2013 Events

"Beyond Greenwash: Environmental Discourses of Appropriation and Resistance" - Keely Kidner (PhD Candidate, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University

Date: 27 September 2013
Time: 11.00am
Venue: RWW 129

In our globalised, media-saturated world, and at a time when climate change is quite literally a “hot topic”, large-scale fossil fuel projects can become very controversial. This thesis explores such polarized situations, focusing on the discourses of industry actors and environmental activists surrounding contentious mining projects. Using two case studies located in Canada and Aotearoa/New Zealand, I analyse video-recorded interviews and collected artefacts (such as pamphlets, information sheets, protest buttons, etc.). This project uses as its foundation a critical ethnographic approach, which recognises and problematizes environmental debates as sites of inequality. I also go beyond language and employ a multimodal framework to analyse action, including gesture, gaze, image, and colour. With this research, I explore the following questions: how are discourses appropriated by the fossil fuel industry to legitimise their expansion? How are these appropriated discourses recognised and creatively resisted by the climate justice movement? And how does all this play out multimodally?

Not-for-profit structures, reporting and accountability

Date: 1 September 2013
Time: 8.00am
Venue: Government Buildings, Lecture Theatre 3

NFP Seminar Series - Seminar 1

Recent reports and proposed legislation (including the Law Commission’s report on Incorporated Societies and the Financial Reporting Bill) raise questions about organisational structure. Choices made affect operational structures, organisational reporting and governance. In this seminar/workshop you will be challenged to consider:

• What changes are occurring in the structure and regulation of not-for-profit entities?
• Is your organisational structure the right one for your operations?
• How does the choice of structure affect your reporting obligations?
• What reporting choices allow your organisation to respond to demands for local and national accountability?

A copy of the programme is available here.

For further information and to register please go here.

Study at Vic Day 2013 with the School of Accounting and Commercial Law

Date: 30 August 2013
Time: 8.00am
Venue: Kelburn Campus

On Friday 30 August, Victoria University is holding its annual Study at Vic Open Day. This year again we expect around 3,500 high school students and their families to the Kelburn Campus. The School of Accounting and Commercial Law will be present at the Expo with a stand which will be located at Alan Macdiarmid Rm102 and will also be having two information sessions on accounting, commercial law and taxation at 9.30am and 11.20am respectively in Hugh Mackenzie Rm206.

A copy of the presentation is available here.

The Rise in Foreign Retailing and NZ's GST Exemption: Time for Change?

Date: 20 March 2013
Time: 12.00pm
Venue: Rutherford House, Lecture Theatre 2

Presentation 12.30-1.30pm (tea and coffee provided 12-12.30pm)

In the past two decades the New Zealand retail market has undergone a rapid transformation. What was traditionally bought in stores is now increasingly being bought online. As a result many goods purchased from foreign websites, valued at up to $400 each, legitimately avoid paying 15% GST. Such an exemption creates a distortion that favours overseas retailers over their New Zealand based competitors.

This presentation will report on results from a recent project evaluating the economic and revenue costs of this distortion. It will argue that, by diverting domestic spending offshore, the government not only misses out on GST revenue, but also loses out on some company and PAYE tax revenue and is distorting consumer choices. But there are significant collection cost issues when trying to levy GST on low value purchases from foreign retailers. We discuss of a number of options to collect such GST revenue if New Zealand's foreign GST-free threshold was reduced, and outline how a cost-benefit analysis could be made.

Presented by William Steel, Summar Scholar (Supervised by Norman Gemmell, Lisa Mariott and Toby Daglish).

RSVP to Tracy.Warbrick@vuw.ac.nz

International Tax Reviews and New Zealand's Tax Working Group: What can we learn?

Date: 12 March 2013
Time: 5.30pm

This lecture will examine the implications for tax policy in New Zealand in the light of the UK Mirrlees Review, the Australian Henry Review and New Zealand's Tax Working Group.

Time: 5.30pm for pre-lecture refreshments, followed by the lecture from 6.00-7.00pm

Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Rutherford House, Bunny Street. Refreshments will be served in the foyer.

RSVP to cherry.chang@vuw.ac.nz (Administrator, Chair in Public Finance) or phone 04-463 9656.

Professor Auerbach's biography

Alan J. Auerbach is the Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law, Director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and former Chair of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously taught at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as Economics Department Chair. 

Professor Auerbach was Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992 and has been a consultant to several government agencies and institutions in the United States and abroad. A former Vice President of the American Economic Association, he was Editor of that association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives and is the founding Editor of its American Economic Journal: Economic Policy.

Professor Auerbach is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the National Academy of Social Insurance, and currently Vice President of the National Tax Association, from which he received the Daniel M. Holland Medal in 2011.