How NZ First became the party of the conspiracist "freedom movement"
Byron Clark
A few months before the 2023 election, Charlie Mitchell and Katie Kenny of Stuff asked the question “Can Winston Peters ride a 'freedom' wave to Parliament?”. Peters had launched his campaign with an interview on Reality Check Radio, the online radio platform launched by the conspiracy theorist group Voices for Freedom, and at meetings had been giving sympathetic answers to attendees asking about COVID vaccines and the supposedly sinister influence of global institutions like the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), or responding “adult human female” to the question “what is a woman?” (a transphobic dog whistle that works in a similar way to the slogan “it’s OK to be white”).
The NZ First line up for the 2023 election featured several conspiracist candidates. Kirsten Murfitt (number 11), a property and commercial lawyer based in Tauranga was initially standing for DemocracyNZ but jumped ship to NZ First. She was found to have an account on the social media platform Telegram under the pseudonym ‘Polly’ where she posted a plethora of conspiracy theories. According to content posted by Murfitt, COVID-19 vaccines contain nanotechnology, that connects the vaccinated to a centralised 5G smart grid, turning them into “biological robots”, and nearly every terrorist attack since 9/11 was a false flag carried out by the New World Order.
Their candidate for the Whangaparāoa electorate, Janina Massee , had formed her own political party called NZ STRONG in 2022. It was never registered to be on the ballot, and in July 2023 she folded it into New Zealand First. Massee had shared a post on social media that asked: “Why are we still being led to the slaughter like so many to the gas chambers[?]”, in what appeared to be in reference to COVID-19 vaccines, and linked to a “grand jury” that would supposedly hold criminal trials for people involved in the pandemic response. On the since-deleted NZ STRONG website she suggested that climate change was “assisted by Governments via weather modification, geoengineering, chemtrails and cloud seeding”.
Caleb Ansell (number 35), who in 2020 stood for the New Conservatives and appears to be a Qanon adherent, stood for NZ First in Coromandel, and the party’s Hamilton West candidate was Kevin Stone, who in May 2020 had shared a post alleging the pandemic was a “plandemic” orchestrated by multiple governments at the behest of global elites who wanted a “great reduction in the population of the developed world and the virtual enslavement of the remainder”.
Former general secretary of the New Conservatives turned Reality Check Radio Host Diewue de Boer, called Winston Peters recruiting a “freedom movement star” (Murfitt) a “masterstroke” noting that “NZ First has always had a solid base of 2-3% who will vote for Winston no matter what, and so its path to victory only requires it to pick up an additional 2-3% of the votes.” Indeed it seems to be a mutually beneficial relationship, Peters got the extra votes he needed to return to parliament, and the “freedom movement” got to use a ready-made party to get fringe policies implemented, rather than trying to get a new party over 5% of the vote in an incredibly crowded field.
The man behind NZ First’s move to absorb the conspiracy theory crowd is Glenn Inwood, the former whaling lobbyist behind the website ‘Resistance Kiwi’. In a letter sent to Elizabeth Mundt (a Voices for Freedom affiliated district councillor in Selwyn, and now an NZ First member) that was quoted in The Post, Inwood talked up the party as the vehicle for the freedom movement to get into parliament, claiming that Peters’ views had evolved “since going to the Parliament Protest (the only politician who did)”.
“From then, I think it’s been a gradual awakening to a whole variety of things ... No other party or politician would even consider meeting Dr. Shelton.”
Dr Shelton, who had been a candidate for Democracy NZ before stepping down, is a former GP who has made the claim that COVID-19 vaccines contain self-assembling nanobots and can make people magnetic. Inwood drew attention to the background and beliefs of NZ First’s 2023 candidates.
“A number are ex-New Conservative, others have come up and said they just need to take a stand. There are a number of Resistance Kiwi people who have seen the change in the party, know that there are no longer “pro-mandate” people in it, and have backed it whole-heartedly.”
Mundt shared Inwood’s letter to a Voices for Freedom Telegram channel, adding “Just asking people to keep an open mind and remember some of us are working very hard behind the scenes in many spaces! All will reveal in good time!!” She urged people to attend a NZ First meeting happening in Christchurch. Inwood told Andrea Vance from the Post that Mundt had asked him why anyone should vote for NZ First and he gave his opinion, claiming he “didn’t actually know she was part of Voices for Freedom.” Inwood had previously given Mundt “media advice” during her campaign for the Selwyn District Council. Mundt remains an active member of the party. At the 2024 conference she pushed a remit calling for local referendums on chemical additions to drinking water, such as chlorination or fluoridation. Her remit passed, despite a pushback from MP Andy Foster, who wanted to refer these issues to the Ministry of Health.
There was jubilation from the fringe when NZ First’s coalition agreement with National was signed. The agreement saw the repeal of the Therapeutic Products Act, which regulated alternative medicine, and the removal of gender, sexuality, and relationship (RSE) education guidelines from school curriculum. Clear concessions to the so-called “Freedom movement”. On Reality Check Radio, host Maree Buscke shared her excitement with New Conservatives leader Helen Houghton.
