As usual, he attacks conservative groups and bodies from a Far Left perspective and TV1 News behaved like delighted kids in a candy store as you’d expect; but for normal people it’s once again ‘nothing to see here.’
Nicky Hager has a new book out, ‘Dirty Work’. The Free Speech Union is mentioned in about 10 pages of it. He calls us “the most puzzling member of Jordan Williams’ right-wing stable“. Puzzling, I suspect, because we don’t fit his story.
Regardless, I would rather you heard what’s in it from me directly.
Not much, is the short answer. As reported in Politik: there’s “no big revelation in this book or any smoking gun”.
A lot of it comes from old interviews with former Taxpayers’ Union staff. Nobody currently at the Free Speech Union was asked for comment (that’s some hard-hitting investigative journalism, right there!).
The argument is the old one, that caring about free speech must really be a cover for something else.
The truth is simple, even if it’s hard to believe from inside the Wellington bubble: we’re an organisation that believes free speech is fundamental to a healthy community, democracy and country, and is worth fighting for – and we’re funded by ordinary Kiwis like you.
Hager went looking for ‘foreign money’ but found none
Hager was clearly looking for evidence of foreign money and a smoking gun which would show shadowy influence coming from overseas.
Yet he did not find it, and near the end of a chapter called ‘Follow the Money’, Hager concedes there is “no sign of any substantial flow” of secret foreign money into New Zealand politics. 
An extract from ‘Dirty Work’
This is no surprise to us: 96% of our funding comes from New Zealand donors like you, with the Union receiving over 12,000 donations last year and the average yearly amount being under $100.
It feels like he went looking for large amounts of foreign money, found none, and threw as much mud as he could at Jordan, and a handful of Kiwi organisations he has been associated with, in the hope that some would stick.
We received a small amount of money from the Atlas Network, around 4% of FY26 income – tied to training programmes and specific lines of work, such as, ironically, our opposition to the gang patch ban and HDCA reform.
We have always been upfront about this — it’s in our publicly available accounts.
The Janet Dickson Case
He spends some time on the case of Janet Dickson, the real estate agent banned for five years for refusing a training course. He says it isn’t a free speech issue because Janet could still say what she liked. But that was never our argument.
We supported Janet because we oppose regulators being able to force people to affirm views they do not hold, coercing them to participate and select ‘correct’ answers for a course that isn’t core to their profession, all in order to keep their licence and their livelihood.
That’s compelled speech and belief. As we stated in our Court of Appeal intervention submission:
“Freedom of expression can impose a positive obligation on regulators to uphold viewpoint neutrality and avoid compelling belief.
Licensing or training requirements should not be used to enforce ideological orthodoxy”.
We were clear about the reasons why we backed Janet, but Hager didn’t give them any attention.
Why the Union cares about regulators
The same thing that happened to Janet is happening with the bodies that license architects, doctors, nurses, teachers and many other professions. Their job is to keep the public safe and hold professional members to a standard of competence. Yet they’ve started reaching past that into what their members have to believe and say, even in their own time.
This won’t be news to you. We’ve been open about our campaign for neutrality in the regulated professions from the start.
Hager says we only take these cases on because they touch Māori policy, and that we act out of prejudice. That’s just not true.
In our submission to the Medical Council, we said we support good, non-discriminatory care for all patients, including Māori, and we back addressing health inequities. Our problem isn’t the goal. It’s forcing doctors to sign up to one ideology in order to keep their job. That goes beyond the Council’s legal remit and it breaches the Bill of Rights. You can also read our submission on the Nursing Council here.
None of this is prejudice. It’s the same point we made for Janet: a regulator shouldn’t be able to compel what you believe and force you to act on it.
It isn’t culture war. It’s whether a nurse or a lawyer can lose their career over lawful private views. Most New Zealanders don’t want that, whichever way they vote.
My biggest take-away from the book
The biggest take-home from the book, for me, is that Hager is completely disconnected from the average Kiwi.
He argues that there’s “no real crisis” for free speech, and that our supporters are “the same angry on-call crowd” that can “drown out genuine community voices”. That’s you he’s talking about!
He simply does not accept that you might have legitimate concerns about freedom of speech – he casts you as a rent-a-mob who have been tricked into believing free speech is an issue. You have no agency and apparently no ability to make your own mind up – without being told what to think and when to get mad.
In my opinion, it is exactly this type of patronising attitude that ordinary exhausted kiwis are sick and tired of hearing.
He calls our election finance system “legalised corruption”, and wants private money for politicians, parties and “their third-party supporters” made “illegal, full stop”. “Third-party supporters” seemingly refers to organisations like us. 
Another excerpt from Dirty Work
His afterword goes further, calling for state-funded news and policy institutes. Let’s just call this what it is: the Ministry of Truth on steroids.
