The cause is clear cut. It is not the one being sold by the upper echelons of our political and business classes to the media. It is not due to a lack of foreign investment. It is not due to hairdressers being too regulated. It is not due to the tax code needing reworking.
It is because the upper echelons of insiders are favouring mates, blocking the path of deserving but non-connected Kiwis, thereby destroying their incentives to better themselves, and the country, in the process.
After the 2023 election, legions of Sir John Key-era politicians were given high-ranking jobs. Former ministers included Simon Bridges, returning as transport agency chair; Paula Bennett as Pharmac chair; Steven Joyce as infrastructure advisory chair; Sir Bill English as state housing review chief.
Upon appointing Murray McCully to head an education inquiry, Education Minister Erica Stanford said: “He is my old boss. I couldn’t think of a better person.”
Hiring the best is no longer the New Zealand way. It’s a schmoozing game.
Non-politician VIPs brought back include Graham Scott, who Finance Minister Nicola Willis made chair of her Social Investment Agency. He was Treasury Secretary 40 years ago. Matt Burgess, English’s adviser in the Key years, returned to advise Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
Lester Levy, appointed by Key to chair the Auckland District Health Boards, returned as chair of Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora. Sir Peter Gluckman, Key’s science adviser, returned to head the science and universities advisory groups. We could fill the page.
The connections game in New Zealand is not limited to National, nor to our public sector. Labour is equally guilty. Many of those in the private boardrooms of our biggest corporates also count other board members as personal friends.
Willis’ former boss was chair of ANZ Bank. She sat on the New Zealand Initiative board, on which the chair of Foodstuffs sits. Most of our oligopolies are members of it. She used to be a Fonterra lobbyist.
The connected ones would say that they fully deserve their hiring and rehiring by chums, based on their own qualifications and experience. They would, wouldn’t they?
But there are now so many egregious examples of inbreeding that perceptions of connections mattering more than merit in New Zealand cannot but be heightened.
The skills required for most of these top jobs have also changed to such a degree since the Key era, because of more tech, that few of this bunch can claim to be up to date.
Doesn’t it happen elsewhere? Yes, but it used to happen far less in New Zealand. It was once our comparative advantage. We are no longer top of the world in transparency.
Our way has become “You scratch my back, I scratch yours”.
When connections matter, we become distrustful of the decisions made by the inner circle. Are they in the public interest, based on the merits of the winning argument, or are they based on satisfying the special interests of a friend, or an industry?
Why is the Government ramming through highly unusual backdated law, wiping legal claims of customers suing ANZ and ASB for disclosure breaches, retrospectively smashing their property rights?
How can helping banks by letting them off law-breaking and clobbering the little guy be in the public interest?
Why has the Government still not taken on the supermarkets, power companies, banks and big construction firms with a big stick?
Why has it not properly addressed the lack of competition that has caused the cost-of-living crisis?
None of it adds up, unless one realises that few of the top decision-makers in New Zealand are any longer making the best decisions for us all, because they don’t know how to, and should not be there themselves. They live in a world of who you know, not what you know.
Why did National revert to Key-era thinking even after he called New Zealand a smug hermit kingdom in 2021? Because a connected group of insiders returned with their same way of doing things.
Key’s social investment approach was photoshopped by Willis. The wellbeing aim of the Dame Jacinda Ardern era was dumped by Luxon because English loathed it. The old single mandate of the Reserve Bank, liked by English, returned.
The three drivers of economic growth during the Key era, namely immigration, tourism and construction, have all now evaporated. Yet they were bet upon by the Government’s group-think, Key-era insiders to again lift us out of stagnation.
Beehive sources tell me Willis has been frantically asking those same insiders “What will be the new drivers of growth?”
Former Reserve Bank Governor Graeme Wheeler wrote during the Key years that none of the old drivers were sustainable. He was right.
Why has Willis not solved the funding crisis, due to the ageing population, by designing Australian-style savings accounts for all?
Because doing so was rejected in the Key era a decade ago and the same connected insiders are still running the show. The upshot? Australians will now retire with 10 times the financial savings of Kiwis.
So, is there a plan? Only to continue the unproductive schmoozing of the connected chums who are running this country and have carved it up between themselves.
The beautifully spun and lofty words of our debating champion Finance Minister do not match the reality of the low upward mobility of our deserving achievers who she has locked out of the cupboard.
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