Complacent Nation

‘We have become a society where we place insufficient value on democratic rights because we have taken them for granted for longer than is safe.’ 


New Zealanders are too complacent about the continuing erosion of their right to know what government is going on their behalf. Political risk has become a primary consideration in whether official information requests will be met, and successive governments have allowed free speech rights to be overridden. 


Drawing on decades of experience as a journalist and newspaper editor, Gavin Ellis chronicles these patterns of erosion. It is time, he argues, for New Zealanders to reaffirm their democratic rights or risk further deterioration to freedom of speech and our civic knowledge.