The Long Read – PFIZERLEAK #3: Has the New Zealand Government been captured by Corporatocracy?

Global Regulatory Capture and the Political Economy of Kleptocracy: Theft by Design.

#PFIZERLEAK – Nadine Connock 30 July 2025

“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question is it right?
And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

In December 2021, after whistleblower Cybersecurity IT Researcher Ehden Biber leaked a series of findings on Twitter relating to discovered Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine contracts, I penned what would become the first of two articles: PFIZERLEAK: Exposing New Zealand’s Manufacturing of Mandated Compliance. Fast forward to 2025, and the Pfizer contract, secured under regulatory capture and indemnification over-reach, appears to have weaponized lawfare in order to uphold corporate impunity and litigation protections using two simple words: commercial sensitivity.

Global Regulatory Capture and Controlled Bureaucratic Incompetence.

#PFIZERLEAK. Nadine Connock December 2021.

For readers new to #Pfizerleak, a rewind to 2021. The first article was a deep dive into the synopsis of Biber’s leaked Pfizer contract findings and how they may have impacted New Zealand:

• Standardised formats for contracts with a slight variation for each country
• Advance Purchase Agreements (APA) opt out clause of only 5 days
• Non-Disclosure clause of ten years, Israel signed to 30 years
• Contracts are above any local law of the purchasing country or receiving State
• Even if another drug treatment for Covid-19 is found, the contract cannot be voided
• Vaccine Ingredients are redacted
• Contracts prohibit the testing, identification and serialization of vaccine batches
• Intellectual Property theft and Patent waivers
• State Assets as ‘future’ collateral and compensation and preventative seizure
• Out of Court private arbitration settlements governed by the International Chamber of Commerce
• Pfizer will not be held liable for ANY damages due to long-term effects
• Efficacy of the vaccine is not currently known

Non-disclosure clauses within the contracts related to advertisement; commercial sensitivity; donation; pricing; delivery delay; discussion of treatment; symptoms; reactions; technology; and devices. Only Pfizer was able to instruct who received doses in the receiving countries, and countries had to agree to all Pfizer instructions. Contract disputes were to be governed by the Laws of the State of New York, USA and attempted assignment of rights or delegation or subcontracting of duties without the required prior written consent of other Parties was to be void and ineffective. A number of leaked Pfizer contracts reported multiple unreasonable terms and tense conflicts that led to several countries rejecting the contract negotiations. Accused of “bullying” in relation to precautionary State-Owned asset seizure and unprecedented indemnification conditions, Latin American Governments spoke of the costs associated with requiring specialist lawyers to navigate complex new legislation that would need to be passed. 

Since writing the first article in 2021, further allegations have been published that shed more light on specifics of contractual indemnity clauses. In response to Pfizer’s proclamation, they had ‘no intention of interfering’ in diplomacy, ABC News journalists reported Pfizer as stating the following:

 In markets that do not have the legal or legislative protections that are available in the United States, we work with governments to find mutually agreeable solutions, including contractual indemnity clauses.

Those nations promised to “expressly and irrevocably waive any right of immunity which either it or its assets may have or acquire in the future”.

Public Citizen looked at contracts where governments had to:

indemnify, defend and hold harmless Pfizer from and against any and all suits, claims, actions, demands, damages, costs and expenses related to vaccine intellectual property.

ABC News reported on the concerns of Australia’s Health Minister, revealing the ‘department responded to the Pfizer negotiations by saying it was “not usual practice” to sign confidentiality agreements, and proposed to have an introductory or explanatory discussion instead’.

In an expose from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, STAT News reported a number of specifics of the contract indemnification, which in hindsight, illuminate the extent of Pfizer’s pre-meditated knowledge of what would need protection. Bearing in mind that these contract negotiations pre-dated Pfizer’s regulatory approval:

Officials from Argentina and another Latin American country, which cannot be named as it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Pfizer, said the company’s negotiators demanded more than the usual indemnity against civil claims filed by citizens who suffer serious adverse events after being inoculated.  Pfizer insisted governments cover the potential costs of civil cases brought as a result of Pfizer’s own acts of negligence, fraud, or malice. In Argentina and Brazil, Pfizer asked for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal costs.

Pfizer asked for an additional indemnity from civil cases, meaning that the company would not be held liable for rare adverse effects or for its own acts of negligence, fraud or malice. This includes those linked to company practices — say, if Pfizer sent the wrong vaccine or made errors during manufacturing.

Negotiations became fraught when Pfizer asked for these additional indemnities as well as create a guarantee fund with money deposited in a foreign bank account. The ministry refused these terms, describing the clauses as “abusive.”

The government had never awarded any kind of indemnity before and did not want to waive liability, but Pfizer said this was non-negotiable. Negotiations continued and eventually a deal was signed that included the additional indemnity provisions, but after a delay of three months.

Some liability protection is warranted, but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, failure to follow good manufacturing practices.

An official from a Latin American country that cannot be named due to non-disclosure, alluded to a shorter confidentiality period of only 5 years:

Five years in the future when these confidentiality agreements are over, you will learn what really happened in these negotiations.

Perhaps this sheds light on the multitude of legislative changes that continue to be rushed through New Zealand parliament since the Pfizer contract negotiations commenced; and that all appear to have correlations with the Pfizer contract indemnity. Is this a last ditch attempt by Pfizer at parliamentary sovereignty interference, in order to close every loophole and tidy up any litigation weakness before non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements expire, or litigation begins?

In the first article, I wrote how the New Zealand public were being held hostage by procedural democracy through the run around antics of the Official Information Act (OIA) and Ombudsman treadmill. At the time, official information requests were being thrown through the revolving doors of MBIE, Ministry of Health, MPI, EPA, The Treasury and the DPMC in a blatant abuse of these processes in order to evade scrutiny and accountability and uphold commercial sensitivity.

This has not changed since 2021. Delay tactics and excuses refusing OIA requests have gotten worse.

