Rocket Lab Fuelled by Broken Promises

There is a particular kind of dishonesty that is dressed up in the language of innovation and national pride. It does not arrive as an outright lie. It arrives as a vision, a story, a community hui at the local marae, a selfie with the Wairoa Lions Club. It arrives as a promise. And then, quietly, expensively, and with considerable personal enrichment, it is broken.

That is the story of Rocket Lab, "Sir" Peter Beck, and the people of Mahia Peninsula.

When Rocket Lab first arrived on the East Coast of the North Island and sought the consent of local Iwi and hapu to launch rockets from their whenua, Beck was unambiguous about what his company would and would not do.

In an early interview, he stated plainly: "Certainly if it involves something that's going to harm people then we're not really interested at all... certainly we don't want to be involved with any kind of missile programmes or anything to do with armaments."

 He added, simply: "No. No weapons."

Sonya Smith of Ngati Rakaipaaka hapu, whose people were among those assured of Rocket Lab's peaceful intentions, has been equally plain about how that promise has played out. "We were sold a bit of a story," she told RNZ. "It talked about satellite launches that supported environmental outcomes and safety outcomes and that's not really how it's played out."

Billboards went up around Mahia: "No military payloads. Haere Atu, Rocket Lab." The company did not respond when RNZ asked whether it had broken its promise to the community. That silence speaks volumes.

It should now be abundantly clear to any New Zealander paying attention that Peter Beck looked concerned Maori in the eye and told them what they needed to hear. A third of all payloads launched by Rocket Lab have since been for the United States military or affiliated agencies. The company now holds over US$1.3 billion in contracts with the US Space Development Agency alone, building missile tracking satellites explicitly designed, in the Pentagon's own words, to "significantly increase the coverage and accuracy needed to close kill chains."

Kill chains. That is the clinical euphemism the American military uses for finding people and killing them.

Which brings us to the present moment. The United States and Israel are conducting military operations against Iran. One of those attacks involved a US strike which destroyed the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province, killing between 175 and 180 people, most of them children. Investigations by The New York Times, BBC Verify, and the NPR and CBC concluded the United States was most likely responsible. Amnesty International has called for accountability. The United States has offered none.

 

Last week, The Guardian reported:

 

US responsible for deadly missile strike on Iran school, preliminary inquiry says

Strike that killed at least 175 people, most of them children, reportedly due to targeting mistake by US military planners

A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children.

According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.

Iranian officials had put put death toll from the attack as at least 175 people, the majority of them children, in one of the worst and most shocking American strikes producing civilian fatalities in recent memory. 

 

Rocket Lab is building the targeting and communications architecture of the same military that just bombed a school full of young girls.

When asked directly whether any payloads it had launched were being used in the Iran conflict, Rocket Lab's Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Morgan Connaughton, said responsibility for how satellites are used rests with the satellite owner. This is the statement of a corporation that has laundered its conscience.

New Zealand has no strategic interest in this illegal war. The United States and Israel have struck Iranian oil and gas infrastructure, strikes that will send petrol prices upward here at home, that threaten regional stability, and that put this country in an invidious position as a close intelligence partner of the United States through the Five Eyes arrangement. The United States and Israel's unlawful attacks are putting New Zealanders and our offshore investments at risk.

Rocket Lab's deep integration with the American military-industrial complex isn't a matter of abstract ethics. It is a concrete conflict of interest for this country's foreign policy and our standing in the Pacific.

Peter Beck cannot be trusted. He told Maori communities one thing and did the exact opposite. He built a company on a promise of peaceful science and turned it into a weapons contractor that helps rogue states indiscriminately target innocent civilians. He accepted a knighthood and a Nasdaq listing while the infrastructure he is building helps guide the most powerful military on earth, the same military that bombed a primary school, murdering hundreds of school girls.

The people of Māhia Peninsula deserved better. New Zealand deserves better. And the schoolchildren of Minab deserved to grow up.

The Dumbest War in Living Memory

There are wars fought for survival. There are wars fought for resources. There are wars fought, however misguidedly, for ideology. And then there is Donald Trump's illegal war against Iran, a war so bereft of coherent justification, so naked in its opportunism, and so catastrophic in its execution that future historians will struggle to find a category in which to place it. The dumbest war in living memory has found its author, and he is currently sitting in the most powerful position, explaining that he knows nothing about a bombed school or a destroyed desalination plant, and that Iranians are in any case, according to him, "among the most evil people ever on earth."

