Tarrant, 28 at the time of the attack, started travelling around the world in 2014 using inheritance money he got from his late father’s life insurance policy. This was around the same time that the mid-2010s “nu-right” began to coalesce around growing Islamophobia & anti-immigrant sentiment in the West.

In 2015, the United Patriots Front (UPF) formed in Australia out of protests against plans to build a mosque in Bendigo. Its core leadership and associates have reformed multiple times to avoid legal bans over the subsequent years, but this network remains the key Australian fascist/white nationalist nexus.

While abroad, Tarrant followed this far-right scene closely. Tarrant donated to the UPF, among other Australian and international far-right groups & figures. Tarrant referred to UPF leader Blair Cottrell as “Emperor” in one of the roughly 30 comments he made in UPF Facebook groups. Another comment praised Cottrell following a TV appearance, reading “Never believed we would have a true leader of the nationalist movement in Australia, and especially not so early in the game. Would gladly stand behind you.”

Tarrant was also connected to Thomas Sewell, founder of UPF successor organisation the Lads Society (LS), and most recently leader of the National Socialist Network (NSN), disbanded in January this year following new Australian hate speech legislation. The Lads Society was formed in 2017 by UPF and some Antipodean Resistance (AR) members. Antipodean Resistance started on the Iron March forum, where Atomwaffen and the wider “skull mask network” formed, fusing Order of Nine Angles (ONA) Satanic fascism with “Siege culture” (inspired by American neo-Nazi James Mason’s book of the same name). Antipodean Resistance was coached by NZ ONA affiliate and propagandist Kerry Bolton.

The NSN, formed out of the Melbourne Lads Society chapter in 2020, has long had allegations of Satanist infiltration at high levels, not helped by prominent member Joel Davis’ Baphomet tattoo (pictured above). After the attack, Sewell claimed that in 2017 he invited Tarrant to join the Lads Society to help create a whites only “parallel society”, but Tarrant turned it down to move to New Zealand. Immediately following the shooting, Sewell commented on Facebook that Tarrant “had been in the scene for a while”.

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As his travel funds started drying up, Tarrant moved to New Zealand in August 2017. He rented a house in Dunedin and began preparing for the attack. He began working out (aided by steroids), and acquired a gun license, buying 10 firearms in 5 months and practicing at a local range. In February 2018, Tarrant commented on a Lads Society Facebook group making thinly veiled threats against an Islamic school near his gym. “Them having seperate schools is something we should support. Plus it makes them all gather in one place....JK JK JK”.

Tarrant continued posting to 4chan during his time in Dunedin, including posting in two threads in 2018 that discussed immigrants in New Zealand. In reference to the spread of mosques, one user posted a box of matches, to which Tarrant replied “Soon”. He identified himself as living in Dunedin, and discussed mosques there, in Christchurch, and in Ashburton. When others egged him on to do something, he replied “I have a plan to stop it. Just hold on.”

In January 2018, Tarrant donated $2300 AUD to Austrian “identitarian” activist Martin Sellner, one of the figures responsible for popularising the term “remigration” in far-right circles. In subsequent emails, Tarrant expresses his adoration for Sellner, with Sellner replying “if you ever come to vienna we need to go for a café or a beer. ;)”. Tarrant replies “the same extends to you if you ever visit Australia or New Zealand” and to “contact Blair Cottrell … or Tom Sewell”.

According to Austrian media reports, their last email exchange was in July 2018. A day later, Tarrant apparently booked tickets to Austria along with a rental car, visiting in November for a week and a half on his last international trip before the attack. While there’s no direct evidence Sellner and Tarrant met, the timing is certainly interesting. Sellner wiped his emails 40 minutes before a police raid on his home in the days following the Christchurch attack, with Austrian media speculating he was tipped off by the SPÖ, a far-right party in the then-governing coalition with ties to the identitarian movement.

Regarding the attack itself, Tarrant’s biggest influence was Anders Breivik, the man behind the 2011 Norway attacks in downtown Oslo and at a Labour party youth camp on Utøya Island, killing 77 people. Breivik distributed an online manifesto before the attacks, being one of the first to do so, and (attempted to) send it to 8000 emails he found by trawling online far-right spaces. It was 1500 pages, mostly from other sources, including copy-pasted blogposts about white genocide and edited sections of the Unabomber manifesto. Throughout were calls for more far-right “lone wolf” attacks to accelerate a forthcoming race war between Christians and Muslims that would eventually reclaim Europe.

Breivik would later claim in court that the attack was simply one part of a larger propaganda operation to amplify his message and manifesto, something he exploited by leaning into the media frenzy and making a mockery out of the trial. Breivik had actually planned to film himself beheading the Norwegian PM on the island and upload the video to YouTube, but he was unable to acquire an iPhone in time and the PM left the island ahead of his arrival.

Although there were a number of white supremacist attacks in the years between Breivik and Tarrant, most notably the 2015 Charleston church shooting and the 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life attack, Tarrant was the first to study, replicate, and refine Breivik’s formula. A copy of Breivik’s manifesto was found on the SD card in the drone he used to surveil the mosques ahead of the attack. Tarrant cited Breivik as his “only ... true inspiration” in his own manifesto released before the attack (titled “The Great Replacement”), down to using Breivik’s directions for DIY petrol bombs (pictured below, however not used during the attack). Tarrant also tried to link himself to Breivik, claiming “brief contact” with him and that he had received a blessing from the “reborn Knights Templar” order that Breivik claimed membership of, though its existence is highly debated.

Most importantly though, Tarrant took Breivik’s formula and updated it to be as memetically impactful as possible. Both the Internet and the far-right scene had changed considerably in the 8 years since 2011, something Tarrant took advantage of. Instead of a rambling 1500 page manifesto, Tarrant’s was only 74. It combined red herrings that doubled as media headlines (”Candace Owens radicalised me”, “Fortnite trained me to be a killer”, the Navy Seal copypasta, etc.), alongside an “emotional” narrative of his radicalisation (largely fabricated when compared to the known timeline). Throughout the manifesto were very explicit calls for others to follow in his footsteps, with the second half being various justifications for committing far-right terror attacks.

The use of memetics extended to the aesthetics of the shooting, including painting various slogans & dog whistles onto his guns and donning black tactical gear (something now oft-replicated), starting his stream by saying “remember lads, subscribe to Pewdiepie”, and playing far-right meme songs like Serbia Strong. Of course, Tarrant’s biggest “innovation” was livestreaming the attack. While livestreamed crime had been seen before, Christchurch was the first time a terror attack was streamed in full, all from a “first person view” on a head mounted GoPro.

Tarrant first posted the stream and manifesto links on 8chan minutes before embarking on his attack. The original Facebook stream only received <200 viewers, and Tarrant would be arrested 19 minutes after he started shooting, preventing a planned attack on a third mosque in Ashburton. However, the wheels were already in motion. In his 8chan post, Tarrant requested people to “please do your part by spreading my message, making memes and shitposting as you usually do.” The video and manifesto soon spread rapidly and globally, with the livestream becoming both a viral shock video and example for fascists of someone putting words into action (as Tarrant said on 8chan, “a real life effort post”).

Those who went looking for the soon-taboo video might have run directly into the arms of Terrorgram, a network of Telegram channels that formed in the late 2010s to propagandise for the Iron March-derived “skull mask network”. They would have been not only greeted with the full video of someone executing dozens of people, but also a whole spread of propaganda and literature about why this was correct, and how to replicate it themselves.

Tarrant was quickly immortalised as a “saint” by Terrorgram and other accelerationist fascist groups that had begun to take root around the same time, the latter often using Terrorgram as their recruiting grounds. Tarrant’s manifesto was intentionally amorphous, claiming no allegiance to a specific sect or movement apart from general white nationalism and accelerationism, allowing many different groups to incorporate him into their cosmology as the key example of their ideology in action. It’s no wonder that Tarrant would subsequently inspire the most fascist accelerationist copycat attacks of the 21st century.

9 days after the attack: an arson attack on a California mosque, with graffiti referencing Christchurch found outside. A month later, John Earnest attacks a synagogue in California, killing one and injuring 3. He claimed responsibility for both attacks and praised Tarrant in a manifesto published on 8chan. He also unsuccessfully tried to livestream the attack on Facebook.

3 August 2019, 4 months later: Patrick Crusius shoots 23 people dead in a Texas Walmart, specifically targeting Mexicans. He publishes a manifesto on 8chan, praising Tarrant and highlighting Tarrant’s influence on his attack.

10 August 2019: a stabbing attack on a mosque in Norway, injuring one. The perpetrator, Philip Manshaus, unsuccessfully attempts to livestream it after killing his stepsister at home, and describes Tarrant as a “saint” online.

October 2019: German man Stephen Balliet streams himself on Twitch killing 2 people outside a synagogue, before giving an antisemitic speech denying the Holocaust to the camera.

January 2021: a 16-year-old Singaporean is arrested for plotting to attack two mosques on the two year anniversary of the Christchurch shooting. His manifesto described Tarrant as a “saint” and praised the shooting as the “justifiable killing of Muslims”.

August 2021: a 15-year-old Swedish student livestreams himself on Twitch stabbing a school staff member, wearing a head-mounted camera, body armour and skull face mask. His manifesto quotes and references Tarrant as inspiration. An online friend of his would commit a similar attack at his own school 6 months later, injuring two.

May 2022: Payton Gendron shoots 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, targeting black people. He livestreams the attack on Twitch and publishes an accompanying manifesto that praises Tarrant, Crusius, and Earnest.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but Tarrant’s influence on the methods, aesthetics and ideologies of subsequent far-right/accelerationist terror attacks is clear. One of the most recent was the January 2025 Antioch High School shooting, where 15-year-old Solomon Henderson livestreamed himself killing one student and injuring another before committing suicide. His manifesto included sections from Tarrant’s.

After initially pleading not guilty, Tarrant pled guilty to 51 counts of murder in March 2020, with the pandemic robbing him of his desired Breivik-style courtroom theatre. Earlier this year, Tarrant appeared in court for the first time since his sentencing, seeking to appeal his convictions and withdraw his guilty plea. He is claiming that a deteriorating mental state led to his decision to plead guilty, something he says he hid partly due to the “political movement I’m a part of”. Many, including victims’ families and survivors, have called the appeal an attempt to drag himself back into court and turn it into a spectacle.

Whether or not you think Tarrant was explicitly a “lone actor” who received no third-party assistance or encouragement, as the Christchurch Royal Commission concluded in 2020, he was undeniably at least deeply enmeshed in the online far-right ecosystem. The attack was inspired by burgeoning decentralised accelerationist networks and cells, and these networks were his intended audience.

Tarrant’s attack was fine tuned for the digital moment, and has arguably been the most impactful fascist terror attack of the 21st century, achieving the virality that Breivik originally sought back in 2011. 7 years on, his influence on the far right scene is now well entrenched. You can see this direct influence in the method/manner of subsequent attacks, from the use of manifestos, livestreams, and aesthetics.

More generally however, the Christchurch shooting had a snowball effect. Whether or not he is explicitly cited by perpetrators, Tarrant lit the fuse on a far-right scene that was growing increasingly radical, ready to claim martyrs for the cause and instruct those that would follow, unleashing cyclical waves of violence. While Tarrant will most likely rot in a cell for the rest of his life, that does not mean his actions have not had long-term ramifications. Post-Christchurch, far-right terrorism was and will never be the same. Tarrant pioneered the new playbook.

This was initially meant to be a short Twitter thread marking the 7 year anniversary that ballooned into something much larger. Christchurch has been an ongoing research topic of mine for a while now, and this is part of what me and a few others have been working on. We’re still waiting to put our more substantial findings together into one central piece. If you have any information or tips about Christchurch (or in general), you can reach me at smithkstead@protonmail.com.

22-year-old Hawkes Bay man Ronndog Keefe is New Zealand’s first convicted 764 member, pleading guilty to 13 charges last year and losing name suppression late last month. His crimes included CSAM possession and distribution (totalling thousands of files), child grooming, and planning a mass stabbing attack against Muslim men.

Keefe’s story fits into a worrying pattern, being the first charged in New Zealand following dozens of investigations, arrests, and convictions worldwide stemming from the activities of 764 and related Satanic fascist groups, both online and in the real world.

The origins of 764

While there are now many subgroups, offshoots, or imitators, especially following the arrests of key members, 764 was first started by 15-year-old Texas teen Bradley Cadenhead in 2021. Cadenhead had dropped out of high school and retreated online during the COVID lockdowns, and became increasingly fixated on extreme content like school shootings, gore, CSAM, and more.

Cadenhead was influenced and taught by similar online groups and networks that were emerging around the same time, which were in turn influenced by Satanic fascist occult groups like the Order of Nine Angles (ONA) and, more importantly, the newer and more extreme US-based Tempel ov Blood (ToB).

One of these was CVLT, whose Discord server Cadenhead was a member of and learnt tactics from. One of CVLT’s leaders, fellow Texan Kaleb Merritt, was arrested in 2021 for kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl he had groomed over Discord.

764 emerged as a splinter of CVLT in 2021, centred around Cadenhead’s Discord server named after his Texas postcode. 764, like others before it, took far-right and occult Satanic imagery and ideology and used it to systematise the exploitation of vulnerable people online, but started engaging in much more depraved acts than predecessors like CVLT.

764, by way of the ONA and ToB’s influence, venerates evil for the sake of evil, promoting a nihilistic worldview through propaganda and literature distributed amongst the network. Members are encouraged to desensitise themselves to extreme content like gore and CSAM in order to be more effective actors for the group. The age of members is also notable, with many ranging from mid-teens to mid-20s. Multiple 14-year-olds have been arrested in connection to the group’s activities.

764’s most notorious practice involves grooming minors through online platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, and other social media, an activity which group members have created detailed guides for. They search for victims, gain their trust, take the individual to a separate messaging platform like Discord, and then solicit compromising material like personal information or nude images.

764 members will then coordinate to harass and blackmail the individual into committing increasingly heinous acts under the threat of exposure. These acts include abuse against themselves (like more compromising photos, self-harm, or even suicide), animals and pets, or other people. These are then compiled into “lore books” on individuals, which are used as further blackmail material and as a sort of trophy that is traded within 764 circles. Status of members within the group is partly determined by the number of people targeted and how extreme the victimisation is.

Crimes connected to the group include CSAM possession and distribution, sexual abuse, kidnapping and rape, livestreamed suicide and murder, alongside both attempted and carried out terror attacks. Founder Bradley Cadenhead was sentenced to 80 years in prison in 2023 on CSAM possession charges. In 2024, American member Kyle Spitze, infamous for a video of his stepfather shooting him during an argument, was sentenced to 30 years prison on federal CSAM charges. Arrests and convictions of members have been seen across the world, including America, Australia, Europe, South America, and now New Zealand.

Keefe and 764

Ronndog Keefe’s connection to 764 seems to have started sometime in 2022 at the age of 19. During his trial, Ronndog Keefe claimed in a court submitted affidavit that he was actually blackmailed by 764 members into committing his crimes.

Keefe alleged that in November 2022 he posted an edited clip of the Christchurch massacre footage to a Discord server because it reminded him of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game he was playing at the time. 5 of the 20 “violent extremist content” files he was charged with possessing included Christchurch footage.

According to Keefe, a day later he was contacted by a 764 member who requested that he share a CSAM image. When he refused, the member allegedly sent a copy of his drivers license and IP address, threatening to dox him if he didn’t. He then alleges he began “reluctantly” sharing CSAM for the next two years, directed by a 764 member named “Neo”. However, he refused to provide evidence to police to validate this.

The presiding judge called these claims “simply not credible”, and that “the nature and extent of the images he was downloading and distributing clearly demonstrates an interest in both child exploitation material and violent extremist material.” When asked why he didn’t mention the extortion in his first police interview, he said he didn’t want “to look like a victim or like a pussy”.

Keefe was first flagged by the Digital Violence Extremism Team of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) through tipoffs to the US government-run National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Keefe was reported 81 times between November 2022 and 2023. In August 2024, Keefe’s Hawkes Bay home was raided by DIA officials, finding a trove of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and extremist material.

Keefe refused to unlock his phone, but using digital forensics investigators were able to access 54,000 files from the device, with at least 20 being categorised as “violent extremist material” and 369 as CSAM. 2,309 CSAM files were found in a publicly shared MEGA folder belonging to Keefe, alongside bestiality material and a “video of a man having sex with a corpse in a ‘morgue setting’”. He also had at least 24 unique email addresses for Discord and Instagram accounts used to collect and share CSAM.

