Hunting Hooton's Disinformation

This morning Mathew Hooton appeared to attempt to defame Chris Hipkins using disinformation in an opinion article titled " Labour needs a bolder leader than Chris Hipkins."

Hooton asserted :

Exhibit 1.

"As Covid Minister, he then failed to respond to Pfizer when they offered early access to the Covid vaccine, dooming Auckland to the long 2021 lockdown and the continuation of the horrendous MIQ system.' - Matthew Hooton

On 2 July 2021 Derek Cheng reported in the NZ Herald :

" It would be unethical, at best. We're not talking Saudi sheep here," Hipkins said. "We paid a fair market price for the vaccines - and we are doing our bit through [global equity scheme] Covacs to make sure that we're not acting in a way that's unethical in terms of global supply of vaccines." He added that if Pfizer had offered more vaccine doses earlier, he would have certainly accepted them even though New Zealand is free of community transmission. But to just throw more money at Pfizer: "That would have been unethical, trying to effectively bribe our way to get more earlier. It's just not the way we operate as a Government." - from Derek Cheng "Throwing more money at Pfizer to jump the queue 'unethical' - Hipkins 2 July 2021.

Right here is the fact that Pfizer never did offer more vaccine doses earlier to New Zealand as Hooton pretends. A few months later Kate MacNamara spread misinformation based on a wild guess to suggest Hipkins had made a fatuous remark :

"As Auckland University economist Robert MacCullock has estimated, it's likely New Zealand could have paid an extra $40m (in the order of $4 more per dose) to receive early vaccine delivery." - Kate MacNamara: Government's Covid spin spend masks a failure to deliver - 19 August 2021.

Sir John Key picked up that fake news story as if it were a fact but soon after Pfizer rebutted his false claim :

"Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has categorically denied former prime minister John Key’s claim that New Zealand could have paid $40 million for earlier access to its Covid-19 vaccine, saying the notion is “incorrect and baseless" - Sam Sachdeva of Newsroom 28 September 2021.

So in conclusion Hooton had picked up misinformation and appears to have deliberately restated it - in an attempt to undermine and defame Chris Hipkin's leadership.

Exhibit 2.

"As Prime Minister, he wouldn’t make tough decisions to either cut spending or broaden the tax base. He proved unable to prevent successive ministerial scandals. Yet he might be Prime Minister again in 2026 or even sooner." - Matthew Hooton

On 8 February 2023 Stuff reported that "The RNZ-TVNZ media merger is going up in smoke, as is the Government’s social insurance scheme and biofuel mandates. Proposed changes to hate speech legislation would be kicked to the Law Commission – and the Government is also going to refine the Three Waters programme." - PM Chris Hipkins’ bonfire of the policies Stuff.

Clearly Chris Hipkins made bold decisions to cut costs including $4 Billion in savings in Budget 2023 in May 2023. A large amount of that money came from cancelling things like Covid-19 spending and axing the sweetener payments promised to councils for Three Waters.

But wait there is more.

On 28 August chris Hipkin's government announced $4 billion worth of public service savings, cutbacks to consultants and contractors

As for successive scandals - it's notable that Chris Hipkins was not Prime Minister when Stuart Nash did his thing, not Prime Minister when Michael Wood first got into trouble, was not PM when Kiri Allan was heard to speak loudly by an anonymous person who did not complain at the time. For his part - Chris Hipkins acted swiftly and strongly as leader dealing with ministerial scandals candidly and fairly.

So once again Hooton's claims are baseless in fact.

Exhibit 3.

"Voters deserve to know if Hipkins has learned anything and what he would do differently." - Matthew Hooton

After making two baseless claims in Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2, Hooton concluded voters deserve to know if Hipkins will learn and do better.

This is scurrilous opinion writing and the NZ Herald should be ashamed of itself for publishing such factually incorrect, baseless defamatory smear.

Conclusion

Hooton should make a public apology and take back his false statements.

The above would make a good complaint to the Media Council given the way right wing political commentator Damien Grant was hauled up for the same disgraceful behaviour.

Hunting Hooton's Disinformation

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