‘An awakening’: How the freedom movement found its man in Winston Peters
Saturday, 7 October 2023
Spirits were low when the occupation outside Parliament ended. Eighteen months later, many of those present have unified behind one of the few politicians that went to visit them. CHARLIE MITCHELL explores how it happened.
On a late summer’s day in Wellington, members of the ‘freedom movement’ joined a protest in central Wellington.
The tone was reflective. Less than two weeks earlier, the police had torn through “Camp Freedom”, the village defiantly installed on Parliament’s lawn.
The occupation had been a rare display of unity for a movement prone to infighting. Now, the charred wooden slide was being replaced; ‘Lake Mallard’ had drained; the grass was slowly regenerating. The Beehive, just at the other end of Lambton Quay, seemed further away than ever.
Among the procession of speakers was a local man who had been at the occupation.
“It was a difficult thing to come to terms with,” he told the crowd.
“When the camp was torn apart and when everyone went home, we had to think, what now?”
The man was Glenn Inwood, a former journalist and Labour press secretary who gained notoriety for lobbying on behalf of the whaling industry. More recently, he has become involved with the freedom movement, and is behind the group Resistance Kiwi, a pseudo-news outlet and political organising operation.
Inwood has described himself as someone who can’t stay “non-political”. During the occupation, he attended a meeting with ACT leader David Seymour, acting as a representative of sorts for the protesters. He also sought to use his connections within NZ First — he is a long time friend of deputy leader Shane Jones — claiming to have texted Winston Peters urging him to visit the protest (he did).
Amid the post-protest hangover, Inwood said he was turning his attention to the future, “working behind the scenes” to channel that energy into political power.
“We do need to think about how we can galvanise the people that were there and how we can galvanise the support from around the country into a new political force that actually brings about some change in our country for the better,” he said.
(Inwood did not respond to a request for comment for this article).
Eighteen months later, these efforts — and others like it — are coming to fruition.
Much of the freedom movement has rallied behind NZ First as its flag bearer, which has helped propel the party above the 5% threshold in recent polling.
It wasn’t inevitable; the journey of Inwood and several others mirrors how the party became the natural home for the freedom movement.
Inwood himself has described NZ First as the “freedom umbrella party”, and some supporters believe the party is less tied to Peters than it once was.
In an open letter urging the movement to unite behind NZ First, one supporter described the party as no longer a “one-man brand” and filled with “mostly freedom people”; A candidate recently described Peters as “only one part of the party”, albeit an important one.
It reflects a focussed effort to unite the freedom movement behind one party; a project that had multiple strands and false starts which, in the dying days of the campaign, appears to be on the brink of success.
The occupation
To the thousands of people who had gathered on Parliament’s lawn, the ongoing refusal by politicians to meet with them proved frustrating.
They did, however, have a few former politicians in their corner.
One was Matt King, the former National MP who narrowly lost his Northland seat in 2020; Peters was another. A third was Rodney Hide, the former ACT leader.
Hide had become a supporter of Voices for Freedom and now hosts a show on its media network, Reality Check Radio (RCR). He was disillusioned with his former party and what he saw as its unwillingness to stand up against Government overreach.
“Our political leaders, including you, have belittled us and disparaged us,” he wrote at the time in an open letter to ACT leader David Seymour.
Hide travelled to the protest from his home in Central Otago, where he revved up the crowd while draped in a New Zealand flag. He later spoke about political strategy to a private meeting of around 20 protest supporters, include members of Resistance Kiwi and Voices for Freedom, according to a Telegram post by Resistance Kiwi.
There were several paths forward for the freedom movement.
One was to build new political parties from the ground up. The parties could advocate what they believed without compromise, but they would need to do so without a political infrastructure, which would prove challenging.
The second was to create an umbrella movement, allowing numerous small parties to combine their votes. This would make it easier to reach the 5% threshold, but required working together and navigating the small but intense differences contained within the movement.
The final option was also the most brazen. The freedom movement could simply take over an existing party, shifting its focus towards freedom issues from the inside.
A fan of this final option was protester Gary Moller, a world champion mountain biker and functional nutritionist.
Like Inwood and Hide, the pandemic response had moved him to become involved with the freedom movement — and he, too, was wondering how all those people unified outside Parliament could have more influence inside it.
In his own telling, Moller became friendly with Hide, who advised him that taking over a party would not be as difficult as one might think (neither Hide nor Moller responded to requests for comment).
And so in mid-2022, Moller launched The Democracy Project, which sought to recruit volunteers to join ACT and place them into key positions. Then, like sleeper agents, they would activate upon receiving instructions to shift the party’s direction.
The plan was not secret.
Moller has outlined it on his website, in videos, and in an interview on Reality Check Radio. It circulated among the freedom movement, and was publicised by Resistance Kiwi and other groups.
Moller has declined to say how many people he knows joined ACT under this plan — although in July 2022, he wrote on his website that “enough of us have joined since December to be having an influence”.
The plan did not work. Seymour has been combative with some in the freedom movement, and several ACT candidates who have expressed such views have left the party.
A year later, Moller said he had given up on the strategy.