At the last check, there were 261 publicly recorded Official Information Act requests on the FYI.org.nz site with a search entry for ‘Pfizer Contract’. This does not account for any personal or private requests made directly to local MPs, community organisations, or members of parliament. There is no way of knowing how many New Zealand citizens have requested in any capacity, for support or clarification, regarding the release of the New Zealand Pfizer contract.

According to the Ombudsman’s website, in 2023, an “unprecedented public interest in how New Zealand procured our supply of COVID-19 vaccines” led to the Government assigning the Chief Ombudsman to step in and handle the situation by way of creating the recommendations and framework for a one-size-fits-all  ‘summary statement’. The Ministry of Health, Minister for COVID-19 Response, and Minister of Finance received multiple OIA requests for copies of the contract between the Government and Pfizer for the supply of the Covid-19 vaccine. These requests were refused on the grounds that release would unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the company, and that the contracts were subject to confidentiality obligations and release would therefore be likely to otherwise damage the public interest. Was ‘damage the public interest’ shorthand for damage vaccine confidence or damage Pfizer’s public relations?

After investigating a group of 17 complaints relating to the refusal decisions, the Chief Ombudsman formed the opinion that there were ‘good reasons’ under sections 9(2)(b)(ii), 9(2)(ba)(ii) and 9(2)(c) of the Official Information Act to refuse the requests for full, or redacted, copies of the contracts which relate to commercial sensitivities and protecting the public interest.

As per conflicts-of-business-as-usual, there is a total lack of independence in the creation of this OIA response summary. The Ombudsman recommended that the Ministry of Health work with officials from Pharmac, the Treasury, and Pfizer, to develop the summary statement.  The Ombudsman based his final opinion on comments and additional information he received from the Ministry of Health, the Minister of Finance, the Minister for COVID-19 Response, and Pfizer itself, about the impact the release of these agreements might have, and their own views on the release of summary information. The summary was to supposed to address the following:

• Confidentiality commitments
• Indemnities / exclusions from liability
• Warranties
• Safety and efficacy
• Donations to other nations due to supply chain manufacturing limitations
• Clauses relating to supply, and obligations to purchase
• Clarification on matters of concern raised by the requesters; such as whether any terms sought exclusivity, or to limit New Zealand’s ability to purchase other COVID-19 vaccines or treatments, or whether any terms had the effect of ‘assigning sovereign resources’ or taking state assets as collateral.
• The total cost, in aggregate, of the financial liabilities the Government assumed at the point of signing the contracts (these figures were estimated by Treasury in its reports to the Minister of Finance on its assessment of the indemnity requests).

The summary statement danced around all manner of non-disclosure limitations and comprised of the typical politicized word salad downplaying the seriousness of matters of public interest in favour of confidentiality:

Aggregation of financial liabilities assumed by the Government in terms of the Crown’s financial liabilities under COVID-19 indemnities, officials considered the total maximum aggregated liabilities to be unquantifiable. However, as the potential maximum exposure of each could exceed $10 million, the Minister of Finance presented a statement to the House of Representatives when each indemnity was granted under section 6 65ZD(3) of the Public Finance Act 1989. It is important to note that most of the Crown’s liability under the COVID-19 vaccine indemnities is covered by ACC under the Accident Compensation Scheme, as outlined above.

What is important to remember, are these statements uncovered back in 2020, from an OIA document titled ‘201001 Pfizer indemnity business case’:

Bell Gully has advised that the scope of the indemnity is in practice very close to the scope of ACC and…some risk remains that the indemnity goes beyond what the ACC scheme will cover.

Have there been any ADVERSE EVENTS in the Pfizer trials to date? This question is best answered by Pfizer BioNTech.

Alongside the lead agency MBIE, Ministry of Health, MedSafe, Pharmac and MFAT, DOIA request 2122-0912 advised MBIE negotiations for the Pfizer vaccine contract were comprised in part, by advice from legal firm Bell Gully – legal advisors to Pharmac – and Medicines New Zealand, of which Pfizer is a member.

To further the conflict-of-interest revolving door, during the Covid pandemic, according to his company profile, Simon Watt commercial barrister, formerly a Bell Gully partner for 22 years, supported MBIE in leading contract negotiations to secure New Zealand’s portfolio of Covid-19 vaccines, including the Pfizer contract. Watt has advised over 50 public sector entities including Crown entities; state-owned enterprises; Schedule 4A Public Finance Act companies; and other statutory entities on commercial, public law and regulatory matters.  He advised on the establishment and set-up phase of entities including Pharmac, and DHBs. Watt is now Deputy Chair of the Medical Council of New Zealand.

Why this conflict of interest was not immediately flagged or was not addressed by the Ombudsman speaks volumes. How could New Zealand sign off on an indemnity on the basis of legal advice from a consortium of conflict of interests, that referred safety diligence back to the responsibility of the Supplier.

The summary statement claims: unquantifiable liabilities for New Zealand; that ACC effectively covered ‘most of’ the responsibility of the indemnity; yet Bell Gully as advising lawyers warned of some risk it would not be enough; the Minister of Finance needed executive sign off; and indemnities provided to vaccine suppliers were concluded on the basis that there are a very limited range of circumstances where they would be triggered.

But here is the real kicker:

 The need to grant these indemnities partly arose from supplier-inability to secure insurance for the COVID-19 vaccines in the context of the broader pandemic and the speed at which the vaccine products were being developed

$$$ ** Pfizer could not get insurance. So, the world signed off on their indemnity ** $$$

Despite the Ombudsman disclosing that the contract allowed for disclosure of information, if required, in accordance with the Official Information Act 1982, he rejected the majority of disclosure requests and upheld non-disclosure justifications:

Although the Ministry appreciates the high degree of public interest in its vaccination programme and the Pfizer vaccine, this does not outweigh the need to protect the commercial sensitivity of the information in the agreement. Therefore, the information requested is withheld under the following sections of the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act):

• Section 9(2)(b)(ii) as its release would likely unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied the information.
• Section 9(2)(ba)(ii) to protect information that is subject to an obligation of confidence and making it available would likely damage the public interest.
• 9(2)(h) to maintain legal professional privilege.
• 9(2)(ba)(i) to protect information that is subject to an obligation of confidence and making it available would likely prejudice the supply of similar information, or information from the same source.

