GUEST BLOG: Tadhg Stopford – Ruth & Nicola: Protest time? Or do politicians just require educating?

TWO WOMEN, ONE BROKEN SYSTEM — AND A COUNTRY PAYING RENT ON ITS OWN WEALTH

How the Willis–Richardson “fiscal responsibility” spectacle reveals the deeper truth about monetary capture in New Zealand — and the escape route no one in the political class dares to mention.

When Nicola Willis challenged Ruth Richardson to a public debate (“Anytime, anywhere”), the media framed it as a dramatic clash between two economic heavyweights; two eras of fiscal thinking colliding on the public stage. (RNZ: “Anytime, anywhere: Nicola Willis challenges Ruth Richardson to debate”)

But look closer and something far more revealing appears: both women, despite their fight, operate within the same closed monetary paradigm — the paradigm created in the 1989–94 reforms, enforced by Treasury, and defended by private financial institutions.

The fight is real.

But the battlefield is fake.

And that is the point.

THE PUBLIC THEATRE OF ORTHODOXY

Richardson, architect of the 1991 “Mother of All Budgets”, still represents the foundational austerity creed: “Debt is dangerous, deficits immoral, the state must shrink.”

Willis, despite cutting taxes, is now attacked for being insufficiently austere by Richardson and the Taxpayers’ Union she chairs. (RNZ)

Both sides assume:

• Government must first obtain money before it can spend it.
• The source of that money is private savings supplied by investors.
• Bond markets maintain discipline.
• The Crown is a household that must “live within its means.”

These assumptions are the shared foundation of the Willis–Richardson clash.

They are also economically false.

THE REAL DEBATE — THE ONE YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HEAR

When Kim Martin, Director of New Zealand Debt Management, tells the public that investors “lend” us their savings and government issues bonds to fill the gap between tax and spending, she is repeating the orthodoxy she inherited. (FMA “Jess Learns to Invest,” interview transcript)

It is the same orthodoxy Richardson enforces, the one Willis attempts to modernise but not question, and the one Treasury treats as dogma.

But internationally, that orthodoxy has been abandoned.

The Bank of England openly states that commercial banks do not lend pre-existing savings; they create new money when they make loans. (Bank of England, “Money Creation in the Modern Economy”, 2014)

The RBNZ demonstrated the same principle when it created tens of billions of dollars during the LSAP programme. (RBNZ LSAP programme documentation)

Thus, the idea that the Crown must rely on private investors’ “savings” is fiction.

It is not economics. It is ideology.

Why does the political class still believe it?

Because the 1989–94 reforms were engineered to blind Parliament to monetary sovereignty and to make the government dependent on private bond dealers.

This is structural capture.

ENTER ANNA BREMAN — A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

Anna Breman’s 2021 Riksbank speech openly acknowledges that traditional monetary tools are no longer sufficient. (Riksbank, “Monetary policy in the wake of the corona crisis – we need to think along new lines”, 23 February 2021)

She states:

• “Monetary policy needs a larger toolbox.”
• Negative interest rates, dual rates, yield curve control, and helicopter money should all be considered.
• People’s QE is technically feasible.
• Direct monetary financing is conceptually possible where legal.

This aligns with the international consensus at the BIS, IMF, ECB, and BoE — but runs completely counter to the Richardson–Willis austerity framework.

In other words: the incoming RBNZ Governor understands modern money.

Our political class does not.

THE TENSION IN NEW ZEALAND IS NOT LEFT VS RIGHT — IT IS TRUTH VS ILLUSION

On one side: a political and bureaucratic class that truly believes government must beg private financial institutions for money.

On the other side: a global shift acknowledging that money is created inside the system, and sovereign nations are not inherently financially constrained.

New Zealand sits at the seam between these realities.

The Willis–Richardson feud keeps public attention inside the austerity frame.

Kim Martin’s interview reveals the depth of the myth.

Anna Breman’s academic history quietly exposes the truth.

THE COST OF BELIEVING THE MYTH

Because we treat the Crown as a household, we suffer:

• A $210B infrastructure deficit (Treasury infrastructure estimates)
• The lowest homeownership rates in modern NZ history (Stats NZ)
• Chronic underfunding of hospitals, rail, and energy systems
• One of the highest external debt positions relative to GDP in the OECD (OECD data)
• Offshore banks extracting large annual profits (NZ bank profitability reports)
• Cycles of austerity and tax cuts that weaken public capability
• Permanent fiscal anxiety despite abundant natural resources

For forty years, our prosperity has been sacrificed to maintain the myth of monetary scarcity — a myth that benefits only one group: the institutions that create private credit.

THE PATH TO SOVEREIGN PROSPERITY AND SECURITY

A sovereign nation has tools private-credit economies do not:

1. Sovereign credit creation for productive investment
2. Strategic credit allocation (the “window guidance” used by Japan, Korea, China)
3. Public balance-sheet expansion in recessions to stabilise employment and industry

New Zealand is legally capable of using these tools.

Section 47(2) of the Public Finance Act allows borrowing “from any source.” (Public Finance Act 1989, s47(2))

The RBNZ can and does create money ex nihilo.

Parliament can redesign monetary-fiscal coordination — if it chooses.

Historical precedent (1936–45) shows sovereign credit rebuilt New Zealand faster than any private-credit regime ever has.

This is the real path to national security, resilience, prosperity, and independence.

Not austerity.

Not Ruth-enasia.

Not bond-market appeasement.

WHY THIS MOMENT MATTERS

The Willis–Richardson conflict, the Kim Martin interview, and Anna Breman’s intellectual background all point to the same truth:

New Zealand’s political system debates spending, but never debates who should create the money.

Every fight about tax, welfare, infrastructure, and debt is downstream of this single question:

Who should create the money we use — the Crown or private banks?

Until this question is answered honestly, New Zealand remains a monetary colony: compliant, extractive, and declining.

We are not out of money.

We are out of courage, clarity, and sovereign imagination.

The Truth-Based Legal Revolution aims to restore all three.

History is merciless on nations that outsource both knowledge and will — and generous to those that reclaim them.

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