Hi Friend,

As you know, with the Budget only a week away, we've been hard at work hammering out some key common-sense messages:

• Stop borrowing. The Government is borrowing $75 million per day! Government Debt is now more than $90,000 for every Kiwi household. Nicola Willis needs to Stop the Debt Clock, and balance the books.
• Cut the waste and huge growth in bureaucracy. After COVID was over, instead of rolling back spending, Labour doubled down. There are now 18,000 extra bureaucrats compared to 2017 – delivering worse results for New Zealanders.
• Reverse Grant Robertson’s tax hikes. The average wage earner pays $49 more per week in tax because income tax thresholds haven't been adjusted for inflation since 2010. $49/week is the minimum Nicola Willis needs to deliver next week.

I'm emailing you because, despite all that's going on, we're facing yet again a media absolutely determined on giving New Zealanders a one-eyed view of the world. As you'll see below, yet again they are trying to exclude centre-right messages, and we're asking our supporters to help with the fight back.

Our advert designed to get cut-through 🗡️

Last week, I asked the team to come up with ideas to raise public awareness about the explosion in Wellington's back office bureaucrat numbers.

We need to balance the alarmist media and usual groaners harping on about the terrible 'cuts' and deliver a message that it's about time Wellington got real and faced up to the economic realities facing New Zealand.

So we thought, what better than a full page 'eviction notice' to Wellington's fat cat, back office, faceless, bloated bureaucrats on behalf of taxpayers.

So that's what we did – an advert that we knew would get under the skin of the public sector unions and the 'blob' to hopefully start a genuine debate about whether the Government's half hearted 'cuts' are really all that bad?  In fact, we say they are both justified and don't go nearly far enough.

Here's the advert we had in mind:

Click here for larger version.

Stuff refuse to publish advert on basis that it might 'upset' some people in Wellington

After booking the advert for Wellington's The Post newspaper, we provided the file ready for print.

Then all hell broke lose.

While Stuff acknowledged that our advertisement is totally in line with Advertising Standards Authority rules, they outright refused to publish it anyway.

They pulled the ad on the basis that the "inflammatory and provocative" advert could result in them having to respond to audience complaints.

...while it is clear that the opinion in the ad creative belongs to the advertiser, it falls into the guidelines as an: 'ad which is controversial and/or likely to elicit audience complaints'...

On that basis, they pulled the advert at the last minute.

, remember all of the offensive/abusive anti-Christopher Luxon advertisements that the unions ran during the election campaign? Why does our media have such a double standard?

In my follow-up emails with Stuff, it is rather illustrative what words they can't cope with. Here are some of the specific terms they required removing before reconsidering publication (their emphasis, not ours):

• "....public service gravy train."
• "....government grifter job scheme...."
• "Mickey Mouse degrees,"
• "Flat White Marxists....."

This is what we are up against ⛰️

Look , I get that we have a leftwing media and that it can be hard to ensure that taxpayers (and the Taxpayers' Union!) get a fair suck of the sav in terms of what stories the media does and doesn't cover.

But how is it right that now just the excuse of 'we might get a few complaints' justifies censoring paid-up advertising because the lefties at Stuff don't like the message?

Saying that a political advertisement can't be 'controversial' or use terms that are emotive or hyperbolic basically makes political advertising pointless.

The very purpose of any effective political advertisement is to illicit strong feelings, be 'controversial' in the eyes of some, and (God help us) elicit some letters to the editor!  That is the whole point of both advocacy advertising, and a local paper!

We want to fight this decision, and (at minimum) go to other advertising channels to show up how ridiculous, biased, and unreasonable Stuff are being. But we need your support to do it.

Remember, this is the same media organisation that took five million as part of the so-called 'Public Interest Journalism Fund'. 

Last month, Stuff was also before a Select Committee begging for a "Digital News Bargaining Bill" to tax companies who linked to their website. They said that without the bill/tax, Stuff and other media organisations are 'unviable'.

So they scream poverty, take taxpayer money, but are more than happy to turn down paid advertising because they simply don't like it.

Friend, it's us against the media. Will you chip-in and support our message?

👉  I'll chip-in to fight Stuff's hypocrisy   👈

Thank you for your support.

Jordan Williams Executive Director New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union