And there you have it, the matrix of commercial sensitivity: the supplier, the lawyers and the contract holders.

The summary statement concluded with an assertion that the New Zealand Pfizer contract did not assign sovereign resources or take state assets as collateral for the purchase of vaccines. The contract excluded any provision for state assets or resources to be used as security or collateral to meet the Government’s payment or indemnity obligations. However, there was no mention (denial or affirmation) of the requirement of any specialist legislation required. With institutionalized State communication, it is often more important to elucidate what is not being said.

One partially successful OIA in May 2025, was able to confirm which agencies held copies of the New Zealand Pfizer contract: The Ministry of Health, Pharmac, and The Treasury.

Although Pharmac now holds responsibility for negotiations with Pfizer and for their contracts, the original negotiator was the Ministry of Health. All three agencies hold a copy of the contract and are therefore jointly responsible for any request for information about the contract and for withholding the contract information under the Act.    

As part of this chain of enquiry, we now have the title of the New Zealand Pfizer contract:

According to the Government:

New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy. This means the Sovereign (who is also the British monarch) is New Zealand’s Head of State, acting on the advice of the New Zealand Government. The Sovereign is the source of all executive legal authority in New Zealand, and acts on the advice of the Government in all but the most exceptional circumstances. The Sovereign exercises its power in New Zealand through the Governor-General.

#PFIZERLEAK

“Pfizer accused of abuse of power. Purchasers must protect and defend Pfizer.

Pfizer becomes the legislator and judge that controls the contract”

PFIZERLEAK #2: Has the New Zealand Government  Attorney General Signed Over Our State Sovereignty?

Global Regulatory Capture and Controlled Bureaucratic Incompetence

#PFIZERLEAK – Nadine Connock December 2021.

In my previous article investigating New Zealand’s manufacturing of mandated compliance, I questioned how a supposedly ‘democratic’ nation would willingly approve Pfizer’s contractual agreements to diminish the role of Parliament and the Judiciary, allowing provision for execution of extreme executive powers under emergency public health orders. In January 2022, whistleblower Cybersecurity IT Researcher Ehden Biber, released further findings relating to Pfizer vaccine contract conditions signed by over 110 governments worldwide. A Waiver of Sovereign Immunity clause in the contracts provided a plausible answer as to how State Sovereignty was so easily diminished. It was from these findings that I wrote the second article PFIZERLEAK #2: Has the New Zealand Government Signed Over Our State Sovereignty?

Now that the New Zealand Government has refuted any contract clauses that may have provisions for State assets or resources as indemnity collateral, and the Pfizer contract itself is held with the Sovereign in Right of New Zealand, it is worth revisiting the second article to reassess how State Sovereignty may have been interfered with.

Do we believe the New Zealand contract indemnity does not have a version of a Waiver of Sovereign Immunity? Perhaps now, it is more important to go back to the complex legislation changes in the contracts that was required in order to obtain legal security, that could be masquerading as a Waiver of Sovereign Immunity.

Previously, Biber’s series of leaked findings from July 2021 prompted many citizens of these countries to question the unprecedented levels of contract indemnification and liability protection that governments had willingly signed off on. Biber’s leak became a critical piece of evidence detailing the testimony of a senior executive of Pfizer, Carlos Murillo. Murillo as ex Country Manager of Pfizer Brazil and then President of Pfizer Latin America, testified on the 13^th of May 2021 under oath, in front of a senate investigative committee. Biber revealed, one of the many key takeaways from this testimony, was Murillos’ confirmation that Pfizer contract conditions negotiated with Brazil, were comprised from a unilateral template that standardized negotiations. Standardization provided for international consistency in obtaining legal security: dispute settlement methods; competent jurisdiction; applicable law; confidentiality; and waivers of immunity and enforcement. Murillo testified that the standardization of contract conditions allowed Pfizer to negotiate with hundreds of countries in parallel, and advance at the pace they advanced, in order to roll out vaccine uptake.

As the first article covered, Latin American negotiations were not always smooth sailing. Brazil referenced Pfizer dictated these ‘leonine’ clauses to ensure incompatibility with Brazilian law, resulting in complex legal negotiations to alter Brazilian legislation in order to guarantee legal security for Pfizer. By then, in 2022, over 110 countries were facing constitutional interference. Under the Waiver of Sovereign Immunity, State-Owned Sovereign Assets negotiated as collateral and compensation were allegedly comprised of:

• Federal Bank Reserves
• Embassies
• Military bases
• Airlines
• Offshore Accounts and Holdings
• Water, Oil, Gas, Healthcare

As we have now seen with the capture of The Ombudsman, it was then, and is still now, almost impossible to ascertain whether New Zealand’s contractual negotiations with Pfizer were equally as fraught; or the degree to which bullying or incentivization occurred. With the trail of conflicts of interests now revealed, negotiations certainly appear duplicitous. However, due to unilateral standardization, we took back then, from various leaked contracts, that the Purchaser must fulfill all contractual obligations under the Agreement, including, without limitation, any such obligations that … survive expiration or termination of this Agreement.

I still believe in some capacity, New Zealand signed away its constitutional ability to uphold rule of law and this is why we continue to see continual amendments and additions to our state legislations.

#PfizerMandate: Pfizer Interfering in New Zealand State Sovereignty

Pfizer Judicial Reset

Pfizer contract clause 9.4 entitled ‘Waiver of Sovereign Immunity’ provided some answers as to the Warp speed parliamentary legislation changes of the time, that the New Zealand Government rushed through without adequate public mandate. According to Biber, by signing Clause 9.4, Governments had:

• expressly and irrevocably waived any right of immunity… including but not limited to immunity against service of process, immunity of jurisdiction or immunity against any judgment rendered by a court or tribunal, immunity against order to enforce the judgment, and immunity against precautionary seizure of any of its assets
• agreed not to assert any such immunity in any proceeding in connection with this Agreement
• expressly and irrevocably waived the application of any Law in any jurisdiction that may otherwise limit or cap its obligation to pay damages

Biber stated, that by signing a Waiver of Sovereign Immunity, Governments had “violated the sacred principle of power separation between the executive, legislative and judiciary branches” that constitute democratic sovereignty. Endangering democracy by allowing foreign imposition and corporate interference to capture State Sovereignty through unlawful contracts that indemnify against “any other theory” of law, which included criminal law.