Let us dispense, first, with the pretexts.

This is not a war for security. The Arms Control Association has noted plainly that such a war of choice against Iran, without congressional approval, violates the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act, as well as Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations. Iran was, by all credible accounts, still engaged in diplomatic talks on the very day the US and Israel missiles began to fall on civilian targets.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said on 2 March 2026 that the agency had found no evidence of "a structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons" in Iran, and when asked directly whether Iran was "days or weeks away from building a bomb," his response was simply "no." Iran was still engaging in reportedly productive diplomatic talks over its nuclear program the day before the United States unleashed its weaponry. Security was never the point. If it were, you do not blow up the table at which the other party is prepared to sit.

This is not a war for oil, at least not in the way that cynics once imagined. American and Israeli strikes have, for the first time, targeted oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran. You do not secure a resource by incinerating it. What you do achieve, however, is a surge in global oil prices that enriches investors (including Trumps family members) and producers elsewhere, rattles markets, and inflicts immediate pain upon ordinary consumers, including New Zealanders whose import-dependent economy has absolutely no insulation from such shocks.

This is not a war to free the Iranian people either. The liberation narrative has long served as the humanitarian mask of American imperialism, and it fits no better here than it did in Iraq. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed that the United States attacked a freshwater desalination plant on Qeshm Island, with water supply to thirty villages impacted. You do not liberate a population by destroying the infrastructure upon which their survival depends. The Geneva Conventions are unambiguous: targeting facilities indispensable to civilian survival constitutes a war crime.

When Trump was asked about the desalination plant, he offered this remarkably incoherent response: "I know nothing about a desalinisation plant, other than to say, if they're complaining about..." He then trailed off into fresh denunciations of October 7, conflating Iran and Hamas as though the distinction were a bureaucratic inconvenience rather than a basic fact.

Bombing schoolchildren does not liberate them. Bombing desalination plants does not free people. It starves them, and it breeds a generation for whom the word "America" will forever cause resentment and anger across the entire world.

What this war actually is becomes clearer the more one examines the timeline. Whenever new material surfaces connecting Trump to the Epstein files, fresh documents, flight logs, or witness testimony implicating powerful men in the sexual abuse and torture of children, the news cycle conveniently fills with explosions. The pattern has become so reliable that it scarcely requires elaboration. A political war, then, fought as distraction. A racist and religious war, in which an entire nation of 90 million people is reduced by its attackers to a single, dehumanised caricature.

Trump has described Iranians as among "the most evil people ever on earth," a statement of breathtaking historical ignorance and moral vacancy from a man who has spent years cultivating relationships with some of the most genuinely evil figures of modern times.

From the moment Operation Epic Fury was launched, Trump's messaging has oscillated between outright fabrication, dealmaking and the wholesale destruction of Iran. He has called on the IRGC to surrender in exchange for immunity. He has asked Iranian diplomats to switch sides. He has declared that the new Supreme Leader will "not last long" without American approval. These are not the utterances of a statesman prosecuting a considered strategy. They are the improvisations of a man who began a war without a plan to end it, and who is now making his endgame up as the west loses allies and the body count climbs.

OMG a reporter confronts Donald Trump about Iran bombed its own elementary school with an American Tomahawk missile ridiciliously 😂🤣😭 pic.twitter.com/k7ld66Xk9W

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 9, 2026

The war is not supported by the American people, and the Trump administration has done and said little to justify its belligerent actions. The varying and contradictory rationales from Trump's useful idiots have only offered the public simple incoherent jargon, and run contrary to available evidence.

New Zealand cannot afford to observe this catastrophe with the polite detachment of a small nation that prefers not to make a fuss. The economic consequences of a destabilised Middle East, surging oil prices, disrupted shipping lanes, and rattled global markets, land here with the same weight as anywhere. But beyond the economic, there is a moral obligation that this country has historically been willing to honour. We have a tradition of independent foreign policy that this moment demands we exercise again. But sadly our current spineless leadership is so vacuous as to appear like they're in support of Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war of annihilation.

Every missile that falls on a school, every village left without clean water, every use of illegal weapons, every civilian death that Trump waves away with a fresh denunciation of people he knows nothing about, each of these is a brick in the wall of resentment that will define how the world regards complicit Western nations for decades to come. History is not made only by those who pull triggers. It is also made by those who stay silent while the triggers are being pulled.

