Integrity Briefing: NZ’s “Chumocracy” and the suppression of Prof Robert MacCulloch

New Zealand’s “soft corruption” has been called out this week by leading economics professor Robert MacCulloch of the University of Auckland. He’s launched some heavy broadsides at the way that political and business elites in this country are ruining the economy and the political process by their dysfunctional hold on power in which dissent and debate are suppressed using patronage and threats.

MacCulloch’s criticisms come about in the announced closure of his website, which he says is due to pressure from Cabinet Ministers and others. His main complaint seems to be that New Zealand is run by a “chumocracy” of mates whose “cosyism” is leading to national decline.

Cabinet cancel culture?

MacCulloch announced this week that he is closing his long-running blog, explaining that “National, Labour and Big Business NZ have begun to complain & threaten me at the highest levels about my writings. The game has become clear. Continue doing so and it will mean the end of your career” – see: DownToEarth.Kiwi Closing Due to Threats from National & Labour Parties & Big Business NZ Incorporated

MacCulloch, possibly New Zealand’s leading academic economist, has been fearless in combating oligopolies in the economy and exposing the “cosyism” in our political system. As his last blog post says, he’s “exposed the links between the Big Banks, Supermarkets & Building Firms with our Minister of Finance and PM. It has all been too much for the establishment to bear.”

In interviews and writings this week, MacCulloch has outlined how the attempts of himself and others to hold powerful interests to account have been met, not with reasoned rebuttal, but with threats, blacklisting, and institutional pressure designed to silence dissent. His experience provides a rare insider’s account of how New Zealand’s political and business elite police the boundaries of acceptable debate. MacCulloch explicitly claims to be closing his website after receiving “threats from current and former cabinet ministers.”

He has also recounted specific threats and institutional pushback, such as the supermarket chain Foodstuffs attempting to silence critiques of the duopoly by contacting Auckland University over a colleague’s writing. He also revealed that a director of a major New Zealand corporation had recently complained to his employer about his writing. The impact is chilling.

MacCulloch also highlighted the danger of defamation lawsuits and the real risk of being labelled a troublemaker: “You get excommunicated from the little cosy group of inbred Wellington officials and high-ranking boards.” He says he has become “persona non grata”.

Political appointments as patronage

MacCulloch’s core accusation is that New Zealand operates on a system of “soft corruption.” This week, he has explained what this means: “there is a high level of soft corruption going on in the country, and I’ve learned about corruption in New Zealand. It usually is not money under the table like it is in most countries and suitcases of cash. Corruption in New Zealand takes the form of you scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

The message conveyed to him, particularly from figures associated with the current National-led Government, was that positive political commentary would be rewarded with political appointments. He relayed the type of messages he receives from politicians: “You write lovely articles about us, and you tell everyone how wonderful we are, and there’s more likely to be… something in it for you. Oh gosh, you know, maybe you’ll be put on a board or something.”

MacCulloch argues that this patronage system is how the “inbred club” maintains control over appointments to high public and private offices. It’s about ensuring that only those who toe the line and don’t rock the boat are considered for positions of influence, be they directorships or advisory roles. This creates a powerful incentive for self-censorship among academics and commentators who might otherwise offer robust critiques.

In an interview on The Platform with Michael Laws this week, MacCulloch said he was essentially excommunicated by New Zealand’s political establishment for criticising government economic policy and elite appointments. The final straw for him, he said, was the accumulation of pressure from current and former Cabinet Ministers, who made it clear that his public commentary had made him unwelcome in influential circles, including appointments to public boards and advisory roles.

MacCulloch has tenure at the University of Auckland and says he has no ambition for public roles. However, his case illustrates how dissent is discouraged not by direct censorship but through reputational smears, legal intimidation, and the closure of career pathways. He simply asked: what’s the upside of dissent when the costs are so high and the returns nil?

A central theme in MacCulloch’s recent and past analysis is the existence of a “cosy inbred club” running New Zealand. This cosiness, he argues, comprises interconnected individuals across politics, the corporate sector, and the civil service, who are often “promoted way beyond their abilities.”