Not only did this clause provide explanation for how the New Zealand’s Attorney General of the time, David Parker, was able to hold so many overlapping and conflicting portfolios and ministerial responsibility; but the relevance to why complex new emergency legislation, formulated under executive orders, appeared to have a series of procedural anomalies that questioned the constitutional validity of ministerial authority. Parker claimed incorrectly at the time, that there were no Bill of Rights (BORA) breaches or issues with downstream legislation, and not dissimilar to Jacinda Ardern’s “nothing left in the tank”, Parker bowed out of politics in 2025 stating he had “given it all”.

Fast forward to 2025, and the current Attorney-General, which we now know holds the responsibility for maintaining confidentiality of the Pfizer contract on behalf of The Sovereign in Right of New Zealand, has outdone David Parker’s ministerial overlaps and appointed herself across six ministerial portfolios. In a deep dive titled Has New Zealand’s Attorney-General got too much power? , as well as stating our Attorney-General now appoints new judges, Jodie Bruning warns of the following:

The Attorney-General has four primary areas of responsibility. These involve the roles of senior law officer of the Crown, principal legal adviser to the government, named plaintiff/defendant representing the Crown in litigation by or against the government, and liaison and link between the government and the judiciary.

The senior law officer stands in a special relationship with Parliament, the courts and the executive. As well as holding six Ministerial portfolios, the Attorney-General holds a unique position in Cabinet: as senior law officer, the Attorney occupies a special relationship to his or her cabinet colleagues. By convention, the Attorney must exercise independent and impartial judgment, without exception for party political considerations or policy goals. The Attorney’s law officer decisions are exempt from collective cabinet responsibility and cannot be overridden by Cabinet’s collective will.

During the Covid Response in New Zealand, without adequate public mandate, the Government of the time enacted three pieces of complex emergency legislation, formulated under executive orders, in order to accommodate preferential bilateral trade agreements due to vaccine negotiations and acquisition relating to the Pfizer Covid-19 purchase contract. Warp speed parliamentary legislation changes were rushed through under ‘emergency powers’ raising red flags. These three pieces of legislation were: the Covid-19 Response Bill; Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill; and Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Bill.

The Covid-19 Response Bill is now under scrutiny with a controversial Royal Commission of Inquiry, and the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill has passed its second reading and is looking like it will fulfil the social license required to regulate Artificial Intelligence, as Silicon Surveillance Capitalism heads towards the final frontier and New Zealand is the pilot project.

Pae Ora Healthy Futures Bill was passed in 2022, disestablishing District Health Boards and Health Promotion Agencies, transferring their assets into a singular, centralized amalgamation named ‘Health NZ’. A new Crown agent. Pharmac became a Crown Entity and the Board appointed by the Crown. Pharmac was given exemption from Part 2 of the Commerce Act 1986 meaning the following protections against corporate impunity no longer applied:

• Prohibition of activity that substantially lessens competition
• Equates to contain a cartel provision (resale price maintenance)
• Restrictive trade practices
• Taking advantage of market power

And now, in June 2025, the Government announced Pae Ora Healthy Futures Act 2022 will be up for a “suite of amendments”,  including:  legislating health targets to lock in accountability; removing audit requirements for the NZ Health Plan aligning with other Crown entity requirements; and repealing the Health Charter and Sector Principles to reduce red tape. Reading like a neoliberal capitalist takeover of state-owned-enterprise corporate privatisation, masquerading as public-private-partnership trickle-down legislation.

Pharmac now holds the responsibility of the New Zealand Pfizer contract after its transferal from the Ministry of Health. Despite the Government’s assurances that the Pfizer contract did not restrict or place limitations on future supplies and agreements, or contain clauses relating to supply obligations to purchase, Pharmac is now proposing to enter into a new supply agreement for the COVID-19 vaccine, with Pfizer holding Principal Supply Status. Supposedly following a “competitive procurement process” if this new proposal is approved, Pfizer’s brand of COVID-19 vaccine (Comirnaty) would be the principal funded brand of COVID-19 vaccine from 1 February 2026 to 30 September 2027. Pharmac would have the option to extend the Principal Supply Status period for two consecutive 12-month periods, to 30 September 2028 and 30 September 2029. And in an act nothing short of anti-competitive trade practice, Pharmac will gate-keep the “exceptional circumstances framework” that will be required in order to justify your personal choice not to use the Pfizer product:

We understand that Comirnaty may not be suitable for everyone. This proposal allows people to access a different brand if their prescriber considers Comirnaty to be clinically unsuitable for their health needs. We have received clinical advice from our Immunisation Advisory Committee that the following people may need a different brand to Comirnaty:

• people who have hypersensitivity to any components of the vaccine
• people who have experienced myocarditis or pericarditis (inflammation of the heart).

We are proposing to manage the funding of alternative brands via Pharmac’s Exceptional Circumstances framework. This would require an individual’s prescriber to provide information why the funded brand Comirnaty is not clinically appropriate.

No mention here of the “new safety information” and labelling requirements of Comirnaty on adverse reactions and myocarditis or pericarditis from the US FDA from April 2025. Thanks to the work of Sasha Latypova, her revelations that US regulators attempted to require Pfizer update their labels to include findings of myocardial injury following vaccination, but failed due to lawfare yet again:

The letter cites multiple long-term observational studies, including one showing 278 out of 331 patients experiencing post-vaccine cardiac symptoms. It warns that failure to comply places the companies in violation of federal law (FDCA section 505(o)(4)). If ignored, their products will be labeled “misbranded,” opening the door to a full market recall.

