Bryce Edwards
Director of the Integrity Institute
British journalist Simon Kuper’s provocative new book Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions offers a devastating diagnosis of how corruption captured British politics. His thesis cuts to the bone: Britain ran for decades on the “Good Chaps” theory – the comfortable assumption that those in power would “follow the rules and do the right thing” because they were, well, decent chaps.
These were typically upper-class men who had fought in world wars, attended elite schools, and genuinely believed public service was the highest calling. They didn’t need strict laws or oversight because their personal honour codes forbade stealing from the state. The system worked – until it didn't.
As Kuper documents, this genteel arrangement began crumbling from the 1980s onwards. The Good Chaps died out, replaced by a generation shaped more by Thatcherite wealth-worship than wartime sacrifice. Without internalised moral codes, and with London awash in oligarch money, British politics became increasingly corrupt.
The old unwritten norms proved useless against “Bad Chaps” who saw public office as a route to personal enrichment. Britain today, Kuper argues, is run by a clique of bad chaps: politics and institutions are “awash with financial scandals, donors who have practically bought shares in political parties, and a shameless contempt for the rules.” His chronicle spans from oligarchs bribing MPs to donors effectively buying policy. The lesson is clear: unwritten codes of conduct are powerless to stop the sleaze once bad chaps take office.
Most dangerously, Britain’s self-image as a pillar of clean governance blinded it to this growing rot. As Kuper warns, one must not “kid ourselves that Britain leads the way in integrity: that is how the Good Chaps get away with it.” The myth of exceptionalism – the belief that “it can’t happen here” – allowed unethical actors to break institutions from within.
New Zealand's dangerous delusion
Reading Kuper’s account from Wellington, the parallels are impossible to ignore. We too have long operated on our own version of the Good Chaps theory – the comfortable assumption that Kiwis are inherently honest, that our remoteness protects us from corruption, and that our informal, “she’ll be right” approach to governance is a strength rather than a vulnerability.
Year after year, New Zealand used to top Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, fuelling a narrative that our public service is incorruptible. Politicians and officials still boast of our ranking as evidence that our institutions are fundamentally sound. This has bred not confidence, but massive complacency about the possibility of wrongdoing among our political and business elites. We have become infected by the dangerous belief that corruption is mostly an overseas problem, something that afflicts ‘less fortunate’ countries, but ‘it can’t happen here.’
Like Britain, our political culture has long been built on trust – informal checks, high levels of discretion given to public servants, and relatively light regulatory oversight. That works well when officials are dutiful and honest. But what happens when a few “bad chaps” start exploiting the gaps?
That complacency should have been shattered last week by two damning reports that suggest New Zealand's Good Chaps era – if it ever truly existed – is well and truly over. The upshot of this is that New Zealand, like Britain, now needs more formal integrity rules and laws, because it can’t just assume that informal rules and norms prevents those in power and business from titling the playing field in their own favour.
The canary stops singing
The first wake-up call comes from the Ministerial Advisory Group on Organised Crime, whose latest report to Associate Police Minister Casey Costello pulls no punches. “We are ignoring the canary in the mine,” the report warns, describing how corruption and insider threats are not just present but growing rapidly in New Zealand.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, who returned to New Zealand after working in France on transnational crime, offered perhaps the report’s most striking assessment: “I believe that New Zealand has not only been complacent when it comes to corruption but also naive. I don’t think there is a good understanding of the threat corruption presents to the integrity of our democratic system and the values our country is proud of.”
This isn’t hyperbole from an alarmist bureaucrat. The report details how “compromised police officers, immigration officials, and private sector employees in our ports and airports have facilitated drug smuggling, leaked sensitive information, and undermined the integrity of our border system.” Most significant drug interceptions were planned as “rip-on, rip-off” jobs, where trusted insiders helped retrieve concealed shipments before Customs could inspect them.
Summarising the situation last week, the chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group, Steve Symon, put it like this: “We are a country that’s becoming corrupt. We were proudly the number one country in the world in terms of the least amount of corruption. We’ve dropped down to number four, and we’re unfortunately trending in the wrong direction. But more than that, I think what we’re seeing is we used to be a country where I think we genuinely could trust one another to keep up the values of our country, and, sadly, I think it’s being eroded.”