In a seminar posted on his website, he said they “could not get past the current leader” — Seymour — and he was pursuing another avenue for change; uniting behind another party.
Kingmaker in the north
While there were various plans in play, they were not mutually exclusive.
While the effort to take over ACT went ahead, others threw their support behind the most promising of the burgeoning“freedom” parties: DemocracyNZ (DNZ),
Unlike its rivals, DNZ had an advantage. Its leader, Matt King, was a former electorate MP. If he could win back his Northland seat, it would negate the need to meet the ominous 5% threshold. The movement would have a kingmaker in the north.
The party drew support from members of the freedom and anti-vax communities. Among them were Dr Matt Shelton, a doctor who has claimed the Covid-19 vaccines contain self assembling machinery and can cause magnetism, and Kirsten Murfitt, a Tauranga-based lawyer who shared a range of extreme views about the pandemic and other issues on Telegram.
Both had sizeable platforms and signed up as candidates.
The party also had funding. Vlad Barbalich, a Wellington property developer, was on the party’s board and was tasked with fundraising. He personally donated $10,000 to the party, donation records show (he later resigned from the party and now supports NZ First).
Inwood also joined DNZ, believing it was the strongest contender among the freedom parties.
His group, Resistance Kiwi, actively promoted DNZ over the course of several months: “We at Resistance Kiwi are proud to support DemocracyNZ for a whole variety of reasons, including that the party has a real opportunity of winning the Northland electorate,” its account posted on Telegram in October 2022.
Then the relationship ended abruptly. In June, a group of candidates left the party, citing a range of concerns with its management.
News of the exodus was broken by Resistance Kiwi, which had a curious amount of detail about the internal machinations behind the rupture: “Whatever the reason, this will be the death knell of the party in this year’s election,” the group concluded on Telegram.
Inwood would have been well aware of what was happening.
Two of the departing candidates were Shelton and Murfitt, both of whom had become close to Inwood (Shelton had even bought shares in Inwood’s company that same month, company records show).
Both went on to become involved with NZ First — Murfitt is the party’s 11th placed candidate, and Shelton had a sit-down chat with Peters where they discussed “jab injuries” and other issues.
Inwood, by now, had chosen his party.
“As someone who can’t just stay ‘non-political’, I will be focusing my efforts on supporting NZ First,” he wrote on Telegram.
”I also firmly believe that NZ First is having an awakening to the issues.”
The comeback
In the first half of 2023, Winston Peters had been quietly mounting his comeback, filling out rooms in regional New Zealand.
NZ First was not the same party that had been in a doomed coalition with Labour. Virtually its entire board had turned over in 2021, bringing new voices into the party while other long-standing figures had left.
These changes were reflected in Peters’ campaign, evidence of which could be found on his Facebook page.
As of writing, it has more than 120,000 followers, and Peters is keenly aware of its power (in an exchange with this journalist several months ago, Peters posed a question, then noted: “The 120,000 followers on my Facebook page will be very interested to know your answer.”)
During the earlier stages of the pandemic, Peters had been staunchly in favour of Covid vaccination. A post on his Facebook page said unvaccinated people “were holding the vast majority of kiwis and the economy to ransom - at immense cost”. Another suggested unvaccinated people should not be eligible for the dole or parole. (Peters has since said someone else posted those messages and they did not reflect his views. He has consistently opposed vaccine mandates since at least February 2022).
That rhetoric changed rapidly. After supporting the protests at Parliament, Peters had continued posting about ‘freedom’ topics, including the Baby W case and gender education in schools.
While his public speeches were devoted to familiar NZ First topics, he was increasingly asked about issues spanning the World Economic Forum, vaccine injuries, and 15-minute cities; questions he sometimes struggled to answer, but honed his responses as the months progressed.
Some in the freedom community had noticed this shift.
In May, Peters was invited to a town hall in Wellington to discuss the Therapeutic Products Bill, which would regulate natural health products. The event was emceed by Glenn Inwood; Gary Moller was on the panel.
With the original plans of both men thwarted, they threw their support behind NZ First as the final chance of getting the freedom movement over the line.
Inwood has since registered as a third party promoter under the name S.B. Group, which appears to be behind a website called VoteWise, promoting Shane Jones’ candidacy in Northland (“It’s ironic, but voting for Shane Jones ensures a National-led government,” the website — which is currently unavailable — previously said. “And you get a great MP.”)
It also produced a video featuring Lorraine Moller, the Olympic runner — and Gary Moller’s sister — endorsing NZ First which was posted on Peters’ Facebook page.
In the dying stages of the campaign, it is clear which of the three early options won out.
The new parties, such as DNZ and Liz Gunn’s NZ Loyal, have failed to amass support, as has the umbrella party Freedoms NZ.
There is now widespread support within the freedom movement for NZ First, recognising both its policy offerings and its position to exercise raw political power.
In a recent post, Moller encouraged others to join NZ First and influence the party from within — “when you become the party, it becomes you”.
“Our adversaries have been effective in sowing division across New Zealand, including within the freedom movement, but we won’t let them triumph,” he wrote.
“It’s time for us to unite and stand together as one. Our power lies in combining our votes and throwing our support behind a single party that is past the five per cent threshold, and that party is NZ First.”