MEDIAWATCH: Government censor Budget Journalism they don’t want you to hear

Extraordinary situation with our Comrades at BHN, their nominated Journalist for the Budget, NZCTU Economist Craig Renney, has been blacklisted and banned from attending the Budget Lock up for BHN!

There has been an ongoing feud between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and NZCTU Economist Craig Renney which has entered childish brat territory very quickly…

Craig Renney and CTU want apology from Nicola Willis over Treasury ban

The Council of Trade Unions (CTU) wants an apology from Finance Minister Nicola Willis after what it argues is a false characterisation of an error Craig Renney made in an October press release, which ultimately saw him blocked from future Treasury briefings.

Documents now released under the Official Information Act (OIA) show that Willis’ office’s frustration at an error made in one of Renney’s press releases fed into Treasury’s decision to bar him.

Renney maintains the mistake, an inaccurate quote, was an innocent error that was quickly corrected, however Willis and her office have said the quote was “made-up” and “fabricated”.

The spat deepened this week, when the CTU saw the way Willis’ office had characterised the incident to Treasury officials in OIA documents, which are mainly emails from Willis’ office to Treasury.

The CTU and Renney want an apology from Willis for those remarks and they want Willis to back Treasury reinstating Renney’s access to certain Treasury briefings. Willis, however, is not apologising and maintains that the quote was “made-up”.

…banning the Economist from the largest Union access to Treasury Briefings because of a mistake in a press release, (a mistake that was quickly corrected), is the sort of behaviour of a wide eyed free market ideologue with an enemies list, not a Finance Minister of the Crown.

Nicola Willis has doubled down on denying Craig access to Treasury briefings by also now banning all Unions from the Budget lock-up…

Unions barred from Budget 2025 lock-up – NZCTU

The New Zealand Council of Trade Unions Te Kauae Kaimahi has sent an open letter to the Government objecting to its decision to block the NZCTU and other unions from attending the Budget lock-up on 22 May.

“We object in the strongest possible terms to the Government’s decision to bar the NZCTU from the Budget 2025 lock-up. The NZCTU represents over 300,000 workers across the private and public sectors and is the largest democratic organisation in New Zealand,” said NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff.

“Workers will be significantly impacted by the decisions made by government at Budget 2025, and it is important that the NZCTU can accurately report on Budget decisions to ensure working people are properly briefed.

“This Government appears to believe the banks, international financial institutions, and consulting houses are more important than working people, and it seems that is why the representatives of working people have been denied access.

“Last week the Government made the highly controversial decision to unilaterally gut the pay equity claims process. It is therefore unsurprising that it doesn’t want working people to understand the rationale and impacts of its Budget decisions this year,” said Wagstaff.

…so we have a Finance Minister exercising an enemies list and banning the Economist and Unions from the budget lock-up, so far, so crazy.

But Nicola Willis has now stepped even further by banning independent media from attending!

Now let’s be very clear, BHN is a legitimate independent media outlet, they command an enormous live online news platform and are pioneers of the new left media in NZ.

Craig Renney is without a doubt one of the most intelligent, clever and insightful left wing economists we haven and he is the one the media turn to for  understanding of what is going on with the Budget.

BHN had gained media accreditation to be at the budget lock-up, and they had appointed Craig as their attendee, Craig does a podcast with BHN and is a legitimate media talent in his own right.

Treasury accepted BHNs accreditation right up until they realised the person was Craig Renney and then they immediately banned him!

This all matters because for the vast majority of hard working Kiwis, they get the immediate headline and little else, and that’s what the Governments trying to achieve by locking out Economist, Unions and Independent Media from covering the budget.

You will all remember last year when the Budget came out. The first briefs were that it was a ‘balanced’ budget right up until Waatea broke the bombshell of how much Māori budget had been cut.

The Government is using totalitarian censorship to trick you into believing their hype lines rather than a clear eyed assessment of what they are doing.

This matters because Nicola Willis intends to butcher the budget and she wants as few critical witnesses as possible in the hope their pet journalists regurgitate the ZB talking points they are spinning.

No wonder people call her the C word.

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