Kieran Madden
About Kieran Madden
With prior experience in project management and policy, Kieran has led our research team since 2015. Joining Maxim Institute after completing a Master’s in Public Policy from the Crawford School of Economics and Government at ANU, he is now working on a multi-year, multi-level research project on poverty in New Zealand.
Most Recent Activity
Half-right no substitute for the whole truth
By Kieran Madden
“A problem well-defined is a problem half-solved,” the saying goes. Caricatures of complex problems on the other hand, lead us…
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The early years consensus
By Kieran Madden
The first three years are critical for a child’s development and long-term success in life, but policy has unfortunately been…
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Getting the story straight on jobs
By Kieran Madden
“Lies, damn lies, and statistics”—so the saying goes. Statistics New Zealand’s release of this June’s unemployment figures wasn’t a lie,…
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Taking responsibility
By Kieran Madden
Before a momentous mission launching two NASA astronauts into orbit from Cape Canaveral in May this year, tech entrepreneur Elon…
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Keeping the “forgotten sector” together
By Kieran Madden
My two-year old daughter hasn’t quite worked out that some things cannot be fixed or brought back to life, no…
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Educational hubs or babysitters clubs
By Kieran Madden
The Alert Level 3 announcement that schools would be opened was met with a collective sigh of relief from some…
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Looking beyond our bubbles
By Kieran Madden
We are in extraordinary times, calling rightly for extraordinary measures. Although our vision of the future is obscured by the…
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Total rugby and the future of work
By Kieran Madden
The futurists are hailing that the “the fourth industrial revolution” is upon us, a time where robots will take over…
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Policy for the people, with the people
By Kieran Madden
While reading about a promising new policy initiative by a bright-eyed non-profit organisation, I did a double-take when I read…
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“Random” answers for poverty prove Nobel-worthy
By Kieran Madden
Far too often, debates on topics that really matter are mired in oversimplification at best, and stagnate in sloganeering at…
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The failure of audacious goals
By Kieran Madden
“Goals are for losers.” I wouldn’t put it quite as provocatively as cartoonist Scott Adams did in his book How…
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Avoiding the election budget “black holes”
By Kieran Madden
In April this year, astrophysicists did the seemingly impossible and took a photo of a black hole. The black hole…
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The Art of Disagreeing Agreeably
By Kieran Madden
Illustrations by Anieszka Banks When engaging with someone you disagree with, own the fact that it could get awkward. New Zealanders…
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Don’t turn away
By Kieran Madden
“Our noses were almost touching…we were breathing the same air.” These are the words of Marcia Khoza, whose mother was…
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The “yeah, nah” government
By Kieran Madden
That gutting feeling of unfulfilled expectations is hard to shake, and the bigger the promise, the bigger the disappointment. The…
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Raising resilient children through healthy relationships
By Kieran Madden
When we hear of the overwhelming, and often heart-breaking challenges that some families face it can be easy to feel…
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This is our home
By Kieran Madden
Vibrant flowers gild the gates of the Christchurch mosques, each bouquet laid with trembling hands, representing a beautiful solidarity amidst…
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Now is the time to take our changing future seriously
By Kieran Madden
The Government is dead-set on improving “wellbeing” as the mark of their leadership, and “long-term intergenerational wellbeing” in particular. This…
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Vocational surgery required
By Kieran Madden
Our vocational educational system is on life support— haemorrhaging badly in desperate need of surgery. Four of New Zealand’s sixteen…
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Killing the cult of consumerism
By Kieran Madden
“Our Gross National Product…measures everything, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Bobby Kennedy’s famous 1968 speech decried how measures like…
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