It was in police interviews following the raid that Keefe first admitted to his involvement with 764, and that he wanted to be seen as an “edge lord” by the group. Police also found evidence of Keefe engaging in 764-style grooming, as he was charged over his online communications with a 13-year-old American girl. He had posed as a 14-year-old boy and given her gaming tokens before soliciting nude images from her, which were later distributed online.

Following his August 2024 arrest and while awaiting trial, Keefe told an underage American girl who he’d been in long-term contact with over Discord (different from the one he’d groomed) that he was planning to carry out a mass stabbing attack on the date of his court appearance. He had often expressed to her a desire to commit mass violence to gain notoriety inspired by other extremist attacks, but his plans become definitive following his arrest in August.

He told her that he planned to target specifically Muslim men at either a mall or mosque and that he intended it to be a “suicide mission”. The American minor subsequently submitted a tip about the threat to the FBI, who then contacted New Zealand Police on 28 September 2024, who raided Keefe’s home later that day.

During this raid, police found a bayonet and machete in Keefe’s room, which he argued during his trial was for “chopping pumpkins”, and that the messages were “drunk rantings”. A manifesto-style diary was also found. It is likely that this manifesto was intended to be released alongside the planned attack, something which has been a feature of both far-right violence and 764-associated violence in recent years. In this diary, Keefe described himself as a “soldier of Christ, his country, people and religion” who had been radicalised at 19. Police also found a copy of the Quran in his wardrobe.

Following the second raid, Keefe was additionally charged with threatening to kill and cause grievous bodily harm, later pleading guilty to all 13 charges in 2025. In December 2025 Keefe was sentenced to five years and four months in prison and required to register as a child sex offender for 8 years. Almost to the day of his sentencing, the New Zealand government (alongside Canada) designated the Order of Nine Angles as a proscribed terror organisation, with 764 included as a subgroup. While he received temporary name suppression during the trial, his application for permanent name suppression was denied and he was finally named in late February this year.

Keefe’s story is typical of other 764 members and its subsequent offshoots. A young person who retreated onto the Internet during the pandemic who grew increasingly isolated and desensitised, and became absorbed (or if you believe Keefe, dragged) into a sick game where your “high score” is how many lives you’ve ruined.

The desensitisation and mediation of the horrors through a screen allowed him to become numb to it. However, when he got that knock on the door in August 2024, it all became very real very quickly. So in his mind, the only answer was a “suicide mission” where he murdered as many Muslim men as possible. It’s the logical conclusion when you become completely immersed in an ideology and world that venerates inflicting violence and causing misery above all else.

To be clear, the Order of Nine Angles and Tempel ov Blood is nothing new, even in New Zealand (something that will need to be covered in full in a later post). However, the 2010s Satanic fascist infiltration of far-right circles, and its evolution into a new post-lockdown form, has resulted in a huge surge in victimisation and violence that is only seeming to grow over time. Keefe is the first convicted in New Zealand, but it’s unlikely he’ll be the last.

At the time of that last article, what ASIO knew about the attackers or could have done wasn’t entirely clear. However, last week’s episode of Four Corners featuring “Marcus”, the same whistleblower from last year’s report on ASIO’s foreknowledge of the Wakeley bishop stabbing, revealed what I and many others suspected: the Bondi shooters were active in Wissam Haddad’s pro-ISIS network.

Wissam Haddad is an extremist pro-ISIS preacher who up until last month, ran the Al Madina Dawah Centre, an Islamic prayer centre described by Marcus as being like an “ISIL camp in Syria or in Iraq”. Haddad also ran a street preaching operation, which Haddad used to recruit young and vulnerable people and radicalise them into supporting ISIS.

Marcus, the Four Corners whistleblower, was hired by ASIO in 2016 to pretend to be a radical imam in order to infiltrate Sydney’s extremist pro-ISIS groups, as well as Wissam Haddad’s “inner circle”. Haddad’s operation was heavily surveilled by ASIO. According to the spy turned whistleblower, ASIO believes Haddad is “the most important jihadist extremist preacher in Sydney.”

According to Marcus, ISIS videos and songs were frequently played at the prayer centre, a crime in Australia, and something corroborated by Haddad’s conviction for possessing ISIS flags and DVDs of ISIS videos in 2015.

Supposedly, Naveed Akram went from a “normal” teenager to growing close with ISIS supporters at a “religious retreat”, where he was shown ISIS videos from various countries, including a video which called for attacks on Australia.

Another person radicalised in Haddad’s network was Isaac El Matari, a 20-year-old who declared himself the leader of ISIS in Australia, who was arrested in 2019 and sentenced to 5 years jail for planning terror attacks. Marcus claims that Naveed Akram’s relationship with El Matari before his arrest was so close that Naveed had foreknowledge of the attacks. ASIO was aware of this relationship back in 2019 when El Matari was arrested.

Also revealed by Marcus was the fact that Sajid Akram, Naveed’s father, openly endorsed ISIS and El Matari’s plot. Marcus reported this to ASIO, who opened an investigation into the father and son in 2019. ASIO spoke with Sajid and he promised that he wouldn’t allow Naveed to associate with extremists anymore, with ASIO subsequently determining that the Akrams were not ISIS supporters and closing the investigation.

However, Sajid was already by then a close associate of a man named Ye Ye, an influential pro-ISIS preacher who did recruiting for Wissam Haddad. As we all know, Sajid and Naveed Akram would later go on to commit the deadliest attack on Australian soil since Port Arthur.

This episode is damning and poses serious questions about both ASIO’s conduct and what they’re doing with their budget, a figure which currently sits at A$1.1 billion and only seems to grow every year.

ASIO are secret police with extraordinary powers: instead of having to get their warrants signed off by a judge, as is usual in Australia, ASIO only has to get approval from the Attorney-General, an appointed government minister, and ASIO’s only requirement to get a warrant issued is that it would help further ASIO’s goals. ASIO can subject people (including children as young as 14) to special questioning warrants which allow ASIO to take away their right to silence and forcibly question them or produce any information. The subject of a questioning warrant doesn’t even have to commit or be implicated in a crime; the questioning warrant just has to help ASIO collect intelligence.

ASIO do not have to give you a copy or details of the warrant or tell you why it was issued. Someone who has been subject to a questioning warrant is not allowed to talk about the questioning they were subject to. In fact, it is illegal to name or identify an ASIO agent or “affiliate” under any circumstances and you could face up to ten years prison for doing so, and there is no public interest defence. It is also illegal to speak of ASIO’s “special intelligence operation[s]” – that is – ASIO operations where the participants in them are immune from any criminal or civil liability for anything they do as part of the operation, so long as they do not torture, kill, or rape anybody.

In short: ASIO can kidnap anybody they believe has knowledge that may help them, take away their right to silence, and it is illegal for the person they kidnapped to talk about it or who kidnapped them.

The only conclusion one could make from this episode is that ASIO had clear knowledge that the attackers were dangerous and a threat to the public, and they failed to stop them. ASIO has no shortage of powers at their disposal that could have been used to stop this.

This is not acceptable for an agency of their nature. Attacks like the one we saw in Bondi need to be caught and stopped before they happen every single time. Every time an attack isn’t prevented, that means that it was carried out and someone was harmed or killed. At this point, it’s safe to say that ASIO got 15 people killed.

However, ASIO has been doing its best to hide from accountability. The night before the Four Corners episode went to air, ASIO published a statement to its website trying to discredit the whistleblower and the Four Corners episode before the public could see the claims for themselves. In the statement, ASIO insists that Four Corners broadcast fabrications, and laughably claims that Marcus misidentified Naveed Akram.

This doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Many of Marcus’ claims about his background were able to be confirmed by Four Corners and line up with publicly available information. Unlike ASIO, nothing Marcus has said has been proven false. If Marcus really was lying or mistaken, ASIO could release the intelligence which proves that – they instead have chosen not to and are hiding behind smug assertions and petty attacks.

ASIO also claimed that the ABC’s previous reporting that the Akrams were given military training in the Philippines is false, sticking to the story that the Akrams’ 27-day trip to the Philippines in November 2025, a month before the attack, was spent almost entirely inside their hotel rooms, only leaving for very short periods of time.

This narrative about their trip does not stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny, given that the Akrams travelled to the Philippines soon after they began training for the attack on a rented rural New South Wales property; their phones were logged on to phone towers near an ISIS hotspot in central Mindanao, and Filipino police have stated that the Akrams visited a gun shop while in the Philippines.

ASIO ended their statement with an ominous threat against the ABC: “if the ABC chooses to publish claims it cannot substantiate – particularly ones it has been told are untrue – we [ASIO] will reserve our right to take further action.”

What you just read is Australia’s secret police sending out ominous and vague threats to journalists and the country’s largest and most important media outlet after they failed to get an episode pulled from airing.

Former ABC journalist and Four Corners producer Peter Cronau described the statement as “unprecedented”, saying that it’s “exceptional for ASIO to publicly threaten the media – let alone threaten to take ‘further action’ rather than ‘further legal action’”; it’s “exceptional for ASIO to itself directly take on the ABC” rather than its parent agency, and “exceptional for ASIO to take such an aggressive tone in its direct communications with the ABC.”

When Senator David Shoebridge asked ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess at a Senate estimates hearing about the threat his agency issued to the ABC, Burgess refused to elaborate on what “further action” against the ABC entailed. Apart from that, no other senator at that estimates hearing decided that it was prudent to ask Burgess about the Four Corners episode.

This threat from ASIO came two days after the National Archives of Australia issued an order forbidding the ABC and SBS, Australia’s two public broadcasters, from destroying any information relating to “the capabilities and powers of law enforcement, border control, [and] immigration and security agencies to respond to antisemitic conduct”, as well as “the circumstances surrounding the Bondi terrorist attack” which includes government agencies’ “knowledge prior to the attack”, “judgments, decisions and actions made in relation to the attack”, and “interactions and information sharing between agencies”.

The scope of this order includes messages with sources, which severely undermines ABC and SBS journalists’ ability to protect their identities. The ABC’s leadership also refused to describe how the ABC would protect its journalists if compelled by the antisemitism royal commission to hand over documents.

Clearly, ASIO is desperate to avoid all accountability for this. As I wrote in my previous article about Bondi, the royal commission has been set up to fail. Its terms of reference have been watered down to avoid any real inquiry into intelligence. The inclusion of former ASIO director and ambassador to America Dennis Richardson will also ensure that to the extent that the royal commission does investigate intelligence, it will certainly avoid any hard questions or topics that overly scrutinise Australia’s intelligence agencies.

It seems less likely than ever that the survivors and families of the victims of this horrendous attack will ever be allowed to know the truth of what happened leading up to the shooting. And it seems more likely than ever that nobody at ASIO or Australia’s law enforcement and intelligence community at large who allowed this to happen will have to lose their job, let alone face actual consequences.

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Marcus, the ASIO whistleblower, went to great lengths to try stop attacks like the one we saw at Bondi and Wakeley at a great risk to himself. He has not been rewarded for it. Instead, he has been abandoned by Australia’s government, having lost his residency in Australia and perhaps even facing prosecution for revealing classified information. He now lives in hiding, separated from his family, and is now under threat from the ISIS cell which he blew the whistle on. The Information Rights Project, a charity led by Julian Assange’s brother, is currently running a fundraiser for him as he is currently running out of money while facing great danger to his livelihood. So far they’ve only been able to raise around $42,000 – less than a quarter of the $200,000 goal.

I implore all of you to donate to this fundraiser. I donated $20 myself. It’s important that whistleblowers are provided refuge and support. It rewards people who did the right thing and will ensure that future whistleblowers will feel safe in coming out.

You can donate to Marcus at the link here: https://informationrights.org/take-action/save-marcus-now

As per the latest “Epstein files” release, a much wider range of emails and messages from the late “financier” (and human trafficker) have been released. Lawrence Krauss was one of Epstein’s frequent communicators, mentioned over 5,000 times and remaining in touch until his arrest and death in 2019. Krauss got his physics Ph.D. from MIT in 1982, and by the mid-2000s had become a prominent theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, and public speaker. He wrote pop-science books with titles like “The Physics of Star Trek” and “Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth...and Beyond”, editorials in the New York Times, and often spoke at conferences or made media appearances on scientific issues.

In 2006, Krauss helped Jeffery Epstein organise a conference on gravity on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the most populous island and the one closest to Little St. James. Krauss was able to help invite 20 or so internationally renowned physicists to the conference, including Stephen Hawking, funded by the Epstein-ran Edge Foundation.

In 2008, Epstein further cemented their relationship by helping Krauss set up The Origins Project, a Krauss-chaired initiative at Arizona State University “created to explore humankind’s most fundamental questions about our origins.” Epstein put $250,000 USD towards the project, and would later be invited to the annual events put on by Origins and continued to fund related costs.

Soon after founding Origins, Krauss began visiting New Zealand for speaking tours and trips. He emailed Epstein, Epstein associate and maths professor Martin Nowak, and a redacted person in 2009 about being “in an airline lounge in new Zealand on my way to Sydney”, lining up with an appearance on RNZ’s Nine to Noon in March 2009.

On 10 March 2010, Krauss emails Epstein about Origins and Epstein paying him to “consult” on quantum computing and other issues, writing about “leaving for new zealand tomorrow..”. He adds that it’s “been a bad week actually.. lots of trauma on home front etc..” (Krauss was married to his first wife Katherine Kelley at the time, officially divorcing in 2012). On this New Zealand trip, Krauss spoke at the University of Otago among other venues, including giving an interview to the Otago Daily Times on how people should listen to their “inner scientist” to respond to misinformation.

On 22 March, Epstein emails “where have you gone?”. Krauss responds:

I am still in New Zealand.. flying back later today.. interesting.. I was just going to email you.. (a) to fill you in on NZ.. and (b) to see about talking.. and (c) to say the president of the university’s rep. just emailed me to say that he will juggle his schedule to see you in early April or end of march if you let me know when a good time for you to visit is. will call when I get back in US.. probably tomorrow..

On 30 March, Epstein’s assistant Lesley Groff messages Epstein: “Emailed Lawrence Krauss to please call you at the PB (Palm Beach) house today.” At some point between the last email, plans were made to travel to New Zealand, as the next email on 31 March reads:

Jeffrey.. I am looking into my fall travel and I don’t know if you were serious about maybe taking a few days to go to new zealand.. There is a cosmology meeting in Tokyo end of sept that I wouldn’t go to otherwise but if you wanted to attend it for a day we could fly there for a day, listen to some lectures (maybe one by me), then go on to NZ for some walking.. or alternatively go to NZ oct 11 or so ( I would be in LA and could meet you there) and then swing by australia and pick up [REDACTED] (Nancy Dahl-Tacconi) to return to US as she and I will be going to FLA then before heading on to halloween elsewhere.. I only mention these things because you indicated you might want to do something and I was thinking of alternatives.. no problem if a no go.

Krauss seemed smitten with New Zealand, as many Americans have become, and wanted to give Epstein the bug. He also asked if he could host an Origins meeting for scientific advisors “in St. Thomas ... flying out the 12-14 members.. putting them up at ritz, or something, and having meetings either there or at your island?” Epstein replies: “yes, date works”, with Krauss replying “Great will take it as a yes on all counts. :)”. Krauss mentions that he’ll be in NYC soon and they organise a call for the day after. On 1 June, Epstein receives an email from Lesley Groff: “Lawrence Krauss will meet you for breakfast at 10am on Thurs (3 June). at the house.”

On 3 June, Krauss writes:

thanks for the two lunches, and I am very excited about going to New Zealand etc.. (will work out a proposed schedule, and I am assuming it is definite, as otherwise flights would have to be purchased well in advance). It was great to see you...will call you on the weekend..

2 weeks later, on 17 June, Krauss emails trying to confirm the October trip to New Zealand:

Hi.. back in Phoenix after grueling week.. the movers came on Tues.. and I flew back last night.. now I am moved out officially I guess, and am trying to move forward.. 1. Bitter discussions at the end indicate it is getting important to try and get finances straight.. I will look at your form and probably contact a lawyer soon.. 2. have begun investigating trip in Oct.. I suggest general outline as follows: Oct 13, you arrive in Phoenix for the day.. we could then leave late on the 13th if you want, arriving in New Zealand early morning of the 15th.. I am going to try and contact people there to arrange 3 interesting days of talking, and viewing.. then fly to Australia on the 18th to pick up Nancy (and if you want a short visit fine), otherwise we leave after that, arriving in FLA on the 19th.. We will either exit at Orlando, or we will catch a commercial flight to there (or drive), from Palm Beach. Sound good?