The parallels with Kuper’s British story are unmistakable. Just as Brexit-era Britain saw politicians taking money from Russian oligarchs with impunity, New Zealand is discovering that our borders and institutions have become porous to criminal money and influence.
What begins as “criminal corruption” – gangs bribing officials to smuggle drugs – bleeds into political corruption. The advisory group makes this clear: “corrupt insiders are a key strategic asset for organised crime groups.” When criminal networks compromise a customs officer, they can just as easily compromise a politician. The money and methods that infiltrate one part of the state spreads to the top.
From criminal to political corruption
Some might dismiss this as merely “criminal corruption” – nasty business involving underworld activity, but separate from the political sphere. This would be dangerously naive. As the advisory group makes clear, “corrupt insiders are a key strategic asset for organised crime groups” – they actively seek leverage over national institutions. When criminal networks successfully corrupt border officials, police officers, and port workers, they don’t stop there. The money and methods that compromise a customs officer can just as easily compromise a politician.
Kuper documents this progression in Britain, where oligarch wealth became a “natural resource” that foreign and domestic elites exploited by “investing” in UK politics through party donations. New Zealand faces a similar risk. Our housing market, our financial system, even our political parties become repositories for illicit funds seeking respectability. The incentives for Bad Chaps are growing, especially when officials or politicians realise how much is on offer for turning a blind eye.
More troubling is what the report reveals about our institutional blindness. New Zealand is the only Five Eyes country without a national anti-corruption strategy. The report describes how in the absence of a unified strategy, efforts to combat corruption here have been fragmented, uncoordinated, and inconsistent. There has been no shared framework for intelligence, reporting, investigation or accountability across agencies. In short, while other comparable countries built formal anti-corruption infrastructure, New Zealand assumed its “good chaps” and clean reputation would suffice – an assumption that is now failing.
The transparency charade
This corruption vulnerability is thrown into sharp relief by the second report released last week: the Public Service Commission’s self-assessment of New Zealand’s progress on its Open Government Partnership (OGP) commitments. The OGP is an international initiative where governments pledge to advance transparency and integrity. New Zealand’s government often touts its OGP membership as proof of our commitment to honest, open politics. However, as the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding – and the pudding here is looking pretty unappetising.
According to the commission’s review, the results of our latest National Action Plan are dismal. Just four of the plan’s eight commitments were successfully completed. Two commitments were not delivered at all, and the remaining two only partially fulfilled. Tellingly, one of the half-finished items was the commitment to design and implement a national counter-fraud and corruption strategy – exactly the kind of comprehensive anti-corruption plan the organised crime experts say we desperately need. Officials from multiple agencies had in fact begun work on such a strategy, but it has “remained in the development phase, awaiting direction from the Minister of Police/SFO and Minister of Justice”. In other words, even as organised crime groups were infiltrating our institutions, our public service was sitting on a draft anti-corruption plan, waiting for political leaders to tell them to pull the trigger. The bureaucracy knew what to do, but without ministerial leadership, they were paralyzed.
It gets worse. The self-assessment prompted a scathing reaction from independent observers. NZ Council for Civil Liberties deputy chair (and open-government expert) Andrew Ecclestone told Newsroom that the commission’s report on its own “timid and unambitious” OGP plan was itself “complacent and insulting,” effectively an indictment of the government’s entire approach to open government. His critique is devastating: more than a decade after New Zealand joined the OGP, “nothing has been built by the commission. There are no shared agendas for progress, no public awareness of OGP and its potential, no budgets to incentivise agencies and civil society to work together… and the lead government agency takes no responsibility for this failure at all.” In short, the agencies entrusted with guarding our transparency have been asleep at the wheel, resting on past laurels.
The Good Chaps myth unravels
What connects these two reports – on organised crime and on government openness – is a dangerous delusion that New Zealand is somehow uniquely immune to corruption. The organised crime report notes that New Zealand has traditionally ranked as one of the world’s least corrupt countries, but warns this reputation bred a false sense of security. “The fact that we have enjoyed a reputation as largely being corruption-free has led to a degree of inertia,” the authors wrote, “which is something we have heard from numerous officials.” In plainer terms, our own hype about being squeaky clean led us to relax when we should have been tightening up.
