Chapter 10 in my book, Fake Believe: Conspiracy Theory in Aotearoa, deal with the politics of conspiracy theory in New Zealand in the wake of Covid-19 and the parliament occupation.
Now, with a week to go until New Zealand’s general election, with almost half the registered political parties on this year’s ballots being, directly or tangentially, part of Aotearoa’s conspiracy milieu, I thought I’d post a few excerpts from the book and see how I feel about them now.
The chapter begins with the following summary of what it means to look at politics with conspiracisim in mind:
It’s all politics
This chapter is about politics, but it’s easy to feel like all of conspiracy is politics these days. New Zealand’s conspiracy groups are constantly filled with demands that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern be arrested, or occasionally even that she be killed. Sometimes they claim that she has been arrested and killed already.
Talking points in conspiracy groups are often quite clearly aligned with those from mainstream right-wing political groups.
And, similarly, talking points from mainstream right-wing political groups can often seem to have hints of conspiracy theory within them. For example, the National Party had taken positions in opposition to various UN agreements which were also singled out by conspiracy theorists as being part of the UN’s plan for global governance.
A petition on the National Party website in opposition to the United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was quietly removed from the party’s website in the days after the Christchurch mosque attacks, leading to accusations that the party was trying to cover for its past ‘dog whistling’ to conspiracy theorists and extremists. Party leader Simon Bridges blamed the petition’s removal on ‘an emotional junior staffer’.
On balance, it’s probably unlikely that the National Party had any real intention of appealing to extremists when they took a political position on the UN agreement. They were in opposition to a government that was supportive of it, and they have a history of taking quite a restrictive approach to migration, so it made sense they’d oppose it.
But for conspiracy theorists and extremists, who saw the UN plan as part of an effort to dilute the voting power of New Zealand’s right wing by importing liberal refugees, the National Party’s opposition could easily be considered an example of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.
As Covid became a significant factor in the day-to-day lives of New Zealanders, and a Labour-led government took unprecedented steps to limit the virus’s impact, the hyper-partisan politicisation of the pandemic that had been building in the US began to be imported to Aotearoa by way of conspiracy communities.
While mainstream political parties in New Zealand, even those firmly on the right, weren’t taking the same extreme oppositional approach to Covid, they were taking every chance to attack the government’s response to the virus. In the meantime, those who were taking on board the conspiratorial Covid misinformation originating out of US political groups were increasingly seeing the virus as a Left-vs-Right issue.
Within New Zealand’s conspiracy groups now there are really only two political positions: the Left are puppets of the Chinese Communist Party, or the New World Order; or all the mainstream political parties are puppets of the Chinese Communist Party or the New World Order.
‘National and Labour are complicit in the fabrication of the NZ response to the pandemic. They are just two sides of the same coin,’ wrote Brett on Telegram. ‘Don’t be taken in, don’t be fooled into thinking one offers a better future for us than the other — neither does.’
It’s a popular sentiment overall, although there are still times when certain moves from opposition parties are met with approval. Opposition from National and ACT to the Three Waters plan often finds praise in conspiracy groups, and the occasional opposition MP strikes a winning chord.
Yet, still, it generally feels that politics, at least in the mainstream, and conspiracy have managed to remain fairly separate in New Zealand.
But the nexus between the two are steadily increasing, as conspiracy narratives increasingly incorporate culture-war touchstones and political controversies, and as some aspects of conspiracy break out far enough into the mainstream as to seem like an enticing issue for political campaigning.
In the year-and-a-bit since the book was published nothing much has changed in terms of how these issues interact with NZ politics. The shadow of Covid still looms large, with conspiracy-minded people still suspicious of a return to lockdowns, or some new iteration of the virus in order to justify government action.
But perhaps the National Party has become more wary of dog whistling toward conspiracy theorists, to their credit.
On the other hand, ACT has been somewhat more vulnerable. They have strongly embraced opposition to co-governance — an issue that significance within conspiracy circles as another sneaky UN tactic! Pete put it bluntly in a Telegram message: “co governance is about one world government via the UN.”
For a period of time, following early 2022’s parliament occupation, there was a concerted effort by some in the “freedom” movement to join and gain power within the ACT Party, however it was largely unsuccessful. While some of the party’s candidates approaching the election were found to have been involved, to varying degrees, with the conspiracy ideas, they party itself hasn’t publicly embraced much of a conspiracy platform (besides the co-governance stuff, but for different ideological reasons).
The Fake Believe chapter carries on, looking at international political context around conspiracy theories. The section on international (mainly US) politics concludes like this, bridging back to a local context:
[…]
Videos of Republican primary debates for national-level elections gained viral attention on social media as candidates argued among themselves about which conspiracy theories to believe. ‘Your campaign is a psy-op,’ said one Republican hopeful to another in a debate among candidates hoping to compete in the Arizona Governor’s race.
