Having just turned the final page of Nicky Hager’s latest investigative work Dirty Work, it is impossible not to feel a chill of recognition. Once again, Hager has pulled back the curtain on the shadowy machinery of New Zealand politics — and what lies behind is not pretty.
At the centre of his expose is the so-called Taxpayers’ Union — derided publicly by Victoria University students in 2024 as the “Toilet Paper Union” — a label that has stuck for its blunt accuracy. Hager describes it plainly as “the latest front for New Zealand’s radical right”, a group that began as a seemingly grassroots voice for fiscal restraint but is revealed to be largely bankrolled by a small circle of extremely wealthy donors with a very specific agenda: lower taxes for the rich, and the steady dismantling of public education, healthcare, and social services in favour of privatisation.
Perhaps the most disturbing detail laid bare is how the group found its footing. Hager documents how the Taxpayers’ Union only gained real, widespread traction when it pivoted to race-baiting — channelling resentment around Three Waters and co-governance in ways that thinly veiled long-held anti-Māori prejudice. As Hager puts it, this was the story of “a campaign of racist politics unfolded”, designed not to inform but to divide. One internal admission from the Union’s own ranks puts it starkly: “Politics is as much about emotion as logic” — and stoking fear proved far more effective than reasoned debate.
The consequences have been real and damaging. Hager shows how this multi-million-dollar campaign helped shift the 2023 election “to the right”, pulling major parties into its wake. The current government’s sustained rollback of Te Tiriti-based commitments, the winding back of co-governance arrangements, and the relentless framing of Māori aspirations as “divisive” are, in part, the direct harvest of seeds sown over years by the Taxpayers’ Union. The tactic is cynical but simple: stir up division, focus public anger on tangata whenua rather than the concentration of wealth, and clear the way for policies that favour corporate and elite interests at the expense of the many.
While Māori bear the brunt of this campaign, the ultimate target is broader. By channelling frustration toward cultural issues rather than economic fairness, the agenda serves a singular purpose: to protect the billionaire backers from scrutiny while social support systems are quietly dismantled.
This is not inevitable, and it need not be accepted. We deserve better than politics driven by distraction and division. Urgent reform is needed — starting with full, real-time transparency around all political donations, including those to third-party lobby groups such as the Taxpayers’ Union. We need a government that will roll back the attacks on Māori, workers, and our public institutions, and rebuild a politics that honours Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a living covenant for all.
As for the “Toilet Paper Union”? It is exactly what its student critics named it: disposable, shallow, and sustained only by the wealth of a few. It has no genuine mandate from the people, and no place in a healthy democracy. Let us call it by its true name — and together, flush it away.
