John McLean: The eagle has floundered

Labourite Chatham Islands CEO comes a criminal cropper. Where are the coppers?

The phrase “The Eagle has Landed” indicates successful completion of a difficult or important task. Astronaut Neil Armstrong first spoke those words on 20 July 1969, from the moon to Mission Control in Houston, Texas. He did so to communicate that the Apollo 11 Lunar Module, named “Eagle”, had successfully touched down on the Moon.

Neil Armstrong died in 2012 but will be fondly remembered and revered for at least as long as the Western Civilization lasts. Without Western Civilization and the likes of Neil Armstrong, humans would have barely escaped the Dark Ages.

Conversely, New Zealander Paul Eagle will be quickly forgotten, despite having recently achieved moderate but deserved infamy. The Chatham Islands Council appointed Paul Eagle as its Chief Executive in November 2023, on an annual salary of about $250,000 plus free accommodation in the Council-owned house on The Chathams. The fact that the Chatham’s Council chose Eagle is reason enough for the Government to immediately replace that Council with a competent Commissioner.

The Chathams’ current Mayor is Greg Horler, who appears to be a solid, salt-of-the-earth fella. Just one thing Greg – get a staffer to update the Council’s website. Eagle has resigned.

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Before Eagle’s appointment as Chathams CEO, the Council had approved $200,000 for routine maintenance of the Chathams CEO residence. Once appointed, Eagle unlawfully commandeered the activities, with unauthorized expenditure ballooning the cost to about $460,000. His grandiose ambitions included converting a garage, buying Miele appliances (Fisher & Paykel wasn’t good enough for him) and appointing his own wife to lead the “project”. In addition, there was much other unauthorized expenditure on his Council credit card (food, flights etc.)

When New Zealand’s Auditor General was forced to investigate Eagle’s profligate nest-feathering, Eagle dug his talons in. In an infantile and futile attempt to cover his tracks, the A-G found in this report to Parliament that Eagle has created and altered quotations, contracts and other documents, and fed them to the A-G.

Despite the Auditor-General’s report stating, “We have not reached a view on the legality of the chief executive’s actions”, it’s clear that Eagle’s conduct was criminal – forgery, using a document with intent to mislead, obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, misuse of public office, breach of fiduciary duty amounting to criminal breach of trust...

Eagle has claimed in a letter in his own defence that he “panicked [sic] when I realized the documentation was incomplete and I tried to fix this”. But, if indeed Eagle was panic-stricken, panic is no defence to criminality. And Eagle wasn’t fixing anything; he was doctoring and fabricating documents and forging signatures in a transparent, self-serving attempt to cover his tracks.

So, where did this Eagle fly in from? First and foremost, he’s simply, and nothing more than, a lifetime Labour Party Luvie.

Under the Labour Party ticket, Eagle was elected to the Wellington City Council for three terms from 2010, rising to deputy mayor under Mayor Justin Lester. Eagle campaigned for Parliament as a Labour MP in Wellington’s Rongotai electorate in 2017 while still a Councilor. Eagle’s National Party opponent was ex-Government Minister Chris Finlayson. Finlayson commented in his 2022 memoir, “Paul is a nice guy and I enjoyed being on the campaign trail with him”. As with Wellington’s current Mayor and ex-Labour Party leader Andrew Little, Finlayson never won an electorate seat. They were both strictly Listers, repeatedly spurned by their electorate constituents.

Eagle was a two-term Labour Party MP, 2017-2023. In his second term as an MP, Eagle reneged on an express promise he’d made that he wouldn’t run for the Wellington Mayoralty while he was an MP, and ran for mayor of New Zealand’s capital city in the 2022 local body elections (endorsed by the Labour Party).

It’s a testament to just how uninspiring and generally useless Eagle is that he came third in the Mayoral race, losing out to Tori Whanau (the Capital’s Wahine Disaster Mayor) and then-incumbent Mayor, Andy Foster. After failing to win the Wellington Mayoralty, Eagle then disappeared from national politics, abandoning his duties as an elected Member of Parliament, despite continuing to draw his parliamentary salary of $163,961 p.a.

After quitting Parliament at the 2023 general election, Eagle glided instantly into the Chathams CEO role, with then Chathams Mayor Monique Croon claiming that Eagle was appointed to the role following a comprehensive, nationwide search allegedly run by an independent recruitment firm. I can’t find the name of that alleged firm.

Eagle nabbed the Chathams CEO role for a number of reasons, all completely divorced from his capacity to do the job.

First, he has Māori ancestry and is not afraid to trumpet and exploit that aspect of his life, which of course he didn’t choose or do anything to achieve. On winning the Rongotai electorate, Eagle squawked that he’d become the first Māori male to win a general electorate seat for the Labour Party in more than 100 years. (I’ve no idea whether that’s really true.)

Secondly, the Chatham Islands are technically within the Rongotai electorate. How that was supposed to augment his credentials for the Chathams CEO gig is anybody’s guess.

Thirdly, Eagle’s adopted son, Tamarangi, is said to hail from the Chatham Islands, with Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri ancestry. There’s a delicious irony here. Ngāti Mutunga is the tribe from North Taranaki that, with adjacent Taranaki tribe Ngāti Tama, commandeered a ship and in 1835 committed a genuine genocide on the original inhabitants of the Chathams, the Moriori people. So, Eagle was regarded as especially qualified for Chathams CEOship because his adopted son is apparently partly descended from people who killed, ate, enslaved and otherwise tried to exterminate the Moriori. I’ve covered this atrocity in a previous Substack.

A PAULING
John McLean  1 August 2025

Craig Pauling is the chair of the Canterbury Regional Council (“CRC”). I don’t find Pauling particularly appalling. Craig’s publicly civil - a civility born of his absolute belief in deep-seated dogmas. But Craig is also a lead actor in an appalling tragic farce…the racial renting asunder of the once proud, plucky, pretty unified nation of New Zealand.
Read full story

Eagle plays the strong, silent type. In reality, he’s a simple race hustler with nothing useful to say or do, and plenty to hide.

In his mild defence, Eagle appears not to have played the oppressed victim race card to try and excuse his selfish criminality.

And in a sense, Eagle can be regarded as (kind of) a victim. Eagle is a victim of the Woke ideology that individuals with Maori ancestry should, and are deservedly equipped to be, appointed to positions of authority simply by dint of that ancestry. In other words, a victim of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Eagle’s downfall results from the demeaning DEI claptrap that humans should be elevated based simply on being brown skinned, biologically female, not heterosexual or…any other Woke characteristic unrelated to genuine fitness for office that the Wokerati invents.

In response to the Auditor-General’s report, New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office has “noted the published report and will consider the matters raised”. But, despite Eagle’s criminal conduct, don’t hold your breath for the SFO to investigate. SFO CEO Karen Chang must stand up.

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Let us not forget that the Police exonerated John Tamihere for his conduct at the Manurewa Marae, after Tamihere appears to have been recorded encouraging his minions to snatch others’ voting papers and vote for the Maori Party – which would of course have been a crime. And what of child porn/bestiality work computer watcher & sex pest McSkimming; Jevon the un-jailed ex-Deputy Police Commissioner (appointed by Hipkins)? Shouldn’t McSkimming face further criminal charges now it’s apparent he fraudulently used Police funds to pay for sex romp hotel rooms?

Are New Zealand’s cultural elites adorned with invisible Teflon capes? Can anything be made to stick to the glossy Aotearoan eagles, as they soar their rarified air?

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced