Comrades – Free Speech Hypocrisy, My post-Working Group thoughts and a new podcast announcement

Comrades, I’ve had a week to digest the reality that the Political Right have cancelled gold award winning political podcast, The Working Group, and want to thank all the very kind people who have reached out with kind words.

I spend a lot of time focused on doing the mahi, and don’t appreciate how the work is being received and so many of you have been genuine and gracious in your comments.

Thank you.

Before I give my post-Working Group thoughts and my new podcast announcement, I’d like to pay homage to The Working Group and my co-host Damien Grant.

We worked together creatively for 5 years.

The Working Group started as a 10 minute segment on MagicTalk with Sean Plunkett and it quickly became 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, then a full hour because a Marxist fighting a Libertarian was fun.

Sean got sacked for being Sean and the segment bounced to Ryan Bridge, until he left for a new show on Newshub (that was promptly killed off by Newshub collapsing) and bounced to Graeme Hill until Magictalk got killed off.

Damien and I then started the show as a joke on YouTube out of his warehouse oil the North Shore where we would simply interview a politician on the phone with a mic taped to the speaker.

We grew it from there to a Studio in Mediaworks, then moved to the B Studio down the road, then to the new ROVA studios.

We hit number 1 on the Political Podcast charts and won Gold and Silver last year in the Podcast Awards as well as creating 7 live streamed election debates and becoming the only show where there was an actual debate on the treaty Referendum.

We made some incredible media and it is with a deeply heavy heart that I announced that it has been cancelled by the Political Right.

I also want to thank Damien. He has been a generous friend, a funny mate and someone I had an immense amount of respect for.

I rarely agreed with him on anything, and we would debate issues long after the show, but his decision to cut the funding because I refused to bow the knee as the Editor of the Daily Blog has been infuriating for me.

Damien Grant owns Gravity Management and Gravity Management sponsored The Working Group.

Early this year we were all set to start the season after the huge win of last year…

…however over the Summer, Damien and I began fighting again privately over content that I was publishing on The Daily Blog that was critical of the contacts between the NZ Initiative and Stuff…

…there had been building tension behind the scenes of The Working Group for some time.

Damien seemed to have believed that because he sponsored TWG that he had some type of editorial control over The Daily Blog and was constantly wanting me to change my tone on criticism towards Israel and my criticism of the NZ Initiative or connecting them to the Atlas Network.

I repeatedly explained to Damien that he was not the Editor of The Daily Blog. 

I have conveyed this passionately back to Damien. Many times.

This tension came to a head over Summer as I published blogs linking Stuff’s Political Editor to the NZ Initiative and to Nicola Willis…

…I find it astonishing that a Free Speech Champion like Damien pulled the sponsorship to an award winning political podcast because his right wing mates don’t like my free speech!

Just to be clear, Ani O’Brien insinuated a Green Party MP was being sexually abusive towards their child using the most pathetic evidence in the world, evidence it turns out was laid out by NZF Hate Troll Rhys Williams.

I criticised Ani for making an insulation as serious as that with fuck all evidence, yet for Damien, Ani’s free speech to insinuate a Green MP is a pedophile IS MORE IMPORTANT than my free speech calling her our for that.

As Editor of The Daily Blog I will always criticise the Right when I think they are wrong, I will always highlight the links with Hard Right Free Market Think Tanks and the political and media infrastructure of NZ and I will stop criticising Israel when they stop murdering Palestinians.

I will not bow the knee.

Having The Working Group cancelled because a Free Speech Champion has been bullied into it because his right wing mates don’t like my free speech, I believe stains the mana of Damien’s work as a columnist in a way he doesn’t appreciate nor comprehends.

When you see him pimping the Free Speech Union, remind him of that hypocrisy please.

So The Working Group is over and while watching the Libertarian you spent 5 years working with burn your collective work down in a Viking funeral that only he’s invited himself to, the oddest thing has occurred.

I have a fire in my belly.

At first I thought it was an ulcer or a stroke, but as the days have passed, I have felt a growing anger that I’ve spent so long creating a space to debate with the Right when they never intended to debate at all.

It was most apparent to me with the Treaty Principles Referendum select committee.

The Right didn’t want a debate over the Treaty Principles Referendum, they wanted the pretence of a debate so they could hold that engagement up and masquerade it as legitimacy.

I am sick of having a debate with the bad faith Right  and want to lead a new Political Podcast that is unashamedly Left and wanting to ask the hard questions about the issues and take the debate to the Right rather than allow them a faux engagement.

I have been inundated with sponsor offers to launch a new Political Podcast since I announced the cancellation of The Working Group and I have made an agreement with a new sponsor and we will be looking to launch the first show this month!

I am excited about what we can do with a clean slate and desire to actually argue rather than pretend.

We have 18months until the next election – I intend to disrupt the politics as usual narrative.

More announcements of show name, time and where you can watch it as we get closer to the date.

In Solidarity.

M Bradbury

Host, Writer and Producer of a new Political Podcast

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