Dear Ministry of Social Development,

Please supply any documents (including reports, briefings and memos) that discuss universal basic income initiatives (either in New Zealand or elsewhere).

For clarity, I interested in any document that discusses universal basic income pilots, negative income taxes, unconditional cash transfers, and any document that discusses design issues associated with introducing a universal basic income, whether hypothetical or otherwise.

Please note that I am only interested in documents dated since 1 January 2000.

Yours faithfully,

James Adams

Dear OIA_Requests (MSD),

Thank-you for your email. I do not want to create any unnecessary work for your staff, so I would be more than happy to narrow the scope of the request.

Firstly, I would be happy to receive only documents from 2008 onwards. If there are major reports by MSD staff that are predominately about the costs and benefits of a UBI that were written from 2000-2008, I would appreciate a list of the titles of these reports.

Secondly, I am particularly interested in any reports or briefings that were sent to your Minister on the topic of Universal Basic Income schemes. Also, if there are any summary reports, written by MSD staff, that estimate the costs and benefits of introducing a UBI scheme in New Zealand, I would be interested in reading these (even if the report did not go to the Minister).

Thirdly, I am not interested in papers which are predominately economic theory or modelling. Similarly, reports or briefings that merely mention the idea of a UBI are not of any interest.

My reason for asking for this information is to get a sense of whether MSD looked into UBI schemes in any detail and what, if any, the key findings were. Breadth is more important to me than depth, although I appreciate that you will want to ensure that the information you provide gives a fair representation of the work done by your Ministry. Please do not hesitate to get in touch again if you require further guidance.

Yours sincerely,

James Adams

Dear Nicholas Ross,

I wish to extend my thanks for your response. The work that you do is an important part of keeping our democracy alive, and I appreciate the work that has gone into answering my query.

Thank-you again,

Yours sincerely,

James Adams