Taxpayer-Funded Lawfare in New Zealand: How much is it costing us?

This is the second article in a series about lawyers profiting during the covid era

Covid was never about public health. In case you were in any doubt about that fact, you can check out the interference from New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which led the policy strategy and ‘advisory’ functions for Ardern’s Labour Government from the get-go. NOT the Ministry of Health. In this article, I provide a summary of some of MBIE’s financials, including some of the taxpaid dollars it paid to NZs Large Law Firms that I’ve written about.

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In my previous article about NZ lawfare, I’ve described some of the reasons why many of the Government bodies, professional societies, quangos and regulators enablers like Medsafe acted in lockstep with the covid narrative, along with the lawyers:

I’ve also written about how large corporate companies like Fonterra were in bed with Government from the start, and of course we won’t ever discover how much these commercial organisations paid to lawyers (or how much they were funded). But we can see how much our taxpaid dollars were spent on lawyers through Official Info Act requests (OIAs). So, I want to look now specifically at one of those Government entities, MBIE, and the enormous sums it paid to lawyers over the covid era. Why? That’s probably the subject of another article in itself, so that’s start with what they have coming in from page 129 of this years Annual Report:

So in promoting profitable immigration income, employment and environmental tourism, MBIE is all about promoting the Myth that is Clean, Green, 100% Pure New Zealand. Something I have written about before here and here. Its job is to promote the narrative about the (eh hum) ‘equal land of opportunities’, environmental responsibility fascism, and our circular economy (a particularly amusing MBIE webinar is available here). Now we know about the military foundations of covid, MBIE had to be in charge. J.R. Bruning has an excellent comprehensive report on the covid era ‘Emergency’ powers that our Government awarded itself:

Emergency Powers: [4] In a Controversy, who controls the Science? (AKA the modelling)

In that article is this quote:

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has directed funding to understand risk in the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 business unit was established within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. This unit was not only responsible for strategy and policy, operational co-ordination and public communications, it was established as the data hub, Data analytics, monitoring, reporting and insights – […]

While initially funded by the MBIE, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet currently directly fund and contract the University of Auckland based institution Te Pūnaha Matatini and {this entity} is not an institute with experience in infectious disease epidemiology nor does it exercise an appreciation of the long standing principles of public health, […]

Te Pūnaha Matatini was established to explore and understand complex systems and uncertainty. COVID-19 work appears to be centred around conducting modelling using data supplied directly from officials. Their Sars-Cov-2 modelling has failed to take account of open-ended dilemmas inherent in risk modelling: complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. (my emphasis)

If you want to read Te Pūnaha Matatini’s Annual Reports, I’d suggest you have a rainbow-coloured sick-bag on hand. The entity looks to be entirely funded by the Government’s Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) and details ‘research’ into SMART cities, climate change modelling, SDGs, woke DEI training and ‘innovative’ healthcare interventions. People on their Advisory Board, predictably, include people like Pieta Brown with previous roles as Chief Analytics Officer, Head of Data, and Associate Director at PwC. Nuff said.

More on TEC another day. But meanwhile, back to MBIE and covid lawfare. The important element of MBIE is its broad umbrella of NWO-WEF-related responsibilities. Not least in promoting the narrative. This includes dictating policies to the Crown Entities, Public Private [Philanthropathic] Partnerships (PPPPs) and Quangos, as illustrated in this infographic:

To give you an idea about the bureaucracy involved in these entities, I’ve written about some of these PPPPs and Crown Entities before, including this case study of the ‘CommComm’:

In 2020 MBIE reported how its non-dept expenses were forecasted to increase by $1,268 million ‘mainly due to costs responding to covid’, including:

• $100 million for the MIQ programmes

• $105 million for Strategic Tourism Assets Protection

• $300 million for delivering the 'Shovel Ready' infrastructure projects

• $129 million for provision of support to the research and development sector’s response to COVID-19, in particular the development of a vaccine strategy

• $29 million for Regional Skills Leadership Groups and Māori apprenticeships

• $40 million for NZTE support services for small businesses

• $231 million for other initiatives responding to COVID-19. (my emphasis)

The Phantom of the Five Eyes that is NZ and its close and strategic relationship with China is no secret. And MBIE points out its office in China was there to process visas (highly profitable for the universities and other sectors):

This video from the beginning of the craziness, illustrates the strategy of quarantine hotels concentration camps for healthy people, with conspicuously no reference to any healthcare provision for this ‘deadly infection’.

The MBIE ‘Managed Isolation’ voucher system was so unethical and unjust, it proved to the subject of a long and finally successful court battle. But meanwhile, what were MBIE paying lawyers for legal advice and representation in these cases and other covid-related ‘complexities’? Btw there’s no doubt many of these complaints ended in non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) - common in New Zealand. We will never know how many.

Knowing about the Large Law Firms Group Ltd. (see my previous ‘Lockstep’ article linked above), I asked MBIE through OIA (Ref: DOIA-REQ-0006407) about costs of two of the law firms that I have a particular interest in. Q: Over the past five years, what was paid to Kensington Swan Holdings Ltd aka ‘Dentons’ and Budfin Nominees Ltd aka ‘Buddle Findlay’, together with Crown Law, the Government’s own legal advisor? Because of the Revolving Doors of Power, Crown Law are closely associated with these law firms, as are MBIEs own ‘in house’ lawyers. The following chart shows MBIEs expenditure in these areas (‘Internal’ being in-house lawyers), which will not be exhaustive, but gives us an idea:

My graph from data supplied via OIA from MBIE ref DOIA-REQ-0006407

Does a spend of nearly NZ$16 million in one year on legal services, seems excessive? More than NZ$74 million over five years has been spent by one NZ Ministry alone - and there’s likely more expenditure to be exposed for this single entity over time too.

The sheer amount of taxpaid money that our Government spends on lawyers in efforts to change, manipulate and enforce unjust and unethical legislation is likely to be mind-blowing. Meanwhile, our taxes increase, and healthcare systems, broken. Little wonder that these law firms decided some years ago to partner-up to make the financial relationships between each other and with Government entities and quangos closer, and therefore less transparent and more ambiguous. Much more to come on this topic, stay tuned!

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