John McLean
Citizen typist patriot
Indulge me. I hope to amuse and enlighten you. I aspire to provide another small personal insight into how Clubtearoa really operates.
On 16 February 2026, I again tried to obtain a particular document from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. I did so by making a further request for the document under the Official Information Act (I’d made a similar request back in 2022). It was a long shot which predictably proved fruitless. But my futile effort also sheds more delicious light on what happens behind closed doors, up in the rarified air of New Zealand’s haughty, precious elite classes.
In 2018 and 2019, I made a series of whistleblowing disclosures to the Reserve Bank. My disclosures concerned misconduct of Rabobank New Zealand, a registered bank at which I was the head lawyer at the time. I’ve covered my whistleblowing in an earlier Substack:
NEW ZEALAND’S RESERVE BANK John McLean 13 October 2023
The document I have failed to obtain is the “independent” report that the Reserve Bank commissioned in response to my whistleblowing. The report’s author is a lawyer named David Flacks.
Because the misconduct of Rabobank that I disclosed was indisputably very real and the Reserve Bank did precisely zip about it, either Flacks’ report was a whitewash or the Reserve Bank ignored it. Take your pick. My pick is that Flacks’ report was a whitewash concocted by Flacks in close complicity with senior Reserve Bank staffers.
The Reserve Bank did not respond to my February 2026 Official Information Act request until 7 September. (Bear with me. This is where the fun starts.)
In July, I’d followed up my February request with the Reserve Bank, inquiring why New Zealand’s central bank had not responded to my request. In August, I wrote to the Government Ombudsman, asking the Blobudsman to follow up with the Reserve Bank. Here’s the email trail:
The Reserve Bank has again refused my request for Flacks’ report. Here’s the RB’s predictable response
In its response, the Reserve Bank claimed – probably validly – that, “…the RBNZ does not have any records of your emails of 16 February 2026, 22 July 2026, and 22 August 2026”. The reason for the Reserve Bank’s apparent initial non-receipt is both intriguing and amusing.
In a separate email on 9 September, the author of the RB’s response, John Grey (“Manager Governance and OIA”), advised that I have been blocked from sending emails to the Reserve Bank. Here’s Grey’s email:
For those who, like me, with poor eyesight, Grey’s email ends:
Your email in February 2024, attached, that resulted in you being blocked was unacceptable. You remain blocked from contacting any other email address at RBNZ. We take the health and safety of our people seriously and will not expose them to gratuitous abuse.
And here’s the email that got me blocked (correction, Orr is not a “Dr” of anything; that was likely a spellcheck misfire):
So it goes. Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr took such deep personal offense at an email I flicked him that he blocked me from emailing not only him but anyone else at the Reserve Bank. My favourite line in Grey’s email is, “We take the health and safety of our people seriously and will not expose them to gratuitous abuse.” Hurty words cancellation. Poor old dumpy diddums, Adrian O. (My guess is, I was also blocked because he didn’t want the Reserve Bank hearing any more from me about the RB crushing my protected disclosures.)
My chagrin at Orr, which prompted me to email him, was a remark he made, as Reserve Bank governor, during a formal parliamentary hearing on 12 February 2024.
With his defining glib arrogance, Orr told parliament and New Zealanders in general:
“It’s a great business to be in, central banking, where you print money and people believe it.”
Even by his own crappy standards, Orr’s remark was especially insensitive, tone deaf and contemptible of the real-life experience of ordinary New Zealanders. Under Orr’s politically partisan reign of fiscal ruination as RB Governor, New Zealand suffered its highest inflation in decades. His “Large Scale Asset Purchase” (aka money-printing) programme inflated house prices. His money tree lunacy left those who had nevertheless managed to buy houses with debilitating interest costs to fund their overwhelming mortgage debts, after the post-Orr Reserve Bank had to rapidly increase the Official Cash Rate to combat the inflation that Orr had unleashed.
Indications are that Orr deliberately sugar hit the economy in a politically biased attempt to get his Labour Luvvies re-elected. Mercifully, his attempt failed but the stagflation he caused of course persists.
In his defence, Orr may well have been tipsy when he made his smarmy money-printing remark. He was often boozed when on official duty. He especially loved a good (platonic) nuzzle and guzzle with Finance Minister Grant Robertson.
Orr’s block-him reaction to my email is typical of his brand of elitism. Wokester snobs can give it, but can’t take it. They patronize and disparage normal New Zealanders, and react to pushback by seeking to cancel anyone who counterattacks.
But, thanks to outlets like Substack, ordinary New Zealanders are now able to expose the machinations and misdeeds of the Wokerati.
And I can record all this because I deal in facts. (To coin the trendy term, I have the “receipts”.) And I know that the Reserve Bank would never try to silence or ruin me with litigation because to do would expose its abject failure to discharge its prudential supervisory duties. In a litigation process, Flake Flacks’ fake report would become public. And the roles of other Reserve Bank operatives in crushing my whistleblowing would be revealed.
These people linger, like bad smells. The limpest limpet I had to suffer in the course of my whistleblowing is Scott McKinnon.
McKinnon remains at the Reserve Bank, as “Director of Specialist Supervision”. According to his Reserve Bank website bio, “Scott joined Te Pūtea Matua [for the uninitiated, that’s the Māori name Orr coined for the Reserve Bank] in 2012.”
I vividly recall the moment when my dawning realization – that the Reserve Bank was burying my whistleblowing – crystalized into dead certainty. It was at a meeting at the Reserve Bank’s Wellington premises on 11 February 2019. Just me, McKinnon and Flacks. It became abundantly clear at that meeting that Rabobank was continuing to tell even more lies to the Reserve Bank. The meeting didn’t end well. Out of ammunition and credibility and unwilling to engage further, McKinnon physically ushered me off the premises.
There’s rarely anywhere to go when the Bloberati congeals in self-protection. I tried officially complaining to Minister of Finance Grant Robertson. He duly brushed me off, as expected. I later found out that the Reserve Bank (the very agency I was complaining about) wrote Robertson’s response to me.
But we mercifully now have Substack. One of Substack’s three founders was New Zealander Hamish McKenzie. What a legend. Here’s to you, Mr McKenzie.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