As per the usual pharmaceutical corruption, Covid vaccinations have been exempted with an authorized deviation from the current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and Pfizer’s lawyers were quick to point it out. Not only are the Pfizer shots exempt from the protections of the regulations, but they are not to be considered unapproved products; there are no required standards for quality-control in manufacturing; no inspections of manufacturing procedures; no prohibition on variability and adulteration; and no required compliance.

This is cartel behaviour.

Previously, I wrote about how the Pharmaceutical Industry has been dubbed the most corrupt industry on Earth  ever since the revelation that curing patients was not a sustainable business model. In 2020, Covid-19 had entered Brand Wars into a new domain of biomedical warfare by teaming up with BigTech, in the worst merger yet, to irrevocably alter the global social contract to a dystopian social license where human beings as patentable intellectual property, are the new tradable commodity. In 2025, we are now seeing Disaster Capitalism consolidate this further, via Key Performance Indicators of Health targets metrics legislated into ‘laws’ to ensure ‘measurability’ and ‘accountability’. At the time, in 2021, Oxfam Aotearoa, reported on figures from the Peoples Vaccine Alliance, that revealed the monopoly over profitable contracts those companies held, produced five new billionaires during the pandemic. With a combined net wealth of USD $35.1 billion, which worked out at over USD $1000 a second, USD $65,000 per minute or USD$93.5 million per day. Those figures have since skyrocketed and were miniscule in comparison to now. Attempts to expose the measures pharmaceutical companies were taking to accelerate global supply, maintain monopoly control, and protect their profits began to surface via a number of whistleblowers. So much so, that Pfizer and other known pharmaceutical corporations: Amgen, AstraZeneca, Merck and Genentech tried to block False Claims Act legislation enabling whistleblowers to make it easier to expose corporate fraud.

With the latest government proposal to designate Pfizer as Principal Supply Status, what still appears to have stayed relatively quiet and evaded New Zealand scrutiny is the criminal conviction histories of Pfizer and its subsidiary companies relating to corporate fraud, financial incentivisation and misconduct. At the time of the New Zealand Covid-19 vaccine acquisition in 2020, these criminal histories were well documented and public knowledge. As a result of a six-year investigation from 2009, into unethical corporate conduct initiated by whistleblower John Kopchinski, Pfizer settled under a record setting out-of-court deal. As a result of that criminal fine, Pfizer holds the record for paying the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history of US $2.3 Billion for false claims, off-label promotion, and negotiated bribery in the form of medical kickbacks/commission to compliant doctors. The criminal histories of these vaccine manufacturers are not for bed-time reading. Particularly, if you are still under the impression that these vaccines are effectively and adequately tested and safe because of the trusted science. Even more so, if you believed adverse reactions were only ‘rare’.

Research the histories of unsolicited Pharmaceutical mergers and takeovers, and Pfizer’s name appears in a case study of defensive strategies against hostile takeovers in an attempt to dominate market advantage and control:

The purpose of this Paper is to analyze the background and bitter fight to stay independent by Warner-Lambert against the Hostile Bid from Pfizer. Warner-Lambert used various defensive mechanisms to fend off Pfizer from (an unsolicited) Hostile Takeover. In spite of all these defensive strategies W-L were unsuccessful to prevent the Hostile takeover from Pfizer. Even though Pfizer was able to overturn the W-L defensive strategies in the court…they were unable to avoid the Breakup Fee which they had to pay. After resisting Pfizer ‘s hostile bid for nearly three months, W-L agreed on 8/2/2000 to be acquired by Pfizer for $92.5 billion

Even the very reputable Amnesty International managed to publish a report on the misleading claims of Pfizer Brand wars:

Pfizer’s claims to have “committed to sharing our scientific tools and insights”, starkly contrasts with the fact that the company has failed to join the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (CTAP), which was established to pool data and knowledge, and is not participating in the WHO’s mRNA vaccine Technology Transfer hub in South Africa, greatly delaying the development of production sites in Africa.

Pfizer actively lobbied against the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS Waiver which would temporarily lift intellectual property rights, allowing for expansion of the world’s manufacturing capacity of Covid-19 vaccines.

Despite claims that Pfizer’s development and manufacturing costs relating to the Covid-19 vaccine are entirely self-funded, the company has benefited from pre-orders from some of the world’s richest countries, as well as the large government support received by its German partner BioNTech.

As profit margins soared and the fight for vaccine manufacturing and supply rights ramped up, pharmaceutical brand wars saw an increase in false claims and hostile actions litigation. Vivo Capital LLC, a leading American healthcare investment firm with shares in Sinovac Biotech Ltd, Chinese manufacturer of the Sinovac-Coronovac (Covid-19) vaccine, instigated legal proceedings against Sinovac with lawsuits alleging illegal activity and reckless decision making. Sinovac refuted the claims, arguing the Vivo group was attempting to thwart shareholder dividend payouts and line their own pockets to protect their own profits. According to Sinovac, Vivo invested in Sinovac in 2018 after trying to devalue the company to privatize Sinovac below the market price, and experienced a number of hostile actions including the halt in 2019 of trading shares on the NASDAQ. Sinovac claim Vivo instigated the NASDAQ trading halt in order to suspend investments and shares throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Given the brand wars at the time, this reads more like a bait and switch move to block Sinovac than a genuine investment partnership. During Covid-19, in response to Chinese nationals abroad wishing to have a Chinese-made vaccine, the Chinese government approached the New Zealand government about the possibility of importing Sinovac via Medsafe approval under the Chinese government’s “Spring-Seedling Action” program. New Zealand was not advised to approve Sinovac.

Pfizer hit mainstream United Kingdom newspapers in 2024, after The Telegraph reported accusations by the UK’s pharmaceutical watchdog found breaches to the regulatory code of conduct which included misleading claims, promotion of an unlicensed medicine, and misuse of social media:

Similarly to New Zealand, in 2025, the UK now sees their government looking to address ‘issues’ of Watchdog regulation, promising reforms to scrap regulation under the guise of loosening constraints on economic growth.

