Nicky Hager’s new book, Dirty Work: Taxpayers’ Union’s Jordan Williams responds

Taxpayers’ Union executive director Jordan Williams says it is “very tempting” to want to sue Nicky Hager over his new book, Dirty Work.The book, released at an event in Wellington last night, made several claims, including that the group had an internal dispute in 2022 over whether it should move beyond tax and economic issues and campaign more heavily on Māori and co-governance issues.Hager told a crowd of hundreds last night that it was an exposé of the “latest front for New Zealand’s hard right”.It also claimed the TPU settled an employment dispute involving allegations of sexual harassment against Williams. He rejects the allegation.“This really came from nowhere,” he told Ryan Bridge TODAY this morning.“The suggestion that there is a settlement of some kind or the allegations in relation to that were settled is totally false. My chair Ruth Richardson has dealt with that, she’s checked with every of the historic chairs and the co-founder who sat on the board until 2022. It is totally wrong.”Hager is due to join the show at 7.50am.Taxpayers' Union spokesman Jordan Williams at a Three waters protest in Rotorua in 2022. Photo / Andrew WarnerWilliams said the book was “full of inaccuracies”. He alleged Hager failed to put the book’s allegations to them, seek an interview, or give them a chance to respond before publication.When asked if he will sue Hager, Williams said, “It’s very tempting and a lot of people are texting me in relation to that. But the book’s primary objective is to derail me, to derail David, and to derail the Taxpayers’ Union. “And we have the most important work over the next five or six weeks. We’ve got to show New Zealanders the extent to which we are on an unaffordable path.”He said the TPU would be launching election campaigns over the next few weeks.“This is the most important work of every three years, and I’m not going to let a far-left activist successfully derail. What I’m saying is it’s a question for later.”The book also claimed co-founder David Farrar used access to a National election database to send mailouts to homes occupied by “wealthy National and ACT voters”. Nicky Hager releases his latest book, called Dirty Work, which focuses on the lobby group the Taxpayers’ Union.Williams said this was “totally wrong”.“I’m going to dig out the invoice. We purchased that data from a property data company... it’s such a serious allegation and poor old David, it was never put to him because despite having said to Nicky Hager, ‘We will not injunct you, come and talk to us, we’ll be open’, that is just an example of the way this far-left activist works.”‘Māori issues’Hager claimed in the book Farrar wanted the Taxpayers’ Union to “weigh in on these Māori issues more”, while staff pushed back, saying: “That’s not our mission” and “we’re here to fight about tax rates and economics”.Hager wrote that the dispute went to the board, which changed the TPU slogan from “Lower taxes, less waste and more transparency” to “More Accountability”. One staffer quoted in the book said the change “legitimised a move towards race”.Responding to this section yesterday, Farrar said: “I can’t speak to anything other than what is attributed to me, but I can say it is categorically wrong in relation to me.”Hager says then-chairman Ashley Church resigned because he opposed the organisation’s direction. Williams’ own 10th-anniversary history confirms Church resigned over the otherwise unanimous decision to take on Three Waters and “the way it was done”.Tobacco campaignIn Dirty Work, Hager claims British American Tobacco external affairs managers Elliot Steel and later Stu Mullin met Taxpayers’ Union staff privately, gave instructions and discussed campaign plans.Those involved included Williams and successive TPU campaign managers Louis Houlbrooke, Connor Molloy and, Hager claims, probably Callum Purves. Hager says BAT paid the TPU, which in turn paid Williams’ Campaign Company to produce campaign messages, petitions, advertisements and websites.Molloy later travelled to Panama for the WHO’s 2024 tobacco-control conference, where he promoted lighter regulation of alternative nicotine products and joined the US Taxpayers Protection Alliance at its GoodCOP counter-event.Taxpayers' Union executive director Jordan Williams. / Andrew WarnerHoulbrooke later became an Act senior press secretary, Purves is Act’s general manager and party secretary, and Molloy is now Act’s deputy campaign director.Hager told those at the launch event at Unity Books in Wellington that Dirty Work was largely based on insiders; former TPU staffers and National Party members who were “unhappy about the state of New Zealand politics”.Bridge asked Williams this morning if the group had taken money from a tobacco company and had they paid for free flights.He said they had taken “one of the lowest percentages of any taxpayer group in the world”.“We’re really open, and we’ve been open for more than a decade, that less than 3% of our revenue is from industry. That’s booze, that’s sugar, that’s nicotine.”‘Angry old men’Hager pointed to some stories in the book, which included recounting Act leader David Seymour’s becoming what Hager described as “Mr anti-Treaty” and on what he said was a “hit-job” on former 1News political editor Maiki Sherman, who resigned earlier this year.One of the key allegations of Hager’s comments was that the TPU public statements opposing government waste did not reveal the group’s main purpose.He challenged claims that the group had a wide-ranging supporter base, which he alleged were “angry old men in their 70s and 80s and sometimes their late 60s who have bought into their idea and believed their untruths” about the threat of evolving Māori rights.Asking himself why publish a book before the election, Hager said there were two reasons; the first being elections were the time we should be thinking about politics: “What better time?”He then claimed coalition ministers had benefited from the work of groups like the TPU.“They should be held accountable by the public.”Asked during a media stand-up how the book showed links between political parties and lobby groups, Hager claimed there are politicians in all the main right-wing parties that tolerate or collaborate with the TPU.“I don’t think they even realise what a terrible decision they’re making.”Crowds gather at a Wellington book store ahead of the release of investigative journalist Nicky Hager's new book Dirty Work. Photo / Marty MelvilleAsked what made the TPU’s relationship with parties distinct from other lobby groups’ relationships with parties, Hager claimed there was a “phony, fake, misleading network, a spider’s web” of groups that were “filling up the political space”.“I think that if the Taxpayers’ Union and its key members were looked at critically a lot of their power would disappear.”Hager said he didn’t find explicit instruction from the National Party to TPU over any matters but then claimed it wasn’t necessary because they were aligned.Williams, who also featured in Hager’s 2014 work, Dirty Politics, said the organisation had been targeted specifically because of its success, noting they have built “the largest taxpayer movement in the English-speaking world”.He said in his email to members about two-thirds of donations come from grassroots donors, while less than 3% came from “industry memberships and donations (including alcohol and nictonie) [sic]”.The email repeatedly asked supporters to donate.“The next few days are going to be hard. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But we can’t let him win,” the email ends.Crowds gather at Unity Books in Wellington ahead of the release of Nicky Hager's new book.Hacking & Hollow MenIn 2018, the police apologised and paid “substantial damages” to Hager after unlawfully searching his home during the investigation into the hacking that led to the Dirty Politics book.The settlement came almost four years after the publication of Dirty Politics, which alleged the office of former Prime Minister Sir John Key ran a dirty tricks campaign through right-wing bloggers.Hager wrote the book after an anonymous source known only as Rawshark provided information said to have been hacked from Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater. Police launched an investigation into the identity of Rawshark after Slater complained about being a victim of hacking.That complaint led detectives to search Hager’s home on October 2, 2014, taking computers, paperwork and other material. In the settlement that followed, police apologised for a range of breaches of Hager’s rights, including wrongly using an exception in the Privacy Act to access 10 months of Hager’s banking data from Westpac.“This sends a vital message that people can share important information with journalists with confidence that their identities will be protected,” Hager said.Hager’s publications also include 2006’s The Hollow Men and 2011’s Other People’s Wars.