Krauss seems to just have begun his divorce process with Kelley, and to psychoanalyse, probably looking for greener pastures. Is the university president he mentioned trying to get Epstein to meet with back in March 2010 while in New Zealand1 the University of Otago president, where he gave two lectures the same month? The Nancy he mentions picking up in Australia is Nancy Dahl-Tacconi, a colleague who he would later marry in 2014.

Sadly for Krauss, Epstein replies: “new zealand trip is off.. I have to be in dubai duing that time.. Lets talk over the weekend. regarding your work for the foundation.” Krauss replies: “Will talk over the weekend... Sad to hear about NZ, and even sadder to hear that there is no time to even go with you to pick up nancy afterwards... I was tempted to suggest that I fly to Dubai on my own just for the opportunity of doing the latter with you.” Sadly for Krauss, Epstein blew him off.

Epstein was still funding Krauss’s endeavours however, sending him $100,000 USD to fund two Origins events (and Stephen Hawking’s private jet fee) in November 2010. They stayed in touch, with Krauss skyping Epstein in 2011 about meeting in Europe:

I think i wil just meet you in zurich on the 30. th.. I do not want to spoil your spa trip and could not stand to see your dark energy in bright light

In the same year, Krauss began receiving scrutiny for his relationship with Epstein. In April 2011, he was quoted by the Daily Beast saying “As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and [Epstein] always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people.” He later commented on a blog “I remain skeptical, and I support a man whose character I believe I know...If you want to condemn me for that, so be it.” According to an email from a BuzzFeed News reporter in 2017, public allegations against Krauss began coming out in 2013, with a list of incidents dating back to 2006.

In May 2012, Krauss emails Epstein:

am off to new zealand for a week.. just returned from DC getting my big prize.. maybe we can talk when I get back.. in NYC twice in next 6 weeks.. btw my publishers wanted to send woody allen a copy of the new book with a note from me but they don’t have his address.. probably he wouldn’t want you to give it out to me.. but if I had them send it to you, could you forward it to him?

Epstein replies confirming a meeting and sends an address for Woody Allen. Krauss replies “Thank you... :) Just landed in auckland.. staying at marvelous hotel.. want to take you to new zealand sometime.” Krauss made multiple speaking appearances on this trip, including at the Auckland Writers Festival and the University of Auckland.

On 24 May, after getting back from New Zealand, Krauss writes to a PA for Epstein saying: “Let’s do Friday lunch and sat dinner?” The PA confirms, and says “Jeffrey wanted you to talk science with [Woody Allen]”, who would be joining the two for a meal. A few weeks later on 6 June, Krauss sends Epstein a simple email with the subject line “new zealand”:

any ideas on how I can spend 6 months there a year? Wanna consider an institute?

No response from Epstein, but it seems that Krauss (with Nancy in tow) was looking for an escape plan outside of the United States.

On 19 October, Krauss emails again:

back in the US.. can we talk? I need some help.. re New Zealand.. and want to talk to you about it and other things.. Are you coming to Origins of Deception event this weekend in Tempe?

Epstein replies:

no i had no notice,, none,, i am in paris,

Krauss asks again when Epstein can talk, then sends another email:

Hi Jeffrey.. You saved my life once, and I may need a different sort of life-saving.. but one that I want to be win-win... I would like to talk sometime.

Epstein replies:

what can i do to help.. if it is to ask woody allen for more favors . i must decline.

Krauss replies:

:) nothing to do with Woody... and unfortunately you are out of the country or I could introduce you to cameron diaz when I film with her on thurs.. :) No.. it is more personal.. thank you for writing.. would really like to talk about this, but I can put some stuff down by email first if you want.

They then seemingly organise a phone call. On Thursday 25 October, Krauss emails Epstein, saying:

ok.. we haven’t talked more about this.. but on spec I emailed the vice chancellor to see if they were interested in dealing.. they are.. would love to talk.. was just with Cameron Diaz in my hotel room here in L.A. so there!

He forwards along correspondence between Nancy Dahl-Tacconi (then working in Canberra, Australia as a department head in the federal environmental agency), him, and the Otago University administration, discussing plans to open an “institute” that would involve Krauss paid for his “salary, research and outreach program” and Dahl-Tacconi being a “strategic research development person to help improve [Otago’s] research competitiveness, evaluate programming and build partnerships”. However, plans had come unstuck due to the squeeze exerted on universities during the GFC and Key years, with Otago indicating the institute would most likely be canned.

Krauss responds saying he was “shocked and dismayed”, complaining that Dahl was already looking at school options and they were planning to visit the next month. Krauss instead proposes that a private foundation might be interested in funding at least the first 2 years of the institute ($250k USD a year), with the university funding the institute after that. The Vice-Chancellor replies that she is “cautiously optimistic” about the arrangement, after working out “a number of fish hooks”. She discusses requesting “special permission from [Immigration New Zealand]” as Krauss is over the age of 57, and that Otago could “cost out a reasonable overhead package that could be used as ‘in kind’ matching funds for the Foundation’s contribution.”

To be clear, Krauss never identified who this mystery financier would be, and Otago included many caveats in their correspondence with the pair. Krauss tried to organise it first, then ask for permission later from his longtime patron.

2 weeks later, on 4 November 2012, Krauss sends a desperate email, one more desperate than all the others, with the subject line “email silence”.

Hi Jeffrey. I have tried to call a few times. Don’t know where you are. I leave tomorrow on a cruise to lecture and see a total eclipse.. with limited access to phone and email. Really wanted to touch base with you on a few things.

He asks about Epstein meeting with the Origins Project’s Strategic Planning Team, and then:

2. I have’t heard from you regarding New Zealand. I have asked Otago for specifics of what they want to arrange re position, support etc, and what they would need for the first year and then a commitment that they would cover this in following years. I don’t know where you are on this, and have gotten conflicting signals. I understand if you are not interested--there is no reason you should be I guess, except to help stabilize my life and work--but I need to know rather than wonder, and I suppose we need to talk about it to find that out. I have no idea what Nancy and I will do if this falls through, and what I will do. We had been planning on doing a move there for her and buying a place there early in the new year. The uncertainty is taking a huge toll right now with great stress for both of us. She wants to leave Canberra next year no matter what, and whether shell move for a job, or for a location will be determined in the next month or so based on whether Dunedin opportunities fall through. As far as my work goes, if we don’t finalize things before the end of the year, I have no idea what I will do after that.

Epstein replies curtly: “re origins . if you want of course i will, „ re new zealand„ I can’t get behind it.”

Krauss replies:

... re New Zealand.. pity.. I had hoped I could convince you it would be win-win--- a great place to have a retreat once a year or so with a bunch of interesting people to explore interesting questions, and figured I might even convince you that the strategic research programs that Nancy would foster there would also be worthwhile... or at least worth the $250K or so investment from you on spec.. Seemed the only logistically workable option for the near term for us.

As far as I know so far, the above exchanges are the closest that Epstein ever got to visiting or interacting directly with New Zealand. While there are still a lot more files to sift through (and things we will never see), New Zealand did not seem too high on Epstein’s list of interests. There are certainly many tangents and connections, including the New Zealand couple who managed the Zorro Ranch, Little St. James, and Palm Beach properties up until his death; the New Zealand-Filipino yacht worker couple who were seemingly caught up in the Little St. James raids, or discussions about paying Auckland University professor Brian Boyd to write a book on Lolita, among a few others. But even compared to Australia, there is nothing so far close to how larger countries and their elite were discussed in the files.

However, Krauss’s interactions with Epstein point to an interesting trend. Krauss began coming under fire for his relationship with Epstein in 2011, and soon after that in 2013, allegations of sexual harassment. In 2017, when a BuzzFeed News reporter approached Krauss to comment on a forthcoming expose on his conduct, he emailed Epstein for advice on drafting his public statement.

When Krauss emails Epstein in 2012 “you saved my life once, and I may need a different sort of life-saving.. but one that I want to be win-win...”, and then uses the same language later to describe the Otago institute (”a win-win--- a great place to have a retreat once a year or so with a bunch of interesting people to explore interesting questions”), he certainly seems to be asking Epstein to helping him set up a little node in New Zealand, one that would be mutually beneficial to both of them.

This was something that Epstein did regularly over his “career” for his associates, funding their pet projects, make-work jobs, and vaguely-defined institutes. Krauss was trying to get Epstein to use his influence and money to set up another one of these in New Zealand. Krauss would have been far away from the fallout of a seemingly ugly divorce and allegations that were catching up to him, landing a breezy job for him and his assistant-turned-wife. It also would have been like many of the other foundations, institutes, companies, and assorted ventures that Epstein had a silent hand in, a little point of contact and influence for him to exert his will through. Located in a university town at the bottom of the world, with its own long history of organised crime and child sex rings.

Compared to now, Krauss was a pioneer. Over the rest of the 2010s and into the 2020s, many more elites and celebrities have flocked to “bolthole” New Zealand (as a friend once put it to me, “a little wet Israel”), incentivised by a number of factors. Many of them have their own unsavoury past, as previously covered on Exit From Affco. However, Epstein personally didn’t seem that interested in New Zealand.

Maybe it’s because Epstein was from an older generation, and wasn’t concerned about the end of days in the same way his associate Peter Thiel is, who is hoping to ride out the impending chaos in his little own Lord of the Rings fantasyland. Nor did he feel the need to escape the prying eye of the metropole to get away with his crimes, as Epstein was then residing in the largest single residence in Manhattan. Maybe he thought New Zealand was a rainy little backwater filled with pudgy colonial goyim.

But again, escaping to Aotearoa is a route that Thiel and many others have taken. While John Key was relatively subtle about implementing it, going as far to make Thiel’s citizenship secret for 5 years, the current coalition is throwing the doors open, now offering investor visas where you can drop $5m in exchange for residency. And considering how light they’re currently going on “prominent New Zealanders”, do you think they’re going to touch the “international wealth creators”?

This was a quick one that I wanted to get out on what I’ve found so far digging through the files. Most other threads will take some time, like the managers Brice and Karen Gordon, as that seems like a very knotted web to untangle (”Brice Gordon” shows up 11,333 times). Depending on interest, we might cover some more Epstein then return to regularly scheduled programming. This latest dump has also provided a breakthrough for another long-term research project of mine, which should be coming in the next while.

I also wanted to say thank you to my readers, I hope you’ve been enjoying Exit From Affco as much as I enjoy putting it together for you. An extra special thanks to those who have decided to become a paid subscriber, as you fund a little habit of mine: hoovering up out of print/out there New Zealand non-fiction books. New Zealand has always been a relatively small consumer market, with an even smaller book market, many defunct publishers, and a national archive that has given up on digitising their collections, so I’ve been trying to clean out what I can find in 2nd-hand stores (and elsewhere), especially over summer travels. Right now is a great time to buy 2nd-hand books, for some reason. Before you ask, no, I don’t know what demographic trends are.

Above is some of what I’ve been able to acquire over the past few months. As I go deeper into New Zealand research, I realise more how limited and obscure some of the historiography can get, especially in the fields that I’m interested in, and have started to try build up a wide-ranging physical collection. And as I’m seeing more and more repositories or libraries shutter, I’m realising how crucial that is.

But again, thank you to those who have reading over the past while. I have a more retrospective post planned for the 6 month anniversary of Exit From Affco coming in a few weeks, but I’m grateful that these stories about an odd little place in the bottom of the South Pacific are finding an audience (including some senior journalists and a sitting MP or two).

Mā te wā,

– Smith K. Stead

On December 14 last year, a father-son duo of ISIS gunmen attacked a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney’s Bondi Beach, an Australian cultural landmark, killing 15 people. The attack was the deadliest since the Port Arthur shooting in 1996. Just hours after the attack, the director of ASIO (Australia’s equivalent to MI5 or the NZSIS), Mike Burgess, addressed a press conference stating that one of the attackers was “known to” ASIO.

A report in the ABC the following morning was able to give detail on what that meant: back in October 2019, ASIO knew that the younger gunman, then-18 year old Naveed Akram, was “closely connected to Isaac El Matari”. El Matari was a 20 year old who fancied himself as the leader of the Australian branch of ISIS, and was sentenced to 7 years in jail for planning attacks in Australia on behalf of the organisation.

However, the Bondi massacre would not be the first time that ASIO’s negligence had violent consequences. Just eight months prior to the Bondi massacre, an episode of Four Corners featured an ASIO whistleblower identified only under the pseudonym Marcus. The whistleblower alleged that the agency, ostensibly meant to protect the Australian public, ignored his warnings about the impending stabbing of a celebrity bishop in Wakeley.

The episode described in detail how Marcus, an imam, was recruited by ASIO to infiltrate a prayer centre and movement headed by a radical pro-ISIS preacher, Wissam Haddad. Haddad is connected to several people convicted of terrorism offences, and his network targets teenagers for recruitment and radicalisation.

Also of note is that Naveed Akram himself was connected to Haddad’s network. After the shooting, photos and video surfaced of Akram participating Haddad’s Street Dawah Movement in 2018 when he was just 17 years old.

In response to the Four Corners episode, ASIO did not get its act together, but instead responded by saying “the insinuation ASIO would not act on intelligence about a terrorist attack is false”, going as far as to call it “offensive to [ASIO] officers who work 24/7 to keep Australians safe.”

It’s not unreasonable to say that after these two incidents, an inquiry into ASIO and the rest of Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement would be warranted.

In the days following the attack, much of the media and commentariat called on the federal government to establish a royal commission, whilst the Albanese government resisted the calls.

However, much of the commentary on this matter missed the forest for the trees, calling for a royal commission on antisemitism, rather than into the incident itself and the behaviour of Australia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies leading up to it.

Not too long ago, New Zealand, a smaller British colony which neighbours Australia, faced a similar tragedy: a far-right Australian gunman who had moved to New Zealand just 20 months prior shot up two mosques in Christchurch, killing 51 people. To this date, it remains the deadliest attack on New Zealand’s soil since colonisation. Just 10 days after the attack, New Zealand’s government established a royal commission into the massacre.

Many who called for the government to establish a royal commission into antisemitism cited the Christchurch royal commission as an example of what could be done in Australia. For example, The Nightly’s Latika Bourke, a commentator who was at the forefront of calls for a royal commission specifically on antisemitism, referred to the Christchurch royal commission while doing so. Menachem Vorchheimer, a Melbourne activist best known for his efforts to silence critics of Israel, accused both the federal and Victorian government of antisemitism and called for a royal commission into antisemitism, saying Australia should respond to the Bondi massacre the same way New Zealand responded to the Christchurch massacre.

These people seem like they haven’t even read the terms of reference of the Christchurch royal commission, let alone read its report. The inquiry was not focused on the far-right, nor was it focused on Islamophobia. The Christchurch royal commission’s terms of reference mandated it to focus on the perpetrator of the attack himself, along with what New Zealand’s government agencies knew about him, and whether they could have prevented it.

Instead of trying to do a politicised analysis of the social and political environment of New Zealand society, it specifically focused on the attack, whether it was preventable, and how attacks like it could be avoided in the future.

When it was still holding out on establishing any type of royal commission, the federal government announced that it would have Dennis Richardson perform an inquiry into Australia’s intelligence agencies and law enforcement, which would be supported by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The terms of reference for the so-called Richardson inquiry were not too dissimilar to the terms of reference for the Christchurch royal commission. The inquiry would look into what federal government agencies knew about the Bondi attackers prior to their massacre, their information-sharing practices, whether Australia’s federal agencies could have prevented the attack, and what should be done to make sure that Australia’s agencies can prevent such attacks in the future.

While these terms of reference are no doubt a good basis, this inquiry still is a far cry from what is needed. To begin, the government wanted this inquiry done within five months. That is nowhere near enough time. For comparison, the Christchurch royal commission took 20 months to deliver its report. New Zealand has about one fifth the population of Australia. The NZSIS and GCSB, New Zealand’s two intelligence agencies, have less than a thousand employees combined, compared to approximately 1800 at ASIO alone. New Zealand’s intelligence agencies have a combined budget of less than A$300 million, as opposed to ASIO’s A$1.1 billion budget.

This inquiry also does not have the powers traditionally afforded to an inquiry. Instead, it relies on the very agencies it is supposed to scrutinise voluntarily playing ball. It’s also being done under the auspices of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, as opposed to being done by an independent body.

The man doing the inquiry, Dennis Richardson, used to be the head of not only ASIO, but also the Department of Defence. In addition to this, he had a five-year stint as ambassador to the United States during the Global War on Terror from 2005 to 2010. It is completely false to call this independent. The inquiry would be conducted by a man who has spent his entire life working in the government and security state, with the support of a government department that answers directly to the Prime Minister.

