Stuff
The Post’s editorial last Friday showed Stuff at its worse. The previous day it had printed a full page advertisement from Hobson’s Pledge which was basically a cartoon wondering why Labour leader Chris Hipkins doesn’t rule out the racist Maori Party as a possible partner in a Labour-led coalition should they be able to form a government after the election. Editor Hooton conceded that the advert did not breach the law or advertising standards so Stuff decided to run it.
As expected, many readers were very angry that it appeared in full page glory and this reaction provided the Editor with the opportunity he wanted to denigrate Don Brash’s lobby group which advocates for democracy and ethnic equality in New Zealand.
The Maori Party’s election campaign is about promoting the interests of one ethnic group – part-Maori. The reality of the Party’s influence is that it only has parliamentary representation because there are seven special seats in which only voters on the Maori role can cast a ballot.
Hobson’s Pledge
This organization, despite Hooton’s protestations, is not racist unlike his editorial.
Don Brash’s Hobson’s Pledge is based around the 1840 statement of our first governor, William Hobson, at Waitangi: He iwi tahi tātou", ("we are now one people”). Fundamentally it supported the concept of equality for all New Zealand citizens under one law.
Today it campaigns against -
- race-based policies
- separate Māori seats in parliament
- co-governance models
- compelling working people to complete Maori courses.
Janet Dickson lost her case before the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal after refusing to complete Te Kākano, a compulsory course she believed conflicted with her Christian convictions. Janet was also clear that this training had nothing to do with selling property. The Tribunal has upheld the regulator's decision, placing Janet's licence and livelihood at risk. Hobson’s Pledge letter, 5 October 2026
In criticising the advertisement wondering why Hipkins doesn’t reject the idea of the Maori Party in government – Hooton is rejecting what many voters would regard as a fair question.
Before denigrating an organisation wedded to the principles democracy and equality, Matthew Hooton needs to look in the mirror.
The topics Stuff won’t cover
There is a raft of issues the publishing company won’t touch.
- What the Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi) actually said.
- The farce of Freeman’s false and unauthorized “Treaty” which the Waitangi Tribunal likes.
- The English version of the Treaty – the Littlewood Treaty
- Whether the Waitangi Tribunal has kept to its original purpose, and is possibly past its used-by date.
- Examples of where the Tribunal has exceeded its legal functions.
- The undemocratic nature of the special Maori seats in parliament
One thing the editorial did get right was a summary of the groups who oppose Brash’s’s organisation - .. Maori activists, woke Pakeha liberal elites and a censorious left-wing media.
Hobson’s Pledge - We are now one people - is a statement which was used in 1840 and in variations since such as by Prime Minister Ardern after the 2019 Christchurch massacre.
Roger Childs is a writer and freelance journalist. He is a former history and geography teacher, who wrote or co-authored 10 school textbooks.
6 comments:
As a country we will never be able to move on without having an honest discussion about all these issues.
It is without a doubt costing the country, economically, we could be so much better.
It will take a strong leader to initiate that discussion, Winston and David come to mind. Definitely not Luxon - he is just as weak as Hooton.
Hooton came across as unbelievably biased in the true manner of the NZ media. His political and racist colours nailed firmly to a strongly left-leaning mast. What a venial buffoon he is; takes the money, probably advertising is the only thing keeping his rag afloat, and then goes all frothing at the mouth over an advertisement which is both funny and true in its implication.
Hooten got the job because he is on the opposition side but can be portrayed as supposedly being at one time ,,right,, wing. He never was, just a globalist more like a UK LidDem. People are supposed to think his appointment of a fake Nat shows balance.
There is another piece to the Stuff story that deserves attention:
Stuff did not simply change ownership when Sinead Boucher bought it for $1. She also chose a direction for the organisation.
In 2022 she took Stuff through certification as New Zealand’s first B Corp, signing up to a progressive buzz-words movement founded in the United States in 2006 to promote a broader idea of corporate responsibility — to workers, communities, customers and the environment, as well as shareholders.
B Lab, the force behind B Corp certification, says its mission is to transform the global economy into a “more inclusive, equitable and regenerative system” and to change the “behaviour, structure and culture of capitalism”. Its programme explicitly embraces justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, stakeholder governance and environmental action.
That might sound like something destined for the corporate foyer and a framed certificate.
It wasn’t. Stuff scored 83.4, and Boucher said B Corp principles fitted Stuff’s strategy of “making Aotearoa a better place” and giving everything it did a “tangible, positive impact”.
That is important context.
Because Stuff had already begun changing the way it saw its job.
There was the public apology over its historical treatment of Maori, the Pou Tiaki programme, the emphasis on te ao Maori and Treaty principles, and a declared determination to change the organisation’s culture.
B Corp did not create all of that. But Boucher chose to put Stuff firmly inside that broader philosophy and proudly attached the company to it.
So when you look at the way Stuff now approaches arguments about the Treaty, co-governance, Maori seats or race-based policy, it is reasonable to ask whether something more than ordinary editorial judgement is at work.
Readers notice these things without needing a policy document pinned to the wall. They notice which arguments get a sympathetic headline and which are introduced with a raised eyebrow. They notice who gets three paragraphs to explain themselves and who gets three lines. They notice when one side is treated as having concerns while the other is treated as having motives.
That is where the Hobson’s Pledge episode becomes interesting. The question is not whether Stuff is entitled to dislike the advertisement. Of course it is. The question is whether a newspaper that has consciously adopted a particular social philosophy can still give an unfashionable argument the same cold-eyed examination it would give one it already agrees with.
A newspaper is allowed to have values. It is even allowed to have opinions. But reporting becomes rather less useful when the values arrive in the newsroom before the facts do.
And this is why I think Boucher’s embrace of B Corp matters. She made a deliberate choice about what Stuff should be. We should therefore be entitled to ask what that choice has done to the journalism.
The danger is not that Stuff has values. The danger is that the values become the lens through which the news is selected, framed and explained — until some arguments are examined and others are merely processed.
A newspaper should open the door and let the reader look around.
It should not decide in advance which rooms the reader is allowed to enter.
B Lab says the B Corp badge can attract customers, employees and investors and strengthen brand credibility. But if Stuff’s entrenchment of those left-leaning principles makes readers doubt its impartiality, the badge may be doing the opposite of what it promises: eroding the trust and credibility on which a newspaper depends.
Apparently the expectation of equality as homosapiens is in fact racist.
Comments at 8.25 are spot on but Stuff readers , those who read it not to evaluate and question but to believe the narratives , are untroubled by bias.
As a former journalist and employee of what became Stuff (until 10 years ago) I know personally ex-Stuff and a few current Stuff staff and to a man, woman and whatever they are firmly of the belief they are not biased; they are a vanguard telling the ''truth''. They have the zeal of the true believer and are unswayed to the point where politics can no longer be discussed with them ( they are angry at dissent) on the rare times I now meet them. I avoid any group situation as they expound with fervour and I sit silent so for many years now I avoid such situations. They become unpleasant. Stuff is effectively an operating umbrella of a range of so-called progressive and racially correct advocates and sees itself like The Guardian. I recall that around 2016 when Trump was elected (like him or not) about 150 newspapers or organisations such as the NYT, Wapo, NZ Herald, The Guardian etc met and decided they would no longer handle the news the same way. In effect no more two sides to an issue (if they ever saw it that way). Reporting and columns became a campaign.
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