Max Rashbrooke (born 1980) is a New Zealand journalist, political writer and researcher. He is an adjunct senior research fellow in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written extensively on inequality in New Zealand and other aspects of public policy.

Life and career

Rashbrooke was born in

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

in 1980, where he attended Muritai Primary School and Petone College. At Petone College he received the highest New Zealand score in the 1997 Australasian Schools English Competition. He attended

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington (), also known by its shorter names "VUW" or "Vic", is a public university, public research university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of New Zealand Parliament, Parliament, and w ...

where he was the editor of student magazine '' Salient'' and graduated in 2001 with a BA (Honours) in English literature. From 2003 to 2010 Rashbrooke was based in London, where he worked as a political journalist, including as a freelance journalist for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

''. His experiences in London during the

2008 financial crisis The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC), was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes of the 2008 crisis included excessive speculation on housing values by both homeowners ...

helped develop his political views. After moving back to New Zealand in 2011, he worked as a freelance researcher and commentator, and in 2014 joined Victoria University's Institute for Governance and Policy Studies as a senior associate. When the institute closed in 2023, he became an adjunct senior research fellow in Victoria University's School of Government. In 2024, Rashbrooke, along with two co-founders, launched the Institute for Democratic and Economic Analysis (IDEA), an independent public policy think-tank. Rashbrooke's works include four books on inequality in New Zealand published between 2013 and 2021. News website ''Stuff'' has said his first book "both coincided with and helped to motivate a national debate about the widening gap between rich and poor". In 2018 he published ''Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action''. He has received the Bruce Jesson Senior Journalism Award on two occasions, was a 2015 Winston Churchill Fellow, and held the 2020 J.D. Stout Research Fellowship at Victoria University.

Selected works

* ''Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis'' (Bridget Williams Books, 2013) * ''The Inequality Debate: An Introduction'' (Bridget Williams Books, 2014) * ''Wealth and New Zealand'' (Bridget Williams Books, 2015) * ''Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action'' (Bridget Williams Books, 2018) * ''Too Much Money: How Wealth Disparities Are Unbalancing Aotearoa New Zealand'' (Bridget Williams Books, 2021)

References

External links

*
Profile
on

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Read NZ Te Pou Muramura (formerly the New Zealand Book Council) is a not-for-profit organisation that presents a wide range of programmes to promote books and reading in New Zealand. It was established in 1972 and its programmes have included ...

Profile
on the TED website
IDEA Institute
think tank co-founded by Rashbrooke {{DEFAULTSORT:Rashbrooke, Max 1980 births Living people Writers from Wellington City Victoria University of Wellington alumni 21st-century New Zealand journalists 21st-century New Zealand non-fiction writers New Zealand male journalists New Zealand male non-fiction writers New Zealand political journalists New Zealand political writers New Zealand columnists