GUEST BLOG: Tadhg Stopford – The guts of NZ’s pain is a great betrayal

Treasury stole our sovereignty

There are moments when a country realises its leaders no longer serve the nation. Instead, they serve the assets that enrich them. It’s the moment when our public servants, (‘aristocrats’, “the best”) become oligarchs. Mere wealth addicts.

In New Zealand, that moment has arrived. It is here. You can see it, feel it, taste it, hear it. It is why our economic growth has been diabetic. It’s why our politics never gets better. It’s why our politicians largely agree. They literally do not serve the public interest, and deny that they can.

As Labours finance spokesperson said last weekend, “we can’t do everything” instead of addressing the energy crisis privatisation has wrought. “Labour” serves capital, here and in the UK.

For forty years, Treasury’s ideology, foreign-owned banks, and a property-addicted political class have hollowed out our democracy, captured our economy, and turned our government into an obedient servant of the rentier elite.

Economist Ganesh Nana calls them SUCERs:
Subsidised, Unregulated Corporate Enterprise Rentiers.

I call them what they are, our new colonial landlords. Crooked thieves in suits. Like Edward Gibbon Wakefield who poisoned our nations birth with his greed; Treasury and its bankster class of international enablers have poisoned our economy with their Judas economics.

Treasury serves its own kind

From the 1980’s onward, Treasury preached a doctrine that:

• Shrank and neutered our state
• Blocked our sovereign investment
• Forced us into dependence on private credit
• Privatised the profits
• Socialised the losses
• And called it “responsible governance”

It’s Orwellian, and; funnily enough; it started in 1984. Meanwhile Treasury employees enjoy a comfortable career with a smoothly revolving door.

Economists have a phrase for this, it’s “Judas Economics”; the betrayal of the public for private gain.

Bernard Hickey describes today’s result perfectly:

“There is no shortage of capital. Global pension funds are begging to lend us money. Our government simply refuses to use it.”
— Bernard Hickey, CPAG Hui 2025

But instead, we borrow through private banks whose profits flow offshore.

Instead of building public wealth, Treasury has bullied us into a debt and suffocation spiral, and tells us it’s inevitable.

The SUCER economy: How rentiers took over everything

Ganesh Nana’s analysis is devastating:

SUCERs:

• Ignore externalities
• Avoid regulation
• Extract monopoly rents
• Target guaranteed public funding streams
• Deliver minimal public value
• Cannibalise public services

Energy, supermarkets, dairy, banking — all captured.
Now the government is designing health and education for SUCER colonisation:

• 10-year elective surgery contracts
• Charter-school expansion
• Outsourcing with no cost modelling
• Deregulation via the Regulatory Standards Bill

This is not incompetence.
It is a programme.

The political class are a rentier parliament, and enemies of the nation.

Bryce Edwards’ landmark analysis shows MPs collectively own $379 million in property.

A parliament of landlords legislates for landlords.

A cabinet of landlords governs for landlords.

A PM with seven properties sees rising house prices not as a problem — but as a wealth strategy.

Which brings us to Christopher Luxon.

The prime minister who says the quiet part out Loud

In a now-infamous interview (Newshub, 2025):

“People get wealthier by having their houses appreciated and becoming more expensive over time.”
— Prime Minister Christopher Luxon

That is not an economic plan.
That is rentier ideology.
And it is a direct conflict of interest.

Luxon has sold at least three investment properties since becoming PM.

His declared portfolio shrank from seven → three, with multiple sales confirmed in 2024.

Hipkins alleges over $600,000 in tax-free property profits in a single year.
Luxon denies “flipping”, but not the gains.
Even the uncertainty serves the critique:
MP income registers are designed to obscure conflicts, not expose them.

You cannot govern a housing crisis when your financial security depends on keeping it going.

The bankster state: when debt becomes the business of government

NZ’s mortgage market is the most profitable in the OECD.

Why? It’s simple. Forget the promises of rogernomics and ruthenasia for competition and choice. We’ve been sold out to cartels.

• Four Australian-owned banks control 90% of mortgages
• NZ households pay over $21 billion in mortgage interest
• $8–$12 billion flows offshore annually
• Treasury forbids sovereign credit investment
• 90% of bank lending goes to property, and crucially 10% goes to investing I improving our productive sectors.

Nz has become a sucker economy. Our wealth is being sucked out.

As Michael Hudson writes:

“A financialised economy is one where the business of government is to support the financial sector, not the public.”

We are living in that world. I’ve been watching it unfold for forty years, but it’s been hard to really comprehend the racket / slow motion robbery, because it’s occurred in a non truth based environment. We have been gaslit. We have been betrayed.

Politically, we have been trapped in an abuse relationship.

That’s why we chose MMP, it was all we could do to try and protect ourselves.

Yet, because of the basic commitment to serving the finance sector that both major parties and too many of the minors share, it’s done us little good so far.

We need to seize the opportunity and break the racket before it finally finishes breaking us all.

The racial dog whistle: who really loses?

Luxon claims rising house prices “make NZ wealthier.”

But who is “NZ”?

• Māori homeownership has collapsed
• Pasifika homeownership is near zero for under-40s
• Renters pay for the asset inflation they can’t access
• Young workers subsidise older asset-holders
• Rural and low-income communities are left behind
• Wealth flows offshore to Australian banks
• Every rent increase is a transfer from NZ households to foreign shareholders

The wealth effect is not a rising tide.
It is a pump – extracting from the many to enrich the few.
Is that what we were told would happen?
No, it’s not.
Has anyone taken responsibility? Or apologised? ….only Jim Bolger, RIP.

The legal question: who does the government serve?

Here lies the heart of the truth-based legal revolution.
Democracy is breached when:

• Officials act in conflicts of interest
• Public resources are diverted to private gain
• Sovereign credit is suppressed for ideological reasons
• Core obligations of stewardship are abandoned
• Public services are cannibalised for corporate rentiers
• Policy is shaped by those who profit from scarcity

Section 29 of the Magna Carta forbids deprivation of rights and property without lawful cause. It is black letter law in Nz

Yet, a rentier state deprives us daily.
The law is on the side of justice – we must wield it.

The path forward: A sovereign, regenerative, democratic New Zealand

We can choose a different path:

1. Restore public credit creation
2. Create a National Development Bank
3. Rebuild health and education as commons, not markets
4. End rentier capture through transparency reforms
5. Return banking profits to NZ communities
6. Rebuild homeownership for Māori and young working families
7. Rewrite Treasury’s mandate for public prosperity

It is not radical.
It is responsible governance.
In fact, as a historian, I’d like to share with you that it is also biblical government.

The truth-based legal revolution begins

Rentier power survives through illusion:

• “Debt is dangerous.”
• “Government has no money.”
• “Rising house prices make us wealthy.”
• “There is no alternative.”

All propaganda.

All disproven by NZ’s own data.

The alternative exists.

The alternative is ours.

The alternative begins with truth.

Let’s reclaim our sovereignty.

Let’s rebuild the Golden Kiwi.

Let’s end the SUCER era.

Tadhg Stopford is a historian and teacher. Support change by purchasing your CBD hemp CBG at www.tigerdrops.co.nz