YAPP - Yet Another Political Party

Dan Ryan wrote an article a few weeks ago about our visit to a Freedoms NZ event, where Brian and Hannah Tamaki, Sue Grey and others extolled the virtues of their new umbrella political party. Currently Freedoms NZ consists of the member parties Vision NZ (Destiny Church's political wing), Rock the Vote, New Nation, Yes Aotearoa and almost the Outdoors and Freedoms Party (Sue just hasn't signed on the dotted line yet).

The alternative, “freedom” focused conspiracy prone political space is a little crowded at the moment. Although we lost Advance NZ, where Billy TK and his Public Party joined forces with Jaime Lee Ross, a while ago, there are other parties in this space in various stages of rise or decay. As well as Freedoms NZ, there's fire and brimstone Christchurch preacher Carl Bromley's party, FONNZA, anti-vaccine Democracy NZ, farming-based Heartland New Zealand, the conservative christian One Party and the eponymously named (and somewhat arrogant) Leighton Baker Party.

And now, as if that lot isn't enough, we have a new party to throw into the mix - Liz Gunn's New Zealand Loyal party.

Liz announced the formation of her new party through a 22 minute video posted to Rumble, YouTube and elsewhere on the 28th of June:

The gist of Liz's political platform are outlined in the first few minutes of her video, and included:

  • Tax reduction for the middle class
  • No water fluoridation, as it reduces IQ
  • No 1080
  • No mandates
  • No masks
  • Employment of anti-vaccine doctors and nurses
  • Banning of gender education in schools
  • Devolution of power to local communities, allowing people to do whatever they can imagine
  • Protection from interference from rich people like Bill Gates

Liz then went on to belittle MPs across the board, saying that Chris Hipkins looks like a child in shorts, and that they're all little, insignificant people. She talked about the “Brown Mafia”, a group of Māori elites (ugh, I hate that phrase) who are supposedly corrupt and taking money meant for the hardworking Māori everyman.

Then came the conspiracy thinking: The WEF is secretly policing the world. The mainstream media are puppets, paid off by the government.

Liz feels like she has been complimented by being labelled a conspiracy theorist, as conspiracy theorists are people with “critical thinking skills” and “inordinate courage”, who are willing to secretly share “hidden stories” (misinformation) online despite the massive censorship of the Labour government. She's also worried about the “odd” weather patterns she's seen recently (presumably an allusion to government weather control, rather than climate change), and calls GM food a “horrendous mistake”, like the “WHO Bill Gates foundation disaster for COVID” (aka the vaccine). Liz imagines that New Zealand will be the food basket of the world, supplying the entire planet with food, once the rest of the world's farms are corrupted by GM crops.

With 5G and security cameras, Liz says we're living in a surveillance state with transhumanism just around the corner. She imagines a totally uncensored media as a “beautiful vision”.

Her big plea in the video is for 500 people to join her within 1 week - and this is the number of members needed to register a political party. Liz says that this tight timeframe is a way that people can prove their loyalty and commitment to her - which is somewhat ironic, given that her spiel is all about this being a group effort, with no “personalities”. Liz has also suggested, on her party's new website, that all members should sign up to a monthly payment: “We, as New Zealand Loyal, require 500 paying Kiwi members to launch the party… Our obvious preference would be that you make a monthly donation, as NZL will have ongoing costs”. This may be another reason why she's pushing for people to join as soon as possible, so that she can start pulling in money - especially as she's asking for one time donations of up to a million dollars, and recurring payments of up to $100,000 a month:

What's interesting about the website is that it appears to be built on top of popular shopfront website Shopify, suggesting that there'll likely be a plan to start selling merchandise and other products soon.

She finishes by telling people to “put down whatever funds you can” to help the party get off the ground, and then tells everyone that if she doesn't receive money from 500 people within a week, she'll keep the money and spend it on her own media efforts rather than giving it back to people.

Five days after this video was posted, on the 3rd of July, Liz posted a follow-up video:

In this video, she announces a bunch of numbers - video views, site visits, newsletter sign-ups, and then finally that after 4 days they had reached 644 paid up members, more than they needed to register their political party. And, because of what appears to have been an oversight (although Liz denies this), everyone who joined has to fill in a second form, as the original one didn't ask people about their date of birth or electorate - oops!

But the upshot of all this is that Liz has promised that, by today, she will have had someone drive the necessary paperwork to Wellington to register her new political party, New Zealand Loyal, and that she will start to announce both her policies (which I'm guessing are going to be an eye-opener) and her candidates and staff. This second one, the people she chooses, may well tell us more about her plans than the policies she announces. I for one will be watching her closely for the next couple of weeks, and if there's anything more worth reporting I'll be sure to let you all know.