This is regulator capture.

In 2025, Pfizer is slapped with yet another whistleblower lawsuit, and a $60 million dollar fine to settle false claims and violations of Anti-Kickback Statutes:

Pfizer, Inc., on behalf of its wholly owned subsidiary Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has paid almost $60 million dollars to settle claims that the pharmaceutical giant engaged in a kickback scheme from 2020 through 2022. Biohaven was charged with knowingly causing false claims to be submitted to Medicare and other health care programs, as well as doling out luxury gifts and money in exchange for health care providers prescribing their drug to patients.

A whistleblower lawsuit first brought the anti-kickback claims against the Pfizer subsidiary in a 2021 lawsuit. The allegations included high speaker pay-outs, allowing attendance at multiple speaker programs that provided no educational benefit and included attendance by friends and spouses of speakers, and expensive meals at high-end restaurants.

Events were held at entertainment venues or fancy restaurants that were not conducive to educational lectures and speakers were allegedly paid pursuant to the number of prescriptions they wrote rather than their expertise, and those payments were grossly underreported to the CMS Open Payment System.

U.S. Attorney General for the Western District of New York pointed out:

Patients deserve to know that their doctor is prescribing medications based on their doctor’s medical judgment, and not as a result of financial incentives from pharmaceutical companies.

Acting Attorney General, Brett A. Shumate explained:

Through this settlement and others, the government has demonstrated its commitment to ensuring that drug companies do not use kickbacks to influence physician prescribing.

If only our Attorney-General had done the same.

In total contrast, DOIA request 2021-1518 advised no due diligence was taken to investigate Pfizer’s management team or its ethics as a company when assessing vaccine acquisition for New Zealand. Instead, due diligence focused on assessing the performance and delivery of Pfizer’s vaccine. MBIE were satisfied that Pfizer had not been ‘reckless’ in the development of its vaccine, despite admitting ethical due diligence was not undertaken either. And even with the latest fraudulent claims and criminal activity, the New Zealand Government continues to force through Pfizer to retain Principal Supply Agent through to 2029. This is without a doubt, a clear case of regulator capture and corporatism.

How was it that a large, powerful international pharmaceutical corporation, with a criminal track record for corporate fraud; that could not secure insurance for its own product; was able to enter into vaccine acquisition contracts with over 110 Governments worldwide and not get vetted?

#PFIZERCAPTURE

Fast forward to 2025, there is currently six legislative amendments being pushed through parliament that have raised further red flags in relation to the Pfizer contract. They all involve some sort of regulatory regime role and reinforce protections favouring commercial and trade sensitivity. In no particular order:

• The Regulatory Standards Bill (Ministry for Regulation)
• Gene Technology Bill
• Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act)
• The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill
• Crimes Act 1961 No 43 (as at 05 April 2025), Public Act 105A Corrupt use of official information
• Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill

There are plenty of individual critiques of these amendments and new legislations, but as yet, no mainstream opponents appear to have analysed the suites of amendments and their correlations as a whole in relation to corporate capture. With the censorship and gag order of the Pfizer contract still in place, no one has yet considered a common thread amongst all of these changes, and the pharmaceutical industry has remained unnamed amongst the critiques.

Why is there so much legislative reform enforcing protections of commercial sensitivity and corporate interests?

With this in mind, what would be interesting to reconsider with hindsight, is whether the Covid-19 Vaccine Strategy Taskforce; specialist steering committee; or behavioural unit, was set up to oversee and essentially gate-keep Pfizer’s legal frameworks required to circumvent New Zealand local laws and legislation. This may also fall into the arena of the ‘post-marketing surveillance requirements’, Pfizer insisted upon, in order to uphold the contract indemnity.

What if all these legislative reforms are essentially Pfizer’s Waiver of Sovereign Immunity in disguise?

1. The Regulatory Standards Bill

What is most illuminating about this red flag, is the total lack of reference to the Pharmaceutical Industry by any of the big academic hitters, constitutional lawyers, and economists critiquing the Regulatory Standards Bill. From Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey; Dame Anne Salmond; Integrity Institute’s Bryce Edwards; Dr Carwyn Jones; Max Harris; Bill Rosenberg; Sir Geoffrey Palmer; Russell Norman; and an impressive list of submissions against the Regulatory Standards Bill, none have drawn any connections to the implications of Health NZ, Pharmac, Pharmaceutical Corporations or the Pfizer contract, despite naming public health implications for corporations that control tobacco; alcohol; fast food; and primary industry players creating environmental pollutants such as forestry and dairy.

Russell Norman said if passed

the bill would set a new and dangerous precedent: that the Crown compensate corporations whenever new laws affect the use or value of their “property”. If a future Government passed regulations to protect rivers, which resulted in a dairy corporation having to reduce its pollution and stocking rates, there would be an expectation that the dairy company would be compensated for its loss of property.

And because “property” isn’t defined, it could mean anything – land, infrastructure, permits, stock, even intellectual property. It flips the well-established principle that polluters should pay on its head.

Jane Kelsey also warned the scope of “property” in the bill is not defined. In doing so, she references: shares, companies, real property, Intellectual Property, Foreign Exchange, carbon credits, fisheries quotas, cryptocurrencies, social media platforms, licenses, mining permits, and capital itself.

Melanie Nelson quotes Kelsey as warning “the principle could be used to bolster Investor-State Dispute Settlement claims. The RSB could be cited in international arbitration, where claimants can argue that failure by the New Zealand Government to apply the regulatory takings principle was a breach of their legitimate expectations”.

Again, despite the parallel with the Pfizer contract indemnity requiring off-shore international arbitration and profit protection, there is no mention of pandemic vaccine contracts or their pharmaceuticals that have been stockpiled.

