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- Date published:
12:18 pm, January 16th, 2026 - 17 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, Deep stuff, nicola willis, Politics, winston peters -
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The attack on the NZ Reserve Bank is lock step with Trump.
New Zealanders used to expect that if you got into real trouble there were true nodes of resistance to power. Somewhere you could turn to help you stand up to them. Now look at how weak they are now: unions, universities, public service independence, local government, the courts, professional associations, the armed forces, public media. They used to be towers of strength in our civic imagination and now they are close-to piles of rubble in which we find little shelter.
Democratic elections are the largest and most consequential of checks on the distribution and direction of public power, but in a well functioning country it is institutions that have the larger share of that check and balance upon power in our daily life.
As one of the least-governed and most right wing economies in the developed world, New Zealand has the most to lose when institutions are weakened further and the rule of regulation dissolves in the face of our trifecta of real estate capitalism, agricultural capitalism, and the four Australian banks that enable them.
So when Minister of Finance Willis decides to directly attack and remove the Governor of our Reserve Bank and the Minister of Foreign Affairs further attacks them for supporting the independence of the US Federal Reserve – the most powerful institution in the world – we should be able to see what losing institutional power means in a small country as well as a large one. We can see what a full-throated attack does: it turns them into ministerial pets.
Who then dares stand up? Well, Jerome Powell and most of the Reserve Bank governors in the developed world. That has made even the Republican Party take notice and push pause.
This National-led government has gone far deeper than the previous Labour government to weakening democratic accountability: attack, defund, suppress, ignore, legislate away. While Labour removed voting for regional representation in health, this National coalition has gone far deeper by:
New Zealand, as Professor Kelsey, Max Harris and Max Rashbrooke and many others have attested, has long been the starkest illustration within the developed world of a country with many institutions removed from public ownership. But now it is beginning to share with Trump the will to degrade and demolish the remaining institutions either regulators or legislators in order to aggregate more and power political power into the hands of fewer and fewer people. It is heading towards a New Zealand similar to that of the 1880s in its power structure: they are removing the entirety of the modern state.
We do not have a government with either the political guile or confidence as the tyrant now in charge of the United States of America. New Zealand’s Prime Minister – unlike President Trump – won’t be sitting down with the equivalent of the New York Times for a two hour interview to set out in detail where he is proposing to go next. What we have in New Zealand instead is the quieter form of tyranny: year by year far fewer institutions with any power to resist even if we had the courage or funding to ask them to resist power for us.
So the next time someone in New Zealand has the temerity to defend a leader of an overseas public institution, push pause before trying to cut that voice down.
Yes. The Government see Trumpistan as a good model to follow, and now they are trying to implement it here. This country is going to become mini-Trumpistan if the Coalition of Chaos are not soundly thrashed at the next election.
My Dad, a generally left-wing voter said "they (Coalition of Chaos) see Trump and his crew as being a role model to look up to and follow – they can do whatever they want, so why can't we?"
He was right. The attacks on the public service, the institutions protecting our democracy, our voting rights and our international credibility are all things that Trump is doing right now in the United States. The firing of diplomatic and institutional representatives for having the temerity to tell the truth speaks to a contempt for honesty. So, the attack on the Reserve Bank Governor is par for the course. More attacks like it will happen. Each of them – all of them collectively – are an attack on this country as an upstanding and – formerly – outstanding member of the international community.
All the things – the policy changes, the events I ever dreaded happening in New Zealand are now starting to because of Luxon, Seymour and Winston. All the things I want to happen in New Zealand have been put on stop because even though they will benefit the whole country, it simply is not in the remit of this Coalition to help New Zealand and New Zealanders.
Sadly though, I do not see Labour doing much. Their entire front bench is yesteryear's crew. The whole lot including Hipkins need to go. They need to be ruthless like National were under Michelle Boag and be prepared to enact a "deadwood" policy of moving along the M.P.'s who have had their day, which in the case of National, Ms Boag once called "deadwood".
I second everything in this excellent post except the finger-pointing to Trump as the role model for the CoC.
Trump is nothing but like the Wizard of Oz, i.e., a scary giant figurehead and loudmouth who hogs the limelight, which he craves, but leaves many others and much else in the dark shadows outside of it.
The script that Trump and the CoC are following is unduly influenced by the Atlas Network although Trump may not realise it, or not give a damn, and Luxon does realise it and is complicit, or impotent to do anything about it.