Stepping back from the national political stage, the same has been seen at all levels of politics across the US, with online conspiracy and ‘culture war’ influencers actively encouraging believers to run for office at all levels, from school boards to state legislatures.
So far, however, this pattern hasn’t been observed in New Zealand — very few mainstream political candidates have expressed strong support for conspiratorial narratives, and there hasn’t been much evidence of any concerted push into local politics.
Many countries faced Covid with high-profile political personalities casting doubt on the fundamental scientific facts surrounding the virus — in some cases even having governing or primary opposition parties actively refuting the messaging of public health officials.
New Zealand’s political voices largely kept their criticism focused on the specific measures and actions taken by the government in response to the pandemic — none deliberately catered to pervasive misinformation or divisive conspiracy claims.
But could it be just around the corner?
It would be unrealistic to suggest that conspiracies haven’t played a part in New Zealand politics for decades, most notably those around 1080 poison and fluoride.
But, while these issues crop up from time to time in political discourse, or, in the case of 1080, form the core policy issues for some very minor parties, they seldom attract the attention of the political press or major party candidates.
We have yet, for example, to see opposition MPs suggesting that members of the Labour Party are supporting paedophiles, or are conspiring with the Chinese Communist Party to enact communist rule in Aotearoa. Nor have we seen National voters chanting ‘lock her up!’ at the mere mention of Jacinda Ardern’s name.
But there are still some mainstream political figures who have either danced around the edges of conspiracy theory or even fallen all the way in.
This remains true — aside from Winston Peters (we’ll get to him soon), there has been no significant adoption of conspiracy theory messaging within the mainstream.
In the book I examine mainstream figures who had at that point embraced conspiracy. There was just one very clear example, a figure who is no longer part of the mainstream:
Matt King
Matt King was the National Party’s MP in Northland for a single three-year term after the 2017 election. After failing to win re-election in the electorate and not gaining a list seat in Parliament, it seemed the former cop would probably fade out of the public eye, but Covid changed that for King.
In May 2020, while still Northland’s MP, he had been criticised by posting a photograph on Facebook of himself, unmasked, standing close to staff and family members in a restaurant, seemingly ignoring the social distancing rules at the time.
In a series of replies to critical comments on his post he said, ‘I just think the social distancing stuff at the stage we are at now is over the top,’ and ‘I’m just using my brain as an adult and he was too. We’re not Nazi Germany.’
On another Facebook post around the same time, King replied to a detractor, ‘You are blind at the altar of St Jacinda.’
The public comments, from a sitting MP, were unusually brash for the time, and attracted the attention of Covid-oppositionists. From that point on, although he wasn’t as vocal, he had been categorised as an ally by those who were highly sceptical of the virus and the government’s response.
King’s Covid views brought him to public attention again in August 2021, after he’d left Parliament. It was soon after New Zealand had re-entered a Level 4 lockdown following the emergence of Covid in the community, and he posted a link to a conspiracy website’s article describing vaccines as ‘mRNA gene therapy’ which featured an hour-long video by a popular anti-vax activist.
The National Party distanced itself from King’s post, pointing out that he was no longer an MP and didn’t have an official role with the party. However, the reaction from many like-minded readers was very positive.
‘Thanks Matt for sharing that. Many people have not done their homework before taking the jab. Motivated by fear also. What will happen in a few years when people get sick or die. Will those people be able to sue the govt?’ wrote one Facebook commenter.
He wasn’t, King insisted, an anti-vaxxer himself. He just wanted to, ‘start people talking,’ he told the New Zealand Herald.
Gradually over the following months King began to develop his status as an oppositional voice on Covid and some other popular conspiracy-adjacent topics, while still seemingly leaning on his credibility as a recently former MP. He posted regular Facebook videos and conducted interviews with other Covid sceptics.
The National Party again publicly distanced themselves from King in November of 2021 when he released a video interview with ‘discredited’ academic Simon Thornley in which they sought to sow fear and doubt about vaccines and promote alternative treatments.
‘There aren’t many politicians like Matt anymore they have gone to the dark side. We are on our own, against a regime out of control fronted by one of the biggest tyrants NZ has ever seen,’ offered Richard on Telegram in response to news of National’s choice to disavow King.
By the time New Zealand’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ arrived on Parliament grounds in early February 2022, King was a minor celebrity in the country’s Covid-sceptic communities, and he was quick to align himself with the occupation. Within days he had joined the protest and was a regular fixture on the many videos and live streams coming out of the occupation.
In early March 2022, in the immediate aftermath of the eviction of protesters from Parliament grounds, King announced that he would be forming a new political party ‘to represent all the political homeless at the moment’.
