The pettiness of Willis exposed for NZ to see – where’s the right wing free speech champions now?

After my experience with The Working Group, I am now of the view that the Right Wing Champions of Free Speech are all a myth, and that the Right have used their supposed support of Free Speech simply as a means to weaponise it so they can decide what can and can not be said.

You see the truth of how little the Right protect Free Speech with the latest document dump on Nicola Willis, who while in public pretended to support free speech by allowing the Unions to be inside the budget lock up, but privately was actually doing all she could to censor them…

Finance Minister Nicola Willis wanted tighter Budget lock-up, documents reveal

Newly released documents show Finance Minister Nicola Willis wanted to keep her Budget 2025 lock-up more restricted than she suggested.

A week before this year’s Budget was released on May 22, Willis told the Herald she “directed” the Treasury to let more people into the lock-up, after she received complaints over access being more limited than in previous years.

“I wanted the lock-up to be opened up to more people, because I think that it’s good that they’re there,” Willis told the Herald on May 15.

“I had received feedback from a range of groups, who … explained to me that even though they don’t have market sensitive audiences – which is the normal range of people that are there at the lock-up – they appreciate the opportunity to digest the information and communicate it quickly and effectively to … the people that they represent.

“I recognise that that is a useful thing to do.”

An extra 30 people were added to the lock-up acceptance list, bringing it up to 153.

However, emails between Willis’s office and the Treasury, released under the Official Information Act, show Willis wanted the lock-up to be more restricted in the first place.

She wanted the Treasury to handle Budget 2025 in the same way it managed the Half-Year Economic and Fiscal Update (Hyefu) and Budget Policy Statement (BPS) lock-up in December 2024. That was despite the Treasury being criticised for restricting access to this event.

…she said something in public that has been caught out as a lie and the reason she lied…

Beef between Willis and unionist

On November 4, Willis’ chief press secretary told a Treasury communications adviser that the minister’s office was happy for organisations that had previously attended the lock-up to be invited to the December briefing, “with the exception of Craig Renney, who fabricated a quote at the FSC [Financial Statements of the Government] lock-up”.

Renney – a director at the Council for Trade Unions with political aspirations – maintains the error was a mistake, not a fabrication, as the Herald reported in March.

Nonetheless, Willis’s press secretary went on to tell the Treasury adviser that it would be useful if invitees were told the lock-up was “not intended to provide them with the opportunity to advocate for their point of view with other attendees”.

The next day, the Treasury adviser emailed his colleagues, recommending a clause be added to the lock-up rules to restrict attendees from doing recorded interviews in the lock-up.

This would prevent media from broadcasting opinion and analysis of the financial documents straight after the lock-up, possibly giving the Government/Treasury more control over the way the information was presented in the initial instance.

He also recommended Renney be banned from lock-ups for three years.

The Treasury adviser’s colleagues immediately raised their concerns.

They noted Renney had not actually broken the lock-up rules.

“When Mr Rennie [sic] and the CTU kick up a fuss, we’re unnecessarily risking Treasury’s reputation on an issue that will likely look politically motivated on the part of MoF’s office,” an adviser warned.

She also took issue with the lock-up interview ban, suggesting it would be hard to enforce and would limit the time journalists had to get comment.

As it turned out, the lock-up rules weren’t changed and Renney wasn’t banned for the “fabrication”.

Rather, a decision was made to limit access to journalists and analysts from banks, economic and tax consultancies, accounting firms, professional services, and regulators.

This meant advocacy groups were barred.

…and the reason she changed her mind wasn’t because of a realisation that it was wrong to exclude the Unions, but because she was scared the Taxpayers’ Union would kick up a fuss…

The NZ Initiative kicked up a stink publicly for being declined while the Taxpayers’ Union threatened the Treasury with legal action.

…r-i-g-h-t.

It wasn’t an acknowledgment of how petty National were being to the Union, it was the fear that the far right free market NZ Initiative and the shit-kickers at the Taxpayers’ Union would take offence.

The NZ Right are not the Free Speech Champions they pretend to be, it’s a lie.

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