This is all moot, because just two weeks after establishing the Richardson inquiry, the Albanese government buckled and finally established a royal commission of its own, not into the attack or intelligence agencies, but instead a “Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion”, which cancelled the Richardson inquiry. Instead, Dennis Richardson will be assisting with the royal commission and its interim report, scheduled for April 2026.

The terms of reference for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion are horrendous, and are a far cry from what the Richardson inquiry was supposed to do. The Richardson inquiry would have investigated what Australia’s government agencies knew prior to the attack, what agencies with information about the attackers did with it, how information was shared between Australia’s government agencies, and how attacks like this could be prevented in the future.

The antisemitism royal commission does none of this. Let’s take a look at what it mandates instead:

(vi) whether relevant [Federal], State, and Territory intelligence and law enforcement agencies performed to maximum effectiveness, including whether they had adequate powers and the right systems, processes, and procedures and whether there was an appropriate authorising environment for information sharing with other [Federal], State and Territory agencies;

(vii) whether relevant [Federal], State and Territory intelligence and law enforcement agencies were prevented from taking prohibitive actions by the current legislative framework and authorising environment;

(vii) identifying any gaps in legal and regulatory frameworks that impede the ability for law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies to prevent and respond to attacks of this nature at both the state and federal levels;

These terms are premised on the idea that if the agencies tasked with keeping Australia safe did fail, it is because they didn’t have enough laws to give them free reign.

It even trots out the possibility that the lack of an “appropriate authorising environment for information sharing” is to blame for the failure to stop the attack, the same excuse that the US government had for failing to stop the September 11 attacks 24 years ago.

In case you forgot, Australia passed a plethora of counter-terrorism laws after 9/11 and during the Global War on Terror: mandatory metadata retention, powers to allow a minister to strip someone of citizenship, control orders, surveillance laws, just to name a few. Some of these measures that were supposed to be temporary have recently been made permanent!

Australia already has plenty of laws to prevent terror attacks. In spite of this, the aforementioned Four Corners episode demonstrated that attacks don’t need to be prevented with special government powers. Instead, good old fashioned infiltration proved to be effective. So why is the royal commission so keen to find reasons to give security agencies more powers?

We can’t know for certain why, but it’s worth remembering that after ASIO claimed without evidence that Iran was behind the firebombings of Jewish institutions throughout Australia, the Prime Minister boasted that “Australians can […] know they have a government that backs our agencies and says, ‘whatever power you need, we will give you’.”

With the government’s stated eagerness to give ASIO and other intelligence agencies seemingly unlimited power of which there is no oversight, it’s hard not to think that there could be a more cynical motive to this.

Regardless of the motivations though, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion won’t bring justice for the victims of the attack. It seems very likely that ASIO and perhaps other government agencies shoulder part of the blame for the deaths of the 15 victims of the Bondi attack. Not only is the government trying to avoid scrutiny on ASIO and other agencies, but instead they are cynically using this royal commission as an opportunity to give them more power.

Securely contact William Evans here: https://www.willevans.com.au/tips/

You’ve probably seen the video of Te Pāti Māori performing a haka in New Zealand’s Parliament in protest of the Treaty Principles Bill by now. It’s reached close to a billion views combined at this point, and reactionary media has been quick to jump on it as some sort of “stone age” display (as if protest has never been a part of parliamentary politics before). You might even hear people say that the bill they’re protesting is about “equal rights”, and what this current government just wants is an honest discussion about what the Treaty means. This is all a smokescreen for what the Treaty Principles Bill is actually about: rewriting history to protect extractive capital.

Meet David Seymour, current leader of the ACT Party. He’s somehow even more off putting in person. Seymour joined Young ACT at university, the right-wing “libertarian” party founded by the post-1984 Labour neoliberals who thought they didn’t go far enough. They ransacked a state with large public corporations, and let their friends carve it up for the highest bidder.

This wave created a new oligarchy class, with key figures who cultivated mechanisms useful for their goals. Alan Gibbs was one of the most prominent, involved with the NZ Business Roundtable and the NZ Initiative. If you want to get a picture of Gibbs’ character, here’s a video of him describing lining up the New Zealand Forestry Service’s fleet of equipment and putting up for auction. Gibbs is “the godfather” of ACT, and it serves as a way for him to push his vision for New Zealand, shared by other likeminded ideologues. “I’d privatise all the schools, all the hospitals, and all the roads”, he once told a party conference in 2014. “We've had a 20-year siesta so I think Act should get out there and shake the market.”

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But ACT can also be seen as part of a wider push, one tentacle of the Atlas Network, a think tank incubator founded in 1981 by British entrepreneur Antony Fisher. Described as a “think tank that creates think tanks”, the Network seeks to cultivate and connect like-minded organisations that push Austrian School-inspired libertarian free market policies. Quickly spreading in the 1980s after endorsements from Margaret Thatcher, F.A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman, and a long relationship with the Koch brothers, the Atlas Network now boasts 600 partner organisations in over 100 countries.

They have been described as “the predominant vehicle for fossil capital’s global mobilisation against climate science and policy”, helping elect far-right governments and running astroturf/botting campaigns. They were instrumental in helping Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro and others come to power, and were a crucial part in drafting Liz Truss’ austerity budget. They push for devastating cuts designed to play on populist messaging of “gutting the bloated state”, and massive deregulation, often for extractive industry interests. They do this at whatever cost, flooding the system with whatever tactics they think will work to manufacture consent.

Prospective Atlas Network underlings can go into the global system, intern at a few different think tanks, go to some training sessions, and meet likeminded people. They come out with experience in spin doctoring, pushing talking points, and dirty politics tricks. They can then go set up their think tanks at home with initial support from Atlas, before quickly connecting to favourable domestic interests. Any guesses who the current Atlas Network chair is? Why, it’s Debbi Gibbs, Alan Gibbs’ daughter.

The reason I lay this out is David Seymour, after seemingly trying and failing at engineering, decided to sell his soul and enter the Atlas Network system. Here he is putting on a fake Canadian accent to argue against public transport in the 2000s. Seymour worked for Atlas-connected think tanks in Canada, one of their most active fronts for anti-climate policy. He participated in training sessions, including songwriting contests about charter schools with the Atlas Network CEO, Brad Lips (pictured below).

After cutting his teeth in Canada, Seymour returned to New Zealand and becomes leader of the ACT Party in 2014. He worms his way into respectable discourse by debasing himself as a “meme” to paper over ACT’s questionable reputation. He goes on Dancing With The Stars, tells Women’s Weekly “I’d give it all up for love”, visits high schools for meet and greets (and gets fond of Snapchatting students), trying to present himself as anything other than a complete skinwalker. But he still harbours deeply reactionary politics, and bides his time for the opportune moment.

That’s where the Taxpayers’ Union (TPU) comes in. The TPU is another Atlas Network think tank, founded by Jordan Williams and David Farrar in 2013, a year before Seymour is made ACT leader. Williams was a disciple of the Key-era National attack dogs like Cam Slater and Farrar, taking lessons from them and overseas taxpayers’ unions to create a right-wing lobbying firm that can be dressed up as a “Concerned Citizens” group. They are the private lobbying wing of the forces behind ACT, and alongside others like the NZ Initiative, they push a coordinated set of policy and soundbites. The TPU funds a 24/7 media hotline for comment any time of the day. They’re so committed to reducing wasteful government spending that they file millions’ worth of frivolous OIA requests, and took out $60,000 in COVID wage subsidies. They have also been caught astroturfing protest movements, and it shows their wider strategy: capitalising off reactionary anger to serve their end goals of reducing regulation and oversight for industries, and further cannibalisation of the state.

In 2020, the Labour government told the farming industry (paraphrasing here) “Can you please do some planning on water usage and pollution? Nitrate readings are 30x the level where it starts affecting childbirth in some areas.” The farming industry replied “over my dead body”, and the Groundswell protests were born. Groundswell took on the classic appearance of “the little farmer taking on the big bad state”, with tractors marching through major cities protesting against being given the burden of looking after the environment, similar to scenes in Europe over recent years. Groundswell’s demands were to stop regulations on water use, exempt themselves from climate change policy, remove the “ute tax”, etc. But Groundswell was an astroturf campaign, with a domain name was registered by the TPU and initially promoted on their mailing list. It was an orchestrated effort to protect one of the largest interest groups in New Zealand politics: animal farming.

35% of NZ land is owned by animal farmers. Cattle farming, especially dairy, has grown significantly in recent decades. 95% of dairy is exported overseas, primarily to serve as milk powder filling in chocolates. It is also, of course, incredibly destructive to the environment. Groundswell was the industry’s attempt to push against regulation, using the TPU and their dedicated lobby group, Federated Farmers, to turn it into an off and on national news story for months. But their biggest issue was Three Waters, the plan to bring water infrastructure under larger, publicly-owned regional bodies due to increasing costs and financing issues. Regional Māori iwi would also sit on the boards and have equal voting rights to local government. To talk about New Zealand’s somewhat unique form of “co-governance” between Māori and the Crown, we have to take a brief history lesson on te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi).

To heavily simplify its history, the Treaty was signed in 1840 between a group of Māori chiefs and British representatives. Māori at the time outnumbered Europeans 80,000 to 2,000. It followed a previous Declaration of Independence signed by northern iwi in 1835. The treaty (and previous declaration) were drafted due to concerns of land theft and lawlessness on the part of Europeans, and encroachment from other colonial powers like France and Russia. The British government wanted further assertion of their control over the islands. The Māori version, the copy signed by both parties, agreed to let the British manage kawanatanga (governance), while Māori retained tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty/chieftainship). It outlined a system of shared authority, where Māori systems of self-governance could coexist with a British system. The English version differs, where Britain gains “sovereignty” instead of “governance”, and “chieftainship” is instead “undisturbed possession of lands”. These differences in meaning, arguably intentional, eventually led to the New Zealand Wars. Settler demand for land and increasing crackdowns on Māori sovereignty drove decades of conflict and land theft, followed by systemic attempts to wipe out Māori society. Turned into a segregated underclass, many Pākehā believed the “Māori question” would be solved by time.

But that never happened. A hīkoi (march) in 1975 led to the government finally recognising the treaty in law and establishing the Waitangi Tribunal, a legal body meant to investigate breaches of the treaty. In 1985 this was backdated to include historical claims up to 1840. The “principles of the treaty” started being invoked as a way for the tribunal, and other institutions, to refer to what the “spirit” of the document was, and what implementing that in a modern society might look like. The English version is only 578 words, not exactly a novel. But there in lies the problem: recognising the treaty opened Pandora’s box. As claims began to come into the tribunal, and Māori begun challenging the status quo, the government began to realise what actual reconciliation might look like.

In 1989, after axing the Department of Māori Affairs (in part due to a scandal orchestrated by the CIA), Labour PM David Lange laid out a loose set of “principles”, setting the bounds of what the government believed honouring the treaty would mean in a “practical” sense. Legal scholars argued it was a “definite and cynical attempt to redefine the treaty”. In effect, these have been the “guiding principles” since (while still violated repeatedly on this very limited definition). Arguably, there has been growing cooperation with and recognition of Māori by successive governments, even if limited or non-existent in many areas. But for New Zealand’s elite, any Māori oversight in government decision making is bad. They’re going to try stop you from polluting waterways, digging up the ocean floor for minerals, or selling mining licenses for $1 a year, and they might have mechanisms to actually stop you.

So the right, spurred on by ACT, TPU and others, began pushing co-governance as a political issue to manufacture consent. It started with Three Waters, fear-mongering about infrastructure being taken out of “Kiwi hands” and given to the “Māori elite”. There were a number of propaganda campaigns to push this further, including a “Stop Co-governance” national roadshow, where former street preacher Julien Batchelor told old white New Zealand, especially first generation British transplants (Ten Pound Poms), that Māori were coming to institute a new apartheid. Of course Batchelor would know, as he grew up in colonial Kenya before moving to New Zealand when the British left. He somehow acquired the funds to distribute 250,000 booklets promoting his talks and spreading fears designed to tap into the psyche of this group.

This was among a number of tricks used to force co-governance as an issue, that played especially well with an increasingly reactionary portion of the country looking for easy blame after lockdowns and post-pandemic economic shocks. Riding off of this, Seymour announced his Treaty Principles Bill (TPB). He said it was about “equal rights”, but in effect it would nullify any recognition of rangatiratanga or the relationship that Māori and the Crown have, pushing Māori-Crown relations back to the 1950s. It received objections from all corners of society, including prominent Māori, legal scholars, church leaders, and most living ex-PMs. However, the 2023 election became a vote partly on the “place of Māori in society”. The right focused on issues like bilingual road signs and ministry names, Three Waters leading to “Māori dominance”, axing the Māori Health Authority, slashing and burning the progress made in recent decades.

Like in most other countries, the incumbent centrist Labour Party lost heavily. ACT only received 8% of the vote, but Seymour was able to get the Treaty Principles Bill included in the right’s coalition agreement, supported by the other parties just for the first reading. National and NZ First let ACT lead them to the precipice, inciting major pushback. ACT is ramping up the temperature, and their coalition partners, with their own connections to the Atlas Network and the wider lobbying octopus, are able to play dumb and say their hand was forced. This parliamentary vote was the one that was protested by Te Pāti Māori last week, introduced 2 weeks earlier than expected to be overshadowed by the American election and get ahead of another hīkoi on Parliament.

The current coalition has spent the first year in office gutting the state and rolling New Zealand back decades, including restarting oil and gas exploration, firing thousands of public servants, creating a “fast-track” consent process which seems to mostly apply to their donors and friends, hiring tobacco and gun lobbyists to rewrite laws, opening military-style “boot camps” for youth offenders, trying to privatise the school and health systems, cancelling planning reform and infrastructure projects, and of course, throwing Three Waters onto the bonfire. I’m sure private industry will be able to step in and handle water infrastructure the way they’ve handled the power grid. The usual backroom dealings of a National government are fully out in the open.

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You cannot believe them when they say that the Treaty Principles Bill is an “honest dialogue” on what the document means. It’s an attempt to tear it up and sell the last they can squeeze out of Aotearoa to the highest bidder. It might not pass now, but it’s not the end. ACT is now trying to turn the bill into a global culture war issue, where Western chauvinists like Matt Walsh can pick up half-baked talking points and treat it like another sideshow to throw popcorn at. The haka in Parliament was a protest against a government that has rejected norms, procedures, and any shambolic sense of democracy to push through destructive policy after destructive policy, trying to bring the country back to a time where “Māori knew their place”. Most people should be able to see it for what it is, indigenous people standing up against the agents of global capital and saying “we shall not let this pass”.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) document, first issued by Bush Sr. in 1991, lays out the executive branch’s “national security concerns”, and how they plan to address them. Where does New Zealand and the Pacific sit into this strategy? Well, America is tired of its Global North allies who have not pitched in, especially against China.

We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain. But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone. Our allies must step up and spend—and more importantly do—much more for collective defense.

States buy into the security umbrella through arms sales and favourable deals, shoulder more of the burden of running the empire, but get more favourable treatment from the US.

American policy should focus on enlisting regional champions that can help create tolerable stability in the region, even beyond those partners’ borders. These nations would help us stop illegal and destabilizing migration, neutralize cartels, nearshore manufacturing, and develop local private economies, among other things. We will reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy.

New Zealand (and Australia) have long served as the regional managers of the Pacific, and as China has gained influence in the region, they’ve reverted back to a more colonial role. The past decade has seen more security agreements, war games, training, “freedom of navigation” exercises, and an increasingly aggressive tone from New Zealand on China.

Much of the groundwork for this re-alignment towards the US was laid by the previous Labour government, with Andrew Little spending his last year in office as Minister of Defence and intelligence signing numerous military agreements with Pacific neighbours. However, the NSS marks a large escalation in foreign policy from Biden, and even the first Trump term. The first three on the list of “America’s core foreign policy interests” read:

• We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine;

• We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials;

• We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity;

Put simply, America is telling Europe to start re-arming (later on “we expect our allies to spend far more of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on their own defense”) while it militarises the Western Hemisphere and Asia-Pacific in preparation against China.

The Indo-Pacific is already the source of almost half the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century. Which means that the Indo-Pacific is already and will continue to be among the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds.

Other lines point to preparing for more refugees (“prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States”), coordination on the now-combined Global War on Drug Terror (“governments cooperat[ing] with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations”), and keeping China out (“free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets”). While these are talking specifically about the Western Hemisphere, this would likely extend further afield (“keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open”).