On 19 March King announced the launch of DemocracyNZ. It was the first official party to launch with what appeared to be hopes of capturing the support of those who found themselves isolated by their extreme and conspiratorial ideas about Covid and the government action it provoked. While not explicitly a ‘conspiracy theory’ political party, it’s focus on ‘the Bill of Rights and regaining/protecting our democracy’ is a strong nod to popular narratives that have arrived out of New Zealand conspiracy communities.
And within many online conspiracy groups it is assumed that Matt and his party ‘share our values’ and that ‘he is one of us’.
While the party announced plans to stand candidates in the 2023 general election, it didn’t take advantage of an earlier opportunity to enter Parliament — the Tauranga by-election to fill the seat vacated by former National Party leader, Simon Bridges.
Immediately after the parliament occupation, it looked as if King could become the respectable face of conspiracy politics. We was a recent MP with a major party, he presented well and seemed smart and well-informed. He was widely trusted within deeper conspiracy circles, while also have the potential to appeal to those who wouldn’t wan to associate with some of the more extreme elements of the “freedom” movement.
His was the first new party to emerge from the (literal) ashes of the parliament protests.
But it apparently wasn’t to be. DemocracyNZ largely crumbled in mid-2023 when internal disagreements saw five of the party’s candidates leave, with four issuing a statement denouncing the culture within the party.
DemocracyNZ has registered 13 candidates on their list, with each also standing in an electorate, including Matt King in his former National seat of Northland. The party has yet to reach 1% on any public poll.
In the 2020 election there was one party firmly making a play for the conspiracy vote, and that was Billy Te Kahika Jr’s NZ Public Party, which later merged with Advance NZ, the party formed by former National MP Jami-Lee Ross after his spectacular departure, as a sitting MP, from National.
I devoted a good number of words to Billy TK and the NZ Public Party in the book as, at the time, they were still a somewhat prominent part of the conspiracy community. However since the book’s publication TK and the party have faded entirely from view. This is largely because Te Kahika was convicted of fraud in relation to his handling of party finances.
The next person I wrote about was…
Liz Gunn
Liz Gunn, a former television presenter and news reader, became an outspoken anti-vax and oppositional voice during the 2021/2022 outbreak. In late October of 2021, while Auckland remained in a Level 3 lockdown, Liz Gunn posted a video on Rumble, a popular alternative to YouTube among conspiracy theorists and extremists, in which she railed against Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
‘[Ardern] has today announced the most draconian, cruel, inhumane, unkind measures to take away Kiwi freedoms,’ Gunn said in the opening minutes of her video, in response to the announcement of the new Covid-19 Protection Framework — the ‘traffic light’ system that saw vaccine passes introduced.
This was the first obvious sign of Gunn’s strong stance on the issue, and one aspect of her emotional video went even further to guarantee attention for it.
‘I mentioned two events happened today,’ said Gunn as she approached the end of the video. ‘The first was Ardern’s evil — it’s the only way I can put it — but the second was our mother earth creating an earthquake around Taumarunui just after she made her announcement. Our mother; our jewel; our beautiful country said enough!’
Gunn’s assertion, that a small earthquake that stuck during the Prime Minister’s press conference was nature’s rebuke of the government, was headline grabbing, and while it was a little polarising among the anti-vax and conspiracy theory groups she was appealing to, the general tenor of her message was well received.
A message from popular conspiracy theorist and extremist Cross The Rubicon captured the mood of many:
OK one may think this woman, Liz Gunn is a bit potty talking about the earth rising against Jacinda.
I squirm a bit myself to be honest. But her message about Jacinda is sound enough for me.
She says Jacinda is a tyrant. I’m with her there with bells on.
She says Jacinda is a liar. Again with lots of bells on.
Jacinda is going to destroy NZ. I’m turning into Quasimodo here!
Yes, yes, yes . . . Liz Gunn has some great points and I totally agree about the scumbag, lying communist, globalist POS that is Jacinda Ardern.
This thing is the satanic Trojan horse groomed from an early age to destroy NZ from within.
From that point on Gunn became a celebrity in the online spaces that had formed to oppose Covid vaccinations, masks, vaccine passes and, functionally, any acknowledgement of the global pandemic.
It was a launching point for Gunn to create FreeNZ, an organisation that occupies a strange middle ground between media outlet, advocacy group and political party. At the time of writing Gunn hadn’t yet pivoted directly into politics, but she had positioned FreeNZ as a political force, leading to speculation that a political party may be the next step for her and FreeNZ.
In the months after the violent dissolution of the Parliament protest, Gunn’s influence in the larger conspiracy movement appeared to have waned somewhat, perhaps eclipsed a little by the boosted profiles of other conspiracy influencers who used the occupation as an unending source of topical content.
However, she remains a continuing presence. Gunn’s journalism background and her competent production team have ensured that she continues to create engaging and shareable content, and that she is a guaranteed stop on any conspiracy-media publicity tour by figures wishing to reach a conspiratorial audience in New Zealand.
