New Conservative leader, Leighton Baker says they are the voice of middle New Zealand and will not be silenced. This is despite New Conservative's election campaign suffering death threats, assaults, defamation, mis-representation, false accusations, court cases, fake news, journalists digging back decades for dirt, cyber hacks, dog bites – even attempts by those in powerful positions to slander, distort or suppress their message.

Lucy Elwood, Chief Executive of the Cancer Society of New Zealand, belatedly joined a growing list of people eating humble pie this week when she publicly apologised to New Conservative Napier candidate, Deborah Burnside, for the Society maligning her to a journalist and member of the public last month. Their behaviour resulted in an incorrect news item being published on 11th September, but it took the Society almost a full month to do the honourable thing.

“Anyone can make a mistake,” said Baker. “But for the Cancer Society to take so long to fix their blunder during one of the most important election campaigns in New Zealand’s history, it just demonstrates how deep the bullying culture is embedded in our society.

“TVNZ even manipulated their criteria to ensure that a failed MP and a previously rejected political party were invited to participate in a televised election debate on 8th October, while excluding us,” he explained. “This despite New Conservative polling higher than three parties invited to the debate and standing candidates in all 72 electorate seats – a significant, serious achievement matched only by Labour.

“To add insult to injury, TVNZ now wants us to pay their court costs for defending our challenge to get them to play fair and democratically.”

In another example of the media abusing their power, Newshub made up a news segment on the party early in July. Writing for The BFD, Juana Atkins described the Newshub piece as a ‘hit job’, the type of thing her work as a high school English teacher used when helping students to analyse advertising and films for subliminal messages, camera angles and many other techniques used to influence and persuade.

“They interspersed New Conservative footage with historical footage of Hitler, Nazis and street violence in a blatant propaganda piece, positioning the party as white supremacists – an allegation that is quickly quashed by checking out New Conservative’s candidates and supporters,” explained Baker. “While the Party hasn’t received an apology for that appalling bit of defamation, we did get an invite onto TV3’s AM Show where the hosts did play fair.”

“But some naive or uneducated people obviously took that disgusting item at face value, and have spent months defacing our ‘Protecting Free Speech’ and ‘All Life Matters’ billboards among others,” said Baker.

“This is ironic in that New Conservative stands for racial and religious equality before the law, the sanctity of life, and freedom of speech. We stand for everything the Nazis hated and destroyed.”

References:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/hawkes-bay/300129047/cancer-society-apologises-to-new-conservative-candidate
https://thebfd.co.nz/2020/07/13/dangerous-ideas/

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