These are all plans that are currently unfolding with America flexing its muscles southwards into Latin America. The continent is experiencing a return of Operation Condor-style fascism to bring it back under heel after the most recent centre-left electoral wave. Far-right leaders like Bukele and Milei are engaging in austerity and crackdowns while cooperating heavily with the Trump admin. The Trump admin is currently trying to bully Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Holdings out of their stake in the Panama Canal. The Pentagon has killed at least 99 people so far in strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific to combat “narco-terrorists”, actions that are seemingly attempts by the Pentagon to push the bounds of what the US military can get away with. As of writing, the US has already escalated to a military blockade of Venezuela until it gives up land and oil “stolen” from the US. America is enacting what the NSS calls the “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: they reserve final say over the affairs of the continent and beyond, and will use force to get their way.

This new era of American foreign policy requires allies to escalate accordingly, through investment, coordination, policy, and rhetoric. While the previous Labour government oversaw a creeping re-alignment towards the USA under Trump I and Biden, the coalition government has accelerated this process, and now Trump’s plans for a heavily militarised future are being enacted. Judith Collins, serving as Minister of Defence, Space, and the intelligence agencies, has been the figure charged with overseeing New Zealand’s new security and military policy. Trump took office January 20th, and on the 22nd Collins spoke to 1News ahead of the release of NZDF’s 15-year strategic plan.

“We have enormous resource wealth in this country. All these sorts of things make us vulnerable and we also have a real obligation to our Pacific neighbours, to work with them, to help them to protect their fishing grounds and their own sovereignty. Now we’ve got a big role to play and we should never rule out the fact we have to defend ourselves.

“We cannot only be the really nice people who come in and sort out the terrible mess after earthquakes and volcanoes, and all those sorts of things that happen. We do need to have a serious lethality component.”

Collins announced the government would be investing over 2% of GDP into the NZDF over 4 years back in April, the same month a military co-operation agreement was signed with the Philippines, a First Island Chain country. In August she announced a $2b purchase (originally budgeted for $300-600m) of five Lockheed Martin helicopters through a US government defence purchase program. She made a “secret” visit to Ukraine in September to look at how New Zealand can integrate the technologies being battle-tested on conscript after conscript, before meeting with UK officials to sign a new defence cooperation agreement.

FBI Director Kash Patel visited in July for some smiling photo-ops and the opening of an FBI office, one that he said would help counter China’s Pacific influence. Collins then visited Washington D.C. in October to discuss “how we might further bolster our long-standing defence and security partnership” and “potential opportunities for closer collaboration with one of our closest partners”, as New Zealand builds “a more combat capable defence force, with enhanced lethality and interoperability”. Collins later told the Post that

“They see us as an extremely valuable player, even though we’re obviously smaller than other partners. They really like the fact that we’ve been stepping up on deployments, that we are growing our defence force and its capability.”

What kind of conversations do you think she had with these people?

It’s interesting that the government would announce an action plan against meth trafficking in November that includes police, Customs, NZDF, Navy, and the GSCB running cross-agency “maritime operations” against drug syndicates operating in the Pacific. The Trump admin later that month sent out a diplomatic cable to all Western US embassies, asking them to “begin collecting data and reporting on migrant-related crimes and human rights abuses facilitated by people of a migration background”, and to let governments know that “the United States stands ready, willing, and able to support them in handling what we see as an existential crisis (migration)”.

New Zealand is also being enmeshed into the “kill-webs” that America is constructing across the Pacific through frameworks like Five Eyes and AUKUS. Pacific researcher Marco de Jong’s piece “Network empire: how advanced military tech is reshaping Five Eyes” lays out these developments:

In practice, the NZ Army’s pursuit of interoperability has led to deeper data integration through its Network Enabled Army project, Plan ANZAC, and the ABCANZ Armies programme. With the goal of contributing a motorised infantry battle group to an Australian Brigade within a US-led division, the NZ Army has begun linking its tactical sensors into Australian and multinational effector networks. During the US-led multinational Project Convergence Capstone 2025 experiments, the Defence Force sought to integrate with its Five Eyes partners and “[experiment] with NZ Sensor and Fires systems, enabled by networked C2 systems”, contributing to “a combined targeting process”. Put simply, our drones, their missiles, shared system.

Handwritten notes from a Five Eyes meeting in Britain acquired by Nicky Hager show that the intelligence sharing network is turning into an explicit military alliance under Anglo-American leadership. A huge focus was on the Asia-Pacific region, and preparing for a conflict with China: “A central part of the plan presented in Portsmouth... was to ‘develop a credible and effective combined joint all-domain [command and control] capability for counter-PRC Operations.’”

Without signing onto AUKUS, without formally re-engaging in ANZUS, and without much public debate, New Zealand is rapidly fusing into the American smart-tech war machine that is being constructed against China. Albeit, New Zealand has always played a crucial role in the formal and informal Anglo military alliance following WWII. While we officially severed our participation in ANZUS in 1985, we still remained a floating satellite dish for Five Eyes, and now produce guiding components for smart bombs and launch military satellites, all most recently used in Gaza. There have been moments where we’ve deviated from the pack. There have also been many times when a government has led us headfirst into fighting for the empire that America inherited from Britain.

The 1951 waterfront dispute (Part 2 coming soon) illustrates how easy it can be for the government to sign on the dotted line. In 1950, PM Holland announced at a Commonwealth PM summit in London that “New Zealand would stick by [America] through thick and thin and through right and wrong”. Days later, he flew to Washington D.C. to meet with President Truman and the men who were currently shaping what would become the American Century, to sign that proverbial deal with the devil. Is Holland’s declaration in 1950 that far from what current ministers and officials are saying, or doing?

Since everyone and their government-issued merino sheep has published an explainer on the McSkimming scandal, and many others have been reading through the full IPCA report, I think it’s important to place this latest chapter in New Zealand elite malfeasance in context. It’s another example of what has a few euphemisms; the old boys network, the “little village” of New Zealand, the smoke-filled room. Powerful people closing ranks to protect each other.

Some have said this represents a new low in the reputation of police and the justice system, which if you’ve been paying attention it really shouldn’t. This is the same culture that was uncovered in the 2007 Bazley report, with the Commission of Inquiry finding hundreds of cases of sexual assaults being covered up and ignored. The year before, police were using their informant Robert Gilchrist to infiltrate rallies during the trial of officers who had covered up the sexual assaults against Louise Nicholas.

It’s not even the first time a police commissioner has been accused of being involved with illegal porn. When Police Commissioner Howard Broad apologised to the victims of the crimes outlined in the Bazley report in 2007, he blamed the damning findings on “a very few officers who have behaved disgracefully. Their actions were wrong and contrary to their oath of office.” Another few of those bad apples you keep hearing about.

Just a few weeks later, ex-TVNZ journalist turned conservative muckraker Ian Wishart released the findings of a 2 year investigation into long-running rumours and allegations about rampant Dunedin police corruption in the 1980s to 1990s, when Broad was a member of the the Dunedin CIB. The report alleged that a bestiality film had been screened at a party at Broad’s home in 1981, which Broad admitted but said he had no part in screening the film. He accused former police officer and private investigator Wayne Idour, the source of the claim, of providing the film.

More serious were allegations that much of the police had been involved in widespread corruption, as one unnamed former police officer reportedly told Investigate: “a large chunk of Dunedin police were effectively the biggest organized crime syndicate in the city – even more powerful than the gangs.” The biggest was a revival of a long-standing allegation: the cover-up of a pedophilia ring involving officers, MPs, lawyers, and businessmen, ran by the father of a senior police officer.

Tom Lewis, a former police officer who worked on the investigation, published a book covering the scandal among other stories of police corruption in 1996 (which I sadly don’t have, unless anyone has a spare $250 for a second-hand copy). However, he’s spoken about the scandal elsewhere. According to Lewis, underage Dunedin schoolgirls were being solicited by a scout to perform in $1000 BDSM shows for private audiences of well-heeled patrons in hotels around the South Island. In 1984, Lewis began running a sting operation inside the Dunedin CIB. This is what an undercover police officer was reportedly told by the ring’s scout, “Audrey”:

“[The informant] would be leading a naked man wearing a dog collar around the stage while whipping and abusing him. She would perform sexual acts on the man and invite women from the audience to participate, and she was then required to have sex with the bondage slave on stage. Audrey also told the constable she could double her fee by having sex with as many of the audience as she could manage. The more she serviced, the more she would be paid. She was, like Cathy, told that if she had sexual intercourse with the dog she would receive a large bonus.”

Soon the undercover officer was put in contact with the ring’s proprietor “John”, who police soon figured out was John Lewis, owner of the Parkside / Carisbrook Hotel.

“John Lewis told Devlin that his sex shows were based on the Marquis de Sade’s book, and that people attending the show “were right into bondage and perversion”. He warned her however that confidentiality was extremely important because “prominent people such as members of Parliament” would be present.”

His son was Murray Lewis, a Dunedin police officer who would go on to become the Tauranga Area Commander and be appointed to the New Zealand Order of Merit for multiple policing deployments in the Pacific. The undercover constable met John at the Parkside while wearing a wire, who explained the show and then asked to see her naked. Instead, Lewis and his team were waiting outside.

“When police burst in, they found John clutching a bottle of baby oil and whip, while on the bed nearby lay a copy of the Marquis de Sade’s book as well as a dog collar and leash. A videotape was found of one of the previous Dunedin sex shows, and included the type of sexual acts John and Audrey had described to Cathy and Constable Devlin. One local man on the videotape was instantly recognisable to police.”

The second that Lewis was brought back into the station, walls began to be put up against any sort of investigation. Evidence went missing. The team conducting the search warrant on the apartment of “Audrey”, real name Lynley Deaker, “forgot” to file a search warrant, meaning all evidence was inadmissible. The Dunedin District Commander personally requested that John Lewis be immediately bailed and released. The CIB chief ordered that the investigation be closed, as it was a “victimless crime”.

A whitewashed report was released in 1985, trying to kibosh any claims about a ring, or a cover-up. Then-local Labour MP Michael Cullen, who later served as Attorney General under Clark, and Labour party member and school teacher David Benson-Pope, who would later become a Labour MP, distributed the report around the community to quell fears. That didn’t stop other allegations from circling around in the intervening years, like officers using stand over tactics on brothels to get free sex out of prostitutes.

Dunedin has long been a particularly corrupt outpost of the New Zealand police, with a long history of allegations, more than a few botched investigations under their belt, and Port Otago serving as a major port of entry for drug traffickers. But as shown, many of the people involved in this were promoted upwards. Broad became the national Police Commissioner. Murray Lewis was given an NZOM for his services to the Crown. After being stonewalled on his investigations into the ring, Tom Lewis left the police and moved to Australia in 1986.

Time and time again, the New Zealand establishment lets its mask slip, and reveals the rot underneath the surface, something I’ve explored here previously. McSkimming is yet another example. As a small settler-colonial country with many imperial hangovers, New Zealand has inherited the British style of cloak and dagger dark politics, where rumours might swirl around, but after a certain point up the ladder things can be swept under the rug.

This culture is inculcated into people who start climbing that ladder. If you want to join the club, you have to learn when to bend the knee, and when to look the other way. This is another demonstration of how thoroughly that culture has been embedded inside the police, from top to bottom. The IPCA report uncovered 13 police staff who had knowledge of McSkimming’s relationship. Only four of those were not involved in covering up his crimes.

I guess this one hasn’t been much about McSkimming. To be honest, I don’t think this will be the end of the story. There are still many unanswered questions, like who knew what and when, and how McSkimming came across enough money for a large home, multiple investment properties, a luxury car collection (and “exotic car tours” company, with no actual footprint), and a number of expensive hobbies.1 If a deeper look on McSkimming is something people are interested in, let me know.

While I also welcome any sort of increased oversight against a police force with no leash apart from a very toothless IPCA, the New Zealand police has demonstrated again and again that they need serious reform (or abolition). But if we do see actual enforcement, don’t expect it to be pretty. New Zealand ranked top of the world on the oil-money funded Transparency International “anti-corruption index” only because of this ingrained culture of turning the other way, now beginning to slip down the rankings as the coalition government enters the “scrap everything for parts” stage of neoliberalism. When more skeletons start getting pulled out of the closet, we won’t be “Clean Green New Zealand” much longer.

What had a bigger impact was the diplomatic turmoil that followed. Clark’s Labour government issued diplomatic sanctions against Israel following the duo pleading guilty. A visit to New Zealand by Israeli President Moshe Katzav was cancelled, and the Deputy Chief of Staff was denied permission to enter the country in March 2005 to speak at a fundraising event. Clark requested an apology and explanation from the Israeli government before relations would be restored, calling the incident “far more than simple criminal behaviour by two individuals”.1 Clark later said she had “no doubt whatsoever”2 that the two were Israeli spies, and that other thefts had taken place.

“We regard it as totally unacceptable that a country with which New Zealand has long had friendly relations would attempt to undermine our law and sovereignty in this way.”3

Hamas praised the New Zealand government’s response, urging other countries to “adopt firm measures against the Zionist entity’s violations of laws on foreign lands to achieve certain targets.”4 The government quickly tried to distance itself from the statement, saying Hamas would be subject to the same response if it tried a similar operation.

In mid-2005, the Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom finally sent a letter of apology, expressing “regret for the activities which resulted in the arrest and conviction of two Israel citizens in New Zealand... Israel commits itself to taking steps to prevent a recurrence of similar incidents in the future.”5 In August, the Governor-General accepted the ambassador’s credentials, officially restoring relations. Shalom and the New Zealand ambassador to Turkey met in October of the same year, with an Israeli government statement reporting the meeting was the first between officials “since the incident with the Mossad”.6 An Israeli spokesperson later denied that the statement was an admission of guilt, saying that the quote should have been in inverted commas as espionage had only been alleged by the New Zealand government.

But what happened to the men in the ring after the debacle? After returning from his stint in New Zealand prison, Eli Cara decided to get a job with Visa.7 Uriel Kelman has seemingly dropped off the map. Tony Resnick, the New Zealand paramedic and AUT lecturer, suddenly fled the country for Hong Kong the day after Cara and Kelman were arrested, saying that he needed to visit a friend who’d been in a car accident.8 Resnick’s wife and children soon followed, and it’s believed they then ended up in Israel. Resnick was an (albeit small) stockholder in a New Zealand company named Nomad Wireless Holdings, later Old Wireless Holdings, with telco and venture capitalist Martyn Levy as director.9 Levy was involved in the early 2000s with attempts to attract Israeli investment into New Zealand, through later-bankrupt developer Andrew Krukziener’s VC firm.10

Martyn’s father, Geoff Levy, who had just stepped down as co-chairman of the Auckland Jewish Council earlier in 2004, told the NZ Herald “he had known Mr Resnick, a former council member, for many years. He said the allegations about Mr Resnick were no more than that and should be treated with caution.”11 Geoff Levy also served as Uriel Kelman’s lawyer during the trial. In June this year, Martyn Levy spoke at a talk on post-October 7 antisemitism with New Zealand Jewish Council president Juliet Moses.12

However, the much more interesting figure was Barkan, the man for whom the passport was intended. He’d already left New Zealand before the two were arrested, with New Zealand authorities saying at the time they were unaware of his whereabouts. A New Zealand NGO operating in Asia, Global-Protect All Children (then tied up in allegations that its cofounder Jack Sanders was a pretend NZSIS agent providing disinformation to Nicky Hager,13 a story too complex to get into here) alleged that Barkan had stolen a Canadian passport in Guangzhou in April 2004, just weeks after leaving New Zealand.14 New Zealand intelligence suspected that the passport theft was an attempt to get a clean passport for an operation in the region. It’s likely the Canadian passport was Barkan’s Plan B.

Barkan then allegedly used the stolen Canadian passport to enter North Korea alongside other Israelis posing as “security consultants”, helping North Korea build a “security wall” on its border with China.15 He had been spotted in Pyongyang the same month, according to the NGO. On 22 April 2004, only 11 days after the Canadian passport was stolen in China, a massive explosion occurred at the Ryongchon railway station in North Korea, a town near the Chinese border.16 Hundreds, if not thousands (depending on North or South Korean sources) died, with 40% of the town being flattened. While it was initially assumed the explosion was an attack on Kim Jong-il, who had passed through the town 9 hours before, 12 Syrian scientists accompanying missile and military components to Damascus were also killed in the explosion.17 Israel has a long history of targeting military scientists of enemy countries, including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. It’s certainly interesting that the Israeli spy on the run for New Zealand passport fraud allegedly steals a Canadian passport and enters North Korea as a “security consultant”, not even 2 weeks before Syrian scientists are killed in an unsolved explosion in the same area.