This is the dumbest kind of war: illegal, unjustified, racist, politically motivated, and conducted by a man who cannot name the school or desalination plant he has just ordered destroyed. New Zealand should oppose this war. Our politicians should say so, clearly and without any apology. 

United States Murders 160 Iranian School Girls

In the rubble of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, southern Iran, during the morning of 28 February, 2026, lay the bodies of more than 165 young school girls and their teachers. Their deaths, delivered by American and Israeli missiles, are not the unfortunate side-effect of conflict. They are the predictable outcome of a reckless, illegal war launched by the Trump regime with the full-throated support of the war-criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

The official line from Washington is familiar and repulsive. The strikes, we are told, were necessary to neutralise an Iranian nuclear threat. Yet the evidence for any such threat is entirely absent. International inspectors have found no diversion of nuclear material, no weaponisation programme, no credible signs that Tehran was racing toward a bomb. The claim is a fabrication, recycled from the same playbook that justified the catastrophe in Iraq. It serves only to dress up aggression in the language of self-defence.

 

Yesterday, Al Jazeera reported:

Iran holds mass funeral for girls, staff killed in US-Israel school attack

Thousands gather in Minab for a mass funeral, chanting against the US and Israel after the school bombing.

Iran held a mass funeral ceremony for 165 schoolgirls and staff killed on Saturday in what Iran has described as a United States-Israeli attack on a girls’ school in the southern city of Minab.

The Israeli military has claimed it was not aware of any Israeli or US attacks in that area. Throughout its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel has denied multiple deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians, only to later backtrack when irrefutable evidence emerged, then terming such attacks as “accidental”.

What makes the lie particularly grotesque is the precision with which the same forces operate when it suits them. The United States and Israel can target and murder senior Iranian leaders with clinical accuracy. Drones and missiles found their marks without hesitation. Yet when the target was a school full of seven to twelve-year-old girls attending morning classes, suddenly the technology faltered and the deaths were dismissed as an unfortunate accident. The contrast isn't a failure of intelligence; it is a failure of morality.

This latest outrage fits a now-familiar pattern in Donald Trump’s behaviour. Whenever fresh details surface about his longstanding connections to Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophile network, new documents, flight logs, or witness accounts, Trump reaches for the oldest trick in his book: start a war. Domestic scandal looms, public attention must be diverted, and what better way than to pose as the strongman defending civilisation against a manufactured enemy? It is cynical, it is predictable, and it is drenched in the blood of innocents.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT:
Iranian state media shows crowds mourning in Minab after a strike on a girls’ school killed 150 students. The UN called the attack ‘absolutely horrific’ and urged an investigation https://t.co/SIiplNUFLo pic.twitter.com/kf0JE1HavA

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 3, 2026

Netanyahu bears equal guilt. Dogged by his own political troubles and accusations of war crimes in Gaza, he has long agitated for confrontation with Iran. The two leaders feed off each other’s belligerence, each using the other to shore up domestic support while the bodies of children pile up. Their warmongering is not about security; it is about survival, political survival purchased at the price of the lives of other people’s children.

The economic consequences are already rippling outward and will reach New Zealand shores soon enough. Oil prices have surged on fears of disrupted supply routes. Global stock markets have plunged, erasing billions in value overnight. For an import-dependent economy like ours, the fallout is straightforward: higher fuel costs, rising inflation, squeezed household budgets, and the real risk of a broader slowdown. This is not abstract market volatility. It is the direct, measurable cost of two leaders choosing missiles over diplomacy, something that our current spineless Prime Minister should be condemning without hesitation.

The UN education agency @UNESCO says that the bombing of a primary school during the US and Israeli military attacks on #Iran on Saturday constitutes a grave violation of humanitarian law. https://t.co/fkXfJck0UM pic.twitter.com/tV98qaCMHS

— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) March 2, 2026

The world has seen this horror movie before, and the ending is never noble. Trump and Netanyahu have once again demonstrated that civilian lives, especially those of Muslim girls in a country they have unjustly demonised, count for nothing when weighed against personal political expediency. Their sanctimonious claims of precision and necessity collapse under the weight of dead children.
 

New Zealanders, like people of goodwill everywhere, should recognise this for what it is: naked imperialism dressed up as defence. The slaughter in Minab is not an accident of war. It is the logical result of warmongers who believe they can bomb their way out of trouble at home. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have blood on their hands that no amount of spin will wash away. The international community must name this outrage for what it is and refuse to let it pass without consequence.

