Willie Jackson has attacked me and this site on his Facebook page. In his rant, he claims that this site is “hateful”, that it was involved in Dirty Politics, and that it had a “terrible history of Dirty politics”. Like the Prime Minister he also thinks that the story was an unwarranted attack against a public health advocate.

All that would be fine and dandy if it wasn’t just plain false. If anyone is spreading disinformation it is actually Willie Jackson.

For a start, it is not hateful when you have a genuine story that features the hypocritical actions of a woman who courts publicity. She stated many times with the latest lockdown that we shouldn’t be meeting with friends for a chat or indeed anything else. We were told by her to lock away ourselves at home. While she was saying that she most certainly wasn’t doing it.

She invented new lockdown rules regarding bubbles, who and where you can have them, and the media just accepted, unquestioningly, the flannel. She stood and watched while her new found bubble friend, Dr. Nicola Gaston broke level four rules and went for a swim, and then used her close friendship with Dr. Ashley Bloomfield to get him, without even seeing the video to declare that it wasn’t really swimming. (Never mind that hundreds of others have been given infringement notices and fines for doing far less).

Willie Jackson and the other apologists for Siouxsie Wiles‘ behaviour have also excused away her lack of mask-wearing. Wiles herself has been an advocate for mask-wearing, even in level two. But when she was caught her enablers in media and politics rushed to her defence and excused it all.

Wiles can’t have it both ways, that mask-wearing is important, but when it suits her she just ignores it. She has told the nation that breathing in air from a passing walker is enough to catch Delta. Which is it then Dr.Wiles? Masks because it’s so catchy…or OK when it suits you?

Willie Jackson’s defence aside, he has basically made stuff up and is running the very same lines that his pal Martyn Bradbury is running. It is real ‘shoot the messenger’ stuff here.

This site is not “hateful”. In fact, the editors go out of their way to ensure everything is fact-based and proven. If you read the articles in question there is not any hint of “hate” involved. We have simply told the story of a world-class hypocrite, and for that, we are attacked as “hateful”.

The BFD is also wrongfully linked with “dirty politics”. Since The BFD has only just turned two years old it is rather hard to have been linked or involved with “dirty politics” when that occurred in 2014. The only “dirty politics” revealed in that case was the willingness of the left-wing to use crimes against a journalist, together with mainstream media to work hand in glove with the criminals to dox, denigrate and seek to damage that journalist, his friends and his business associations. That was the real “dirty politics”.

The smearing of the messenger continues unabated. The lies abound. The disinformation is deliberate. Not one word in our stories is false. Not one.

Now the left-wing is accusing us of working with National party operatives. Of stalking and doxing Siouxsie Wiles and spreading disinformation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those allegations are all deliberate lies. Defamation even.

I am not even a member of the National party. Neither I nor my editor advised anyone of the pending story before it was published, except the team of more than 60 volunteers and staff at The BFD. It is a lie if anyone says anything different. Willie Jackson is lying, Martyn Bradbury is lying and Greg Presland is lying.

The truth is that a member of the public took the video. I have no idea what political party they support and nor do I care. This is, despite claims to the contrary, a public interest story about a publicity-seeking scold who loves nothing better, while sitting in a well resourced state-funded job, than to lecture, hector and bully people into complying with rules, regulations and laws she helped advise the Government on. The very fact that the whole country is talking about this tells you it IS news.

What is a scandal is that the state broadcaster and their journalist and editor saw fit to try and suppress it.

Worse still, the Director-General of Health excused it all away on the basis of a friendly phone call. And even worse the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and now a minister have also run interference. In other countries, this would be called corruption.

They all shrug and minimise the actions of Dr. Wiles and Dr. Gaston while hundreds of other Kiwis have felt the heavy hand of the law with fines for doing the same, arrest and pepper-spraying for not wearing masks and Police aggression in car parks and shops around the country. None of them can ring the Director-General of Health and get a free pass. No shopkeeper, butcher or otherwise can do the same as the Police kick in their doors and shut them down for simply trying to earn a living.

The mainstream media should hang their heads in shame that a member of the public thought that the only media outlet who would cover this story was The BFD. Not TVNZ, not Radio NZ, not NZ Herald, not Stuff, not Newshub…no one but us.

The attacks by the media are nothing other than professional jealousy. The attacks by the left-wing have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that these lockdowns and policies are political and not for health reasons. If they were for health reasons then Siouxsie Wiles would have said something like this, “As New Zealander of the Year for my health communications, I realise that I have let the whole country down and I humbly apologise and seek the country’s forgiveness and promise it won’t happen again. Please keep the rules, please wear masks, and please stay home”.

Siouxsie Wiles and her Government protectors passed up an opportunity to reinforce the health message. They instead attacked the messenger, went political and told the whole country that the rules don’t apply to them and theirs.

We can now be under no illusion that Jacinda Ardern is keeping half the population of New Zealand locked down for political reasons. We now know that masks are optional, we can go see our friends and excuse it all away by saying they are all in our bubble.

The Government, with its defence of Siouxsie Wiles, has just told New Zealand that their elimination strategy is optional, and I for one will be doing my part to make sure that sinks in.

Know them by their actions. It’s okay to disobey because Siouxsie says so, and so does Jacinda Ardern, and Grant Robertson and Willie Jackson and Dr. Ashley Bloomfield. They wrecked their public health message, and they did it to themselves. I’m just pleased that I had a tiny hand in all of that.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...