‘You can go wild’: Two years on, ‘freedom’ candidates face the limits of power

Saturday, 5 October 2024

A 2022 campaign by alt-protest group Voices for Freedom sought to elect fellow travellers onto councils. Two years later, how are the successful candidates grappling with fighting the system from within? CHARLIE MITCHELL reports.

Norman Dalley is a familiar face in Roxburgh. He is treasurer of the historic cinema, thought to be the longest continuously operating movie theatre in the world. He chairs the board of the community-owned rest home. And in 2022, he reached the pinnacle of small-town politics, the elected chairman of the local community board.

Community boards are an endangered species. Once common, many have been scrapped or had their powers diluted as politics has become more centralised. But where they still exist, they are a precious link between small communities and the wider district. Yes, the stakes of their decisions are low — perhaps they dole out small grants to community groups, or manage the local hall — but they are ears on the ground for the council, a way to raise concerns upwards.

It’s an ideal job for a community-minded person like Dalley. But since becoming chairman of the Teviot Valley Community Board, the smallest in Central Otago, he has been frustrated with a part of the job he didn’t sign up for; a minor irritation that occasionally spills into public view, as it did during a board meeting in June.

Dalley was reading his chairman’s report to the board when he paused to raise a personal matter. On a recent Sunday, he said, he had received unwelcome visitors at his house.

“I was inundated with people dropping their [annual plan] submissions off at my home,” he said.

“It has really irked me.”

He looked to his right. Board member Gill Booth was sitting two seats away.

“Those submissions were solicited by you, as a board member,“ he said to Booth.

“It did not need to become a personal issue … it’s totally unacceptable behaviour.”

It was true. Booth had been rallying locals to submit on the annual plan, which had proposed large rate rises for the area. Because the submission period had closed, she told people to drop their submissions off at Dalley’s house (specifically, in his letterbox). Booth herself had delivered submissions to his back door.

The district’s mayor, Tim Cadogan, was at the table, listening to Dalley’s report in disbelief.

“To send people to someone’s home is an appalling action by a community board member,” he said. “It’s beyond the pale.”

Booth was unfazed. She apologised for not letting Dalley know in advance, but defended collecting the submissions. The ward was facing some of the highest rates rises in the district.

“We want to get people engaged in the council process,” she said. “People were angry, they were upset, a lot of the older people were quite frightened, and they have every right to be prompted.”

She responded to the mayor’s comment with a simple message, and a useful summary of her attitude towards the board.

“I’m willing to be appalling if it means working for the community.”

‘We’re at war’

Two years ago, the anti-vaccination group Voices for Freedom (VFF) issued a call to arms. It was time to get involved in local government.

The group wasn’t promoting or endorsing candidates. Instead, it was offering the backing of its loose cohort of supporters, who would get behind like-minded candidates.

It was something of a social experiment. How powerful was this online movement? VFF had formed around opposition to public health measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, but had grown to encompass opposition to climate change policy, globalism, and an increasingly liberal society. Did this so-called “freedom movement” have political sway?

Dozens of such candidates stood for office, but only a small percentage were elected. They found themselves in an unusual position; elected members in a governance system they believed to be fundamentally broken.

Like many freedom candidates, Booth’s path to elected office began online. In 2020, she was angered to see the council, led by Cadogan, had declared a climate emergency at the request of local school students.

She created a Facebook group lamenting the state of local government, which quickly gained followers. Booth, a devoted supporter of Donald Trump, became active in Groundswell and in 2022 attended the occupation outside Parliament.

At public meetings, she encouraged others to become a nuisance — to be “ungovernable”, and to have fun doing so. If you go to public consultations, she said, shut them down. Bring a friend. Pick an issue, make flyers and spread them widely. She had personally put up flyers on a council building alleging Cadogan had “missing testicles”.

While her approach was light-hearted, the message was not. At an event held by far-Right platform Counterspin Media, she warned that the coming local elections would “probably be the last” before councils were replaced with UN hubs. Councils were coming for your private property, and through planning rules, herding you into areas to be controlled.

“Try not to break your council staff,” she said in one public speech. “But if you have to, do it. Because we’re at war, and they have no hesitation to take everything off us.”

Booth became a frequent guest in VFF videos about local government, and ran for election herself. Her 271 votes won her the fourth of four available seats on the Teviot Valley Community Board, ahead of a candidate who had not supplied a statement or photo.

Nearly two years later, Booth is frank about her time on the board and the limits of its power.

“I'm not Joan of Arc,” she told The Press. “I had no expectations of going in and changing the system.”

Instead, she has used the position as a platform.