National Has Failed New Zealand

The coalition government's incompetence is on full display as unemployment soars, costs increase and Kiwis pay the price, all under the unqualified watch of Nicola Willis and the bumbling leadership of Christopher Luxon.

It's been over two years since the National Party-led government slithered into power, promising a solution to the cost of living crisis. 

Remember that old chestnut from their campaign trail? Well, fast forward to 2026, and what we've got is more like a rock bottom fiasco with no solutions in sight.

Last week, RNZ reported:

 

Unemployment rate highest in a decade as it rises to 5.4%

Unemployment rose to its highest level in more than a decade, with more people chasing work than jobs created, while wage growth slowed further.

Stats NZ numbers showed the unemployment rate rising to 5.4 percent in the three months ended December, from 5.3 percent in the previous quarter. It was the highest level since March 2015.

"Over the quarter, we saw higher levels of engagement in the labour market as both employment and unemployment increased," macroeconomic spokesperson Jason Attewell said.

A total of 165,000 people were unemployed, a rise of 4000 on the previous quarter and 10,000 on a year ago.

The signs are clear to see: a prolonged downturn that's squeezing the life out of ordinary New Zealanders, skyrocketing unemployment, stubborn inflation creeping above the Reserve Bank's target, and a surge in homelessness that's as predictable as it is heartbreaking.

If this is what governing looks like, then Christopher Luxon and his crew are woefully out of their depth, unfit for a second term, and frankly, a danger to the nation's wellbeing.

Let's start with the economy, shall we? Since National took the helm, GDP has contracted repeatedly, with the latest figures showing a dismal 0.9% drop in the June 2025 quarter alone. Projections for 2026 aren't much brighter. The OECD forecasts a meagre 1.8% growth, barely enough to crawl out of the hole they've dug for ordinary New Zealander's.

The current government is taking no responsibility for their economic mismanagement. Unemployment has hit 5.4% in the December 2025 quarter, the highest in a decade, leaving 165,000 Kiwis without work. That's not just a statistic; it's families struggling, young people scarred by joblessness, and a generation burdened with an average $26,000 student debt while facing double the national unemployment rate at 12.5% for under-30s.

If you think that National keeping people poor is good for the nation, then be my guest...keep voting for a government that is hellbent on inhibiting our young citizens and our great countries future potential.

Inflation? It's at 3.1%, again edging above the RBNZ's 3% upper limit, fueled by government-administered hikes in fees, rates, and utilities (read taxes) up 10% in 2025 alone. What was it that National promised again?

Wage growth lags at a pitiful 2%, meaning real incomes are shrinking while costs soar. How convenient for a government that blames everything from the previous administration to global tariffs, but never their own slash-and-burn austerity that is driving down wages and forcing people overseas.

At the centre of this mess is Finance Minister Nicola Willis, a woman whose qualifications for the role seem as thin as the excuses she peddles. Economists should be lining up to call for her resignation, but once again the mainstream media is falling in line with the status-quo and not properly reporting.

Even the right wing is getting sick of the incompetence. Former Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas labeled her "not up to the job," while University of Auckland's Robert MacCulloch accused her of having "no plan" beyond slashing public services. A group of 20 prominent economists penned an open letter in October 2025, slamming her policies as short-sighted and contributory to the recession, but a toothless mainstream media hasn't put any pressure on this complete failure of a Minister.

Under Willis, borrowing has ballooned more than under her predecessor Grant Robertson, despite a lack of any actual economic disasters or worldwide crisis. What exactly is her excuse?

Public debt is on track to hit 100% of GDP in decades, and the bureaucracy she promised to shrink has barely budged. Her response? A flimsy denial: "I don't agree," as if this is enough of a response while New Zealand's economy goes down the drain.

This is the same minister who claimed she was building a "rock solid" economy, while critics, including those on the right side of politics like the Taxpayers' Union accused her of fiscal fudgery. Unqualified? Absolutely. Inept? Undeniably.

And then there's Prime Minister Christopher bloody Luxon, the former airline CEO who can't seem to land a coherent sentence let alone a credible vision for New Zealand.

His popularity has tanked amid economic woes, with hecklers at Waitangi Day 2026 shouting "treason" over Treaty rollbacks and indigenous rights erosion. If tanking New Zealand's economy without any reason isn't treason, what is?

It's the same old chestnut of divide and rule. There is no doubt that the National Party and their coalition partners have used Māori as a bogyman to try and gain support from the racists and white supremacists. But that tactic will hopefully do more damage to their brand in the long-term.