Gunn isn’t the only figure to have brought forth political aspirations from the significant opposition to Covid measures.
It took Gunn a surprisingly long time, I think, to make the jump from conspiracy media personality to political figure. It seemed clear during the parliament occupation that a political party was the next step for her — she practical said so herself a times.
Gunn’s party, only officially announced in June this year, is called NZ Loyal and has leaned in hard to pretty much every major conspiracy and culture war issue. Her years of media experience have helped her gain some popularity among those in the conspiracy community, with the party registering as high as 1.2% in a recent poll.
While no political pundits seem to be rating the party’s chances, Gunn herself is very confident, telling supporters at a recent meeting that she was planning to have those intending to vote for NZ Loyal complete a signed statement of their intention before casting their vote, which they would upload to the party’s website. She said she hoped to receive “two million” of the declarations, with which she would be able to prevent votes for her party being stolen.
Two million votes for Gunn’s party would likely represent almost 70% of the total party votes cast. This would be especially problematic as the party only managed to register three candidates on their party list. They have sued the Electoral Commission to add more.
There were other popular figures from the parliament protests who looked likely to make political moves.
The Bakers
Leighton Baker began his political career as a candidate for the mostly forgotten Kiwi Party, a conservative breakaway from the United Future party which contested a single election in 2008.
He was not elected. Receiving just 536 votes, he was 15,824 votes behind Labour’s Clayton Cosgrove, who won the Waimakariri electorate seat.
But it was the beginning of a political career of more than a decade which saw him become the leader of the New Conservative party until shortly after the 2020 election.
Following the Kiwi Party’s poor showing in 2008, the party dissolved, with many of the candidates joining the Conservative Party, founded by political activist and businessman Colin Craig. Baker became a member of the party’s board and stood as a candidate in the Christchurch East electorate.
However, the Conservative Party fractured in 2015 following a series of scandals involving leader Colin Craig (first he chose to join TV3’s David Farrier for an interview in a sauna and then, far more seriously, was revealed to have been sexually harassing an employee).
Out of the ashes of the Conservative Party rose the not-very-creatively-named New Conservative Party, of which Baker was named leader in 2017. He, and the party, stood in the 2017 and 2020 elections without success, and he was replaced as leader in late 2020 and then left the party entirely.
And that had seemingly been the end of Baker’s political story . . . until February 2022.
Baker’s daughter, Chantelle, had been building a name for herself online as an influencer. In 2015 she was among the cast of a short-run reality video series created by radio station ZM. Called ZM’s Ladies of New Zealand, publicity for the show described Chantelle as ‘a Christchurch fashionista’.
With that brief flash of fame long behind her, Chantelle had started to grow an audience as a Covid vaccine sceptic on Facebook by late 2021, regularly posting links to articles and websites that cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines. Her Facebook Live videos also grew in popularity, regularly achieving a thousand or more live viewers, as well as thousands more views in following days.
But it was the February 2022 occupation of Parliament’s grounds that really shot Chantelle to fame in the Covid-denial community and the broader conspiracy theory world. Chantelle had joined the ‘Freedom Convoy’ as it travelled from Northland to Wellington, and she was posting videos regularly during the two-day journey.
Once the protest arrived at Parliament, Chantelle’s daily live videos, often running for hours at a time, became one of the easiest ways for online supporters to get a sense of what was happening on the ground.
When police made efforts to evict protesters on day three of the occupation, Chantelle’s live stream, mostly captured from a perch atop a large wall, was the place to watch events unfold. At the stream’s peak there were nearly 20,000 live viewers. Later analysis by The Disinformation Project determined that Chantelle’s live Facebook video had greater viewership and engagement than many mainstream media organisations and was by far the most influential of any media on Facebook that day.
From that point, after the police withdrawal, at the end of some eight hours of ultimately pointless conflict, Chantelle was firmly established as the premier live broadcaster from the occupation.
Weeks later, as police actions to control the protest had become more overt, Chantelle’s parents came to join her at the protest. While he was no longer a political figure in any meaningful way, Leighton Baker seemed to relish the chance to make the most of the opportunity presented by the protest and his daughter’s notoriety among those present and the many supporters online.
At a time when no notable political figures were engaging with the protesters, Leighton was firmly embedded among those on the ground at ‘Camp Freedom’ and had soon established himself as something of a spokesperson and negotiator for the disparate movement.
By the time police moved in on the occupation in force, on 2 March, Leighton was on the front lines, arm in arm with other protesters pressed hard up against police lines. He was, eventually, pepper sprayed and arrested.
Leighton Baker’s embrace of the protest and its political complaints led some to speculate he hoped to piggyback off the energy of the opposition to government Covid-19 measures in order to once again launch a political career.