Of this widespread cronyism (or “corrupt inner circle”), MacCulloch observes: “Every high-status job in the country is just a job for mates”, and appointments are “so corrupt it’s beyond belief – now it’s just a group of people going from one big job to the next even when they’re not qualified and don’t deserve the job.” He argues that the last Labour Government entrenched a culture of ideological appointments, and the National-led Government is continuing the same pattern — just swapping in their own preferred cronies.

MacCulloch’s allegations about the influence of big banks

Probably the blog post that got MacCulloch into the most trouble was his recent argument that Finance Minister Nicola Willis forced out Reserve Bank Governor Orr on behalf of the big banks – see: Incriminating evidence now points to Finance Minister Willis forcing out Governor Orr to take over the Reserve Bank of NZ on behalf of the Big Banks. In this, he alleged that Willis, acting on the advice of lobbyists and corporate lawyers, pushed for looser capital requirements at the behest of big banks and circumvented the Bank’s statutory independence.

His account catalogued a series of interactions: meetings between Willis and lawyers with lucrative public contracts, secret consultations with the New Zealand Initiative (where she previously sat on the board), and the elevation of insiders to oversight roles in the banking sector. He also noted the sudden shift in the Reserve Bank’s policy after Orr’s resignation as further evidence of political pressure. His most damning allegation is that these moves were orchestrated to serve the interests of monopolies (especially the big banks) and that Willis is now acting on behalf of those oligopolies rather than the public.

MacCulloch alleges that Willis is “doing the bidding of the big banks” and questions her motivations, suggesting a link to her former boss, John Key, who chaired ANZ Bank, a job she “also covets when she retires from politics.” He highlights that while Willis orders the RBNZ to potentially cut capital requirements, Australian regulators are ordering ANZ to increase theirs.

This has been a recurring theme in MacCulloch’s recent work – about the influence of corporate interests on the National-led Coalition Government as a whole. He claims Willis takes advice from lobbyists and “people you just wouldn’t believe”, including lawyers with questionable histories.

More broadly, MacCulloch decries the National-led coalition’s reliance on “ghosts exhumed from the past,” pointing to a string of appointments of figures from the John Key era to significant review and governance roles: Bill English, Murray McCully, Paula Bennett, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Lester Levy, Peter Gluckman, and Neil Quigley. This, he argues, shows a lack of new thinking and ensures “we ain’t no meritocracy anymore.”

MacCulloch highlights the oversized influence of The New Zealand Initiative

MacCulloch’s ire frequently targets the New Zealand Initiative, a think tank he repeatedly labels as the “National Party’s Adviser / Think Tank” and a lobbying group for corporate monopolies.

He highlights the connections:

• Finance Minister Willis was a Director of the NZ Initiative.

• The Prime Minister’s Chief Economic Adviser, Matt Burgess, was a Senior Economist at the Initiative and previously advised Bill English. Chris Luxon, as CEO of Air New Zealand, also used to attend Initiative meetings.

• The Initiative’s board includes figures like Scott Perkins (Non-Executive Director of Woolworths), Chris Quinn (Chief Executive of Foodstuffs North Island), and Barbara Chapman (former Chair of a Big Bank).

• The Chair of the NZ Initiative, Roger Partridge, is also the former Chair of Bell Gully, where Willis’ father was a partner.

MacCulloch accuses the Initiative of being “Pro-Monopoly, Anti-Consumer.” He cites their support for the Foodstuffs North and South Island supermarket merger, their push for lower bank capital requirements (which he argues would shift risk to taxpayers), and their opposition to requiring internet giants to pay for local news content (Google is a member of the Initiative).

He argues that the National Party hasn’t done the necessary work on economic policy, which means that the NZ Initiative can step in with some ready-made answers, which the Government essentially adopts as its policy. In this sense, MacCulloch accuses the Initiative of being a cypher for what the oligopolies want implemented by the Coalition Government.

The big banks, electricity companies, supermarkets, property developers, and petrol companies tell the NZ Initiative what policies would suit their businesses the best, and this is passed onto the Beehive, which loyally seems to implement them. According to MacCulloch, this has resulted in the Coalition Government becoming pro-monopoly.

This type of influence, together with donations and corporate lobbying, means that New Zealand’s political parties have been brought off. MacCulloch says such politicians should be forced to declare these connections: “It’d be good for them to be required to wear their gang patches announcing to Kiwis who and what they truly represent, rather than hiding in shadows.”

