New Zealand Taxpayers' Union is condemning Creative NZ for funding a poem that characterises a National MP as a far-right colonialist lamenting “natives refusing to die off”.

The poem is part of a Newsroom series funded by Creative NZ to the tune of $21,150 last year as part of the Government’s COVID-19 response.

Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Creative NZ shouldn’t be funding any political propaganda, least of all nasty, slanderous diatribes like this. But our arts funding agency has grown out of control, frenzied on an injection of taxpayer funding post-COVID. They’ve hijacked a crisis in order to commission reactionary socialist agitprop from their left-wing weirdo mates.”

“These poems would be less egregious if they took aim at both sides. But an earlier poem addressed to Jacinda Ardern merely encouraged her to push harder for her political agenda. It’s no surprise, considering the author is a former trade union official and former co-leader of the socialist Alliance party.”

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