Atlas Network Takeover of the Medical and Teaching Professions.

Those of you with open eyes and open minds will have noted the recent changes Minister of Health Simeon Brown has made to the Medical Council. Gone are people with expertise, to be replaced by Brown’s hand picked Atlas Network appointees. 

This article by Andrea Vance details this.

Second Free Speech Union figure appointed to regulate doctors after meeting minister

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‘A former chairperson of the Free Speech Union (FSU) – who lobbied Health Minister Simeon Brown over proposed changes to how doctors are regulated – has been appointed to the Medical Council.

Roderick Mulgan, who remains a board member of the FSU, was one of four new members appointed to the Council by Brown last week. That includes senior Auckland anaesthetist Manoja Kalupahana, whose anonymous social media activity became the focus of a high-profile FSU campaign.’

Of Manoja Kalupahana, Vance has previously written

‘A senior Auckland anaesthetist whose anonymous social media account became the focus of a high-profile Free Speech Union (FSU) campaign over scrutiny of practitioners’ personal views has been appointed by the Government to the Medical Council.

Dr Manoja Kalupahana – the anonymous X (formerly Twitter) commentator known as “Momo” – has been appointed by Health Minister Simeon Brown to the statutory body responsible for regulating New Zealand’s 20,000 doctors.

In 2023, Kalupahana’s social media activity became the subject of a workplace complaint and media scrutiny.’

But wait, there’s more:

Free Speech Union attacks reporter for asking minister questions

‘The Free Speech Union ‒ which exists to defend free speech ‒ has attacked a journalist for asking Health Minister Simeon Brown questions over email, after it obtained questions sent by a Post reporter about one of his appointments.

On Monday, The Post’s national affairs editor Andrea Vance emailed a series of questions to Health Minister Simeon Brown about his appointment of Dr Manoja Kalupahana to the Medical Council.

The appointment was gazetted on Friday and put on the Beehive website on Monday morning.

Before an answer was received and within three hours of the query going to the minister, the Free Speech Union issued a press release attacking Vance for even asking the questions.’

For those of you not in the know or who suffer from an inability to open your eyes to the truth (as evidenced by a comment by Wiremu on my recent article) , the so called ‘Free Speech Union’, is an organisation that has clear links to, and is funded by, the Atlas Network. To be fair to the Free Speech Union, they don’t hide this. However it is transparently obvious that free speech has nothing to do with their function, instead they seek to manipulate and control the discourse. Orwell, of course, foresaw this.

What isn’t so clear is the direct links between many of the present government and the Atlas Network, although again this is is not hidden and is easy to find. Simeon Brown is one of these, and so we can draw a straight line between his Atlas Network connections, and his appointment of the two people to the Medical Council.

One has to ask then, exactly whose goals are being served by this government? The needs of the people of New Zealand, or the overseas based goals of the Atlas Network.

I don’t really need to answer that question. 

But Brown isn’t sailing a solo path here, with putting hand picked people to control a profession.

Education Minister, Erica Stanford, also with connections to the Atlas Network, has done a very similar thing to the New Zealand Teachers Council. Formerly teachers were able to vote for a number of teacher representatives on this council (after all is is an organisation to manage the teaching profession). Stanford in her ‘I know better’ mode, unilaterally decided to do away with this, and instead to take full responsibility for appointing all the council members.

Brie Elliott has written about this on her Facebook page:

‘The Ministry of Education has finally released the membership list for its new Teaching Standards Expert Advisory Group.

These standards will shape the working lives of more than 100,000 educators across Aotearoa.

So the first question should be simple:

Where are the teachers?

Because if you scan this membership list looking for the voice of an ordinary practising classroom teacher, you will come up remarkably empty.

Instead, the group is made up largely of institutional leaders, university figures, regulators, policy advisers, and people already connected to major education reform networks.

It includes principals. It includes academics. It includes professional regulators. It even includes a health professional.

But the people who will actually be assessed against these standards — the teachers themselves — are almost impossible to find.

Does Erica Stanford and the Ministry of Education NZ know that expertise is not the same thing as representation?

When you look closer at the membership, the same names and networks that have appeared throughout New Zealand’s education reforms appear AGAIN….

One of those names is Dr Nina Hood.

Hood is listed as a Principal Research Fellow at Learning First — the Australian consultancy deeply involved in New Zealand’s curriculum redesign.

Learning First has received more than $2 million for curriculum-related work in Aotearoa, with the Ministry determining that the company was uniquely positioned to deliver this work and exempting it from normal procurement processes. This was weird already because we know of multiple New Zealand organisations that could have done this work including NZCER (New Zealand Council of Educational Research).

Hood is also the co-founder of The Teachers’ Institute, a private teacher training provider established in New Zealand in 2023.

She designed the programme from the ground up.

She has been a prominent voice in the Government’s knowledge-rich curriculum and science-of-learning reform agenda.

She has delivered Ministry-endorsed webinars on the Science of Learning.

She has written influential reports criticising the previous curriculum’s lack of coherence and content knowledge, and her research has been used to justify curriculum overhaul. She was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours alongside Elizabeth Rata and Michael Johnston. 

She is, by any measure, deeply embedded in the current education reform landscape.

But Hood is not the only person from this same education network now holding significant influence.

Her co-founder (teachers institute) is David Ferguson.

Ferguson is not a member of this advisory group. But his recent roles place him across some of the most important institutions in the education system.

Ferguson co-founded The Teachers’ Institute alongside Hood. He was appointed Chair of the Teaching Council – the body responsible for teacher registration and approving teacher education programmes – by Education Minister Erica Stanford in August 2025. He also served on the NZQA Board.

He has now moved into the role of Chief Executive and Chief Review Officer of the Education Review Office, the agency responsible for reviewing schools and early childhood services across the country.

Official Information Act releases have also revealed that Ferguson sought funding advice and support directly from Minister Stanford while running The Teachers’ Institute before his appointment to the Teaching Council. 

WHY ARE THE SAME PEOPLE and networks continue appearing across teacher education, curriculum reform, regulation, and review.

Meanwhile, the architects of reform move between advisory groups, consultancies, universities, and overseas organisations – while the profession they are reshaping is left asking why nobody thought to put them in the room.

Erica Stanford has constructed a group that looks like a panel of experts on education policy, but failed to construct one that looks like the teaching profession. Those are not the same thing.

Everyone who accepted a seat at this table should have asked one simple question before agreeing:

“Where are the teachers?”

Because if you can redesign the standards of a profession without making space for the profession itself, that is not something to be proud of.

It is something to be embarrassed by. And I’m gonna name you all. But because people deserve to know who was involved in shaping the standards that will govern an entire profession – and who was comfortable doing so without meaningful classroom teacher representation.

History will record who was in the room when teachers were asking to be heard.

The question every member of this group will eventually have to answer is simple:

When teachers looked around and asked “where are we in this?”, what did you do?

Fucked. Literally, just, fucked. I’m sorry, teachers.’

So, can someone please tell me why we shouldn’t be concerned about this government’s control of the medical and teaching professions?

Democracy? What’s that?