Robert MacCulloch: Chumocracy is Threatening NZ’s Future

Long-run economic prosperity is built on there being rewards for a person's efforts and ingenuity. However, when top jobs are handed out on connections, not on merit, it falls apart.

Why acquire skills and work experience when there is little in it for you? Why bother?

So it is now in New Zealand. We are in the midst not of a temporary downturn, but of a longer-lasting loss of living standards; stagnation unlike we’ve ever experienced.

Natasha Hamilton-Hart: Chumocracy in the universities?

Do universities govern themselves as a group of chums? My colleague Robert MacCulloch recently called out the soft corruption of “chumocracy” in New Zealand. Chumocracy is governance by a group of mates and insiders. The dangers and risks of governance-by-chumocracy should be clear: complacency, lack of accountability, tolerance of abysmal performance and a culture of in-group favours. All entirely within the law.

Dr Bryce Edwards: 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.