And of course, all of this would all be wildly undemocratic.
Thousands of New Zealanders would be banned from backing causes they believe in, and a lanyard-wearer in Wellington would decide which ones get funded. How long would an organisation that takes on the establishment for a living last on public money alone?
Hager insinuates that there is something sinister in not publicly declaring every donor. This smear and insinuation of his is exactly why many Kiwis prefer to keep donations private – can you imagine the pitchforks at dawn routine that would be performed on anyone who does not align with the ‘state sanctioned causes’.
I also want to be very clear that whilst the Free Speech Union is happy for donors to announce themselves, we will respect their privacy and not declare any donors publicly.
My honest assessment is that this book tells a story that many of our intelligentsia and political class will resonate with. They will, naturally, buy into a narrative that everyday Kiwis have been tricked into supporting free speech. After all, that makes it easier for them to justify ignoring your concerns.
Nicky Hager went looking for secret money behind the Free Speech Union, but instead he found New Zealanders — people like you.
| Jillaine Heather, Executive Director | Free Speech Union |
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Last night, Jordan e-mailed you after Nicky Hager launched his new book attacking the Taxpayers’ Union. (copied below).
At that point, we had not even been given a copy of the book. We have now read it and examined it in detail.
Most of the book is tittle tattle. Much of it is just plain wrong. And all of it is written from an extremely left-wing slant. But on behalf of the Board, I’ve been asked to address the most serious claims contained in the book.
The serious allegation concerning our Executive DirectorOn page 36 of the book, Hager states:The TU board has paid out money to deal with […] at least one sexual harassment case against Williams.
On behalf of the Taxpayers’ Union Board, I can categorically tell you that is totally untrue.
As Chair, I have spoken directly with all living previous Chairs and with the organisation’s co-founder, who served on the Board from inception until 2023.
All are unequivocal: there have been no such claims against our Executive Director, let alone any settlement payment.
This is not a matter of political interpretation or opinion. It is a specific allegation about something Hager claims happened, and the Board categorically rejects it.Alleged misuse of electoral dataHager also alleges that Taxpayers’ Union co-founder, and pollster David Farrar used privileged access to a National Party election database to target Taxpayers’ Union campaign material at particular households prior to the 2020 election (page 77).
This is a very serious allegation because the supply, receipt, or use of electoral data is a criminal offence under s.116 of the Electoral Act.David categorically denies the allegation.
Speaking to Radio NZ, David acknowledged encouraging campaigning against a capital gains tax, but said he did not access National’s database.
He described Hager’s allegation as “totally, 1000 percent wrong, absolutely wrong”.
We’ve spent the afternoon closely examining our campaign and financial archives.
We can find no mail-outs as part of our Capital Gains Tax campaign — in fact, that campaign ended a year earlier on 17 April 2019 when Jacinda Ardern ruled out a capital gains tax as part of the Government formally responded to the Tax Working Group’s final report.The only thing Mr Hager could be referring to is our “Campaign for Affordable Home Ownership” launched on 5 October 2020 with a media release titled “Taxpayers’ Union Launches Major Direct Mail Campaign Against Green Party’s Proposed Asset Tax”. It stated: “In the coming days, we will be contacting tens of thousands of homeowners who are likely to be directly affected though direct mail.”
Unfortunately for Mr Hager, we have found the GST invoice/receipt for the address and targeting data used. We have uploaded it to our website.
This proves that contrary to Mr Hager’s claim that David broke the law, the Taxpayers’ Union legitimately purchased the address data from a property and mailing information company.
As you can see, Hager’s most serious allegations are simply not correct.
It brings into question all of the other accusations and innuendoes – which are mostly based on hearsay.
Yet, as Jordan explained last night, Hager did not put them to us before publication or give us the opportunity to respond. The Taxpayers’ Union will not be distracted from what we are here to do: standing up for taxpayers, scrutinising government spending, and fighting for lower taxes, less waste and more accountability.
Thank you for standing with us – and in particular to all of those who responded to Jordan’s e-mail below
Hon. Ruth Richardson
Chair
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union
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The Taxpayers’ Union is under attack. This evening, Nicky Hager released his new book, Dirty Work. As we feared, it is an attack on the Taxpayers’ Union, me personally, and my co-founder David Farrar.
Hager calls himself a journalist. But yet again he has ignored the most basic principles of fair journalism: put serious allegations to the people accused and give them a reasonable opportunity to respond.
He did not put the allegations in this book to us. He did not seek an interview. He did not give us the opportunity to correct errors or provide missing context before publication.
Instead, he released his accusations at a carefully choreographed media event, in the middle of an election campaign, knowing that the headlines would be written before we could even obtain a copy of the book – let alone check its claims.