It's not just left-wingers like myself who've noticed. Critics such as political commentator Matthew Hooton have eviscerated the so-called Prime Minister, calling Luxon lacking in intelligence, depth, and connection with Kiwis, reduced to empty slogans while the coalition fractures.

Luxon's response to coalition infighting and an economy in decline is to regurgitate the same old and tired business speak that nobody understands. A complete failure to connect with everyday Kiwi battlers who are just trying to survive.

But how can he manage New Zealand out of recession when he can't even manage his own speech paralysis, incompetent economic Minister or inept government?

Under Luxon, we've seen no real plan for prosperity, just more pain for the vulnerable. The human cost is stark. Homelessness has doubled in Auckland, thanks to National's cuts to emergency housing grants...down 65.5% in applications approved. Funding slashed by $78 million, leaving thousands exposed to the gruelling prospect of living on the streets.

The Cost of living crisis? Groceries, rents, and utilities keep rising, with no relief in sight as the RBNZ holds rates steady into late 2026, with Luxon's big plan for energy security a sunset industry of LNG imports at taxpayers' expense. So much for cheaper power prices.

Meanwhile, poverty surges, with over 410,000 on welfare benefits. Imagine if resources were shared more equitably instead of persecuting vulnerable families by removing benefits just to provide landlords with $2.7 billion in freebies.

Imagine if the government was actually doing what we employ them to do like boost social housing targets, fund preventive homelessness programs such as expanding Housing First beyond its paltry 300 new spots, and invest in public services rather than tax cuts for the wealthy and already bloody sorted.

We could halve rough sleeping, stabilise rents, and lift wages through fair redistribution of the great wealth that New Zealand actually has, creating a society where quality of life improves for all, not just the sorted and elite.

But under National, that's a pipe dream. This government wasn't ready to govern in 2023, it isn't ready to govern now, let alone for another three year term. Kiwis deserve better than Nicola Willis' economic mismanagement and Chris Luxon's weak word salad.

McSkimming Cover-Up: Luxon and Mitchell’s Lies Unravel

The Jevon McSkimming scandal, where a former Deputy Police Commissioner stands accused of sexual offending, with a cover-up stench wafting from the highest echelons of the Police and Parliament, has exposed a government more interested in protecting its own than upholding justice.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority’s report, released on November 11, 2025, paints a damning picture: senior cops failed to act, and the rot extends all the way to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Police Minister Mark Mitchell. Yet, the National Party insists they only learned of the allegations recently. Let’s dissect this flimsy excuse and the media’s complicit silence in a scandal that should bring down the government.

First, the timeline reeks of inconsistency. The NZ Herald reveals that Luxon and Mitchell received anonymous emails detailing McSkimming’s alleged misconduct as early as December 2023. That’s nearly two years ago, yet they claim ignorance until the IPCA report dropped this month. How convenient!

On 12 Nov, the NZ Herald reported:

Jevon McSkimming emails: What happened after Mark Mitchell, Christopher Luxon received anonymous allegations?

Police Minister Mark Mitchell says it was “atrocious” for police headquarters to tell staff in his Beehive office not to inform him of emails arriving in his own parliamentary inbox containing allegations against Jevon McSkimming.

The level of gross incompetency required to not know about these allegation emails should inhibit Luxon and Mitchell from being in Parliament, let alone a part of a New Zealand Government. Their claims of ignorance, however, are stretched beyond credibility when evidence shows they were directly informed through their offices, raising serious questions about their accountability, honesty and leadership.

The IPCA uncovered that over 300 emails were dispatched by the complainant, Ms Z, between December 2023 and April 2024, with senior police allegedly managing to suppress the matter, despite 36 emails being directed to Mark Mitchell and 10 to Christopher Luxon. If police headquarters instructed Mitchell’s office to withhold these communications, which he himself described as “atrocious” why did he fail to demand answers or ensure that all those who failed in their duties are rightly dismissed?

Are we simply to accept that none of the staff in Mitchell’s office, the police staff seconded there or their commanding officers fulfilled their obligation to properly inform the Minister, as explicitly required by the no surprises legislation?

The excuse that standard email procedure was initially followed, which has now apparently been changed, doesn’t wash when the procedure itself reeks of a deliberate gag order to ensure Mitchell and Luxon could feign ignorance. This isn’t oversight; it’s a calculated cover-up, particularly when it comes to trying to protect the Prime Minister, who has largely escaped any proper questioning about the sordid matter.

