Message to All Graduates: don't Apply to Finance Minister Nicola Willis' Social Investment Agency. Its a PR Scam.

Finance Minister Willis has declared its business-as-usual in Wellington, where insiders get the top jobs, and tax-payer funded window-dressing is the order of the day. Her new Social Investment Agency was never her idea - she picked up that hobby horse from one of her old bosses, Bill English. What is the "social investment approach" anyhow? Its a mathematical technique that relies on actuarial modelling. For example, maybe there's a scheme that proposes spending public funds to improve child nutrition, like school lunches, whose main effect may be to reduce poorer health outcomes when children get older, in turn reducing future health-care spending. The public cost of the scheme can be weighed against the future fiscal savings to society. Actuaries can put probabilities on the likelihood of the better future outcomes to estimate whether the scheme makes financial sense. The Ministry of Social Development has already been employing actuaries to do these sorts of calculations.

Finance Minister Willis, however, wanted her own whole new agency. She made a political appointment in the form of former Police Chief Andrew Costner to head it. He's a lawyer. Who has he appointed as his Deputy Chief Executive? A chap who "has an extensive background in public relations, having worked for some of the world’s leading public relations firms in London, Hong Kong & Wellington". His other Deputy is another lawyer. Meanwhile Finance Minister Willis has hauled out of retirement career civil servant Graham Scott to be Chair of the Board - he's now into his 80s. I cannot count a single member of the Board who has any actuarial qualifications whatsoever, even though the entire new agency is meant to be based on doing actuarial calculations. One new Board Member has been "a director on government boards, including KiwiRail & Auckland Transport". Amazing. Another says he was a "Professorial Fellow" at Waikato University, even though he was not. He was a Professorial Teaching Fellow - there is a world of difference.

My advice to University Graduates in maths, finance, economics, actuarial studies, statistics & related subjects in NZ is: don't work for Willis's Social Investment Agency, nor Seymour's new Ministry of Regulation. Why be bossed around by Boards & Senior Leadership Teams comprised of Wellington insiders with flakey backgrounds who've played Board Games all their lives and never done a social investment calculation on a real-life proposal, nor a cost-benefit analysis. The world has changed, except for in NZ. Those of us with tech skills aren't taking orders anymore from the kinds of boss-clowns that Willis wants on her Boards and Management Teams. To all hard-working students of NZ - go overseas where your hard earned skills & work experience will be rewarded. Finance Minister Willis has sent you a message. Nothing has changed. Its jobs for boys. Its business as usual under National. She is failing to deliver change. We're back to Ardern-style public relations & comms games, as symbolized by the PR appointments at Willis' new Ministry.

Kings Counsels just Snuffed NZ's Economy by declaring Sovereignty actually lies with their Judge Mates.

What do the partners in the City law firms earn in NZ? Reputedly incomes way over a million dollars a year. A bunch of them took the wage subsidy, even though business boomed for many of their firms during the lock-downs as they were called upon to sort out disputes, like who should pay the rent on commercial buildings. They never disclosed their incomes, since partnerships don't have to disclose their accounts publicly. They hid behind a wall of silence. Most only returned the subsidy after Sir Roger Douglas and myself called them out in the Media. You can read the story here. Many repaid the day after we put them on the front page news - not before. Lawyers dominate our boardrooms, even though most have no industry specific knowledge - whether its the Big Banks, Kiwi Rail, or Fletchers. You name a monopoly in NZ and you will likely find the boardroom stacked with lawyers. Its a proper old boys & old girls club. Chapman Tripp threatened Auckland University with defamation unless it took down an article written by a colleague of mine about Foodstuff's monopoly powers. Lawyers, more than any other group, are putting up the cost of living in NZ.

Now the Kings Counsels have written a letter saying that much of the Constitution of this country is only entitled to be written by judges - no-one else is allowed to tell us what are the "principles" behind the Treaty - even though most Kiwis don't believe such principles even exist. Forget Māori having a say in the matter. Forget Parliament. Let alone plumbers, shop-keepers, doctors, nurses, builders, teachers, or engineers. None of us count. Why has the letter that Kings Counsels wrote to the PM, quoted in Parliament by MP Willie Jackson, gone & wrecked the Kiwi economy? Because it has thrown into chaos the security & clarity of our property rights, and as this year's Economics Nobel Prize reminded us, it is that security & clarity that determines long run productivity growth. My advice to investors, domestic or foreign, is to not invest in NZ. Why? Since a bunch of self-interested lawyers and their judge mates now run the show in this country. They're playing those who identify as Māori off against those identifying as non-Māori, all for their fee income. Wait until the big law firms bleed the Iwi Trusts dry, since those firms thrive on disputes & now have whole departments set up to "advise" the Trusts. It is judges who are writing the legal principles which now govern the economic incentives faced by all of us - that affect the opportunities of our children. How hard to work as a student is now dictated by NZ's legal profession - since university places and jobs have come to be decided on how much applicants align with the chosen constitutional "principles" our judges have decided upon.

New Zealand's legal profession has got too big for its boots. The Kings Counsels who wrote to PM Luxon should disclose their incomes, since they have entered the political arena, and in that arena you must disclose your finances so people can work out your conflicts of interest. What did the Counsels earn during Covid, when the rest of the country suffered? How much have they siphoned off the Māori economy as fee income? Go on, tell us. Of course you wont. You will just go and slink back into the darkness & leave none of us not knowing where you are coming from.