MacCulloch’s broader critique of the incompetence of Corporate NZ

Perhaps the most under-explored aspect of MacCulloch’s critique is his consistent condemnation of corporate New Zealand’s underperformance. He argues that the real drag on New Zealand’s productivity isn’t just government bureaucracy, but the incompetence of private sector leadership.

Business is too focused on getting either special legislative deals from the government of the day, or else corporate subsidies from the taxpayer. According to MacCulloch, the last Government’s Covid Wage Subsidy Scheme was a giant transfer of $18bn to some of the wealthiest businesses in the country, most of whom didn’t need it.

Pointing to the stagnation of the NZX50 and the dismal share performance of dominant companies like Fletcher Building and Air New Zealand, he suggests that cushy directorships and an old boys’ club mentality have entrenched mediocrity.

MacCulloch describes corporate New Zealand, particularly the NZX50 companies, as a “disaster”, run by “accountants and lawyers” who “all know each other”, with many boards forming an “inbred club”. He notes the poor performance of many top companies, some down 50-60% in recent years, questioning if the real drag on the economy is “the ‘top’ private sector managers, the CEOs and the useless company boardrooms.”

This extends to his concern for younger generations. MacCulloch says elite capture of high-status jobs blocks talented young people from progressing: “They can’t get promoted because you’ve got these bums occupying these big positions of power.” Hence, young New Zealanders are leaving the country.

But the public sector doesn’t escape his critique, with MacCulloch lamenting the “inbred culture of the civil service in Wellington” where “the same old types in charge – being career bureaucrats with law, accounting, communications, or vague ‘management’ backgrounds.” He cites the leadership of Health NZ as an example, where he claims nine out of ten on the executive governance team are not doctors.

Why all this matters

MacCulloch’s experience should serve as a warning for anyone who believes in open debate, academic freedom, and political diversity. He is not a partisan hack, nor a fringe conspiracy theorist. He is an Oxford-trained economist, a respected professor, and someone who engaged constructively across the political spectrum. Moreover, he holds the highly prestigious “Matthew S Abel Chair of Macroeconomics” at the University of Auckland.

Yet in a country that used to pride itself on transparency and egalitarianism, his decision to retreat from public commentary reveals an uncomfortable truth: that challenging elites in New Zealand has real personal costs, and that the incentives are stacked against dissent.

This is not a left-versus-right issue. It is about defending the public sphere from being captured by a narrow set of insiders. It is about meritocracy, open debate, and resisting the cartelisation of ideas.

MacCulloch will no doubt continue to be a voice in other forums. But the silencing of his website is a loss for public discourse. As he put it in his final post, essentially directed at the New Zealanders who are willing to put up with this arrangement: “Good luck to maintaining the status quo of the same old people in the same old big jobs, who together with their same old mates have driven NZ into division and economic decline.”

New Zealand needs more people like Robert MacCulloch willing to speak out. But if the price of dissent continues to be this high, how many will choose to do so? His story deserves more attention as a good example of what happens when you dare to speak truth to power in a small country where the elites are all too interconnected.

It can also be summed up by the term “cosyism”, a disease which New Zealand seems increasingly afflicted by. As MacCulloch points out, this is a “soft corruption” of jobs for the boys and girls – New Zealand political and economic system has become one where entry to the upper echelons is extraordinary closed, with political appointments being reserved for mates, or the “chumocracy”.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Director of The Integrity Institute

Further reading:

Robert MacCulloch: DownToEarth.Kiwi Closing Due to Threats from National & Labour Parties & Big Business NZ Incorporated

Robert MacCulloch: The National Party’s Adviser / Think Tank, the NZ Initiative, comes out as Pro-Monopoly, Anti-Consumer

Robert MacCulloch: National-ACT-NZ First’s Pathetic Roll-Call of Ghosts Exhumed from the Past to Roll out Failed Ideas

Shayne Currie (Herald): Auckland University economics professor Robert MacCulloch ends blog, says politicians have threatened future prospects (paywalled)

The Platform: Robert MacCulloch On Ending His Blog Due To Political Threats

David Harvey: Below the parapet – Professor MacCulloch leaves the room

Kate MacNamara (Herald): RBNZ review of bank regulation smacks of political interference, critics say (paywalled)