And now, a bombshell: Mark Mitchell’s own sister was the staff member who responded to Ms Z’s allegation email in January 2024, emails that Mitchell had previously claimed were only seen by police staff members in his office, raising serious questions about nepotism and conflict of interest in this so-called “standard procedure” that looks more like an orchestrated coverup by the day.

On Friday, The Post reported:

Mark Mitchell’s electorate office replied to Jevon McSkimming accuser’s emails

But The Post can reveal that nearly half of those emails — 17 of the 36 — were sent not to his Beehive office but to Mitchell’s Whangaparāoa electorate office throughout January and February 2024.

The graphic messages, sent anonymously, came from Ms Z, a young, former police employee who had been in an extra-marital relationship with McSkimming.

At least one of those emails received a reply from Parliamentary Senior Member Support staffer Lisa Mitchell - the minister’s sister.

Luxon’s “incredibly disappointed” response also rings hollow when his office sat on the emails for months. If opposition leaders received similar tip-offs about a high ranking Police Officer's alleged criminality, and remained silent, there would be hell to pay. The contradiction of coverage and accountability is incredibly stark: the mainstream media, from TVNZ to the Herald, has barely grilled Luxon on this major scandal, preferring to let him sidestep the issue and choose his own talking points.

Contrast this with the relentless scrutiny of Labour MPs when they go for a bike ride or forget to log a meeting. Right-wing scandals get a free pass, while left-wing missteps are flogged to death until there's resignations. Where’s the exposé demanding Luxon and Mitchell's heads? Where's the in-depth analysis highlighting the lies they initially told when claiming ignorance? The silence is deafening, suggesting a media more aligned with power rather than the principles required to keep our politicians honest.

The National Party’s claim of ignorance crumbles under any scrutiny. Mitchell’s admission that police headquarters meddled with his inbox implies someone knew enough to orchestrate a blackout. But that excuse crumbles with the admission that his own sister was privy to the allegations made about McSkimming's sexual offending.

Why didn’t Mitchell and Luxon initiate an investigation after the emails landed, emails they obviously were informed about? The delay smacks of their complicity in the coverup, especially when the IPCA’s findings suggests an orchestrated attempt by Crown Law to try and keep the complainant silent.

The public deserves answers, not more platitudes or excuses, excuses about yet another coverup that only emboldens sexual deviants like Jevon McSkimming and Luxon's former press secretary, Michael Forbes.

This scandal isn’t just about McSkimming’s alleged crimes; it’s a litmus test for the National Party’s integrity. While families struggle to meet the cost of living, the government is preoccupied with trying to shield itself from any fallout over McSkimming's deviancy. They are using the same playbook as the Forbes scandal, ignorance so profound that it should preclude them from standing for office again.

But the main problem is a complete lack of any proper demand by mainstream media or a concerted effort by officials for accountability, coupled with the double standard in scandal coverage, which undermines democracy itself. Another unfortunate failure of the fourth estate to keep our right-wing politicians honest.

IPCA McSkimming Report Exposes another Police Cover-Up

In the dim corridors of power, where accountability is meant to be the bedrock of justice, a festering wound has been uncovered. The Independent Police Conduct Authority's (IPCA) 135-page report, released on 11 November 2025 after a protracted battle against suppression orders, lays bare the "significant failings" and "serious misconduct" at the highest echelons of the New Zealand Police.

This is no isolated lapse; it is the latest chapter in a grim saga of institutional protectionism that has shielded predators while revictimising the vulnerable. At its core lies the complainant, known only as Ms Z, whose desperate pleas for justice against a sexual predator and former Deputy Commissioner, Jevon McSkimming, were not just ignored but weaponised against her.

 

On Wednesday, 1 News reported:

Timeline: How the Jevon McSkimming scandal unfolded over nine years

A Facebook post in 2018. A LinkedIn one in 2023. 105 in 2024. Complaints against Jevon McSkimming surfaced for years but were never properly investigated. 1News traces the timeline of how police failed to act on allegations against one of their own, based on an explosive IPCA report.

The establishment's concerted effort to bury this scandal, through delayed investigations, manipulated protocols, and prosecutorial overreach, demands accountability. The fight to unearth the truth was itself a Herculean struggle. Ms Z's allegations, spanning years of emails and social media posts, documented sexual assaults, threats involving intimate recordings, and misuse of police resources to groom a junior employee, were largely ignored by authorities.

