path of the 1990s. Bruce Jesson finished his book by arguing that “the challenge facing New Zealand is to redefine the role of the nation in the modern global economy”. He called for nation-building understood as “creating a cohesive society that can act internationally with some sense of purpose”. This lecture will address Jesson’s challenge. It aims to set out a concrete programme for nation-building built on strategies to recreate full employment.When: 18:30, Wednesday 26 October
Where: Maidment Theatre, Auckland University
