Professor Robert MacCulloch has been publishing his Down to Earth Kiwi blog for more than five years. Photo montage / Oliver Rusden
Professor Robert MacCulloch has been publishing his Down to Earth Kiwi blog for more than five years. Photo montage / Oliver Rusden
A leading Auckland University economics professor has closed his long-running blog, accusing the two main political parties and big business of threatening his future prospects.
“National, Labour and big business NZ have begun to complain and threaten me at the highest levels about my writings,” Professor Robert MacCulloch wrote onhis Down to Earth Kiwi blog.
“The game has become clear. Continue doing so, and it will mean the end of your future in this country.
“DownToEarth.Kiwi has been told in no uncertain terms that for me, as principal writer, due to this commentary, I’ve been wiped for consideration from top public and private appointments.”
MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel chair of macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has a PhD in economics from Oxford University and previously worked at the Reserve Bank.
He has been publishing his blog for more than five years, but told the Herald he’d reached the end, in the face of threats and what he described as a lack of willingness from politicians to engage with solutions to help fix the economy.
“I’ve run out of steam with it now.
“I know the game – they’ve labelled me a troublemaker, a stirrer and, when you’re labelled that in New Zealand, you‘re counted out of everything.”
He said that Auckland University had been “very good with free speech and they’ve supported me”.
But he could not say the same about others, citing comments from MPs in both Labour – “should I continue with it, I’d be finished” – and National – “you keep carrying on like that, don’t expect to be considered for anything”.
Professor Robert MacCulloch of Auckland University.
He would not name any specific MPs or individuals who had made those comments.
He did say a director of a major New Zealand corporation had complained to the university about his writing.
“So much for free speech. It’s not coming from Auckland University – all the people who say the universities don’t allow free speech, that universities are so awful ... actually, Auckland University has been amazing.
“I wouldn’t say the same about big business and our political parties, so that’s why I’m closing.”
MacCulloch says the blog has been a non-partisan platform: “I’ve genuinely tried to annoy National, Labour and business – and support them.”
That included support for former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson‘s wellbeing framework.
He said he’d noticed that there was surprisingly limited interest from right-wing groups in critiques of Finance Minister Nicola Willis and the National Party’s economic policies and fiscal approach, whereas social issues such as the Treaty and race relations sparked heated debate.
“There’s a sort of pressure to do clickbait to appeal to that audience if you’re on the right, and I just don’t want to do that.”
A final post
In his final post, MacCulloch said it would be nice to think the blog had “added something these past years to improve the prosperity of NZ”.
“We were the only economic commentary source that regularly pointed out how the huge fiscal expansion and money-printing programme of the Covid years would end in high inflation and subsequently economic stagnation.
“Before the blog started, we urged National in the 2010s to sort out the nation’s ailing infrastructure when it had the chance and provided a plan.
“We begged National and Labour many years ago to pre-empt the looming fiscal blowouts in healthcare and pensions due to the ageing population.
“Although offering a fully costed solution to that challenge, with the Budgets completed by a former Finance Minister, both main parties threw it back in our faces and laughed it off.
“We pushed for a new Ministry of Regulation a long while ago – that would subject rules to the discipline of cost-benefit analysis – arguing hairdressers would be a good place to start, which has been taken up.
“We exposed the cosy inbred club made up of people promoted way beyond their abilities that is running NZ, both in the public and private spheres.”
He said Willis had later told media that she was willing to engage with him.
“She never talked to me about anything; she never looked me up. It’s all just nonsense. There’s no authentic engagement with any of it.
“It’s just this whole seedy scene where the Nats were so angry with Ardern and the way she was spinning and all that stuff, but they’re just doing the same. I’ve just lost faith that they are actually sincere.”
Finance Minister Nicola Willis. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Through a spokesman, Willis told the Herald: “I don’t follow Professor MacCulloch’s blog, but I have seen some of his writings in other forums.
“While I haven’t always agreed with the views he has expressed, I respect his right to express those views. A diversity of thought is a good thing.
“I am not aware of having met Professor MacCulloch, but I am open to a conversation if he would like to have one.
“Having spoken out in the past does not disqualify people from public roles, but appointees to public positions are expected to act in a politically impartial manner.”
‘Good luck and good night’
In his final post this week, MacCulloch wrote that he no longer wished to continue with offering fresh perspectives on his blog.
He told the Herald he would focus on his university work.
“So good luck to the country,” he wrote on the blog.
“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.
“As for me, taking a fresh perspective and offering different solutions to the tired old, failed approaches of the past – the ones our two main political parties and their buddies in corporate New Zealand promote to protect their territories – is something I no longer wish to do.
“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. A lack of imagination threatens our future.
“Good luck and good night.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME, including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.