The smears travel around the country before the truth has even had time to put its boots on.
That is not an unfortunate oversight. It is the playbook we are seeing tonight: besmirch people publicly, generate sensational headlines, and force the accused to disprove allegations constructed without ever seeking their response.
We will not let Hager shut us down. We are being attacked because we have been successfulLet’s be clear about why the Taxpayers’ Union is in Hager’s sights: It is because we are successful.
We have built the largest taxpayer movement in the English-speaking world. We successfully use people power to fight for lower taxes, less waste and more accountability.
Our supporters fund investigations into government waste. They send thousands of submissions to Parliament. They sign petitions, contact politicians, turn up at public meetings and make sure taxpayers cannot simply be ignored.
Together, we have defeated new taxes, exposed outrageous spending and forced politicians of every party to answer for how they use taxpayers’ money. Left-wing activists like Nicky Hager hate that. They cannot out-organise us. They cannot out-campaign us. And too often, they cannot convince the public of their arguments.
So instead, we see smears, innuendo and private material—obtained through leaks, breaches of confidence or, in previous cases, illegal hacking—woven into a story designed to make ordinary political campaigning appear sinister.
It is an attempt to do through character assassination what they have failed to do through democratic debate.We will not be bullied. We will not be silenced. And we will not let them cheat New Zealanders out of hearing our side of the story.
We have seen Hager’s methods before — Hager has a well-established formula: weave events from different periods, remove crucial context, and weave them together into the most sinister interpretation available.
Those interpretations do not always survive scrutiny.
His 2017 book Hit & Run alleged that New Zealand soldiers had conducted an “ill-conceived” revenge raid against innocent civilians in Afghanistan.
An exhaustive Government Inquiry led by former Supreme Court judge Sir Terence Arnold and former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer reached a very different conclusion: “The principal allegations in Hit & Run … are not accurate.”
The book even wrongly identified one person as having been killed during the operation when he had died in an entirely separate incident seven months earlier. The photograph used to identify him was of somebody else.
That does not mean everything in Hager’s books is wrong. It does mean that his claims should never be treated as established fact merely because they are packaged as “investigative journalism”.
They must be checked against the evidence. That is what we are doing tonight.The book is a full frontal attack on the Taxpayers’ UnionNaturally, we will work through the book carefully. Where Hager has identified something that genuinely requires an answer, we will answer it. Where he has omitted important context, conflated unrelated events or simply got something wrong, we will put the evidence before the public.
But responding properly will require researchers, legal advice, and staff time. We have to both act rapidly while the story is dominating the news but also not let it derail our entire pre-election campaign (which is exactly what Hager wants to do!).
Hager tries to make our funding sound mysterious or sinister. It is neither.Around two thirds of our donations are small-dollar contributions from grassroots supporters. Less than 3% comes from industry memberships and donations (including alcohol and nictonie).
He’s using that as a smear to try and discredit all of our work. The remainder 30% comes from members of our Taxpayer Caucus — supporters who contribute $1,500 or more each year. We protect the privacy of individual donors, just as organisations across the political spectrum do. New Zealanders should be free to support lawful causes without fearing that their names will be dragged into a political attack book.
But there is no mystery about what your donations fund.You fund the researchers who dig through council and government accounts.You fund the billboards you see beside the road.You fund campaigns against higher taxes and wasteful spending.You fund the technology that allows tens of thousands of New Zealanders to make their voices heard.
Hager had every opportunity to approach us. Three years ago, when we first became aware of Hager’s interest in the Taxpayers’ Union, we publicly addressed the subjects we expected him to raise. We specifically invited him to approach us, put his allegations to us and interview us.
Tonight, Mr Hagar suggested that it was this invitation that led him to start his work. But we know that’s not true. We know from former staff that he’s been approaching them trying to get dirt for years!
Hager has previously defended his failure to seek responses by claiming that doing so might give the subjects of his books an opportunity to seek an injunction.
We removed that excuse. We publicly promised that we would not try to prevent publication.
Still, he did not put these allegations to us before tonight’s launch. That speaks volumes about the whole exercise. If Hager genuinely wanted to establish the truth, he knew where to find us. If he wanted accuracy and context, he could have asked. If he wanted our response, he could have picked up the phone. Instead, he wanted the headlines first and our answers later. We will not be bullied into silence. We have nothing to hide.But we will not stand by while selective material, missing context and one-sided allegations are used to smear the people who built and supported this organisation.
We will not respond to allegations with allegations of our own. We will respond with facts. We will check every significant claim. We will publish the relevant evidence. We will demand corrections where they are warranted. And we will ensure that New Zealanders hear both sides of the story.
Jordan Williams
Executive Director
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union
(abridged –Eds)