Shortly after the election, she set up a stall at a local A&P show decorated with an upside-down New Zealand flag, symbolising a nation in distress. In a video recorded from the stall, she touted her recent election to the community board.

“The thing about a community board is you can break the rules because there aren’t a lot,” she said. “You can go wild.”

In the months afterwards, she delivered flyers in letterboxes on subjects including Three Waters, spatial planning and local government funding. They included her name, community board position and phone number.

The flyers caused a furore. Cadogan responded to them in a Facebook video, debunking a claim in one flier that the council could seize ratepayers’ private property as collateral for its debts.

“This is misinformation,” he said. “It is not correct. I’m pretty cross about it — well, not cross, that’s going a bit far. I’m just disappointed, particularly given that a community board member put it out.”

Dalley, the board chair, was sick of hearing about the flyers and the actions of his colleague. A formal denunciation was required. At a board meeting, he criticised the “unwanted distractions” and “radical influence” coming from Booth.

“This has been a complete waste of my time as an elected member and chairman of the board, and time that could have been far more valuable contributing to serving the Teviot Valley community,” he said.

“My colleagues, bar one, feel the same.”

(Dalley declined to comment for this article. It is understood the board has taken the position that ignoring Booth’s actions has been effective.)

Booth is undeterred by the criticism. In her view, local government is fundamentally broken. It cannot serve the people; it serves itself, and those who stand for election are too often products of the status quo.

For it to change, outsiders like her must come in and dismantle it so it can be rebuilt from scratch. Sometimes, that requires being “appalling”.

“I see my role as not trying to change things within the community board, but to get the community to start to understand how the council works,” she says.

“The changes need to come from a community board that is willing to put forward what people in this area are asking for.“

Whether she will run again is an open question, she says.If she does, she’ll have one less foe to deal with.

Cadogan announced his resignation as mayor this week in a live Facebook video. Amid the stream of comments wishing him well, was a lonely critical post:

“You’ve screwed us over… Not surprised nor sorry to see you go.”

It was signed ‒ Gill Booth.

Lucy H

When the freedom candidates ran for office, they had a choice. Embrace their beliefs, or downplay them.

Some, like Booth, chose the former. Others took a different route.

In 2022, Elizabeth Mundt, a council hopeful in the Selwyn district, was one of a cluster of candidates in Greater Christchurch thought to be VFF-aligned.

She had been identified in an email circulating among VFF supporters. When a Stuff journalist sought to question her over the phone, she hung up. Later, at her home, Mundt spoke from behind a closed door.

“You’re a member of that group?” the reporter asked, referring to VFF.

“No, I’m not a member of that group,” Mundt responded.

She continued distancing herself from VFF, flatly denying any link in response to a Press candidate survey. Her candidate statement sent to voters was rife with platitudes: “I am passionate about reducing waste, protecting our best fertile land, achieving balance between work and play environments, supporting the rural sector and avoiding budget blowouts.”

On election day, she won the second of two seats in the Ellesmere Ward, beating her closest rival by 199 votes.

Mundt’s time on the council has been uncontroversial. She rarely ventures onto contentious ground. In meetings, she is attentive and regularly asks questions. She owns an electric car, has a “great interest” in solar power and is a “big advocate for park and rides”.

Early on, she asked to represent the council on a regional climate change working group. It seemed a good fit. She previously summarised her belief in “common sense environmental policy that is achievable and realistic”. She was chosen to share the role with another councillor.

This is the public-facing version of Mundt. Online, she comes across differently.

The Press has learned that Mundt is an administrator of a ‘freedom’ group on the underground messaging app Telegram, where she has organised private events and shared views she rarely expresses publicly.

A tranche of posts from the account reveal common concerns shared by many in freedom groups: Opposition to Covid vaccinations, drag queens reading to children, and 15 minute cities, the theory that authorities are controlling communities through urban planning.

Some posts from Mundt’s account are extreme. One described ACT leader David Seymour as a “paedophilia loving guy”, referring to his views on social issues. Other posts have referenced the New World Order and “the cult of Moloch”, a child-sacrificing God.

The prospect of 16-year-olds voting, the account once wrote, was “clearly a Hitler type move”. A video titled “Ancient Demons Behind The Gay Movement” was “a perfect Sunday session”, one post said.

More significant are posts that overlap with Mundt’s council responsibilities, giving insight into beliefs she does express publicly. On Facebook, an account in Mundt’s name posted in a group devoted to chemtrails, the conspiracy theory that governments spread toxic chemicals in the atmosphere: “NEXT CHEMTRAIL RAIN STORM COLLECT SAMPLE, SEND IN FOR TESTING, AND LETS NATIONWIDE PUT ALL OUR DATA ON ONE POST AND KEEP A RECORD THEN LETS GO PUBLIC!!!”