Most concerning is this inane comment from State apologist and advocate of the bill, Bryce Wilkinson who claims the bill “preserves parliament sovereignty”:

“Governments always have and always will take property and restrict individuals’ liberty, hopefully for good public interest reason”

A broad and vague definition of property sounds alarm bells. Ryan Ward from the University of Otago questions why New Zealand would wish to adopt a bill that could:

…encourage corporations to bring legal action against the government or other entities if policy regulates in a way that impacts their profits. Regulatory takings refer to property that is taken or impacted in some way by government regulation. What this means in practice is if govt regulation infringes on a corporations ability to use or dispose of its property as it wishes, the govt has to reimburse the corporation for loss of profits”… “regulatory chilling” where govts are hesitant to pass regulation in the public interest for fear of retaliation by corporations” …“the compensation is provided, to the extent practicable, by or on behalf of the persons who obtain the benefit of the taking or impairment

Corporations could sue for violation of terms of trade agreements.

Gordon Campbell, also concerned with regulatory chilling, draws similarities to a rehash of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) power grab:

One of the prime concerns with this Bill is that it seems to bestow on corporations (whose “property “has been taken or suffered “impairment” as a result of government law or regulation) the power to sue for compensation. Problem being, the word “property” in this context means not simply the taking of land or buildings, but “impairment” of profit expectations as well.

Alarmingly, this compensation would be sought first from the prime beneficiaries of the relevant laws or regulations. Inevitably, this possibility would have a chilling effect on the activities of, for example, iwi or environmental groups. Ultimately, the aggrieved “owner” could also sue the government for compensation.

In fact, the history of this gambit dates back even further than 2006. The attempt to provide foreign investors with the ability to sue, intimidate and restrict sovereign governments goes back at least as far as 1997. That was when a draft version of the Multilateral Agreement On Investment (MAI) being secretly negotiated by the OECD got leaked to the public.

The subsequent global protest movement ended in the defeat and withdrawal of the MAI. A few years later, the same toxic MAI provisions re-surfaced in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP, now CPTPP), and again, these provisions sparked widespread protests

In fact, the MAI gives foreign investors one important advantage. They will be able, under stated procedures, to sue governments for compensation if the government enacts policies that the foreign investor feels will affect it unfairly. Under almost all international treaties – the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) is the other exception – only states can sue each other. Under the MAI, however, multinationals can bring actions against governments. Even the threat of litigation from a multinational with deep pockets, as the British Columbia submission points out, may be enough to deter some governments or local bodies.

The Regulatory Standards Bill – which, on the face of it, would give investors the power to sue for compensation if their profit margins are affected when we exercise our right to make laws that primarily benefit us, and not them.

If New Zealand signs Pfizer as the Principal Supply Agent, and the Royal Commission of Inquiry or any other future judicial review impacts negatively upon that supply status, would the Sovereign in Right of New Zealand be at risk of regulatory takings?

Campbell is so far, the only critic to blatantly address the implications of confidentiality and non-disclosure, and the capture of the OIA and Ombudsman process:

“commercial sensitivity” seems to be a one-way street by which aggrieved investors who have the ear of the Regulations Ministry can hope to gain access to information relevant to their commercial activities.

Hopefully, the select committee hearings will clarify the terms of disclosure for the commercially valuable information that liable state agencies will -apparently – be legally required to hand over to Seymour’s Ministry.

The Public Health Communication Centre opposes the Regulatory Standards Bill due to the following reasons which are also implicated in the Pfizer contract:

The Bill’s principles exclude promoting public health or human wellbeing

By enforcing a narrow ‘private harm’ standard and rejecting the ‘public harm principle’, the Bill would limit the government’s ability to act in the public interest, limiting the scope for future public health protections.

‘Chilling effect’ (legislation, legal threats, or law suits designed to discourage or prevent governments) on public health measures

The ‘takings or impairment’ principle would enable commercial interests to seek public compensation if public health regulations reduce their profits, undermining measures like tobacco and alcohol controls or clean air laws.

Former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Constitutional Law Expert Melanie Nelson declare the Regulatory Standards Bill a “Constitutional Crisis in the Making”. Their concerns relate to the judicial interferences Biber and #Pfizerleak has been warning of:

Clause 24 creates a legal fiction that bypasses the courts

The Bill concentrates power in a “super-minister” while silencing other ministers

The risks to public safety and the environment from an ideologically tilted “property rights” regime

The Bill reflects a global trend toward authoritarian capitalism

Bill of Rights (BORA) implications

The executive cannot be the judge in its own court

Executive Dictatorship

Melanie Nelson’s warning of “the judicial danger of structural interference as a framework for control and blueprint for influence” is closely aligned with both Biber and Latypova’s highlighting Pfizer has contractualized a judicial reset:

It is a slow, silent architecture: a framework designed not for immediate confrontation, but for long-term influence — reshaping how laws are conceived, justified, and constrained. Its force lies not in judicial enforceability, but in its power to rewrite the unwritten rules of lawmaking — and the law itself — over time.

From an online forum, the author provides the following on Palmer and Nelson’s critique which also relate to Latypova’s and Biber’s warnings that Pfizer, through contractual judicial capture and implementation of illegal laws circumventing actual laws, has become the legislator and judge that controls the contract:

Nothing falls out the scope of this bill…They are entitled to review everything on the books. And yet they have no legal powers except to get it from all the executives. The statute itself and its critical elements are not law. I’ve never seen a statute like that. It’s basically unconstitutional to do that.

Palmer speaks about how this bill is set up in a way that he’s never seen before…”I have never seen a statute where you say, here are the most important parts that you are to measure regulation against, clause eight of the bill, and we are going to tell you that that is not legally enforceable. Well, why would you do that? You would either do it because you don’t want those standards to be scrutinized by the select committee looking at the bill, or you would do it because you don’t want the court to look at the bill and apply those standards. Well, that is a basically unconstitutional position.

For this reason, the three branches of government all have a share in what the law will be in the end because if the ministers can interpret the statutes in the event of a difference of opinion about them, then you’ve got the recipe for something like a dictatorship because if I want to be a dictator, all I want to be able to do is make the criminal law and then decide who’s guilty and execute the criminal law.

