Dive into some of the big issues facing New Zealand with this bundle of hard-hitting BWB Texts. These four works are combined into one easy-to-read e-book, available direct and DRM-free from our website or from international e-book retailers. Tracey Barnett’s The Quiet War on Asylum addresses a big question: Why would New Zealand, a country that has never had a boatload of asylum arrivals in modern history, suddenly legislate for mass detention? Jane Kelsey looks hard at the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and the impact it may have on New Zealand if enacted. The penetrating discussion of the dramatic transformation in penal thought in New Zealand, and the lasting damage it has caused, is revealed in John Pratt’s A Punitive Society. Robert Wade’s tour of New Zealand in 2013 caused headlines and Inequality and the West places the local inequality debate against a global backdrop. BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Commissioned as short digital-first works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.

The poor standard of current housing, and the inability of too many people on low incomes to access decent housing, is causing a cascade of problems that are avoidable. Housing affordability. Unhealthy homes. Wealth inequality. Environmental sustainability. Social mobility. The state of New Zealand housing is central to many major issues confronting this country. In this wide-ranging BWB Text, leading international housing researcher Philippa Howden-Chapman reveals how New Zealand has lost its way on housing. This succinct introduction, drawing on two decades of award-winning research, helps chart a new way ahead for housing that is healthy, inclusive and sustainable.

New Zealanders are too complacent about the continuing erosion of their right to know what government is doing 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 editor, Gavin Ellis chronicles the patterns of erosion and calls for entrenchment of the Bill of Rights Act. As supreme law, it would set a high bar that politicians must hurdle before freedom of expression could be curtailed.

Award-winning New Zealand writers Martin Edmond, Maurice Gee, Kirsty Gunn and Owen Marshall explore life and memory in this bundle of BWB Texts. These four works are combined into one easy-to-read e-book, available direct and DRM-free from our website or from international e-book retailers. Martin Edmond’s Barefoot Years is a memoir in which the author attempts to re-inhabit the lost domain of childhood. Widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest fiction writers, Maurice Gee has written virtually no non-fiction. The exceptions are the two exquisite childhood reminiscences combined in a mini-memoir, Creeks and Kitchens. In this exquisitely written ‘notebook’ – ‘My Katherine Mansfield Project’ – Kirsty Gunn explores the meaning of ‘home’ in Thorndon. Owen Marshall reflects at length on his writing career and the forces that have shaped him as a writer, in Tunes for Bears to Dance To. BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Commissioned as short digital-first works, BWB Texts unlock diverse stories, insights and analysis from the best of our past, present and future New Zealand writing.

In an era of populist politics, Brexit, Donald Trump, 24-hour news cycles and perpetual election campaigning, how do we govern well for the future? How do we take the long view, ensuring that present-day policy decisions reflect the needs and safeguard the interests of future generations? In this timely BWB Text, acclaimed policy scholar Jonathan Boston sets out what ‘anticipatory governance’ might look like in New Zealand. Confronted with a world becoming more uncertain by the day, this book is essential reading for anyone questioning how democratic societies can tackle the unprecedented challenges ahead.

For novelist Stephanie Johnson, her relationship with Australia and Australians has been an ambivalent one. She has lived there for periods in her life, and her first book, a collection of short stories, was actually published in Australia. She was described then as a young Australian writer, something she says she agreed to ‘for reasons that are complex and some of them hardly honourable’. For Johnson the longing to return has waxed and waned. ‘Why don’t I live there?’ she often asks herself. Yet she is a sixth-generation New Zealander. In this BWB Text Johnson explores her elusive and ambivalent feelings about the sunburnt country – which includes a musician’s road trip there with her singer-songwriter son Skyscraper Stan – and in so doing casts fascinating light on some of the formative influences that have shaped the work of this award-winning New Zealand writer.

The parlous state of our freshwater ecosystems is just one signal that we face a more widespread, and unprecedented, environmental crisis. New Zealand’s dairy industry is big business. But what are the hidden – and not so hidden – costs of intensive farming? Evidence presented here by ecologist Mike Joy demonstrates that intensive dairy farming has degraded our freshwater rivers, streams and lakes to an alarming degree. This situation, he argues, has arisen primarily through governmental policy that prioritises short-term economic growth over long-term environmental sustainability. This BWB Text is a call to arms, urging New Zealand to change course or risk the wellbeing of future generations.