He implies he has `been got at by’ – and I quote:
`National, Labour and Big Business NZ have begun to complain & threaten me at the highest levels about my writings. The game has been become clear. Continue doing so and it will mean the end of your career.’
If that is true and I for one have no reason to doubt Robert McCulloch then I question what the hell is going on not only in the National and Labour Parties but through the upper echelons of Corporations and other `Big Business’ in New Zealand.
Here in full is what he says will be Robert McCulloch’s final Down To Earth Kiwi Post.
DownToEarth.Kiwi Closing Due to Threats from National & Labour Parties & Big Business NZ Incorporated
It’d be nice to think we’ve added something these past years to improve the prosperity of NZ. We were the only economic commentary source that regularly pointed out how the huge fiscal expansion, and money printing program, of the Covid years would end in high inflation and subsequently economic stagnation. Before the Blog started, we urged National in the 2010’s to sort out the nation’s ailing infrastructure when it had the chance & provided a plan. We begged National & Labour many years ago to pre-empt the looming fiscal blow-outs on health-care and pensions due to the ageing population. Although offering a fully-costed solution to that challenge, with the Budgets completed by a former Finance Minister, both main parties threw it back in our faces and laughed it off. We pushed for a new Ministry of Regulation a long while ago – that would subject rules to the discipline of cost-benefit analysis – arguing hair-dressers would be a good place to start, which has been taken up.
We exposed the cosy inbred club made up of people promoted way beyond their abilities that is running NZ, both in the public and private spheres. In spite of the top classes in all of my children’s schools having a majority of Asian students, there is not one Indian Member of Parliament representing the National Party and the only Asian Cabinet Minister, Melissa Lee, got shafted, demoted & replaced in the Media portfolio by Choir Boy Paul Goldsmith. She has much experience in media – he has none. Meritocracy does not exist in NZ, wherever you look. We exposed the links between the Big Banks, Supermarkets & Building Firms with our Minister of Finance and PM. It has all been too much for the establishment to bear.
National, Labour and Big Business NZ have begun to complain & threaten me at the highest levels about my writings. The game has been become clear. Continue doing so and it will mean the end of your career. DownToEarth.Kiwi has been told in no uncertain terms that for me, as principal writer, due to this commentary, I’ve been wiped for consideration from all top public & private appointments. So good luck to the country. Good luck to maintaining the status quo of the same old people in the same old big jobs who together with their same old mates have driven NZ into division and economic decline. As for me, taking a fresh perspective & offering new solutions different to the tired old, failed approaches of the past – the ones our two main political parties and their buddies in corporate NZ still promote to protect their gang patches – is something I no longer wish to do. Good luck and good night.
Shame!!!!! Shame!!!!! Shame!!!!! Shame!!!!! Shame!!!!! Shame!!!!! Shame!!!!!
Robert perhaps it is time for you to join the ACT Party – Leadership in the next 10 years awaits you.
No Minister 
Yeah, I don’t see ACT is the answer, they simply want National’s voters, which means having attractive policies to get them – nothing will change, apart from the color
I disagree Uncoffined.
As far as I can see ACT has driven a lot of the good change that has been effected by this Government with Brooke van Velden being at the forefront. It seems to me Robert McCulloch might be a good fit with them leading to ultimate Leadership when Seymour and van Velden step aside from Politics.
Besides I don’t know where you are going to get the changes you seem to want from any Party if not ACT – maybe having Robert McCulloch with them from 2026 would be a good thing.
National and Labour won’t, NZFirst are limited by Winstons blinkered views in a lot of areas and the Greens and Maori Parties are mostly nutcase activists with agendas that will take New Zealand down an even deeper, darker black hole.
All of the other Minor Parties are so far away from even the 5% that they are not realistic options as far as I can see.
ACT are simply not fit for purpose here in 2025. They were founded in the early ’90s on the crest of the Reagan/Thatcher/Douglas revolution as a globalist, liberal, Hayekian party that still bears the hallmarks of springing from Labour, not National. Perfect for that era, but an anachronism today. Politics and society has moved on. Those policies have been tested and have failed to help local working people – they only help working class Chinese and Indians, and the wealthy oligarchs here who profit from them. In addition, placating the Left on social issues like abortion and euthanasia, as well as liberal immigration policies, has proved a cultural dead end – it turns out you can’t have a society with money if you don’t have one with morals. You just end up with no society, and no money.
Ironically, NZ First IS the sort of Party that would normally thrive in this moment, but we’ve had a half century to get to know what a lying scoundrel Winston Peters is, and nobody with two brain cells to rub together ought to give him the time of day. Added to that, nobody is more a creature of the Establishment now than Winston.
New Zealand is doomed.
Exiled I repeat what I said to Uncoffined.
If it is not ACT to lead the charge where are you going tofind another party to lead the charge you want.
I do not see a charismatic Bob Jones type to lead the charge as Sir Bob did in 1984 – opening the door for Douglas, Prebble and co.
David Seymour, Brooke van Velden and hopefully Robert McCulloch are as good as it gets at the moment.
…and that’s not good enough. They are not going to do what is necessary. They are creatures of their own movement, which as I said, is now an anachronism.
AFAIC, the best that can be said about ACT is what is often said about National – that they will manage New Zealand’s globalist decline better than National or Labour.
Exiled interesting theory re Trump annexing NZ.
I do not think I would want that even though if you went back 3 to 5 generations I almost certainly share Ancestry with him through McLeods from the Isle Of Lewis.
How close it is I do not know and have no interest in trying to research except to say that Trump’s mother was a McLeod from Lewis as was my Paternal Grandmother.
Current population of the Island is just over 21,000 so go back to say 1880 where it is estimated to have been about 25,000. The Clearances and people leaving for work as my father did in 1927 probably account to a large extent for the reduction.
I still have a first cousin living on Lewis and she knows Trumps sister quite well although I do not know if they have ever compared ancestry.
Exiled that is not really an answer.
Or are you saying New Zealand as a Country is bereft of Political Leadership?
If you are then Luxon and Hipkins are prime examples of that. But where are the leaders you want?
Name some – shooting down the incumbents without alternatives achieves nothing.
“Exiled that is not really an answer.”
There is currently no answer.
“Or are you saying New Zealand as a Country is bereft of Political Leadership?”
Yes.
“But where are the leaders you want?”
Nowhere.
“…shooting down the incumbents without alternatives achieves nothing.”
It faces reality, which is an achievement of sorts. I don’t see any homegrown alternative evident. The best thing that could happen would be that Trump decides New Zealand is worth annexing. Or some survivalist militia in the US decides “nice country, we’ll take it!”
Meh. Just tried to log in to give a comment but it’s all FB, X, yada, yada, yad, and the Google login was beyond the usual shit so fuck it.
What I was going to say to him was that if all this shit has already gone down WTF does he have to lose? Keep writing.