NZ Parliament announces it will no longer post on X

Friday, 20 February 2026

The official New Zealand Parliament account has announced it will no longer be posting on X (formerly Twitter) - and Winston Peters isn’t happy about it.

The announcement followed a Sunday Star-Times column by Andrea Vance, who called for public organisations and politicians to depart from the platform.

(You can read the column titled ‘Every official tweet is a nod to child abuse’ here.)

“The social media giant is accused of enabling users to create sexualised images, including of minors and victims of the Crans-Montana ski-lodge fire,” she wrote.

“Meanwhile, in New Zealand… Christopher Luxon, Winston Peters, David Seymour and Chris Hipkins continue to compose official tweets on that very same platform.”

Several other organisations - including Stuff - have previously announced they would stop using X. You see Stuff’s rationale here.

On Friday afternoon Vance told Stuff: “There have been serious investigations and allegations relating to child sexual abuse material and the effectiveness of moderation on X.

“When those issues are live and unresolved, public institutions have to ask whether their presence lends credibility to an environment where such harms are not being adequately addressed.

“This isn’t about culture wars or silencing debate. It’s about child protection and the duty of institutions to model standards that put safety first. Public bodies should communicate in spaces that uphold the law, protect the vulnerable, and can be trusted by the communities they serve.

“If this decision contributes to a wider push for stronger accountability and safer digital spaces, that can only be a good thing.“

The account, operated by the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, previously posted on the social media platform to alert people when oral questions and answers were available on the parliamentary website, or when laws were given Royal Assent.

Clerk of the House David Wilson told Stuff he decided to put a stop the practice, as he could no longer support the platform.

“I stopped it because of the news I had seen about the way X’s AI chatbot Grok can be used to generate deepfake nudes and child exploitation material,” he said.

“It didn’t feel right for my organisation to use a platform that allowed that to happen, and didn’t seem to be doing anything about it.”

However, NZ First leader Peters has since gone on X himself to query why the decision was made without consulting Parliament.

“This is how freedoms are lost - by unilateral decision making being made by moral virtue signalling - where someone seeks to do one thing but causes damage to other freedoms.

“Neither the Clerk nor the Speaker’s Office are the moral compass for 123 MPs let alone 5.3 million New Zealanders.”

Wilson told Stuff he was not satisfied with X’s response to the innappropriate use of its platform.

“Although the account is operated by me, it is called @NZParliament. And when Parliament uses something, it looks like it is endorsing it. So it didn’t feel right,” he said.

The updates regarding Royal Assent would now be posted on Facebook, while oral question and answers could be found on the Parliament website.

Wilson previously decided to stop enabling comments on Select Committees live streams.

“That got to such a volume of comments, including some that were objectionable, that we couldn’t moderate them all. So we turned those off,” he said.