As I write, that hasn’t yet eventuated, but Leighton is still regularly engaging online with conspiracy-adjacent topics through Facebook Live videos and with daughter Chantelle on her Telegram and Odysee channels.
As Fake Believe went to press, I did still imagine a circumstance where Leighton Baker, with his past involvement, might be able to return to the New Conservatives and pivot the party into yet another conspiracy-aligned political contender.
That did not happen. While the New Conservative party does still exist, it didn’t make any significant push toward conspiracy. And Leighton Baker did not return. Instead he created his own party, and in a field filled with challengers all determined to us “NZ” and a strong word like “Loyal” or “Freedom” or “Democracy” he chose and different direction, and created the: Leighton Baker Party
The party has a registered list of three candidates, and has seems to have made almost no impact either in the mainstream political discourse or within the more specific conspiracy discussion.
Leighton’s internet-famous daughter, Chantelle, doesn’t seem to have any involvement with the party.
There was one other big figure from the parliament protests who seemed likely to have some political impact…
Sue Grey
Sue Grey, a Nelson-based lawyer, has been a high-profile member of New Zealand’s Covid-sceptic community since soon after the start of the pandemic. She had previously been vocally opposed to 1080 and has represented 1080 opponents in court against the government.
Speaking to Stuff for an article about Grey in November 2021, journalist Dave Hansford described Grey as an ‘opportunistic lawyer’ for whom conspiracy groups were ‘a happy hunting ground’.
‘Since 1080, she has branched out into every conceivable conspiracy theory there is, but she tends to specialise in the most lucrative. This seems to be the essence of her business model,’ Hansford told Stuff’s Amy Ridout.
That certainly seemed to be true as far as Covid sceptics went. Grey became a celebrity in the online communities founded to dispute official Covid advice and promote conspiracy theories. Her frequent essays and videos outlining her legal opinions about Covid matters are shared widely, and she is frequently hailed as a hero of the movement.
Grey has been involved in multiple lawsuits against the government during the first two years of the Covid pandemic, including challenging the legality of the Covid-19 vaccination programme. In the aftermath of the Parliament occupation, she claimed to be representing many of those arrested on the grounds during the riot that marked the end of the three-week protest.
Shortly before the Covid pandemic, when her anti-1080 stance was her most high-profile association with disinformation, Sue Grey was elected the co-leader of the New Zealand Outdoors Party. Later she was joined by Donna Pokere-Phillips, a former Te Pāti Māori candidate who also became a vocal promoter of conspiracy and disinformation during the pandemic.
The party rebranded itself The Outdoors and Freedom Party in 2021, and it issued press releases labelling the nationwide vaccination programme a ‘government mandated genocide’, while sharing many conspiracy claims on their official Facebook page.
By taking public positions against 5G, Covid vaccines, 1080, GMOs and the science of climate change, Outdoors became one of New Zealand’s highest-profile conspiracist political parties, in so far as they’ve previous appeared on the ballot in two prior general elections.
The conspiratorial beliefs of the party’s supporters are even more wide ranging, with a June 2020 rally in Auckland attracting supporters who were boldly promoting 9/11 conspiracy theories and even professing a belief that the earth was flat.
Grey’s first big chance to leverage her notoriety within the conspiracy community for political advancement came with the 2022 Tauranga by-election. The resignation of local MP and former National Party leader Simon Bridges created an opening for Grey, who had previously been based in Nelson. She took the opportunity to make a play for the seat and was officially declared among the candidates on the ballot vying for a place in Parliament.
Grey made her political play as part of the Outdoors and Freedom Party, who were clearly going to make a play for the conspiracy vote.
But she, and many others online, realised that, with an increasingly crowded field of political offerings targeting the conspiracy vote, there was a strong risk that they would split the vote and end up with a poor result (I would say no result, but one thing that you can be sure of with conspiracy groups is that they will over-estimate their numbers, so many assumed they’d still get some seats with multiple parties splitting the vote).
With this fear in mind, many proposed the idea of a unified party or an alliance of sort (remembering the relative success of The Alliance in 90’s politics).
Umbrella
The hope (or spectre, depending on your point of view) of a unified conspiracy-embracing political movement built on the momentum of the ‘freedom’ and Covid-oppositional movements has taken a number of steps forward since the occupation at Parliament.
At a meeting in Silverdale in mid-July, after many public Facebook posts calling for such action, Brian Tamaki announced that he was making progress towards creating a political coalition. ‘After weeks of work, we have three parties that have now moved into the stage of agreeing there is going to be an umbrella party over that,’ he told the small crowd that gathered to hear him speak in his role as the leader of the Freedoms & Rights Coalition.
The few days later he made the same announcement to a crowd of around a thousand, who had gathered in Auckland Domain for a planned ‘Million Man March’. At this event he expanded further on his political vision, suggesting that the Labour Party would be rendered irrelevant by the 2023 election: ‘Labour are gone . . . so it will be between National and this new party, which the name is going to be developed.’
