Cindy Baxter looks into the background and associations of the author of a stark attack on re-elected Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
There are two New Zealand members of the Atlas Network: The New Zealand Initiative and the NZ Taxpayers Union. The NZTU’s Jordan Williams is quite the hero at Atlas – in 2015 he was paid to travel to one of its trainings, and received a fellowship in 2018 for his work. The Atlas Network claims Williams’ campaign was instrumental in getting Ardern to dump the idea of a capital gains tax.
Both groups have been active during the 2020 election campaign. Day after day, the NZTU churned out press releases challenging the Greens’ Wealth Tax, Labour’s spending plans, and calling for New Zealand to look to Sweden’s model in its economic treatment of Covid-19.
The New Zealand media seems to unquestioningly take up proposals by both of these think tanks, but there’s been some pushback, such as the New Zealand Initiative’s proposals for schools that ranked New Zealand low on an international system that got widely panned by professionals here.