We previously reported on the appearance of three new anti-mandate unions aimed at doctors, nurses and teachers, exposing them as the creation of the director of an Australian Atlas Network linked think tank.
New reporting from Stuff has shown that the web sites used for these “fake unions” used testimonials from people that don’t exist on any NZ register of those professions.
Rachel Mangan is delighted with the service of the Nurses Professional Association of New Zealand (NPANZ) – at least, so said a testimonial on their website about “the best communication Iv [sic] had in the last nine years of my nursing career”.
Teacher Ken Lawson was similarly effusive about the Teachers’ Professional Association of New Zealand (TPANZ), saying “I highly recommend you join.”
So too was doctor Howard Granger, who said of the New Zealand Medical Professionals’ Society (NZMPS) : “These guys are the real deal.”
The only problem for the three fledgling unions, all with strong ties to the anti-vax movement, is that there’s no Rachel Mangan, Ken Lawson or Howard Granger on the publicly-accessible registers of teachers, nurses and doctors in New Zealand.
In fact, not one of the names listed on the “testimonials” page of the three unions’ websites shows up on those registers.
But Mangan, Lawson and Granger do appear on the equivalent registers in the Australian state of Queensland, and others show up on searches of other Australian states’ professional registers.
And, indeed, the same testimonials appear word for word on teaching, nursing and medical unions set up in Queensland by the Red Union network, which were denounced by the Australian Council of Trade Unions in 2021 as “fake unions”, and who’ve done much of the work of setting up TPANZ, NPANZ and MPSNZ.
These fake unions were set up to take advantage of anti-mandate sentiment and are described by Australian Council of Trade Unions secretary Sally McManus as:
fake unions run by LNP members and their associates set up to try and divide working people,” Ms McManus told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “This amounts to an LNP-sponsored anti-vaccination campaign which will directly and needlessly cause working people to contract a deadly virus.
And while their front people on both sides of the Tasman are prominent anti-mandate and anti-vaccination activists, their origins lie with the director of an Australian think tank linked to the Atlas Network. It should come as no surprise that every part of their operation is misleading, including their glowing testimonials.