An attempt to bring an umbrella party to Parliament will not be Tamaki’s first time attempting to convert his profile as the leader of the evangelical Destiny Church into political success and ultimately, according to his own statements, turn the country into a theocracy. ‘It’s a government that shall govern this nation that is not like the governments of this world,’ Tamaki told his followers when describing his vision for the future of governance in New Zealand. ‘It’s not a dictatorship, it’s not a democracy, it’s a theocracy.’
In October 2003 Tamaki had predicted ‘in the next five years, by the time we hit our tenth anniversary, and I don’t say this lightly, that we will be ruling the nation’. The same year the church launched the Destiny New Zealand Party to contest the 2005 election. Receiving around 14,000 party votes for a total of 0.6 per cent, his prophesy did not come to pass, but it was not the end of the attempts.
In May 2019 Tamaki launched a new political party, fronted by his wife, Hannah Tamaki, called Vision New Zealand (initially called Coalition New Zealand, the name was changed after intervention by the Electoral Commission). While it wasn’t an explicitly Christian party, the policies clearly aligned with the church’s stated political positions. The party performed even more poorly than the earlier attempt, collecting just 0.15 per cent with barely more than 4000 votes nationwide.
Tamaki had attracted criticism during the early Covid restrictions when he publicly refused to abide by public health policies that would make physical church services impossible. Later, in 2021 on the eve of a shift to an Alert Level 3 ‘lockdown’, the Tamakis left Auckland, travelling to Rotorua and Te Anau in contravention of Covid protection orders at the time. But, aside from lashing out at what he said were the government’s violations of ‘our religious freedoms’ the Tamaki’s hadn’t been overtly conspiratorial about the Covid pandemic.
Later in 2021 the Tamakis publicly announced they weren’t vaccinated, posting on Facebook that there was ‘little proof of the safety of this vaccine’. Around the same time they formed a new group, the Freedoms & Rights Coalition, which they claimed was an amalgamation of smaller groups and individuals. On 22 September 2021, in a live-streamed brainstorming meeting titled ‘Meet some of the faces who are a part of The Freedoms & Rights Coalition’, alongside Groundswell organiser Scott Bright and controversial Auckland restaurateur Leo Molloy, Tamaki announced the group’s plan to stage a series of large public protest in major centres, including in the Auckland Domain, where Level 3 Covid restrictions still applied. The protests were promoted as being anti-mandate and anti-lockdown, but the event (and those that followed) attracted wide support and attendance from a broad spectrum of Covid-oppositionists, including many with strongly conspiratorial views.
From that point onward, the Freedoms & Rights Coalition was one of the most well organised protest movements in the country, organising more than a hundred protest events around the nation by mid-2022.
Brian Tamaki was arrested and charged for his part in organising the Alert Level-breaking events and was re-arrested and warned for breaching bail conditions on a number of occasions, culminating in his imprisonment for nine days in early 2022, during which time dozens of supporters protested day and night outside the Mt Eden corrections facility where he was held.
His leadership of the protest group gave Tamaki a new high profile within anti-Covid and conspiracy groups, and even with the ending of almost all Covid restrictions and vaccine requirements, he continued to actively promote his strongly anti-government movement. The list of grievances for the group now had little to do with Covid and were instead focused on plainly political issues such as inflation and the housing crisis.
On 23 July 2022, Tamaki led a protest in Auckland as part of a Freedoms & Rights Coalition’s ‘Million Man March’ protest (it was, at best, a Few Thousand People March) in major centres that was intended to cause ‘major public interruption and disruption’. After a speech to attendees in the Auckland Domain, Tamaki led a few hundred protesters on a march onto Auckland’s Southern Motorway, causing massive congestion for close to an hour.
Some would suggest (I mean, I am suggesting, but I’m not alone) that Tamaki’s embrace of the conspiracy culture surrounding Covid was more of a cynical ploy for political power than a genuine adoption of the underlying conspiratorial narratives and fears that drove many supporters.
Tamaki’s “Umbrella Party” eventually manifested in a party they called Freedoms NZ. The promise, Tamaki suggested, was a big tent that would bring together all the “freedom” parties to give the mainstream political establishment some strong competition.
When Tamaki officially announced the party’s formation in August 2022, he suggested a number of parties were potentially going to join him. But, in practice the party is effectively just the Vision NZ party (header by his wife, Hannah) and Sue Grey’s Outdoors and Freedom Party. Other members, Rock The Vote and Yes Aotearoa, have barely any independent profile.
Strangely, despite saying many times, including at his party’s launch, that he would not seek political office, he is #1 on the party’s registered list, followed by Sue Grey and then Hannah Tamaki.
The umbrella tactic does not seem to have been successful, with the party failing to exceed 1% in any public polls.
