10 years ago in 2016, I wrote an article in the Mana News about the Taxpayers’ Union and how, after just ten days, they had missed the Panama Papers entirely—and had nothing to say about it. This, for an organization allegedly dedicated to defending taxpayers.
The Panama Papers was the biggest tax evasion event of the 21st century. An organization claiming to protect citizens entirely missed it for ten days. Until I called them out.
When they wanted to criticize anything to do with Māori and treaty issues, there was no end to their complaints and manufactured outrage. Yet when the biggest tax scandal in modern history broke that involved the Prime minister silence.
The reality is that the Taxpayers’ Union was never about taxes. But it was about playing culture wars against Māori. In truth, the Taxpayers’ Union is an anti-Māori hate group. It has nothing to do with taxes.
The organization was never set up to defend hardworking, working-class taxpayers. It was designed to peddle lies and deceit about fellow citizens of indigenous descent.
A clear example is how its founder Jordan Williams recruited Casey Costello—the former leader of the anti-Māori hate group Hobson’s Pledge Trust—to become chairperson of the Taxpayers Union. Under her leadership, the organization brought in vast amounts of money from British American Tobacco, which then launched her political career into New Zealand First. She allowed tobacco lobbyists to write recommendations on tobacco policy, and when she tried to hide that official information, I used the Official Information Act and got the Ombudsman to force her to release them. As an MP, she went on to support David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill, further demonstrating her commitment to limiting treaty rights. Accepting money from the tobacco industry is hardly ethical for an organization claiming to defend taxpayers.
Take their anti-Three Waters campaign. It had very little to do with protecting working-class taxpayers from being overcharged. Their real concern was preventing the Crown from honouring its treaty rights and sharing water decision-making with iwi. To be fair, their anti-Three Waters campaign was the most successful political campaign in New Zealand history. It toppled the sixth Labour government but left us with the coalition government and its overwhelming economic incompetence.
If the TPU genuinely cared about water for New Zealanders, they would have supported the Three Waters legislation. Instead, we now have Wellington regional ratepayers protesting massive water bills and charges for reticulation—costs that could have been entirely avoided.
The Taxpayers’ Union openly admits it’s part of the New York-based Atlas network. It collaborates with the Free Speech Union—an organization that refuses to defend woke liberal speech but eagerly defends right-wing extremist hate speech. When Don Brash, founder of the anti-Māori hate group Hobson’s Pledge Trust and an ideological ally of the Free Speech Union, sued Matthew Hooton for defamation, the Free Speech Union remained silent—unwilling to defend Hooton’s freedom of speech because he wasn’t part of their ideological allies he actually values the Treaty.
The Taxpayers’ Union downplays the funding it receives from British American Tobacco, but it has never published its funding sources. It keeps them secret. So does the Hobson’s Pledge Trust. With contractors such as Annie O’Brien are shared resources between the Taxpayers Union and the Hobson’s Pledge Trust.
Nicky Hager’s latest book, Dirty Work, validates an argument I’ve been making for over a decade: the Taxpayers’ Union has zero credibility when discussing the protection of working-class New Zealanders from overtaxation. When an organization’s primary strategy is creating irrational fear of Indigenous rights and appealing to colonizer fragility—this is where it excels in creating fear.
But it was built entirely on fear—the fear that the Māori boogeyman was taking over society and subjugating colonial New Zealand.
There was almost no rational debate about how Three Waters could have saved New Zealand taxpayers and ratepayers millions in water reticulation costs. Now Wellington regional ratepayers are paying the price: massive bills and water charges—all because of this propaganda campaign. The Tiaki Wai structure and its costs could have been entirely avoided had the Taxpayers’ Union not interfered in the Three Waters legislation.
The Taxpayers’ Union will never critique the National Business Review rich listers and genuine elites who engage in real tax avoidance that no one ever talks about. Instead, it goes after a phantom boogeyman: the “Māori elite” the primary reason the organisation entirely lacks credibility when it comes to taxation.
