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A fringe New Zealand political party that has not appeared in pre-election polls and whose co-leader has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories about Covid-19, has been listed in a televised debate on TVNZ, a state-owned broadcaster .
The invitation to Advance NZ has raised concerns that the debate could legitimize conspiracy theories in a country where disinformation online has not gained the same traction as abroad.
“It normalizes questions that aren’t really questions, or ideas that don’t have traction,” said Kate Hannah, a cultural historian and researcher in the department of physics at the University of Auckland.
Advance NZ was invited because one of its co-leaders, Jami-Lee Ross, is a current MP, one of TVNZ’s criteria for the event. Ross, who entered parliament as a lawmaker for the center-right National party, one of the two main parties, has been independent since a bitter split with National in 2018.
He joined forces with a new fringe group, the New Zealand Public party, led by Billy Te Kahika, an entrepreneur and blues musician, to form Advance NZ in July. The group has become known for Te Kahika’s views on Covid-19, 5G, the United Nations, and conspiracy theories about New Zealand and global leadership.
New Zealand’s electoral system means that the party would have to win at least 5% of the vote or a seat in the constituency to be represented in parliament. Analysts told The Guardian that neither outcome was likely.
“His political prospects are dire,” said David Cormack, co-founder of a public relations firm and former head of policy and communications for the left-leaning Green Party. “I don’t think they have any chance to enter, debate or not.”
But the concerns went beyond politics. The inclusion of Advance NZ and its conspiracy-based views in the debate “creates the idea that if the media talks about it, they probably know more about it than I do, therefore it’s real, ”Hannah said.
In New Zealand, the views of conspiracy theorists, such as the so-called QAnon beliefs, have not gained the traction that they do in countries like Australia, where researchers recently found such views had a growing following.
It was not known how many people held such views in New Zealand, said M Dentith, a University of Waikato professor who studies conspiracy theories. “But he never really appeared on our political scene until very recently,” they said.
“It could be the case that these conspiracy theories are not much of a threat,” they added, referring to Te Kahika’s views on Covid-19. “Except if only a few people believe them, there are pretty drastic health consequences.”
Research by Hannah, Dentith and their colleagues, published this month, found that social media mentions of conspiracy theories had not increased since the Covid-19 pandemic hit New Zealand. But mentions of conspiracies in the mainstream media had grown, Hannah said, giving the impression that opinions were more widespread than they are.
The “framing” of the TVNZ debate, he added, “has to be very, very deeply careful to acknowledge those things.”
Commentators said it would set a bad precedent to exclude political party leaders from the debates based on their views. Cormack, the political analyst, said that the country’s political debate had been “small-c conservative” and that the “extremist” parties had not gained political foothold as One Nation has done in Australia.
Although Advance NZ has not appeared in pre-election polls, it has a following online; the party’s Facebook page has 30,000 likes. Te Kahika performs regular, sometimes rambling video updates on the platform; With its mild manners, reference to te ao Māori – New Zealand’s indigenous peoples’ worldview – and anti-colonial views, the party has a distinct New Zealand flavor.
In June, David Icke, the British conspiracy theorist, praised Te Kahika and his party on his Twitter account and website.
A video the party posted on Facebook in July falsely claiming that the military would enter homes to enforce New Zealand’s Covid-19 rules was shared more than 1,000 times.
The New Zealand speaker ordered Ross to remove another video in August because it contained images of the parliament, which cannot be used in political advertising without the permission of the persons depicted. The clip took a government minister out of context to falsely claim that Covid-19 vaccines would be mandatory for all New Zealanders.
The video remains online and has more than 200,000 views.
The other party that has benefited from TVNZ’s rules of debate is the Maori party, an indigenous rights group that did not win any seats in the 2017 elections after four terms in parliament. It has been included because it had legislators in office during the last two terms, after its leaders questioned a previous ruling that excluded them.
The debate will take place on October 8, before the elections on October 17.