And, despite his direct involvement in key organisational aspects of the parliament occupation, Tamaki isn’t widely trusted by many in the conspiracy communities. There were many who felt that his Freedom & Rights Coalition was trying to hijack the more organic movements they associated themselves with, and those same people see Freedoms NZ as an extension of that, with Tamaki using it for his own goals.
He is not the only character to attract that suspicion.
Winston Peters
Tauranga, the electorate previously home to former National Party leader Simon Bridges, is perhaps best known in political terms for being the long-time electorate of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
Peters was the local MP between 1984 and 2005, initially as a member of the National Party and, following his resignation from National, as an independent before he formed New Zealand First.
His small party thrived in the MMP system, and in 1996 he found himself holding the balance of power and forming a coalition with the National Party to form a government.
In 2005, Peters lost the electorate to National Party challenger Bob Clarkson, but his party’s overall support still saw him take his place in Parliament and once again as a ‘kingmaker’ in the government when he lent his support to Helen Clark’s Labour-led minority coalition.
Scandal ahead of the 2008 election saw New Zealand First fail to reach the threshold for parliamentary seats, but he returned again to Parliament in 2011.
His role as a deciding force in forming a government was repeated in the 2017 election after which he was able to use his pivotal position to negotiate himself a position as Jacinda Ardern’s Deputy Prime Minister.
However, the 2020 election appeared, perhaps finally, to be the end of the road for Peters in parliamentary politics, after more than 40 years as an MP, when NZ First failed to break through the 5 per cent threshold necessary to secure list seats in Parliament.
While Peters had often taken a contrarian position on many political matters, it was still a surprise to many to see him express support for the aims of protesters outside Parliament in the days after their occupation began in February 2022. It was, perhaps, even more surprising to see him arriving at the occupied Parliament grounds nearly two weeks later on 22 February.
According to Peters, his support of the protest wasn’t necessarily for the things they were demanding (he emphasised that he was vaccinated) but was mostly connected to how he believed that, compared to other protests, they were being unfairly treated by the government he’d previously been a part of.
His bizarre, and avidly live-streamed, walkabout of ‘Camp Freedom’ created a media spectacle and led some to believe he might be intending to exploit the ready-made voting base of Covid-sceptics and conspiracy theorists to have NZ First once again boosted above the necessary 5 per cent threshold in the coming election.
Accompanied by former NZ First MP Darroch Ball and a small group of assistants, Peters wandered around the camp on a day that had seem violent clashes with police in the early morning. While seeming receptive to the protest’s many varied participants, he appeared to break away from some people when their talking points strayed further into conspiratorial territory.
Eventually he left the site and was escorted down Lambton Quay by a phalanx of protest-site security staff who formed a hand-on-shoulder walking box formation around Peters and his small entourage. Among those who accompanied him in the camp, and on his departure, was Brad Flutey, a prominent local conspiracy theorist who was arrested a few days later for making recorded threats of violence on his various Facebook live streams (charges were later dropped).
Fears that Peters would lean into the conspiratorial ideas that underpinned the protest have not been fully realised, but there continue to be hints that New Zealand First, with Peters at the helm, might still be toying with the options. Dipping their toes in the water.
Some observers have pointed to the embracing of Covid conspiracy claims by a few people who have traditionally had strong NZ First connections, leading to suspicions that the party may have friends with their ears close to the ground in conspiracy circles.
New Zealand First’s positions of various conspiracy adjacent issues such as Three Waters reform, Chinese economic influence and Māori co-governance initiatives do make it a possibly attractive option for some in the conspiracy community, but Peters’ very long history as part of the mainstream political establishment is likely to stand in the way of strong support from those with deep suspicion of the government as a whole.
‘Well, I don’t trust you Winston. You reap what you sow. NZ doesn’t need politicians, WE NEED WARRIORS. Leaders who will FIGHT FOR US,’ wrote Linda in response to a video of Peters appearing on Liz Gunn’s online show.
Although others had more hope for Peters, with DRB writing, ‘I don’t suspect Winston was ever part of a globalist takeover plan either; more likely he was just egotistical and easily manipulated. If he can redeem himself by helping to topple these tyrants now, despite his role in putting them in power initially, then more power to him.’
On 5 July 2022, Winston Peters made his most overt political overture towards potential conspiracy-minded ‘freedom’ voters in a small thread on Twitter that hit a number of key culture war points that were likely to resonate with people who may have been considering a political shift to the conspiracy end of the minor party spectrum.
The thread, spread over five tweets, could easily have been at home among the posts in conspiracy theory Telegram channels or on the websites of some of New Zealand’s ‘freedom’, Covid denial or conspiracist websites. What stood it apart most obviously from any of those outlets was the careful word choice and the avoidance of explicitly conspiratorial terminology:
We are watching our democracy being eroded through the enforcement of an ideological and cultural tone that exists only to serve the nation’s elite leftist cabal.