After the initial reports tying him to North Korea, Barkan was subject to further allegations of strange activities in Asia. An anonymous “aid worker” (likely Sanders again) told the Sydney Morning Herald that Barkan was connected to an Israeli security company operating in Thailand. This work included going to countries like “Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deal[ing] with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports”.18 More spurious allegations surfaced in 2005, tying Barkan to an alleged porn and snuff film studio operating on the Mekong River in Cambodia.

“In a professional studio, girls from New Zealand and Australia – students and tourists – were lured into thinking they were to become movie stars. At first they made porn films in studios in Phnom Phen behind a local bar before branching out into films of hangings and executions of city vagrants, followed by suicide films.”19

Barkan resurfaced again in 2010 when the UAE government accused him of being involved in the murder of Hamas arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai luxury hotel.20 Barkan, using a French passport under the name of Eric Rassineux, was one of 32 Mossad agents involved in the operation. Australian, British, Irish, and Dutch passports were also used as cover. Barkan was allegedly seen in CCTV footage tailing al-Mabhouh to his hotel room when checking in, which other agents then broke into while he was out.21 Upon returning, al-Mabhouh was drugged with a paralytic agent and suffocated to death, with all agents flying out within hours of the hit.

The operation caused major friction between Israel and the countries whose passports had been used, with Australia, Ireland and Britain expelling diplomats in the aftermath.22 France’s counterintelligence agency had complained to Mossad after it was revealed the operation was headquartered out of a Paris hotel.23 UAE police alleged that Canada had actually arrested Barkan and was refusing to cooperate, with Canada refuting that they had anyone in custody.24

In the current day, Zev Barkan’s time as a Mossad wetwork operative is seemingly over, now working as Vice President of Operations at Israeli cybersecurity firm XM Cyber. His bio on the company website broadly boasts about his previous occupation:

“Before becoming XM Cyber’s VPO, Zev Barkan spent over 30 years with the Israeli Intelligence Community. Mr. Barkan brings managerial experience, leading technological and operational divisions, including areas such as cyber, IT and was in charge of the International Cooperation Division.”25

Even over 20 years on, questions still linger about the 2004 Israeli passport scandal. Though New Zealand’s diplomatic response at the time was much more severe than the inaction seen after 2 years of systematic genocide, was there international pressure on the government to let the spies off with a slap on the wrist? A Wikileaks cable revealed that the US embassy viewed the prosecution as “grandstanding in order to sell more lamb to Arab countries”.26 The two convicted spies only served 3 months before being deported.

How many other local helpers had been involved with the operation? Resnick was likely the most exposed, having worked at St. John’s and likely involved with identity selection. However, considering his and the other agents’ links to the local Jewish community and the NZJC, it’s likely that others were assisting. That being said, no other individuals have been definitively identified as being involved.

How many other NZ passports were acquired by Mossad agents? The practice had been going on since the 1990s, and the fact that Cara had been in and out of New Zealand 24 times by 2003 means it likely wasn’t the first passport he’d assisted in obtaining through this method. Clark confirmed at the time that other passports had been obtained, and subsequently cancelled by the DIA. And as will be seen in Part 3 of this series, it wouldn’t be the last time.

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In 2004, the Department of Internal Affairs and New Zealand Police stumbled across an Israeli identity theft ring operating in Auckland. A few careless mistakes resulted in the whole operation coming apart, with two spies being arrested and two fleeing the country. It led to the worst diplomatic relations New Zealand and Israel have ever had, but the saga has been swept under the rug in the intervening years.

Israel promised to never do it again, before being caught doing it again when an Israeli was found dead in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, in possession of “at least 5 passports”. In this series, Exit From Affco will cover these little mentioned incidents, and the scale of Israeli intelligence operations in New Zealand and the surrounding region. When politicians like Deputy PM David Seymour calls Israel a “friend and ally”1, remember how they treat their “friends”.

As the foreign intelligence agency of a country that is particularly notorious for being up to no good, Israel’s Mossad finds foreign identities and passports incredibly useful. Using the cover of countries with better reputations, and more visa-free access, can make operations go a lot smoother.

In 1997, Canadian passports were used in a failed attempt to kill Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal in Jordan,2 with Israel promising never to use Canadian passports again. In 2010, following the assassination of key Hamas arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel, Ireland, Britain, and Australia expelled Israeli diplomats suspected in being involved with forging passports used in the operation.3 PM Kevin Rudd later revealed in his autobiography that Israel had previously been caught forging passports in 2003, then vowing to never do it again.4

The Jerusalem Post reported in 2006 that back in the 1990s, Mossad agents had already been using Canadian and New Zealand passports for cover.5 While the practice was phased out for Middle Eastern operations “once the practice became widely known”, it seemed they still had some use for them. New Zealand has one of the best ranked passports in the world, ranked last year at #6 with 186 visa-free countries. Would many border agents suspect a “Kiwi backpacker” from the Antipodes in the same way they would an Israeli?

In November 2003, three Israelis arrived in New Zealand on American, Israeli and Canadian passports. Canadian-born Uriel Kelman was a 30 year old Israeli intelligence officer educated in one of Israel’s top religious schools, with a Mossad agent father.6

”For a long time, Kelman did not see his father, Israel ‘Easy’ Kelman, who for most of his son’s childhood was abroad on missions with Israeli intelligence agencies. It was a natural progression for Kelman to follow his father’s footsteps into Israeli intelligence.”

50 year old Eli Cara was another Mossad agent, at the time living in a settlement just outside the West Bank named after the founder of Zionist terror group the Stern Gang, populated by Israeli security officials like the then-Israeli Defence Minister, and ex-PM Ehud Barak.7 Cara had previously been spotted in a meeting between Mossad and Australian intelligence contacts.8 In 1998 Cara had sent two Mossad operatives to Cyprus, who were later caught and sentenced to 3 years in prison.9 November marked Cara’s 24th time in New Zealand since 2000, using the cover of operating a (seemingly non-existent) Sydney travel agency branch.10

US-born 36 year old Zev William Barkan was the third man, an ex-Israeli diplomat who’d worked for a number of years in Austria and Belgium.11 He’d previously served in the IDF as a navy diver. Barkan was the operative attempting to secure a New Zealand passport for future missions, while Cara and Kelman were there to assist. They were after the most valuable forged passports, ones under real names and identities acquired surreptitiously through regular government channels that could pass verification, compared to ones that were just forged.

To get an identity to steal, they used what is known in Hebrew as a sayan, a helper of Israeli intelligence often recruited from diaspora Jewish communities. Enter Tony Resnick, a Jewish New Zealander, who had first travelled to Israel as a teenager in the 1980s. His uncle Keith Bookman, whose kibbutz Resnick stayed in for a time, told the New Zealand Herald that “When [Tony] was young, he felt a connection to Israel and to the Zionist idea”.12 He decided to serve in the IDF as a paramedic, fighting in the Gulf War, before marrying an Israeli and working as a civilian ambulance driver in Haifa. In the late 1990s, he moved back to New Zealand with his family to work as a St. John’s paramedic, while also connecting back into the local Jewish community. He became a member of the Auckland Jewish Council, the regional branch of the New Zealand Jewish Council, and left St. John’s in 2002 to become a lecturer at AUT.13

The crew of Israeli spies selected a quadriplegic young man with cerebral palsy who had been treated through St. John’s, and lived only a few hundred metres from where Barkan was renting.14 In late November, Barkan visited a Lynfield GP using the victim’s name before leaving the country in early December, with a request for a birth certificate being placed with Internal Affairs the next day.15 The three Israelis travelled in and out of New Zealand in the intervening months, before all returning in March 2004. Barkan went again to the Lynfield GP, asking him to witness his passport application which he “needed urgently as he was soon to marry in Australia.”16 The GP obliged, and Barkan again left the country, leaving Cara and Kelman to collect the passport. Internal Affairs officer Ian Tingey grew suspicious when a well-spoken man with a North American accent rang asking if the process could be sped up, giving an unconvincing answer when questioned.

“When I quizzed him on his accent his explanation to me was he had not travelled or held a New Zealand passport before but had spent a lot of time in New Zealand with Canadian friends and family.”17

After ringing the victim’s father and realising the deception, Internal Affairs and police set up a sting operation to catch them. Attempting to throw off surveillance, the duo requested that the passport be sent to the Auckland offices of a travel document company, which the duo asked to then send to a central Auckland apartment building.18 The building manager was then called by an ex-tenant, who requested that the manager receive a package and then give it to a waiting taxi driver. Cara was waiting outside the apartment building and followed the taxi driver inside, not realising he was also being shadowed by police. The taxi driver was then told by the manager to deliver the package to an address in Freemans Bay, where Kelman was waiting. Cara was arrested before he could follow, and an officer accompanied the driver. Kelman was at the address waiting for the package, throwing his phone in the bushes once he spotted the police, but was arrested soon after.19

And so, Cara and Kelman ended up in New Zealand police custody on passport fraud charges in March 2004. Cara’s house in Australia was raided by ASIO around the same time.20 What had initially seemed like a police sting on a criminal operation soon turned into a diplomatic row when the New Zealand Herald reported in April that “senior officials believe two men arrested for trying to obtain New Zealand passports are Israeli secret service agents”.21 Then-PM Helen Clark told the Herald that the issue had been raised directly with the Israeli government. Following the arrests, the Canberra-based Israeli ambassador for New Zealand was summoned to Wellington, with acting Foreign Minister Jim Sutton reading him the “riot act” and requesting an explanation.22 They were released on bail, and police bugging of the duo all but confirmed that they were Israeli agents.

During the subsequent trial, they denied any relation to Mossad and pleaded not guilty, not helped by Kelman’s choice to wear a balaclava and sunglasses to and from court. They claimed they were just “good Samaritans” who had ran into Barkan by chance and had no knowledge of his application’s illegality, despite using cars rented under his name. In July 2004, they pled guilty to a charge of “participating in an organised crime group in an attempt to unlawfully obtain a New Zealand passport”.23 They were sentenced to 6 months in prison and ordered to donate $100,000 to the Cerebral Society in Auckland. They were deported in September after serving just 3 months in prison.

Part 2 covers the ensuing diplomatic turmoil between Israel and New Zealand, where these operatives ended up, and the strange trail Barkan left after fleeing the country, including 2 assassinations and allegations of running a snuff film studio in Cambodia. Part 3 will cover the ring exposed by the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, the strange behaviour of the Israeli government, and John Key’s sweeping of the affair under the rug.

It’s pretty established at this point that the Middle Eastern campaigns during WWI were an invasion carried out by the Entente powers to divide up the Ottoman Empire into controllable ethnic Bantustans, and to ensure European oil supplies going forward. Churchill said so himself. Addressing the British Parliament in 1913, he said “we must become the owners or at any rate the controllers at the source of at least a proportion of the supply of natural oil which we require.” Sure, the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs as the sick man of Europe. Sure, its collapse might have been inevitable, but European invasion was the cut that brought the house of cards.

On New Zealand’s involvement, many of “Massey’s Cossacks”, rural anti-union workers and farmers deputised as strikebreakers during the 1912-13 Great Strike, would enter WWI as the Mounted Rifles Brigade, one of the most impactful fighting forces during the Sinai-Palestine campaign.

After German manoeuvring that pulled the Ottomans into the war, Gallipoli was the first intervention against the Ottomans, where Churchill decided to send wave after wave of colonial cannon fodder up cliff faces to try make headway towards Istanbul. Since Gallipoli was an abject failure, many troops were relocated to Egypt to prepare for an assault through the Sinai. Once Central Powers forces attempted to capture the Suez Canal in 1915, British forces began a campaign to push them back up through the Sinai into Palestine.

The New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade were an instrumental part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, with their mobility and speed crucial along the vast stretches of deserts, much different to the trench warfare stalemate the European fronts had become by this point. I know history is contextual, but this campaign was arguably brutal even for the time. The British invasion came after a devastating famine in Palestine dubbed “The Year of the Locust”, which saw waves of refugees throughout the region.

New Zealand soldiers were, of course, particularly racist against local peoples. Milnes’ stellar 1999 thesis “Imperial Soldiers?” examined New Zealand and ANZAC troops’ views during the campaign, finding “virtually every letter, book, and diary contained some reference to the Arabs reflecting the New Zealanders’ racial views”. One wrote that “no wonder the old inhabitants of Palestine had to be destroyed... many a chap is disgusted with the people.” The Aide de Camp to the commander of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles wrote that “they [the Arab camel drivers] all want rounding up and shot”. Another wrote that one village was a “God forsaken place, and only fit for n****ers to live in”.

These racist views extended to their treatment of the local populace, including stealing crops and livestock, the “concentration” of nomadic Bedouin tribes into camps (or torture to find out if they were spies), trashing bazaars, and indifference to or active participation in their deaths. One soldier noted in his autobiography that the soldiers all laughed when the Arab spectators were shelled during a battle. Gaza City was actually bombed 3 separate times by British forces in 1917, including the use of chemical weapons during the Second Battle of Gaza. The below photo shows New Zealand soldiers donning gas masks, captioned “Gaza Beauty Show”. 4,000 gas shells were fired into the city. The day that British forces took Gaza was the same day that the Balfour Declaration was issued, creating Jewish Palestine.

Later in 1918, the Surafend massacre occurred, one of the worst war crimes New Zealand soldiers have ever committed. ANZAC troops murdered up to 137 Palestinians living in a village outside modern-day Tel Aviv, an act of “collective punishment” after a New Zealand soldier in a nearby camp was shot and killed giving chase to a thief who’d stolen his rucksack.

“Surafend’s inhabitants were divided according to age and gender, all women, children, and old men being placed outside the village under guard. The soldiers within the village then began to beat the Arab men with clubs and gun traces in punishment for Lowry’s death, killing some and wounding many more. No shots were heard, suggesting that firearms were not used. ... Once the soldiers had completed their physical punishment of the Arabs, the soldiers set the village alight before returning to their camp.”

“Through violence, the soldiers could vent their anger at the Arabs, avenge Lowry’s death, revenge themselves upon the Arabs for their past “crimes”, and reaffirm the soldiers’ superiority and position in society.”

Another undercurrent of the campaign was the influence of British Zionism. Many New Zealand soldiers saw themselves as part of a new crusade to recapture the Holy Land, something they wrote about in their newsletter “Kia-Ora Coo-ee”, the magazine for ANZAC soldiers in the Middle East. “Palestine is the gift of providence to us... It is ours for keeps this time” one article wrote.

Related to this, New Zealanders loathed the historical Jewish population in Palestine, describing them in the same racist language they used for Arabs. However, they did view the early Zionist settlements they came across very favourably. ANZAC troops saw themselves in these Zionist settlers as people “civilising” indigenous land, saying “the houses and pretty gardens of Jewish colonies form a very pleasant contrast with Eastern villages”. They were well experienced with this process, coming from countries that had only just subdued their own indigenous populations.

Contextually, the Mounted Rifles were rural farmboys from the wop wops brought up in a British-influenced society during the peak of British scientific racism. It’s not exactly a shock to find out that they didn’t view brown-skinned people well. But, I think it’s very under-discussed how pivotal a role we played in creating British Palestine, and later Israel. New Zealand soldiers viewed themselves as part of a holy war, “liberating” Palestine from the untermensch, and wresting it back into European settler-colonial control. In many ways, they were right on the money.

There are at least 23 New Zealand soldiers whose final resting place is in the British & Commonwealth’s Gaza military cemeteries. These graves been taken care of by local Palestinians for decades. The current head gardener, Ibrahim Jaradah, told the BBC in January 2023 that his great-grandfather had begun this work 100 years ago, the role being passed down in the family. “I feel I’m the son of this cemetery… when I was young, it was my dream to work here” Ibrahim said. “We feel it’s very important. These people gave their lives for their countries, and we’re trusted to take care of this historic place.” On Monday this week, Ibrahim posted on Twitter the following:

“Tonight my family was displaced from Gaza City at night with no shelter. A scene that repeats what my grandfather lived in 1948 in Beersheba. The only difference is that this forced displacement is now broadcast in HD. History repeats with same pain, and humanity is still absent.”

This year has seen much discussion about the phenomenon of the “prominent New Zealander” headline. Those who have followed me for a while may have seen my multiple threads on former ACT Party president Tim Jago. However, instead of another op-ed about name suppression or the infallibility of the justice system, I wish to present a short history of “elite misbehaviour” in New Zealand. This piece is a triptych, ranging from before the Treaty of Waitangi, to a (nowhere near exhaustive) history of the New Zealand elite’s crimes, to the new “investor class” now increasingly calling Aotearoa home. This is an attempt at answering why the “prominent New Zealander” keeps on ending up in court, and why it seems like they keep on getting a slap on the wrist.