This mirrors precisely what Kuper identified in Britain. The Good Chaps system of unwritten integrity codes worked – until it didn’t. For decades it kept outright corruption at bay, but once the actual good chaps retired and were replaced by those who saw public service as “a bit silly – better to make money in business”, the whole edifice crumbled. Norms only work when everyone buys into them. In Britain, as soon as leaders emerged who didn’t internalise those norms, the absence of formal rules proved catastrophic.
New Zealand now faces its own version of the Good Chaps delusion. As Associate Minister Costello candidly admitted, Kiwis have long thought of ourselves as living in “a little bit of a haven” isolated from global corruption. This haven mentality – the belief that our distance and supposed cultural integrity will shield us – is as misguided as Britain’s was. Our isolation is no defence in the age of cryptocurrency and encrypted communications. Our small size, rather than protecting us, actually makes us more vulnerable to being captured by niche interests. And our informal political culture – while charming in some ways – creates the exact ambiguity and weak oversight that sophisticated corruption exploits.
Britain’s lessons for New Zealand
Kuper’s analysis of how Britain slid into corruption offers crucial lessons. He identifies several key factors that resonate uncomfortably for New Zealand:
1) The death of the public service ethos. In Britain, a post-Thatcher generation of politicians (think David Cameron, Boris Johnson, even Tony Blair) came to power without the old Good Chap ethic of self-restraint. Public office became a stepping stone to private gain. New Zealand has seen a similar erosion. Decades of public-sector reform, outsourcing, and a revolving door between government and business have blurred the line between serving the public and profiting from it. The ideal of a frugal, self-sacrificing public servant has given way to a culture where successful officials often jump ship to lucrative private roles – or enter politics young with an eye to later cashing in.
2) The absence of formal rules to replace informal codes. Kuper was astonished to find that “the UK has almost no laws about political corruption”, so much was left to genteel expectation. For example, it was perfectly legal for a Ministry of Defence civil servant to negotiate with contractors and then immediately take a job with one of those contractors, using insider knowledge with impunity. New Zealand faces similar gaps. Our laws on conflicts of interest and post-public employment are lax. Our Crimes Act provisions on official corruption are so outdated that if, say, a public official misuses information on their day off, it’s debatable whether it counts as acting in an “official capacity.” We rely on convention and personal ethics where other countries have begun to draft clear rules.
3) The influx of dirty money. London became a magnet for wealth stolen abroad, which then seeped into British politics via donations, shell companies, and influencer networks. In New Zealand, we are increasingly attracting international dirty money looking for a safe haven. The organised crime report notes, for instance, that methamphetamine use (and by extension, trafficking profits) surged nearly 100 per cent in late 2024 – enormous illicit profits that criminal groups will seek to launder and invest. Our property market, financial system, and political donations process could be targets. We’ve already seen hints of this, from large opaque donations scandals to overseas investors pushing their agendas. The risk is that without stronger defences, New Zealand’s economy could be used as a laundromat and our politics as a storefront by global bad actors.
Building institutions for Bad Chaps
Kuper’s book is pointedly subtitled “…And What We Can Do About It.” His prescription for Britain resonates strongly for New Zealand. In essence, “the UK needs a system that can work even when staffed by Bad Chaps” – which means replacing the Good Chaps’ gentlemanly agreements with formal, enforceable rules and institutions. New Zealand now needs exactly the same shift. We must build an integrity system that doesn’t depend on everyone being an angel, because sooner or later bad actors will get in (arguably, of course, it’s too late).
Fortunately, we are not flying blind on solutions. The experts have given us a clear to-do list. The Ministerial Advisory Group on Organised Crime made a set of urgent recommendations, and they read like a blueprint for shoring up our defences. Key steps include:
A) Establish a National Anti-Corruption Strategy. Develop and implement a comprehensive strategy aligning all agencies with international best practices, to provide strategic direction and oversight in fighting corruption. New Zealand’s response to corruption needs to be unified and proactive, not piecemeal.
