[1] At Petone College he received the highest New Zealand score in the 1997 Australasian Schools English Competition.

[2] He attended Victoria University of Wellington where he was the editor of student magazine Salient and graduated in 2001 with a BA (Honours) in English literature.

[2] After moving back to New Zealand in 2011, he worked as a freelance researcher and commentator, and in 2014 joined Victoria University's Institute for Governance and Policy Studies as a senior associate.

News website Stuff has said his first book "both coincided with and helped to motivate a national debate about the widening gap between rich and poor".

[1] He has received the Bruce Jesson Senior Journalism Award on two occasions, was a 2015 Winston Churchill Fellow,[3] and held the 2020 J.D.