Suppression orders gagged the media and the IPCA, ostensibly to safeguard McSkimming's reputation as he vied for Police Commissioner. RNZ, NZME, and the IPCA opposed these in Wellington District Court, arguing public interest trumped the accused's career ambitions. Only on the report's release day did the veil lift, revealing how senior officers sought to narrow the IPCA probe's scope and timeline to spare McSkimming's promotion bid. This was no oversight; it was a deliberate cover-up, echoing the "culture of scepticism" Dame Margaret Bazley decried in her 2007 inquiry into police sexual misconduct.

Ms Z's ordeal perpetrated by a repeat offender exemplifies this rot. From 2018, she sent police hundreds of communications, emails to McSkimming's work address, anonymous posts, and 105 hotline reports, alleging rape, blackmail, and exploitation. But rather than probe these serious allegations, police dismissed her as a "fixated threat," charging her under the Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA) in May 2024.


On Thursday, The NZ Herald reported:

Jevon McSkimming case: Police defend decision to prosecute Ms Z over alleged abusive emails to the detective who arrested her

Senior police are defending the decision to prosecute the woman at the centre of the Jevon McSkimming scandal for emails she allegedly sent to the detective who arrested her and his wife.

This is despite Police Commissioner Richard Chambers apologising to the woman for how the previous police leadership mishandled her original sex allegations against the former deputy commissioner.

Earlier this week, the Herald revealed that instead of investigating whether the sex claims could be corroborated or not, the anonymous emails were used as evidence to prosecute her for a harassment campaign against McSkimming.

She was arrested and charged under the Harmful Digital Communications Act in May 2024, placed under restrictive bail conditions and silenced by wide-ranging suppression orders.

Crown Law even gave the victim an ultimatum. Discharge without conviction only if she recanted her claims against McSkimming, despite no investigation being undertaken into the alleged crimes at the time. This coercive bargain, tying absolution to false confession, reeks of abuse of process, undermining fair trial rights and natural justice. The charge was withdrawn in September 2025, not from ethical awakening, but because McSkimming balked at testifying.

However, another HDCA case still lingers against Ms Z for sending 10 emails to the detective in charge of her investigation, a vindictive pursuit that Police Commissioner Richard Chambers must halt forthwith. This isn't justice; it is revictimisation, a perversion of the law meant to shield the vulnerable.

Worse, the coverup extended to the Beehive. Police Minister Mark Mitchell's office fielded 36 such emails since December 2023; Prime Minister Christopher Luxon received 10 more in late 2023 and early 2024. Mitchell now claims that then-Commissioner Andrew Coster directed seconded police staff to forward these complaint emails to headquarters, discuss them with no one, including ministers. But is this true?

The IPCA report doesn't explicitly confirm such an instruction. The claim rests on a police memo reviewed by media and Mitchell's own statements. No secondee has publicly corroborated it. No verbatim directive has surfaced. Given the pattern of police secrecy, it may well be accurate, but without independent verification, we must treat the National Minister's claims with scepticism. Regardless, the emails were supposedly not properly escalated, and the No Surprises protocol was once again breached without consequence.

Mitchell claims ignorance until November 2024; Luxon cites "normal" triage. This strains credulity. With explicit subject lines such as "A complaint regarding McSkimming", we are meant to believe that no junior staffer, political advisor, or secondee felt obliged to flag them as important enough to bring to the Ministers attention? The No Surprises doctrine, enshrined in the Cabinet Manual, demands escalation for "matters of significance," especially scandals imperilling public trust. But here we have a government that ignores their directives, particularly when it is politically beneficial.

These emails were clearly not spam; they were screams for help from a systemically silenced young woman who had been abused by a man in a position of power the system was desperately trying to protect. The apparent protocol breach here, as in Mitchell's office, protected McSkimming, at the victim's expense, as well as those who should have acted in her best interests, namely those elected to represent the general public.

This pattern of secrecy is depressingly familiar. Recall the sexual deviant Michael Forbes, Luxon's former press secretary, whose 2024 filming of woman in private places and recording of prostitutes prompted police alerts to executives (including McSkimming) yet there was supposedly no ministerial knowledge until the media reported on details of his serious offending. Ministers feigned ignorance, police helped Forbes clean his devices and dithered on prosecution despite substantial evidence, mirroring the McSkimming inertia. Both cases reek of the old boys club and political insulation, where "no surprises" means keeping things hush hush so there's no inconvenient truths for the top echelon.

