A young TikTok activist has discovered something shocking about New Zealand policymaking. Brace yourself: A leading New Zealand think tank recommended a knowledge-rich curriculum for schools. And the government agreed. 

Apparently, that is a scandal.  

Not the declining literacy rates. Not the children struggling to read. 

No, the scandal is that a think tank suggested structured literacy and politicians listened. Racing breathlessly through connections and implications, she presents this revelation as if she had uncovered Watergate 2.0. Thousands of views and shares suggest people find this compelling. 

What she never explains, however, is why teaching children to read through phonics might be bad. But then, that would require evaluating the actual policy. 

As it happens, I run this particular think tank, The New Zealand Initiative. And perhaps I should feel flattered that we are considered puppet masters of such Machiavellian cunning that we have convinced the government to teach children how to decode words. 

Truly, our dark powers know no bounds. Next, we will suggest children learn multiplication tables. 

I am not flattered, though. Instead, I am worried. Not about criticism – because that comes with the territory. What worries me is that we seem to have forgotten how democracy actually works. 

A few months ago, the University of Canterbury’s Deborah Te Kawa published something brilliant on this topic. Te Kawa, a policy advisor, explained what anyone who has studied policymaking knows: modern democracy deliberately includes multiple voices in policy formation. 

Since the 1990s, we have moved from the fiction of neutral bureaucracy to what she calls “pluralised and layered” advisory systems. This is how democracy evolved to work better. 

Think about education policy. Who should influence it? Only the Ministry of Education? Of course not. Teachers’ unions have insights about classroom realities. Parent groups understand family needs. Researchers know what international evidence suggests. 

And yes, think tank researchers might have something to contribute. Perhaps we have noticed that countries using structured literacy have better reading outcomes. 

The same logic applies everywhere. When discussing workplace policy, unions represent workers. When addressing Māori issues, iwi provide crucial perspectives. Environmental groups speak for conservation. Businesses explain commercial realities. Community organisations voice local concerns. Each advocates openly for their perspective. 

That is not corruption. That is civil society functioning as intended. This is a multitude of stakeholders engaging with the policy process. 

What my organisation does is so transparent, it is almost boring. We study what works overseas, analyse data and publish reports. Everything we do is downloadable and open to debate. Our “secret meetings” with ministers appear in their official diaries. Our annual reports list every member who provides funding. 

Instead of a “dark agenda”, we have a mission statement. Terribly disappointing, I know. 

None of this matters to the conspiracy theorists, though. They are not interested in whether policies work. They are interested in where ideas come from. 

Modern political discourse has developed a peculiar obsession. It does not ask “will this help?” It asks, “who proposed this?” 

The TikTok activist meticulously traces how The New Zealand Initiative recommended education reforms. She documents our reports, submissions and advertisements. She reveals (correctly) that many of our recommendations have been adopted. She has done everything except evaluate whether structured literacy actually helps children read. 

This is not analysis. It is political genealogy, tracing the bloodlines of ideas to determine their legitimacy. As if good ideas become bad when proposed by the wrong people. 

Consider this thought experiment. What if the Teachers’ Union had proposed structured literacy? What if community groups had advocated for council GST revenue sharing to encourage more housing? What if Child Poverty Action Group had suggested easier supermarket entry to boost competition and lower prices? 

Would the activist still be outraged? Of course not. The problem is not the policy. It is who came up with it. 

And here is the absurdity: when our recommendations are rejected – and still too many are, if you ask me – nobody creates elaborate diagrams showing our non-influence. The government ignored our proposals on pension age and government spending? No breathless TikTok exposés. 

We are only puppet masters when someone agrees with us. It is a peculiarly selective form of omnipotence. 

But perhaps I should not take this personally. After all, this paranoia is not unique to attacks on think tanks. It has become democracy’s new operating system. 

Take minimum parking requirements – those Soviet-style regulations forcing developers to provide car parks whether needed or not. When Green MP Julie Anne Genter advocated abolishing them around 2018, she was pushing basic economics: stop mandating oversupply of a resource with high opportunity costs. The economics was so sound that even we praised her approach. 

Yet Jacqui Dean, from the conservative National Party, called it “madness” and mounted a full-throated defence of red tape. Not because the policy was wrong, but because it came from the Greens and could be framed as part of a “war on cars”. Today? Those requirements are gone, abolished in 2020 through the National Policy Statement on Urban Development – which enjoyed bipartisan support. 

Or consider congestion charging. When centre‑left Mayor Len Brown suggested it in 2011, National’s Transport Minister Steven Joyce shot it down as anti‑motorist. By 2017, Joyce as Finance Minister was commissioning studies. Today, a National‑led government is advancing time‑of‑use charging. Same policy. Different political moment. 

Finally, think of the Auckland Unitary Plan. When the council floated “compact city” rules in the mid‑2010s, some critics cast it as a globalist UN “Agenda 21” plot. Still, the plan was adopted after due process. Today, its basic logic is mainstream: allow more homes where people want to live. Indeed, Auckland’s housing reforms are almost universally praised for having improved affordability. 

This drift from policy to provenance has become so universal it deserves its own academic discipline. Perhaps it should be called “conspiracyology”, the study of how to avoid evaluating ideas by obsessing over their origins. 

On the left, a prominent blogger warns about “the Koch brothers” and “corporate fascism”. The Atlas Network – a global association of free-market think tanks that gave us a camera ten years ago – becomes a tentacled monster controlling global politics. 