It manifests in the push for separatist education, health, justice, and voting systems. In cancel culture, decolonisation, and the aim to limit free speech. In the racist divisive polices like ‘three waters’ and ‘co-governance’ — that only ever intend to give ownership and power to a race-based minority. All of which are being pushed by the out of touch middle class neo-marxists and their ‘fellow cultural travellers’ in the media. . .
Terms like ‘cabal’ and ‘neo-Marxists’ stood out, along with themes like Three Waters and Māori co-governance which were among the main issues of political discussion among the conspiracy community at the time.
While some conspiracy theorists certainly had no trouble reading between the lines — ‘Its good to see you speak freely regarding the cabal deep state agenda, can the damage be reversed quickly?’ asked Roxanne in reply to Peter’s tweets. Her Twitter bio described her as a ‘resistence movement operative’ and her timeline was filled with anti-vax content, Covid minimising, and many tweets referencing various New World Order and Great Reset conspiracy theory narratives — there were far more replies from users calling out or mocking his seemingly brazen play for marginal conspiracy-adjacent support.
From what could be seen in the many online conspiracy groups at the time, Peters’ overtures didn’t (at least at that stage) win him a lot of support. But his positioning on these issues has served to keep him in mind at least — he remains a frequently suggested option as a possibly sympathetic ear for online posters seeking a political outlet for their conspiratorial concerns.
Peters is perhaps the biggest surprise to me from the climate I wrote about a year or so back. While it was clear that Peters was making what I felt was a cynical play for support among the “freedom” movement, I didn’t expect that it would work.
At the time the general feeling among the various conspiracy communities that I watched was that Winston wasn’t to be trusted. They had, in their view, good reason to be suspicious of him too — he was the man who installed Jacinda Ardern into power, and was the Deputy Prime Minister as Covid-19 unfolded into our lives. Beyond that, he was a veteran politician and had served in many Governments in a variety of roles, include that of Foreign Minister, a position which would have put him in direct contact with the sorts of people they would tend to imagine are the nebulous Them that pull the strings globally.
So it’s surprising for me now to see NZ First surging in support and seeming to have taken a position as the preeminent conspiracy party. The party, and it’s leader, are far less outspoken on many conspiracy issues, but they seem to have said enough about the right things to have attracted support.
They have become, perhaps, the respectable face of “freedom” but it’s a respectable face that many still distrust.
“It amazes me that people believe that Winston is their saviour? Since when has he actually done anything, for the people who he pretends to represent?” writes Kpxxx on Telegram.
Another user, Glenn, offered a more verbose assessment of Winston’s role:
Satan sent Turncoat Winston to Freedom camp as an angle of light to steal our votes. He knew we were desperate to talk to someone from the establishment and we all got hexed.
Then, just before the election, the cabal put out a properganda piece called river of Freedom in the main stream theaters. in this movie Winston is supported by a Freedom politician that he has managed to hoodwink along the way.
Don't be fooled people. I know Winston and he is going to betray us for his own gain. He has sold our votes to our enemies twice before. Helen and Jacinda.
I'm off to church now. I hope you all have an enlightening day. Bless
While the deeply rabbit-holed users of NZ’s conspiracy Telegram channels are still very suspicious of Winston, it seems likely that many of the less-involved-but-still-concerned conspiracy adjacent voters see him as the sort of person who can clean house after all that’s happened over the past six years.
Peters has promised to have a reckoning in order to examine the issue of vaccine harm and mandates. The Covid-19 vaccines, and the policy around them, remain an issue that is hugely motivating for a large number of people, and this fairly simple proposal seems to appeal.
Some are still hoping for the best of both world’s however…
“The best scenario in my view would be for Winston and Liz [Gunn] to sort their differences and join up… Yes there is always going to be differences but if you forge his experience and her passion there will be a force to be reckoned with,” Jenny posted on Telegram.
I was just back in NZ visiting family and I swear every conversation I overheard in public had some harrrrrrd conspiracy vibes. Then again here in Aus I live in a very comfy bubble of lefty environmentalists, so going back to rural NZ is always shocking, but I do come into contact with it over here too. The cookers are having a field day with the Voice referendum.
How do we deradicalise these people? How do we minimise the harm these grifters are causing? Would be interested to work on something that helps move people out of conspiracy land. When it was just 1080 I was like fine, okay that’s not really having an impact. When the cranks got Fluoride out of the water in my home town that did start causing real measurable harm. The parliament protests are just the start, there will be some actual violence because the brain worm to brain ratio will soon tip over in favour of the worms.
I need to read your book. It’s in my behemoth To Read pile. Will bump it up a few spots.
Anyway, I'm off to church now. I hope you all have an enlightening day. Bless
This is such a timely reminder. Thank you for sharing it.
Can i be more widely shared?