Legality Is Not Legitimacy: How Lawful Appointments Can Erode Public Trust in New Zealand

A lawful process is not always a legitimate one. Exploring how political appointments, revolving doors, and institutional trust shape New Zealand’s standing and democratic confidence.

There is a kind of corruption that does not wear the trench coat of bribes, nor sneak through the backdoor. It strolls through the front gate, signed off by lawyers, dressed in procedural legitimacy. It smiles for the cameras. It declares itself fully in compliance with all relevant statutes. And that, precisely, is why it is more dangerous than the corruption of the envelope: because it is indistinguishable from the ordinary operations of power.

So let us be precise. The issue is not that Judith Collins broke the law by being appointed to a plum new public post. The issue is that she didn’t have to.

In psychoanalytic terms, which are the only ones truly adequate to grasp today’s political reality, this is not a scandal of transgression - it is a scandal of the obscene underside of the law itself. The Lacanian Real of power leaks through the symbolic structure of legality, showing the true dynamic of underlying power. We are left staring, not at a criminal conspiracy, but at the void of accountability hidden inside normal governance.

What does it mean when a former Cabinet Minister is appointed to a major oversight position without open competition, and this is defended as entirely appropriate? It means the system no longer even pretends to conceal its inner logic. The message is not “we are hiding power from you.” It is worse: “we don’t need to hide power from you.” This is what philosophers of ideology have always feared: the moment the mask falls not because it has been torn off, but because the mask is no longer even necessary.

Machiavelli would understand. Foucault would nod grimly. But it is Robert Michels who must be resurrected now. His “iron law of oligarchy” was never a prophecy; it was a diagnosis. Even the most democratic institutions, over time, decay into oligarchic structures. Why? Because organisation requires expertise, expertise breeds access, and access rewards loyalty. In such a system, the loop always tightens. Not because anyone conspires, but because no one needs to.

The paradox of modern meritocracy is that it produces entitlement. “We are the best-qualified,” say the insiders. “We know the levers. We built the machine. Why shouldn’t we run it?” And so, the revolving door spins: Ministry to boardroom, Parliament to Commission, newsroom to PR agency. And back again.

What is new, and terrifying, is that this is now happening in daylight. Not behind closed doors, but with full ministerial approval, and the defence that - yes, in fact, no other candidates were considered. Not even for show. Not even to maintain the ritual fiction of fairness.

And yet, to criticise this is to invite the counterattack: “Do you doubt her qualifications? Do you oppose experience?” No. That is not the point. The problem is not the individual. The problem is that the process no longer even pretends to be for the public.

You want to know why New Zealand is slipping on international corruption indices? It is not the brown paper envelope stuffed with cash handed under the table. It is the broad daylight shrug. The “nothing to see here.” The formal propriety that overlays substantive decay.

This is not a crisis of law. It is a crisis of legitimacy. And that crisis grows not in the shadows but under full fluorescent lighting.

The deeper irony, one worthy of Kafka, is that the more “process” is invoked, the less room there is for genuine contest. When everything is boxed, signed, and sealed, the ordinary citizen is left not angry but numb. The structure of governance becomes like the online terms and conditions we all click: unreadable, inevitable, slightly suspicious, but inescapable.

How does democracy die in such a system? Not with a bang. With a board appointment.

Some may argue: “But we need experienced people in public roles. Isn’t this efficient?” Perhaps. But when the same faces appear again and again across agencies, boards, commissions, and oversight bodies, how do we explain to a young citizen that these roles are not pre-allocated? That participation is possible. That the public is not a spectator.

The psychoanalytic twist here is that the subject (in this case, the voter) is no longer even needed. The spectacle goes on. Power affirms itself by excluding the possibility of surprise. There is no rupture. No event. Only rotation.

In the United States, some public officials are elected: judges, sheriffs, school boards. It is a messy system, full of money and partisanship. But it does have one virtue: it reminds the citizen that institutions belong to them, not to the political class. Could something similar work in New Zealand? Perhaps not. But what is clear is this: the current opacity masquerading as propriety cannot hold.

We need a new democratic imagination. One that does not rely on performance reviews and quiet recruitment panels, but on rupture. A system that affirms public input, not as consultation but as co-ownership. One where appointments of national significance are contestable, visible, and accountable. Where Parliament remembers it is not a club of insiders, but a fragile stage for the people’s power held in trust.

Until then, the slow erosion will continue. Not because anyone is evil. But because the system itself incentivises self-replication. Those closest to the levers appoint those they already trust. Those already trusted tend to look like those already in power. The result is not conspiracy. It is what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”, except here it is the banality of appointment.

In the end, we do not need pitchforks. We need floodlights. Not to expose criminality, but to dispel the illusion that legality is enough. Because democracy is not a machine. It is a theatre. And the moment the curtain never rises, we are no longer the audience - we are the extras.

This is what I feel. Not outrage. But dread. Dread that we will look back on these kinds of appointments not as exceptions, but as the beginning of a new norm. Where trust is replaced by resignation, and democracy fades not in chaos, but in competence. Competent, qualified, and quietly unaccountable.

A future where the only thing worse than corruption is its absence - because all the corruption has already been legalised.