On Telegram, her account shared an article questioning the “narrative” of climate change which also invoked conspiracy theories about weather control. “Please share far and wide!” the account said. “A great read.” Elsewhere, the account has said people have been “totally fooled by the climate hysteria”, and referred to “climate alarmism fairy dust”.

Within the Telegram group, Mundt’s council position is well known. The account has encouraged members to attend public meetings with her and other councillors, sometimes requesting they stay inconspicuous. “You don’t know me,” one post said, followed by a winking emoji and a list of topics they might want to raise.

The Press summarised the content of this article in an email to Mundt. She did not answer direct questions, but disputed the characterisation of her as a ‘freedom’ candidate.

“I don’t refer to myself as a 'freedom' candidate, but rather a truly independent representative of my community, one who listens to the community rather than someone who is serving their own vested interests, political, career, financial, party allegiances and so on,” she said.

She added that her fundamental value was “listening to and accepting people’s decisions and representing them to the best of my ability”.

Mundt did not deny running either the Telegram or Facebook accounts, and said she was “following a wide range of diverse voices”. On chemtrails, she said it was a “very novel topic” for New Zealand and she thought it was important to understand the issue and the science involved.

Several months ago, the name on the Telegram account was changed to Lucy H, as was a Facebook account previously in her name. Both accounts had made comments asking for information not to be shared in her name.

While unclear whether she plans to run again, or if she has succeeded in her goals, Mundt’s account has cited her insider view as evidence of common theories within the freedom movement.

“In my job they are hearing 15min cities … but everything is packaged with a big pink bow, and with a dash of climate alarmism fairy dust so it looks very very good for us,” it said.

“They cannot possibly know what we know … We have all been researching this for two years solid, they haven’t even opened the door yet!“

Enemies at the gate

Tucked within the sprawling dairy farms of central Southland is a one-hectare rectangle of “paradise”.

Dave Diack and his wife own a cattery and boarding kennel outside Winton, 30 minutes north of Invercargill. It is a sleepy town; the tree-lined main street is flanked by historic buildings, overlooked by a disused water tower.

When The Press phones Diack one morning, his voice is drowned out by dogs yapping in the background.

“I need to tell you a little bit about the situation with the CCTV cameras,” he says.

“That’s where much of this whole thing has got out of hand and blown out of proportion.”

For two years, Diack has served on the Oreti Community Board, which covers Winton and its surrounds.

Public service was an unexpected development in Diack’s life. Before running his business, he had worked at the Tiwai Point aluminium smelter for many years, and did not see himself as political. “I never, ever considered in my life that I would be standing for a community board.”

But under the previous government, he came to believe the country was going backwards. The long hand of the state was reaching into his patch of paradise. “There was an enemy at the gate.”

And so he ran for the only position he had time for, his local community board. He didn’t know how to campaign. When he was asked to give a public speech, he settled on a simple message: He opposed Three Waters reforms, co-governance and the previous government’s RMA replacement (which has since been repealed).

On election day, Diack won the fourth of four available seats, beating his closest competitor by nine votes.

His journey is a familiar one. He found community online, including within various ‘freedom’ groups (he does not consider himself part of the freedom movement, but acknowledges overlapping concerns).

In Facebook comments, Diack chronicled his growing distrust of institutions. He dislikes both Labour and National, and believes the mainstream media has been bought off. Unelected global organisations such as the UN have too much influence. When Covid vaccine mandates were lifted, he saluted those who had protested outside Parliament: “l fully recognise that we are at war in this country and that this was only a skirmish that has been won,” he wrote.

A community board in rural Southland is not the optimal position from which to wage war against these powerful forces. Its responsibilities include maintaining community halls, issuing grants and replacing the local playground equipment.

But you have to start somewhere and, luckily, Diack was not alone.

Before the election, he joined a Facebook group for southern local-body candidates, mostly from within the freedom movement (Booth was also a member).

By chance, others in the group were running for the Oreti Community Board. Two were elected unopposed, and another candidate, a local farmer who had donated to Liz Gunn’s political party, was also elected. Alongside a fifth member, they formed a majority voting bloc on the eight-person board.

After election day, the Oreti Community Board was — and still is — the only elected body in New Zealand where ‘freedom’ candidates had a majority.

It was unclear how this would play out. None in the majority had been on a community board before, so progress was slow. “It's a very steep learning curve,” Diack says. “You walk into it, and immediately you're being confronted with a long term plan, or part of a long term plan.”

The board’s meetings are not recorded or live-streamed, so what happens inside must be ascertained from the published meeting minutes, which suggest a general air of chaos.

