Robert MacCulloch
Robert MacCulloch is a native of New Zealand and worked at the Reserve Bank of NZ before travelling to the UK to complete a PhD in Economics at Oxford University.
As we have often observed on this blog, nearly the entire make up of high-level government positions and private company boards in New Zealand now comprises an old boys and old girls network made up of largely useless people, primarily from legal, accounting, marketing and communications backgrounds. That is why productivity is low, because our institutional (rules and enforcement) quality is objectively ranked as being one of the highest in the world.
Even nearly 100 years ago, in a time of great discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender, the two crucial people who cracked the German Enigma code were Alan Turing, who was gay, and Joan Clarke. Beating the Nazis was obviously the highest national priority. Nothing else mattered between 1938 and 1945.
To achieve that aim, in 1939 Clarke was recruited into the Government Code and Cypher School by her supervisor at Cambridge University, where she gained a double first in mathematics, although was prevented from receiving a full degree, which women were denied until 1948. As the BBC reports, “As was typical for girls at the code-breaking center based at Bletchley Park (and they were referred to as “girls”, not “women”), Clarke was initially assigned clerical work ... Within a few days her abilities shone through and an extra table was installed for her in Hut 8 occupied by Alan Turing.”
As for Turing, he graduated from Cambridge with a lower-ranked degree than Joan, first-class honours in maths, followed by a doctorate from Princeton University in the US. He was put in charge of Bletchley at a time when “homosexual acts” were criminal offences in England. The rest is history. The two of them significantly helped win World War II.
Would these types of people ever have been put into these positions in NZ in 2025? You must be joking. Not a single student, regardless of their ability, who has come through my doors at the university where I work has ever risen to a particularly high position in NZ.
Those doors have been slammed shut by CEOs and senior management teams, whether it be in the public service in Wellington, or the private sector in Auckland, comprised of an endless army of managers, lawyers, accountants, marketing, PR and communications types, distinguished only by their mediocre and ordinariness. Those types occupy the top jobs on the top pay.
A country run by dummies cannot long endure. My advice to smart, hard-working young students finishing school in NZ in 2025 is, “leave the country and find a place where your talents will be rewarded”. That country is no longer New Zealand. Alan Turing and Joan Clarke would’ve never been recruited and never put in charge of anything here.
Good luck to the hoard of Kiwi managers, lawyers, accountants, marketing, PR and communication folk cracking a devilishly difficult mathematical puzzle. Good luck to them making technical breakthroughs that will fire NZ economic growth. Good luck to them becoming regarded as a founder of Artificial Intelligence, like Turing. And beware anyone from either the National or Labour Party who challenges this assertion on this Blog. Because we’re compiling a long list of your mates – of appointees to the top jobs – which have gone to people on the basis of who they know, not what they know. We know who you are. You will be outed.
This article was originally published by Down to Earth Kiwi.