This script has been long in the making and is a living document that’s continuously undergoing tweaks to ensure its (political) survival but more so to increase its impact; this adaptive ability is a formidable strength that has been honed for decades that enables it to blend in any place regardless of local socio-economic and political settings.
In my view, this is the big picture that often seems to get lost when we focus on incidents, events, or side-shows (shit shows) and are pulled down into visceral rabbit holes of outrage and disgust.
Peters knows full-well that what our RBG did by speaking out was consistent with the independence attached to the role. His faux-outrage was for the US government to hear, purely to reduce the chances of political backlash which in the Trumpian era is close-to expected.
and that election coming up, gotta hoover up the maga votes before rimmer n luxo
Add to that catalogue New Zealand's ever increasing alignment with stated US security interests – all with virtually no Parliamentary debate and certainly no electoral mandate.
It feels like mankind is at a cross roads, doomed to go back to another dark age or wake up to the fact that nothing has really changed and pathetic ego driven demigods are still allowed to run rampant, same as it ever was, and actually find methods to remove these cancers from the planet, I see hope in the anti ice, no kings protests, the removal of fuckers like Dutton in oz , garage and that other fool who's name escapes me.
Surly aotearoa can see through the 3 stooges
More than ever we need a public Age of Reason. One can but hope.
Well, folks can always focus on the good news: each election result is another victory for democracy. In the US, 64% of the electorate actually voted in the presidential election, of which about half voted Trump, so he got in on the votes of a third of the electorate. Seeing how the system works must give true believers a thrill, eh?
We can anticipate a similar outcome later this year, but what if a mutuality of revulsion at the prospect of a left/right victory breaks out? Perhaps folks ought to be encouraged not to think about that so they can continue on autopilot. Nature has not yet been totally eliminated, so the left/right exploitation system needs to continue a while yet…
Shakespeare had it sorted!
from Act 5, Scene 5 of MacBeth
spoken by Macbeth in despair expressing a profound sense of life's meaninglessness and futility as he faces his own end.
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Well worth dwelling upon when considering any spoutings from every politician!
Macbeth’s despair was understandable in the context of his personal tragedy but your (political?) nihilism is not and should be countered.
You seem to imply that whatever politicians (i.e., “any politician”) say (and do?), it is meaningless and futile. Perpetuating such a cynical perception can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy that further erodes trust (in politicians and fellow Kiwis), further disengagement and disconnection, which opens the door wide to authoritarianism or even totalitarian dictatorship, i.e., tyranny. The gist of the Post is that our democracy is eroding fast and that authoritarian rule is rising here in Aotearoa – New Zealand and that these trends (phenomena) can and must be resisted and reversed and we’re getting a major opportunity to take action in the General Election later this year.
I assume you won’t be voting at all because of what Will wrote.
Perhaps it is best to vote for the last honest man – Winston and allow him to pick either National or Labour depending upon the offer?
Perhaps, and what’s ‘best’ depends on your criteria, but who’d know?
I assume it was a rhetorical question. In any case, such reasoning means you’d leave the decision to somebody else (i.e., Peters) instead of making clear what you’d want yourself. It’s akin asking a waiter to order for you.
Often ask what the waiter recommends – or just order the Daily Roast.
As long as they do not push newfangled muck!
If that’s your way of participating in democracy and engaging with politics in action: placing a rather poorly specified order once every three years or so for three daily meals and just consume what’s put in front of you without questions asked and grumblings? It begs the question what you’re doing here on TS. Perhaps playing a bored food critic who hates food, chefs, waiters, and other patrons because we’re all gonna die one day? In that case the story of Macbeth was decidedly more upbeat.
Excellent well written analysis Advantage.
So what do we do about the 829,000 eligible voters who didn't vote in 2023? If they did, the makeup of parliament and government would be very different, as would their policies.
Personally, I blame most of these people for the mess we're in, as I do the eligible US non-voters. This really is a case of 'don't vote, don't complain.' I think our focus has to be more on those who deliberately choose not to vote and try to get it through to them the consequence of not doing so.
Superbly written Ad.
My one quibble, as I sip my birthday Pisco Sour above the manically honking traffic in Nazca, is that what the Reserve Bank governor does has far less impact than the MSM would have us believe.
Quarter point cuts in interest rates really are small beer
The real issue, as you say, is that this is effectively a Trump government but the vast majority of Kiwis aren't really onto this.
That is the overriding issue that the Left must push. Trump is now deeply unpopular in the USA. Connect Luxon to this unpopularity and the COC is dead in the water.