NZ First Candidates whacky beliefs

Most kiwis will be aware that it's election year, with the general election only a few months away, scheduled for Saturday 14th October.

Now, since NZ Skeptics is a charity we're definitely not in the business of promoting political candidates or telling our members and readers who to vote for. But, it's a safe bet that skeptics will want to steer clear of candidates with whacky beliefs and conspiratorial thinking tendencies. And probably also want to avoid candidates and parties that don't want to do anything about climate change.

This past weekend, Stuff ran a great article by investigative journalist Charlie Mitchell, reviewing the somewhat interesting histories and online posts of some of New Zealand First's candidates.

New Zealand First have been out of parliament since their share of the party vote fell to 2.6% at the 2020 general election, with the threshold for getting MPs into parliament being achieving 5% or more of the party vote. So, they've been out in the political wilderness during the last term. But, as people say, never count them out. In recent polls, they're risen about the 5% threshold, so may well be back in parliament in the next term.

From the investigation done by Charlie Mitchell, he's identified some weird posts on the Telegram app from a user named “Polly”. Throughout the article, Polly is identified as a “she”, but I reflected that I know a person who is known as Polly with some fairly “out there” theories and viewpoints, so wondered if it might be him.

But, Charlie's done his homework and has been able to match up Polly's posts to a New Zealand First candidate by the name of Kirsten Murfitt. Murfitt's Telegram posts, under the pseudonym Polly covered all sorts of conspiracy theory topics, such as calling the Covid vaccines “death shots”, and believing them to have 5G capabilities. In her work time, she's a lawyer with her own law firm. km Law, based in Tauranga. Unsurprisingly, she's been part of the NZLSOS group - a lawyer group in a similar mould to the silly doctor group NZDSOS that we've covered in the past.

But Murfitt isn't the only NZ First candidate with questionable views. Also identified was Janina Massee, who is the party's Whangaparāoa candidate. She thinks there should be a grand jury to hold hearings on NZ's Covid response, and that the pandemic was staged.

Then there's Caleb Ansell, the Coromandel candidate who previously stood as a candidate for New Conservatives. It seems he's into QAnon conspiracy theories, and unsurprisingly, given his previous party candidacy, is into criticising the LGBT community.

Finally, there's Kevin Stone, who is a candidate in Hamilton West. Again, he's claiming that the pandemic was planned.

All of the candidates identified with weird views seem to be from conservative rural areas (perhaps with the exception of the Whangaparāoa peninsula). I wonder if there's a connection there, or is it just that NZ First attracts that type of person to stand.

Of course, New Zealand First isn't the only party to be wary of this election cycle. Freedoms NZ have launched their campaign, and I've noticed their billboards featuring Brian Tamaki (of Destiny Church) and Sue Grey (anti-vax, conspiracy theorist lawyer) popping up in several places.

Add to that Liz Gunn's NZ Loyal party and you've got plenty of weird places to waste your vote.

This election promises to be pretty interesting, but my prediction is that the “freedom” vote won't see any of these fringe parties make it into parliament.

It will be interesting to see, when these fringe parties fail to make it into parliament, how many of them try invoking rigged election claims that we've seen stemming from the 2020 election in the US.