On the right, a tenured economics professor holding a prestigious named chair at Auckland University spins theories about banks controlling politicians through think tank membership. His evidence? People who understand banking sometimes comment on banking policy. Perhaps the professor might instead engage with whether those comments make economic sense. Just a thought. 

In the centre, a political scientist has established an “Integrity Institute”, funded by millionaires to investigate millionaire influence. It creates registers of lobbyists while being unable to define lobbying. It demands transparency from others while being remarkably opaque about its own agenda. 

The infection has spread to the academy itself. A distinguished New Zealand anthropologist recently wrote that neoliberals were plotting against democracy, citing membership in the Mont Pelerin Society as evidence. 

The Mont Pelerin Society is an international association of liberal economists and philosophers founded in 1947 by future Nobel laureates. But membership alone apparently proves conspiracy. 

No doubt the critics imagine secret handshakes and dark rituals. In reality, the meetings mostly involve discussing better regulation, macroeconomic policy and the history of economic thought. Terribly mundane for a sinister cabal. And I would know because I attended many such conferences. 

After this attack, my colleague felt compelled to set the record straight. He explained that advocating for consistent regulations is not fascism, that Friedrich Hayek was anti-authoritarian. She never engaged with our arguments. 

In all this conspiracy mania, actual policy work rarely gets discussed. Let me return to our own work to show what real policy development looks like. 

A few years ago, we studied how Germany and Switzerland handle housing. Both countries have systems where local taxes grow with development, giving councils reasons to approve housing rather than block it. Both have more affordable housing than New Zealand. 

We spent months analysing such systems, consulting experts, publishing reports explaining how similar approaches might work here. We suggested councils should receive GST revenue for new construction, creating incentives to approve development. We talked to politicians from all sides. 

This idea is now part of the government’s coalition agreement. But does that make it a conspiracy? Or is it just policy development – studying what works elsewhere, adapting it for local conditions, convincing decisionmakers? 

Similarly with supermarket competition. We noted how overseas markets maintain competitiveness, identified regulatory barriers preventing new entrants, then proposed solutions. The government is now implementing reforms making new supermarket establishment easier. Not to help the existing duopoly – to enable competition against it. 

But try explaining this to someone convinced we are corporate shills. A recent article accused us of being puppets of the supermarket duopoly, noting that Foodstuffs and Woolworths are among our members. 

The writer never mentioned that our proposal excluded existing supermarkets from planning liberalisation for five years, giving new entrants a clear advantage. Apparently, we are such incompetent corporate shills that we argued against our funders’ interests. 

The psychological research on these patterns is illuminating, if depressing. People increasingly engage in “motivated reasoning” – seeking information that confirms their group identity rather than evaluating evidence. 

We have developed a remarkable ability to know an idea is wrong before examining it. Why bother thinking when you can simply check the source? Democracy, though, requires grappling with whether things might work. 

It was not always this way. There was a time when society debated ideas based on their merits. 

Remember how New Zealand adopted MMP? Through massive public debate about representation. People argued about fairness, proportionality and electoral mathematics. They engaged with the actual question: what electoral system serves democracy best? 

Imagine trying that today. The TikTok detectives would be busy mapping which think tanks backed which option. The voting system would be an afterthought. 

Treaty settlements emerged from decades of dialogue about justice and history. The Resource Management Act followed extensive consultation about environmental values. 

I mention these not because I necessarily endorse the outcomes; that is beside the point. They were genuine democratic deliberations. People debated substance. They discussed what might work and why. Suspicion about motives did not replace engagement with ideas. 

That capacity seems to be dying.  

Today, suggest teachers use phonics and you are part of an education conspiracy. Propose council incentives for housing, and you are captured by developers. Recommend training more doctors and you are – well, I still do not know what the TikTok activist thinks our sinister motive is. Perhaps we own shares in stethoscopes. 

Yet what I find most remarkable about this descent into paranoia is how it distracts from real problems. 

New Zealand children are falling behind in literacy. Housing remains unaffordable. Infrastructure is creaking. Productivity lags. We have a chronic shortage of GPs. These are practical challenges requiring evidence-based responses. 

But we cannot have those responses if every policy proposal triggers a forensic investigation into its proposer. We have become detectives when we should be problem-solvers. 

The organisations these conspiracy theorists attack – think tanks, unions, business groups, iwi organisations – are institutions of civil society. They are how citizens organise to influence democracy. They are supposed to advocate. 

That is not a perversion of democracy. On the contrary, that is democracy working. 

Deborah Te Kawa put it perfectly: mistaking transparent advocacy for corruption does not protect democracy. It narrows it. 

Perhaps it is even worse than that. When paranoia replaces policy analysis, when citizens can only see conspiracies, when every participant is assumed corrupt, democracy does not just narrow. It stops functioning. 

And the most bitter irony? Those most loudly defending democracy against “capture” are killing democratic discourse. 

They have forgotten that democracy is not about pure ideas emerging from nowhere. It is about different groups openly presenting their views, testing them through argument and evidence and implementing what works. 

When we stop debating ideas and start obsessing over who proposed them, democracy has not been captured. It has committed suicide. 

At least we will have plenty of TikTok videos documenting exactly who to blame. The algorithms will be delighted. 

But I will not plead guilty.  

To read the article on the Quadrant website, click here.