“Coalition agreement, it’s now in, it’s inked. You have to be happy with some of the things that have got past the line, particularly around guidelines, RSE [relationship and sexuality education] in schools. I know I have to admit my little heart went pitter-patter on that, how about you?”
“I'm still buzzing over that.” Houghton responded. “The policy announcements, many of them actually things that, you know, New Conservative have been advocating for, but yes especially the RSE because, you know, I have been on the show so often talking about that. You can't get the grin off my face, absolutely, and you know when I heard it. I was shocked. I was like well, this is a Christmas present. You know the moment of Joy then turned to- I actually shared some tears because it's been a long battle, five years. You know, I walked out of school to fight this.”
The coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First includes a section stating that the new coalition government will “Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines”.
Opposing so-called “gender ideology” has become a Raison d'etre for Houghton. She left the teaching profession to pursue a political career and a law degree, with a particular focus on opposing the teaching of LGBTQIA+ related topics in schools. She has indicated she will return to teaching following the failure of New Conservative to get into parliament, but in her Reality Check Radio interview she made clear she doesn’t see the fight against ‘gender ideology’ as over.
“It's going to be still a battle to make sure that we advocate for all educators and children and parents who still may be pushing against that in school but also for me it is making sure that we remove organisations like InsideOUT from any say and input into school policy, because that is absolutely abhorrent that they should have any control over other people's children.”
InsideOUT Kōaro is a national charity who provides resources, workshops, consulting, advocacy and support for anything concerning rainbow (LGBTQIA+) communities to schools.
“We are really concerned about the potential risks for rainbow young people in response to the repeal and replacement of the RSE guidelines.” InsideOUT Kōaro managing director Tabby Besley said in an email.
“We know that good education about sexuality, gender and relationships is a tool for suicide prevention, bullying prevention and violence prevention. Rainbow ākonga experience significantly disproportionate mental health outcomes and this kind of education in schools goes a long way to help these young people feel affirmed in their identity, rather than isolated. In turn it supports their non-rainbow peers to grow their acceptance and understanding of diversity, which helps prevent bullying and discrimination.”
She is undeterred by the conservative opposition:“InsideOUT Kōaro won't be going anywhere, we've spent the last decade working to support hundreds of schools across Aotearoa and we will continue that, regardless of who is in government, or how loud our opponents are.” At the same time however, she has observed the growing backlash against the rainbow community, “it's clear that a lot of this rhetoric is being driven by and imported here by the far-right in the US and the UK - and that it's primarily rooted in transphobia.”
Research by the Disinformation Project in 2023 found an increase in transphobia following the visit to Aotearoa of British anti-trans influencer Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull (aka Posie Parker), with the rhetoric reaching a level they described as genocidal. Their report detailed a process called ‘community bridging’ where rhetoric originating in fringe far-right spaces would spread more widely though more mainstream groups.
With 6% of the vote, most of the ‘freedom movement’ candidates were far enough down the list to not make it into the House, with a notable exception. Tanya Unkovich. Unkovich, who before her political career was a ‘author, speaker, mentor and life coach’ does not have the extensive digital footprint Kirsten Murfitt or Lee Donoghue (number 12 on the list, an opponent of what he calls “woke extremism”) but she was a member of the ‘Nuremberg Trials’ channel on Telegram which says the COVID-19 vaccine was akin to the Nazis' war crimes. She has also appeared on Reality Check Radio and has a longstanding relationship with the Christian broadcaster Radio Rhema, who have platformed conservative and Christian nationalist voices in the past.
Unsurprisingly, Unkovich has an antipathy toward transgender people. Her private members bill, the Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill, would introduce a fine under the Summary Offences Act for “anyone who uses a single-sex toilet and is not of the sex for which that toilet has been designated”. The bill is unlikely to pass- unlike the removal of RSE guidelines it was not part of the coalition agreement. During the election campaign National leader Christopher Luxon said: You are on another planet if you want to have a conversation about bathrooms and make that an election issue.” Even if it were to pass, it would be near impossible to enforce. But its introduction in parliament will further normalise the idea that transgender people (who make up just 0.8% of New Zealand’s population) should be marginalised. Despite all this, her party complained to the speaker when an opposition MP referred to Unkovich as an ‘anti-trans activist’.
In a speech made during general debate in the house in September,Unkovich spoke of the “forgotten New Zealanders”, not referring to the New Zealanders she wants to fine for using the toilet, but those who were impacted adversely by public health measures during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A few weeks prior to that speech, she had met with members of The Health Forum, an anti-vaccine group, including “7 seriously mRNA harmed New Zealanders”. (While injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine are not unheard of, they are rare.)
The entry of the fringe conspiracist movement into New Zealand First represents a change in tactics, rather than try and get a new party over the 5% threshold as they did in 2020 (with several small parties who refused to work together) a sizable section of the so-called freedom movement” have realised they can achieve their goals by working within an existing party which have been ousted from parliament in 2020 needed a new section of society as its base. The risk is a growing normalisation of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and transphobia, as well as potentially other harmful ideologies, which now have a greater platform, and even some influence in government.