B) Create a central anti-corruption authority. Set up a central body to manage corruption risks across the system – whether as a new stand-alone agency or by empowering an existing one (Public Service Commission, Police or SFO) with a dedicated mandate. This authority would handle corruption reporting, coordinate investigations, and ensure cases don’t fall through the cracks. Australia has recently established a powerful National Anti-Corruption Commission; New Zealand remains an outlier without any such agency.
C) Modernise and tighten our laws. Update the Crimes Act definitions of corruption and bribery to fit modern realities, including corruption in the private sector. Increase the penalties for serious corruption offenses to reflect the gravity of the crime. Treat proven corruption as an aggravating factor at sentencing. In short, raise the legal risks for the bad guys. Our law should clearly criminalise the kinds of shady conduct that currently slip through loopholes.
D) Strengthen vetting and oversight in high-risk sectors. Implement stricter background vetting for anyone working in roles that could be targeted by organised crime – for example, in our ports, airports, law enforcement, immigration system, banking, and telecommunications.
E) Tighten political integrity rules. We should not stop at the criminal underworld. The ‘obvious rules’ around political donations, lobbying, conflicts of interest, and appointments need overhauling too. New Zealand’s donation loopholes may still allow funds to be funnelled anonymously; our lobbying industry is unregulated; our oversight of MPs’ and ministers’ post-office jobs is minimal. These gaps must be closed so that the ‘Bad Chaps’ have fewer entry points into our democratic system. This includes revisiting ideas like a public register of lobbyists, lower donation caps, enforceable codes of conduct for MPs and ministers, and independent screening of major public appointments.
This is the hard path New Zealand must now walk, moving from a system based on trust and informal codes to one with rigorous oversight and enforcement. It will be uncomfortable, bureaucratic, and occasionally embarrassing as scandals are exposed. But the alternative, seen in Kuper’s portrait of Boris Johnson meeting Venezuelan dictators on behalf of hedge funds, is far worse.
Beyond the haven mentality
The convergence of these reports should serve as New Zealand’s corruption wake-up call. We can no longer afford the luxury of believing we’re different, that our isolation protects us, or that Kiwi honesty is somehow innate.
The Good Chaps are gone in Wellington, as in Westminster. What matters now is whether we can build institutions strong enough to constrain the Bad Chaps who have replaced them. Our remoteness is no defence against cryptocurrency and encrypted communications. Our small size makes us more vulnerable to capture, not less. Our informal culture creates exactly the ambiguity that corruption exploits.
As Kuper warns, simply hoping leaders will be “Good Chaps” is no longer enough: stronger rules and watchdogs are needed to stop the bad ones. For New Zealand, this means abandoning the dangerous myth that “it can’t happen here” and recognising that our self-congratulation has become our greatest vulnerability.
The reports released last week are not just bureaucratic documents to be filed away. They are warnings that New Zealand’s integrity infrastructure is failing, just as the threats multiply. Whether we heed these warnings will determine whether future historians write about New Zealand's slide into corruption – or our successful fight against it.
As Police Commissioner Chambers warned, this is about “the threat corruption presents to the integrity of our democratic system and the values our country is proud of.” The canary in the mine has stopped singing. The question now is whether we’re listening.
Further reading:
Simon Kuper: Good Chaps: How Corrupt Politicians Broke Our Law and Institutions – And What We Can Do About It, Profile Books, 2024.
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): Govt’s transparency work ‘timid and unambitious’
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Minister warned of gangs ‘corrupting’ officials; police boss says NZ is ‘complacent’
ODT: Editorial – Corroding corruption in NZ (paywalled)
Brent Edwards (NBR): Combat corruption to fight organised crime: report (paywalled)
Jared Savage (Herald): Corruption by organised crime groups is a real and growing threat in New Zealand, experts warn government must take urgent action (paywalled)
Lillian Hanly (RNZ): Government warned corruption and ‘insider threats’ increasing in New Zealand
Barbara Dreaver (1News): Damning report reveals growing threat of corruption across Pacific
This article was originally published by the Integrity Institute.