Former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, who failed to disclose McSkimming's affair during his 2023 vetting process was clearly incorrectly appointed. He improperly pressured a rushed "quasi-investigation" to clear promotion paths for McSkimming, and lobbied the IPCA for premature closure of their investigation. Now on leave from the Social Investment Agency, he must be dismissed outright, no cushy payouts for one who subverted justice and the police's integrity. Not to mention his deputy commissioner Tania Kura, who dismissed the claims about McSkimming's impropriety as mere office gossip. 

Deeper still, buried beneath layers of institutional denial and public outrage, lies a profoundly historic plague of police-perpetrated sexual violence that has scarred New Zealand's law enforcement for generations. The infamous Louise Nicholas saga stands as a harrowing centerpiece: in the 1980s, she endured repeated rapes at the hands of serving officers Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton, and Bob Schollum, crimes that were systematically covered up for decades through a web of complicity, intimidation, and fabricated alibis among colleagues. This long-suppressed scandal eventually erupted into the public eye, triggering the damning 2007 Bazley inquiry, which laid bare "systemic flaws" in police handling of complaints and a deeply entrenched "culture of scepticism" that routinely dismissed and discredited victims, prioritizing the protection of officers over justice.

More recently, the 2022 conviction of Whangārei officer Jamie Foster, who was jailed for six years and nine months for raping a vulnerable female colleague in a secluded Northland motel room, serves as a stark reminder of the persistent “bad apples” rotting within the New Zealand Police. The victim, a fellow constable seeking safety after a work event, endured a “gross breach of trust” (as Judge Greg Davis ruled), yet the case exposed institutional failures: delayed suspension, a flawed internal probe, and a defence plea for home detention that echoed past leniency toward officers. Despite IPCA oversight and reform pledges, such abuses continue to fester, underscoring how judicial reluctance and police self-protection still shield predators and silence victims.

After McSkimming was found to have been accessing child and bestiality pornography on his work computers, the NZ Police were forced to conduct a wider investigation, but have been silent on how many other officers have been found to be exploiting vulnerabilities in internal systems to view objectionable material. The discovery of McSkimming's sexual deviancy, which emerged during Operation Jefferson, a probe into Ms Z's allegations of his sexual misconduct, uncovered thousands of pornographic searches on his police-issued iPhone, including 68 images of child sexual exploitation and 812 of adult bestiality material, spanning at least five years.

This led to an internal review of internet access controls, which revealed systemic weaknesses: unmanaged devices, limited monitoring, and the potential for staff to bypass filters and "exploit vulnerabilities to access inappropriate content." Documents from the review, obtained by RNZ, highlighted "urgent need" for policy changes, yet as of November 2025, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers has not disclosed exactly how many other officers the audit has implicated or if it has resulted in further disciplinary actions beyond McSkimming's admission of guilt and resignation. The opacity raises troubling questions about the extent of a wider culture of impunity within the force, where senior leaders' devices go unscrutinised until scandal forces accountability, potentially shielding numerous Officers at the expense of public trust.

Speaking of public trust, we cannot ignore the case of disgraced ex-ACT chair Tim Jago, who evaded charges for 1990s assaults on teen boys until a 2024 conviction, specifically delayed by the courts in 2023 until after the election to avoid political fallout for David Seymour and the ACT Party. Police's initial inaction also suggested political deference over justice. These are not anomalies; they signal entrenched corruption within our justice system, and give rise to a culture of indifference to sexual assault and a blame the victim mentality. Is it any wonder that many victims simply don't come forward?

This type of institutional corruption ensures most sexual assault victims, disproportionately women and Māori, find no justice. Only 9% of sexual assault offences are reported; of those, a mere 31% reach prosecution, with 42% convicting, yielding an under 5% rate for overall imprisonment for sexual assault. In New Zealand, lifetime prevalence of being a rape victim hits 23% for adults, yet systemic bias, doubting "desperate" complainants like Ms Z, still perpetuates impunity, and fosters an increased prevalence of offending.

How many more scandals simmer unseen? The IPCA's call for an Inspector-General is a good first step, but insufficient to clear the deep rot within the force. A widespread investigation and purge is imperative: mandatory reporting, independent probes, and leadership clean-outs to remove the old boys club mentality are clearly required.

Ms Z's bravery, commended by survivors like Louise Nicholas, has forced somewhat of a reckoning. But until the establishment prioritises victims over vested interests within the police and government, trust in our so-called guardians will erode even further.