Members often dissent from decisions; Once, an argument broke out about accepting the minutes from the previous meeting. Motions have been passed, then revoked at later meetings.

Sometimes, the minutes are incomprehensible because decisions have been moved, voted down, then pieced back together in parts.

One consequence is that the board’s meetings are unusually long. An emergency meeting a week before Christmas lasted more than five hours while the majority combed through its proposed budget line-by-line, shifting and cutting projects deep into the night.

It capped off a 10-month process in which the board cut its rates take by $80,000 — a small but meaningful amount. It happened, one member wrote, despite “a lot of pushback and reluctance” from Southland District Council staff.

But instead of receiving praise, the board found itself at the centre of a scandal. The CCTV cameras.

During its work to cut spending, the board was asked to replace several CCTV cameras on Winton’s main street, a decision held over from the previous board’s long term plan.

Winton already had cameras — they were bought cheap from Carisbrook stadium in Dunedin before it was demolished — but they were at the end of their useful life. A replacement would cost about $20,000, funded through property reserves, not rates (the budget estimate later doubled to $40,000).

The board majority was sceptical. Why did Winton need CCTV? Where did the footage go, and what was it used for? If the cameras were connected by wi-fi, could they be compromised? Could the cameras be used in future to limit personal freedoms, or violate people’s privacy?

Diack, in particular, was unconvinced. In an interview on the VFF-backed online radio station Reality Check Radio, he said he was worried the cameras could be used to restrict people’s movements, in a manner akin to the Ultra Low Emissions Zone in central London.

He sent a long list of questions to police, and after he did not receive what he believed to be a satisfactory answer, moved the motion to decline funding. It passed with dissent from the minority.

The decision drew intense criticism, much of it on a community Facebook page. Hundreds of comments, across numerous posts, were scathing.

Winton businesses collected more than 35 letters and a survey with 198 signatures supporting the cameras. Local media picked up the controversy, partly in response to an anonymous letter circulating in the community alleging that the board majority was dysfunctional.

Diack was frustrated. He saw a woeful lack of detail in the council’s policies around privacy, and had genuine concerns around how the data would be used. It wasn’t simply about the cost; he was happy to support the cameras if there were clear parameters around their usage. And yet, a different narrative had developed.

To circumvent the Facebook page and the local media, he and another board member wrote a long letter outlining their position. Diack then paid for the letter to be printed and delivered to hundreds of letterboxes around Winton.

It wasn’t enough. After the majority voted against funding the cameras again, one local started a petition calling for the board to be dissolved. In August, there was a fiery public meeting at the school hall, where locals turned out en masse to support the cameras.

“It got insanely out of hand,” Diack says.

“There was a public meeting with effectively a lynch mob there, who thought it was all about the money for the cameras … that was a consideration but it was never going to be the determining factor.”

Ultimately, the beleaguered board majority decided change was needed. They moved to oust the board chairman, Colin Smith, who was in the minority and had supported the cameras.

More than 100 people showed up to the meeting, many supporting Smith, who was nevertheless deposed. One of the ‘freedom’ majority was elected the new chair.

This level of drama wasn’t what Diack expected when he ran for office. He just wanted to do something for the community and make things better. The controversy over the cameras, among other things, had left him jaded.

The weird thing, he says, is that voters rarely raised the camera issue in person. Every month, he and other community board members have a stall at a local market to listen to people’s concerns.

“We have a lot of the elder members of the community coming in and they're worried about footpaths,” he says. “You know, we've had no footpaths in our town for the best part of five years. Those are the kinds of things that I'd hoped that we would be making better.”

He’s unsure if he’ll run again, but will encourage others to do so. Online, he wrote recently that he and a group of southern “patriots” were forming a team to get “the right people” elected onto councils at the next election.

“Local body politics will be the place ‘where its [sic] at’ next year folks and the time to prep for it is now,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the board has made progress. After ousting Smith, the board agreed to reconsider the CCTV matter later this month, “due to the latest attention and misleading information and accusations released to the public”, the meeting’s agenda said.

There was a condition. Twenty-seven conditions, in fact.

Diack moved a resolution requiring police and the council to provide large volumes of information about the cameras, which he outlined in 12 sections with 15 sub-sections. They included assurances the cameras would not use facial recognition except to help locate an offender, or be used to limit the movement of people or vehicles.

Once that was done — and another public meeting was held — the community board would vote on it again.

The motion carried, and the meeting continued. What happened next is unclear; the board minutes are a mess, with motions being rejected and rewritten on the fly.

After nearly three hours, they adjourned the meeting for another time. It was getting late.