In 1826, Edward Gibbon Wakefield kidnapped 15 year old heiress Ellen Turner in an attempt to steal her family fortune. The subsequent trial was tabloid fodder in Britain, with newspapers and books covering every turn. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison, and began plotting other get rich quick schemes while incarcerated. He turned his attention to recently established colonies in the Antipodes.

Wakefield identified what he viewed as crucial flaws in these attempts: a failure to restrict primitive accumulation to those “worthy”, and a failure to recreate the British class system. Those who migrated had a chance at upward mobility unparalleled back in the motherland, at the expense of expropriated indigenous land and resources. In Capital, Marx covers a section of Wakefield’s 1833 book England And America, writing that

“Mr. Peel, [Wakefield] moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 300 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, ‘Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.’ Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!”

In books and pamphlets written in his cell, Wakefield laid out his strategy: through the strategic importation of certain classes, the mass acquisition of indigenous land for dirt cheap prices, and the controlled sale of said land to those deemed worthy, a wage-labour class could be created, ready to serve the new landed gentry of New Zealand.

While Wakefield’s main instrument of colonisation, the New Zealand Company, shuttered in the mid-1850s due to numerous difficulties, Wakefield laid the groundwork for what would become the British colony of New Zealand. The Company’s voyages, starting in 1839, forced the hand of colonial officials to sign the Treaty of Waitangi. The Company’s settlements in Wellington, Dunedin, and Nelson became some of New Zealand’s largest urban centres.

It is certainly interesting that the man most responsible for the colonisation of New Zealand made his plans while in a prison cell serving time for abducting a 15 year old in an attempt to accumulate his own fortune. New Zealand, from even before its official founding as a British colony, was already being dreamed up as a place for the elite to escape to.

From Wakefield to the mid-20th century, there exists little literature on the scale of abuse in New Zealand. The pasting of Britain’s power structures onto New Zealand certainly didn’t alleviate the issue of elite misbehaviour. Britain’s notoriously abusive school system was transplanted here, with the first ones opening in the 1850s and 60s. A number of the oldest have been mired in child abuse scandals, with many offenders operating under institutional cover for decades. A journal article on New Zealand’s “age-structured homosexuality” between 1920-1950 examined over 300 (surviving) records of men charged with sex with underage boys, while also noting that the men charged were predominantly lower class.

“Maybe wealthier men did not tend to come into contact with message boys or did not care to associate with them. Or perhaps police dealt with upper-middle-class men more leniently, and those cases did not make it to court.”

From the 1960s and 70s on, as the taboo on talking about abuse began to soften, stories began to circulate. Schools, borstals, psychiatric facilities, and religious institutions were rife with offenders, with the Abuse in Care Royal Commission finding that 250,000 people were abused in state and religious care between 1950-2000. Reports of heinous abuse at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital emerged in 1976, primarily centred on head of the adolescent unit, Dr. Selwyn Leeks. The NZ Medical Council “investigated” before sweeping it under the rug and letting Leeks move to Australia, beginning a decades long cover-up that continued until his death in 2022.

The same Royal Commission also “found ‘deeply suspicious’ evidence of a paedophile ring involving politicians in the 1980s”. Just last month, a police review found that Muldoon’s Health and Immigration Minister Aussie Malcolm “likely engaged in coercive and/or criminal sexual conduct with ‘multiple young boys’” after allegations were raised through the Commission. The fact he was accused was only revealed 2 days after he died last year. Ron Brierley, a corporate raider who became one of the oligarchs to make a fortune through 1980s Rogernomics, was caught with 46,000 CP images in 2019.

This trend of sweeping abuse under the rug continued into the 21st century. A 2005 Time article opens with the question “is New Zealand a haven for pedophiles?” Dozens of New Zealanders who were found to have purchased child porn remained free months after US Customs agents handed over a list, and noted that “even if New Zealand authorities succeed in charging a person with possession of child pornography, the maximum penalty the suspect faces is a $NZ2,000 fine with no jail time.” The law was finally changed to make possession an actual crime later that year.

In 2020, it emerged that numerous staff at Dilworth, the largest boarding school in Australasia, had abused at least 233 students between the 1970s and 2000s. Both the assistant principal and head chaplain were among those convicted, with a victim describing the school as a “free-for-all of violent physical assault”. In 2021, meat packing fortune heir and arts patron Sir James Wallace was convicted for numerous sexual assaults, with 89 letters from prominent New Zealanders requesting leniency in his sentencing.

Now in 2025, it seems like another “prominent New Zealander” story drops into the news every few weeks. Whether getting name suppression, a slap on the wrist, or not charged at all, the country’s elite seem to be having an incredible run in the courts. You can take your pick out of stories just in this year alone.

The PM’s deputy chief press secretary escaping prosecution for secretly taping sex workers. Deputy Police Commissioner McSkimming being caught with CP on a work computer. ACT Party president Tim Jago being convicted of sexually assaulting 2 boys, sentenced to only 2 and a half years in prison and receiving name suppression for almost as long. A 46 year old “rich-lister” charged with CSAM receiving permanent name suppression, thanks to a “good character” assessment and a five-digit donation to charity.

This coddling of the New Zealand elite and their crimes has been going on for decades and decades. Authorities will turn a blind eye. The court system will bend over backwards to ensure that they get a slap on the wrist. New Zealand media will run cover, as they have a “tradition of not reporting news on public figures’ sexual affairs.”1 Some of the rumours I’ve heard would blow up both sides of Parliament, a few major businesses, and numerous media careers. But what happens when that protection begins to extend to a new elite who are now arriving to Aotearoa’s shores?

In recent years, thanks in part to John Key’s efforts to further financialise the country for his banker friends, New Zealand has become a bolthole at the bottom of the world for those wishing to escape forthcoming societal collapse, or prying eyes. The new “investor class” buying up North Shore mansions or sheep stations in the South Island has resulted in a major shift of who New Zealand is “meant” for.

The 1997 book The Sovereign Individual (co-written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father) outlined a post-capitalist collapse where technological development would render the nation-state obsolete, and libertarian city-states led by CEO kings would emerge from the wreckage. Sound familiar? Peter Thiel has cited it as his biggest influence. The book mentions New Zealand 13 times, including in a list of its most important takeaways:

10. Jurisdictions of choice in which to enjoy high living standards with economic opportunity include reform areas in the Southern hemisphere, such as New Zealand, Chile, and Argentina, which boast adequate to superior infrastructure and many beautiful landscapes and are unlikely to be targets of terrorists wielding nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

Thiel, given a New Zealand citizenship in 2011 by Key’s government after spending only 12 days in the country, bought a 477-acre property near Wanaka in 2015. In 2016, OpenAI’s Sam Altman revealed he had an arrangement with Thiel that in the event of a “systemic collapse scenario”, they would both fly to New Zealand to wait it out at his property. While Thiel’s attempts at building a luxury lodge have been seemingly abandoned, other ultra-rich figures are heeding his calls to escape to the Antipodes. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman told the New Yorker in 2017 that “saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more”. Google co-founder Larry Page attained residency, using it in 2021 to get around quarantine rules to get his son medical treatment. The coalition’s changes to the Active Investor Plus Visa earlier this year, where you can pay $5m in exchange for residency, will certainly help attract more. At least 386 Americans have already applied for the scheme, with PM Luxon saying during the announcement “we’re a safe haven in a very volatile and uncertain world”.

Besides the chilling question of what these people plan to do with this country in the event of a collapse, a more pressing question is what they are doing here now. What happens up those long driveways, on sprawling estates (or underground bunkers), behind closed doors? Thiel has long been subject to rumours about his fondness for towel boys, not helped by recent revelations about his relationship with Jeffery Epstein. Ex-NBC host Matt Lauer, fired in 2017 for multiple sexual assault allegations, began leasing a 6500-hectare sheep station near Wānaka the same year. Controversial British media personality Noel Edmonds moved from the UK to a 800-acre property near Nelson in the 2010s, where he built a “wellness centre” and commented on the area’s “spiritual freedom”. Author Neil Gaiman hired a homeless, vulnerable 22 year old to work as a live-in nanny at his Waiheke mansion in 2022, before repeatedly sexually assaulting her. Emmy Rākete wrote about the case in Overland:

“Scarlett Pavlovich endured what she endured because capitalism in New Zealand worked hard to make sure that she did. A rich man can rape a poor woman in a bathtub and, in some way, get some twisted satisfaction from doing so. But the rich — all of the rich, every last one — directly financially benefit from having built a world in which poor women have no choice but to submit to being raped.”

While some may argue that pointing to this as a wider pattern is speculative, after all of the revelations of the past decade about what elites get up to behind closed doors, is it out of the question? The current government is trying to sell off as much as possible to whoever’s bidding, and if they’re trying to attract a new “investor class” to move to New Zealand, would that not include catering to their desires? It’s not like this is anything out of the ordinary. They’re simply extending the same protection that powerful New Zealanders have to those who can pay for it.

Locked in his prison cell, Wakefield dreamed up plans for his country’s elite to forge Aotearoa into a “Little Britain”. He succeeded, with New Zealand taking on the pedocratic tendencies of the British state, where the depraved acts of the rich and powerful are covered up by the state’s institutions because those running the state are just as complicit. And now, the government is pitching these islands as a “safe haven” for the international elite, who are lining up to pay for boltholes here as the world outside begins to crumble. The colony of New Zealand is entering its next stage.

The next piece will conclude Exit From Affco’s series on the 1951 waterfront dispute, before moving to more contemporary topics that I’m sure will interest many of you greatly. Thank you again for reading, subscribe if you’re not already, and if you want to support the work I do here, you can shout me a coffee through Ko-fi. Ka kite.

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“With a Government backed to support 'America right or wrong' -- a Government openly riding on the chariot of Wall Street towards a third world blood bath -- the destruction of the Union was essential, for no Union anywhere had consistently fought for peace more than that of the waterside workers of New Zealand. The tragedy is what so few Unions did the same.”

- Jock Barnes, Waterside Workers’ Union president, 1952

Today, we'll be covering the prelude to the most impactful industrial action in New Zealand history: the 1951 waterfront lockout. As part of Exit From Affco's ongoing series on the New Zealand security state, and what it looks like when consolidating for conflict, 1951 marks New Zealand's induction into the post-WWII Western order. Not to say this process hasn't played out more than a few times. The 1912/13 strikes saw crackdowns against largely anti-conscription unions before WWI, repeated in more subtle ways by Labour before WWII. The post-9/11 Global War on Terror brought another wave of state repression, seen last time on Exit From Affco in the case of Rob Gilchrist. And now, the New Cold War being drawn up in the Asia-Pacific has brought the past two New Zealand governments even closer into the orbit of the increasingly fascistic American empire.

However, 1951 has been overlooked in the history of why we now find ourselves producing components for smart bombs used in Gaza. Like most of our labour history, it's something that's been left by the wayside. 8,000 Waterside Workers' Union (WWU) members were locked out from ports across the country for 151 days, from 13 February to 15 July 1951. At the height of the lockout, a further 22,000 workers struck in solidarity. Through a combination of backroom deals, emergency crackdowns, press smears, and union bashing, the first National government, the business elite, and moderate union leadership delivered the first nail in the coffin of militant labour in the post-war era. The WWU was torn limb from limb, key officials were banned from working in a port for decades, and sometimes left wrecked by the battle.

But even this story masks the geopolitical tensions and manoeuvring that occurred during those 151 days, forces that helped usher New Zealand into the post-war American order. Not that the New Zealand elite was hesitant in taking that step, but it's a fork in the road of what New Zealand could have been. It's one story in a global wave after WWII concluded, actions taken to ensure that the left could present no real resistance to the "celebration of markets" the Cold War would become. This series will tell an alternative history of the 1951 waterfront lockout, examining its role in the creation of the New Zealand security state, and the organised forces behind the scenes that spurred it on.

By 1951, the American empire was becoming acutely aware of how important the Asia-Pacific was to its post-war hegemony and, now paranoid of any movement that could kick off the Domino Effect, its related anti-communist crusade. 1951 marked 6 months of the Korean War, 2 years after the CPC had won in China, and 3 years since the Malayan Anti-British National Liberation War started. There'd been 6 years of Allied occupation in Japan, and by then the US had given $450m towards the First Indochina War. The Cold War had begun, and America began building up their westward flank in the same way NATO was doing in Europe.

New Zealand was also aware that America was quickly supplanting Britain as the dominant Western presence in the region, as a battered Albion was still rebuilding through the Marshall Plan and support from the colonies. Tens of thousands of American troops had rotated through New Zealand during the war, with military (and intelligence) ties deepening after fighting concluded.1 This accelerated when the first National government took office in 1949 under PM Sidney Holland. A report prepared for President Truman noted that compared to the previous Labour government, "the [National] government has maintained even closer relations with the US and has supported the US position ... with respect to the communist aggression."2 Holland announced at a London Commonwealth PM's conference in December 1950 that Britain and the colonies should

"offer the right hand of friendship and goodwill to Mr. Truman and his American people to whom the world owes so much ... that great country was giving assistance to the free world with unparalleled generosity... no wedge must come between us..."3

Holland added that "New Zealand would stick by [America] through thick and thin and through right and wrong." Compared to Michael Joseph Savage's declaration upon WWII's outbreak that "where [Britain] goes, we go, where she stands, we stand", it seemed the winds had changed in the Pacific. Holland flew off to Washington for a diplomatic visit after the London conference concluded, asking State Department officials upon his arrival "tell me what else I can do, and I will do it".4

While Holland was in America, the New Zealand government invited John Foster Dulles to visit after his tour of Australia. Dulles was serving as the US Emissary to occupied Japan, and Truman's key State Department advisor on the Asia-Pacific. Australia and New Zealand’s requests for a security agreement were now being seriously considered following the start of the Korean War, as America realised it would need allies in the region to support its ambitions. J.F. Dulles was touring the Antipodes to work out the finer details.

The Dulles brothers, John and Allen, were American deep state creatures like no other. Both Princeton men, they cut their teeth in the 1920s at Sullivan & Cromwell, Wall Street's premier law firm, which pioneered tax dodge methods like the holding company and corporate mergers. During the interwar years, their work at Sullivan & Cromwell included managing American investment into Germany, with American dollars counting for 70% of what flowed into Germany during the 30s.5 This work continued during and after the war, with the firm helping Zyklon-B producer IG Farben survive through a labyrinth of shell companies.6 This cozy relationship between American finance, the Nazi state, and the US war machine birthed a child in the form of the CIA, the Allen Dulles-headed intelligence agency started in 1947.

Upon its formation, the CIA became one of America's main organs for ensuring their post-war hegemony remained unchallenged by neutralising any perceived threats to the free flow of capital and commodities. Outbreaks of post-war class struggle, like massive strikes in France in 1947 or resurgent communist movements across Europe, led the CIA to creating the Office of Policy Coordination, tasked with developing a "covert political action capability" including union infiltration.7 In coordination with the French Socialists in 1948, the agency paid to break up communist strikes in Marseille to ensure use of the ports for the Marshall Plan (and give the Corsican mafia a heroin market monopoly).8 The CIA funnelled $10-20m dollars into the 1948 Italian elections to defeat the Communist-Socialist bloc, and organised a letter writing campaign involving Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby for Italian-Americans to warn their relatives about the dangers of communism.9 Wherever the CIA went, they established connections with local elites, and worked together to eradicate any threats to America's economic or political interests.

The CIA, run by Allen, and the State Department, with John Foster as a key official in the Asia-Pacific, were concerned with the New Zealand left. They were particularly focused on the Waterside Workers' Union (WWU), as "port security in Europe and the Pacific ... had become a major consideration of the US Government, with trade union militancy now regarded as a security risk."10 Current and future conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region could be easily jeopardised through political strikes, and New Zealand dockworkers had been one of the most militant blocks of organised labour for over 70 years. They'd held an anti-militarist stance since WWI, with the WWU voting to block shipment of troops or munitions to the "dirty war" in Malaya in June 1950.11 1,300 New Zealanders assisted Britain's "scorched earth" war against Malayan communist guerrillas, where part of the West's "counter-insurgency" arsenal was developed between 1948-1960. Dick Scott wrote in his history of the lockout, 151 Days, that

"[the watersiders] were politically awake and defence spending spelt war preparations to them, and a cannon mouth sitting at the family table in every workers' home. They knew that stolen bread was buying bullets to shoot Malayan workers and buying jellied petrol, atom bombs and bacteria to drench the world in new wars."12

The WWU was clear eyed about what lay ahead if New Zealand became intertwined with America's foreign policy goals. Consequently, they were designated a threat by the American state.

