- Bryce Edwards writes –
Michael Wood has become a victim of his own complacency about conflicts of interest. He simply didn’t take integrity rules meant to protect the New Zealand political system from corruption seriously. And that’s rightly led to his downfall.
Wood’s complacency about corruption-prevention is hardly unique. The whole country has generally been far too relaxed about conflicts of interest in politics and public life.
And why wouldn’t we be? After all, we are told consistently that New Zealand is the least corrupt country on earth. Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index always ranks us at or near #1.
Complacency about corruption
The problem is we’ve become conditioned to believe the hype, and not to trouble ourselves with the idea that conflicts of interest occur in our politics. The upshot is that New Zealand simply doesn’t have much in the way of significant safeguards against political corruption.
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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