Intelligence gathering and active meddling in the union movement had been going on for years before J.F. Dulles stepped off the plane in February 1951. The embassy "had been despatching detailed reports on the WWU to Washington since 1948".13 A CIA report from 1949 titled "Communist Influence in New Zealand" wrote that Labour, National, and much of the establishment union leadership were already committed anti-communists, and that the Communist Party was somewhat declining. However, the report also wrote that

"control of important labor union posts in the Waterside Workers' Union, New Zealand Federation of Labour, and the trade union councils has given Communists greater influence than the Party membership indicates."14

It also makes note of the concentration of CPNZ members in "the ports of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch", and that the WWU's national vice-president was an ex-CPNZ chairman. All throughout the document are references to ports. Ensuring that military infrastructure remained out of "militant" hands was a top priority, so they began pressing on fissures in the union movement to split the union movement.

A 1948 CIA report alleging that the internationalist World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was a Soviet front caused substantial fracturing among the Western labour movement.15 America was trying to get unions to instead jump ship to their anti-communist and CIA-controlled International Confederation of Trade Unions. A 1949 memo details the US Embassy passing the NZ Federation of Labour Secretary-Treasurer a journal article based on that report, to "assist him" in "draft[ing] the required circular on ... the WFTU" and "present a strong case for disaffiliation".16

It's worth stressing that this was not solely a US effort. New Zealand politicians, media, business, and intelligence had long smeared the labour movement and Communist Party as being secretly directed by Moscow. Fighting alongside the USSR in WWII led to a reduction in anti-communist rhetoric and policy, but that uneasy alliance quickly came apart upon the war's end. Labour PM Fraser led a Stalinesque purge of card-carrying and "suspected" communists in the Public Service.17 A 1948 industrial dispute involving the communist-dominated Carpenters’ Union and the WWU led Minister of Public Works Bob Semple to publish Why I Fight Communism, pushed into wide circulation by Fraser.18 The NZ Federation of Labour (NZFOL) had replaced its more militant leadership with moderates in the same year. The first National government beat out Labour in 1949 partly due to its promises of delivering discipline to the union movement. Far from having to force the New Zealand establishment into a crackdown, the American empire instead found willing participants.

The new vice-president of the NZFOL was Fintan Patrick Walsh, a devout anti-communist and close ally of Fraser. Walsh, a former cofounder of the CPNZ, had spent 15 years as Labour's tool in the union movement, pushing it away from strikes and towards the industrial arbitration system. The American Embassy's first secretary described Walsh as a "firm friend of the United States", who regularly chatted with US officials about the Labour Party, the union movement, and suspected communists (or any "fellow travellers"), while knowing much of it would be passed to the CIA.19

At the NZFOL conference later in 1949, a delegate vote to leave the WFTU passed. The WWU ignored the directive, and alongside a long-standing conflict with the FOL over direction, the WWU was unconstitutionally pushed out by FOL executives in 1950.20 This led to the WWU and other dissatisfied unions setting up the Trade Union Congress, their own competing national body which advocated for industrial action over the Court of Arbitration.

Alongside this split inside the union movement, an ongoing dispute between the WWU and shipowners had been continually escalating since the late 40s. Harsh conditions to keep up the war effort had persisted long after, including poor pay, lack of hazard protections, and gruelling overtime. A dispute over exposure to the industrial dye lampblack in mid-1950 led to a nationwide work stoppage, and the matter was quickly taken to the Court of Arbitration.21 However, the shipowners had no intention of reaching a settlement. They wanted a “showdown” with a union now isolated from the wider movement, under a new National government that had gotten into office on union-bashing, currently working out the details to New Zealand's induction into America's new global order.

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The rest of this series will cover the dispute itself, the government's crackdown, the guidance and assistance given by foreign intelligence agencies (including the secret CIA flights), and the impact it had on our own security state. Subscribe to not miss the next one. Ka kite anō au i a koutou.

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"As surely as night follows day, an offensive by the Holland Government against the workers of New Zealand was inevitable. And years of inspired press propaganda had made it clear that the New Zealand Waterside Workers' Union would be objective number one. Its record of progressive thought and militant policy, not only for its own members but for the working class as a whole, had made that certain.

“With a Government backed to support 'America right or wrong' -- a Government openly riding on the chariot of Wall Street towards a third world blood bath -- the destruction of the Union was essential, for no Union anywhere had consistently fought for peace more than that of the waterside workers of New Zealand. The tragedy is what so few Unions did the same. And this is a question that cannot be divorced from the ordinary daily bread and butter economics of a trade union. It is either guns or butter -- with the workers of all countries doing the dying in war and the paying before and afterwards." - Jock Barnes, leader of the Waterside Workers' Union, 1952

I'll be releasing pieces (roughly) fortnightly here, with a mix of this series alongside a few other one-off topics. If you know me from Twitter, it'll be the same coverage of the strange sides of Aotearoa New Zealand, just in long-form. I don't plan to paywall any posts on here for the foreseeable future, but if you enjoy my work and would like to help out, I have set up a Ko-fi. Till next time, tēnā koutou. - Smith K. Stead

For most people who’ve been watching over the past few years, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the New Zealand government is ramping up its mechanisms for state repression against political dissent. The “counter-terror” structures and justifications set up after 9/11 have morphed into tools for the state to respond with a hammer to anything that might seem out of place. With the recent flurry of news, including the passing of the Foreign Interference Bill, changes to the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act, criminalising protests outside of private homes, and the opening of an FBI office in Wellington (with FBI director Kash Patel promising "strengthened and enhanced cooperation" with our agencies), it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better any time soon.

In the present day, even with all the advances in the state’s ability to track, collate, and punish “threats” to its existence, human intelligence and infiltration is still a crucial part of surveillance and counter-subversion. Under this recent backdrop, it might be pertinent to revisit a decade or so old story. One of an undercover informant, part of the post-9/11 expansion of the security state, who infiltrated and wrecked the local left-wing movement for 10 years before being exposed, caught up in the middle of the biggest counter-terror prosecution in New Zealand history.

Codename “Muldoon”

State infiltrators of political movements are nothing new, either here or abroad. During the heady days of the early 20th century labour movement, the New Zealand Police Force (the agency then responsible for intelligence operations) had their work cut out for them infiltrating the ranks of militant unionists, syndicalists and communists. However, this sometimes had unintended results. One undercover agent filed a report detailing a Communist Party meeting, describing one speaker as "doubtlessly the most dangerous communist in the country". He was unaware that he was referring to another undercover operative.

In 1998, Christchurch police approached 30 year-old sickness beneficiary and former NZDF reservist Robert Gilchrist with the offer to become an undercover informant, in exchange for $600 a week on top of reimbursing "work" expenses. Of course informants are used for a number of reasons, but police didn’t want Gilchrist infiltrating organised crime groups or the violent far-right gangs operating in Christchurch at that time. The Threat Assessment Unit, responsible for tracking political groups, were interested in infiltrating various left-wing activist causes. Gilchrist, christened with the codename "Muldoon", reinvented himself as a black-bloc anarchist and began ingratiating himself into New Zealand’s left-wing scene.

Gilchrist entered during a tumultuous time for the left in New Zealand, with the unions having been decimated by legislation changes in the 1990s, a decade and a half of hardline neoliberal governments, global protest campaigns against free trade agreements, and the disintegration of the Alliance bloc. Over his 10 years as an informant, Gilchrist became involved in causes as disparate as anti-war protests, vegan groups, unions, benefits' rights collectives, environmental groups, and political parties.

To people inside the activist scene, Gilchrist was often seen as a shifty character. Veteran Christchurch activist Murray Horton wrote that the groups he was involved with “picked him for a spy from Day One”. Another Christchurch-based activist I spoke to remembered him as "a bit weird", with a lot of money for an anarchist. He owned recording devices, police scanners, and other high-end tech, often using them at protests. He talked a lot about guns, but never showed them off publicly. He seemed to bounce from group to group, hanging out mainly with other anarchists, and was often seen as standoffish and an agent provocateur. He was quick to throw out accusations of "infiltration" when cops would show up 5 minutes before the start of a planned action, and often pushed people and groups to commit illegal actions, backing out at the last minute if plans went through.

‘At protests, Gilchrist was often the one taunting police, says Mark Eden of Wellington Animal Rights Network, who regarded Gilchrist as a friend. “If it didn't involve adrenalin and confrontation, he wasn't interested,” Eden told the Star-Times. During protests he has used a radio scanner to monitor police communications and often took the role of "police liaison" for the protest organisers.

"He was always interested in who was keen on illegal actions and would often make it known that he was keen to be involved in anything illegal or undercover. On a few occasions he would take people out for a drive and sit outside a factory farm or an animal laboratory and encourage them to talk about planning a break-in or other illegal activity.

"He would be really pushy and persistent about planning illegal activities and then would suddenly lose interest, claiming it was too difficult or that he was busy. He was always keen on planning dodgy stuff, but on the occasions when we did break the law, for instance an open rescue of battery hens, he would always have an excuse and pull out at the last minute."’

Special Investigations & Operation Eight

In 2005, in the wake of the 9/11-accelerated focus on counterterrorism, the Special Investigation Group (SIG) was formed as a joint unit between the NZP, NZDF, NZSIS and GCSB (later renamed the National Security Investigations Team in 2016). Due to the "political climate" at the time, the SIG was ostensibly set up to combat Islamic terrorism. Shockingly, there weren't any Al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Ashburton. Instead, a shiny new intelligence unit with expanded powers and the full cooperation of the security apparatus turned its attention elsewhere. Gilchrist's handlers subsequently moved to the new SIG, and the left-wing infiltrator began working for a Global War on Terror security unit.

Gilchrist's move to the SIG in 2005 is interesting timing due to his relationship to Operation Eight. In late 2005, police began surveilling what they alleged were paramilitary training camps for left-wing and Māori activists deep in Te Urewera mountains, southeast of Rotorua. Cameras were placed at the locations (some by Tim Jago's brother Geoff), phones were tapped, and evidence was collected until a series of raids took place across the country in October 2007. These raids against activists were designed as media spectacles to show off the state's new counterterror abilities, with news crews filming black-clad police kicking in doors and setting up roadblocks in Te Urewera.

When the dust settled, 18 people had been arrested, and the prosecution attempted to charge them under the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act due to other acts not allowing the type of evidence collected. In November 2007, the Solicitor-General announced it would be nearly impossible to prosecute them under the Terrorism Suppression Act due to the Act being "incoherent and unworkable". Charges were later dropped against 13 defendants in 2011 after the Supreme Court found much of the evidence and its collection illegal. Only 4 people, including Tāme Iti, ended up being convicted in 2012 of weapons charges, with the jury hung on convicting the 4 of belonging to an organised criminal group. The surveillance and raids was estimated to have cost $8m at the time, and the subsequent trial was at the time the most expensive in New Zealand history, costing $6m.

Many argued at the time that this was the inevitable result of funding the security services to find terrorism where there wasn't. Journalist Nicky Hager said in 2009 "there were a whole lot of new units and equipment and resources brought in for anti-terrorism, where New Zealand hasn't had an indigenous terrorist threat. But they have headed down the track of seeing things in those terms and, for example, interpreting radical bravado talk as preparation for murdering people." However, what did come out in the trial was Gilchrist's proximity and involvement to the case.

Gilchrist provided information to the SIG on at least 3 people caught up in the raids, and a defendant's lawyer alleged he had sold camouflage gear and police scanners to other activists. Gilchrist had also held "training camps" for other members on using scanners and conducting surveillance, which he had been emailing police about. Gilchrist's record as an agent provocateur is cast in a different light when we consider his centrality to the first (unsuccessful) attempt at prosecution under post-9/11 anti-terror legislation in New Zealand.

Exposure

You might be wondering how Gilchrist's correspondence with police came to be known. In 2008, when Gilchrist was 40, his 22 year old activist partner Rochelle Rees was fixing his laptop. When checking to make sure his files were still intact, she stumbled across emails between Gilchrist and police. Instead of confronting him, she downloaded a full archive of his communications and worked with Nicky Hager to release the information to the media. It’s worth stressing how abnormal of an occurrence this was. On the few occasions that political informants are definitively exposed, it’s even rarer that we’re given a glimpse into specific communications with their handlers. This is something that governments usually get away with, and this abnormality reveals how the security state functions, and the full extent of Gilchrist's work and infiltration.

Gilchrist was operating as a funnel of information, forwarding all the mailing lists and news he received to police. Murray Horton alleged that Gilchrist had also managed to convince multiple groups to use a mailing list he set up and moderated, giving police a direct line onto public events and activist emails. This was similar to a previous case in the 1970s where an NZSIS informant asked to look after a left group’s mailing list index cards, before subsequently disappearing. Gilchrist sent information about an anti-taser protest the Greens were organising to police with the subject line "Hehehe - Look at the source of this :)". He also forwarded a Wellington Women’s Refuge meeting agenda about planning actions during the 2007 police rape trials. His handlers would email back with general questions like “Climate Change Groups: What is happening with climate change groups in Auckland? Who is involved? What actions might they be considering for the future”.

He was also conducting an ongoing census of the activist network, providing information on the internal politics and relationships of both groups and people, along with the addresses and photos of activists. Police asked Gilchrist to send a list of which activists were travelling to Australia for a protest against APEC, including where they were staying. Gilchrist had managed to worm his way into an exhaustive number of groups over the years, including but not limited to:

Anti-Bases Campaign, Auckland Animal Action, Beneficiaries Action Collective, Council of Trade Unions (and a number of other unions), GE-Free New Zealand, Greenpeace, The Green Party, multiple Peace Action Network branches, Save Animals From Exploitation, Save Happy Valley, Vegan Balaclava Pixies, Wellington Animal Rights Network

Gilchrist's long time undercover in the activist sphere is similar to overseas programs like the FBI’s COINTELPRO or Spycops in Britain. Particularly controversial in the Spycops saga was the practice of marrying into activist networks, with informants living double lives for decades. Similar concerns can be raised about Gilchrist, considering not only the age gap of his relationship with Rees, but also some of the other emails he sent to police. Rees alleged that in 2005 Gilchrist emailed a photo of a naked underage activist to police with the subject line "needs a shave....". Also allegedly discovered on his laptop were photos of other underage activists, some in various states of undress, alongside a series of photos of one young activist "posing with one of Rob's guns pointed to her head, and in her mouth".

Following his exposure in 2008, Gilchrist sued police in 2013 for $550,000 for lost income, distress, and humiliation, among other claims. The police settled the case for an undisclosed amount. Gilchrist has now dropped off the map. Rees, the woman who initially exposed Gilchrist, said in 2015 that she believed police were still implanting informants into activist networks. She added "it has got little to do with any crime. We know from Rob it wasn't about gathering evidence to prosecute a crime. It was about gathering intelligence."

Conclusions

Critics of the waves of post-9/11 terror legislation rightfully pointed out that increased powers for security agencies would not result in increased safety, but instead heightened state repression. Gilchrist was a cog in this new machine, deployed by the state to spy on activists engaging in largely peaceful and legal activity, and in no way an actual threat to the New Zealand government. Gilchrist was instead the one goading people into committing illegal actions to justify the surveillance state’s existence. This culminated in his involvement with the 2007 Urewera raids, with the government spending months surveilling activists and $14m to convict just four people on weapons charges.

Now, with the backdrop of a new Cold War brewing in the Pacific, the same build-up of the security state is happening again. The Foreign Interference Bill, new changes to the Terrorism Act, and the opening of an FBI office all signal the government's intention to follow lockstep with its Five Eyes partners in ramping up its tools to crack down on dissent. “Strengthened and enhanced cooperation” with the FBI means sharing their tactics, their intelligence, and their aims. What is happening in the US, and the UK, and the rest of Five Eyes, will inevitably come here. It still remains to be seen what the New Zealand government and its security apparatus will exactly do with these newfound powers. We only know about the extent of Gilchrist's work due to someone stumbling across some suspicious emails. How many more informants are out there?

Thanks to the people who helped make this happen, including Kyle, William for making this (literally) technically possible, LWF, Anna, and many others. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you next time. If you enjoyed this, you can subscribe to Exit From Affco below, check out my Ko-fi, or share with someone you think might also enjoy it. Ka kite.

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