It’s clear that this bill has been set up in a way that is intentionally deceptive, cunning etc so its greatest risks can pass through undetected. And you can expect to see ACT supporters with two key arguments: “Show me where in the Bill it says that” and “It’s not binding!” It’s intentional.

Melanie Nelson further warns the “RSB if passed would cause a fundamental constitutional shift from the current legislation”, the bill would effectively weaponize “all existing legislation as well as future legislation and regulation by giving new powers to the Ministry of Regulation to oversee the Regulatory Management System”. Her comment that the bill’s use of regulation to broadly define Rule of law, taking of property, taxes, fees and levies, the role of the courts and law-making is “a bid to redefine how the regulatory state thinks, acts and justifies itself” is synonymous with Surveillance Capitalism that favours corporatism.  Legislation then becomes information gathering machinery – vis-a-viz Ministries; Agencies; Crown entities; Reserve Bank; and local government.

All these opponents and critics of the Regulatory Standards Bill have signaled the dangers and risks of regulatory capture; issues of transparency; state coercion; unconstitutionality; little formal engagement with large chunks of official advice redacted; and problematic terminology and definitions. How long before BigPharmaTech twist the definitions of Intellectual Property and argue their products; profits; property; or purchasers; are secured indirectly regardless, through these legislative protections that have been secured through their contract acceptances and their very comprehensive indemnification clauses.

As part of the Pfizer contract indemnification, how long has New Zealand contracted prioritising the profits of Pfizer? 

2. The Gene Technology Bill

In February 2021, as part of a ‘regulatory approval process’, Pfizer applied to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision-making committee to formally determine whether the Covid-19 vaccine would be considered a ‘new’ organism in New Zealand. The EPA and Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) voted no and approved their decision under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act (HSNO) 1996. The MPI then cleared the vaccine under the Biosecurity Act 1993. The committee’s determination was on the basis that the vaccine was unable to replicate itself, so it did not meet the definition of a new organism and was not subject to regulation as a GMO. However, human medicines are exempt from the hazardous substances part of the Act, so the EPA did not assess vaccine chemical properties. The EPA, as an acting regulatory body, relied upon information provided by the manufacturer and did not conduct a chemical analysis of a product. The determination also relied on the basis that no EPA approval was required for a ‘release’ into people’s arms as opposed to the environment.

No due diligence was undertaken, in favour of trusting the manufacturers supply sheets. Instead, the due diligence focused on assessing the performance and delivery of Pfizer’s vaccine. However, the Taskforce were satisfied that Pfizer had not been ‘reckless’ in the development of its vaccine, despite admitting ethical due diligence was not undertaken. The New Zealand Labour Government Vaccine Taskforce cited “timeliness” (not due diligence) as utmost priority. Expediency over ethical scrutiny must fall into the realms of ‘never again’.

Similarly to the Pfizer vaccine approval process itself, in a damning submission against the Gene Technology Bill, Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility (PSGR) warned the reforms were hijacking democracy:

MBIE officials did not follow accepted administrative law conventions

MBIE did not contract independent scientific researchers to undertake a methods-based, scientifically rigorous risk assessment to confirm that proposed regulatory changes would not present an undue risk to human or environmental health and safety

Questions pertaining to Regulator Risk Management advice and international approaches were declined on the basis of maintaining constitutional conventions to protect the confidentiality of advice

Bureaucrats will decide when a GMO is not a GMO

Many instances in the Gene Therapy Bill reveal industry influence and conflicts of interest designed to favour commercial interests.

Hon Judith Collins has tightly controlled the policy process to ensure legislation should exclusively benefit commercial interests 

MPI as the gene technology enforcement agency, could directly financially benefit from a deregulated environment. A ‘world first’ multimillion dollar joint venture, titled AgriZeroNZ, was signed between the Ministry of Primary Industries and Fonterra, ANZCO Foods, Rabobank, Ravensdown, Silver Fern Farms, Synlait, which would likely involve biotechnology

‘The ‘mandatory medical authorisation’ [Subpart 5] was inserted into the Bill with no apparent prior discussion nor consultation. Medical therapy risk assessment for the safety and efficacy of drugs has been set aside without explanation. No policy explanation has been provided and the Regulator will lack the resources and expertise sufficient to satisfy obligations to protect health and safety

The Bill has written out risk and hazard, excluded the precautionary principle, failed to incorporate ethics considerations, avoidance of liability and the tying of regulatory hands to prevent regulators looking at information other than other regulators

Pre-consent communications, in particular, those that relate to a licence or determination application between the gene technology regulator and the agency, are to be exempt from the Official Information Act

These reforms are more than a democratic hijack. This is corporate capture covering its tracks. With HSNO as the framework for the Covid-19 MPI EPA approval process, it is rather convenient for Pfizer and litigation safeguards that the government is now re-writing the Gene Technology Bill. Replacing this bill, will replace the HSNO Act.

Dr. Guy Hatchard also warns:

MPs appear largely misinformed on the impacts of outsourcing experimental biotechnology regulation to overseas regulatory bodies; removal of the precautionary principle; and the immunity from civil and criminal liability clauses.

If we are to consider liability implications for the Crown, and more-so the minimization of any indemnity issues, the HSNO Act and GMO Bill need to be watertight to benefit commercial outcomes required in the gene tech regulatory and approval processes to uphold Pfizer as harmless. Particularly, if Pfizer start claiming damages due to regulatory takings; impairment principle; or even regulatory chilling. By excluding regulator communications and approval negotiations from the OIA, and regulating through neoliberal deregulation, this is total silencing and by way of definition when the State will not impart information – similar to Palmer’s definition of dictatorship in the Regulatory Standards Bill – New Zealand becomes a rogue state.

3. Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) Reforms

If it wasn’t for the seriousness of criminal enterprise at play, this reform would actually be farcical. And it sure made me laugh out loud when I first read it. The Health and Safety at Work Act, which under the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Michael Wood, and throughout Covid-19, was the same legislation that the Minister used to enact the monumental responsibility to task Worksafe and MBIE with developing the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 and Public Health Response (vaccinations) Order 2021; leading to vaccine mandates; monitoring and compliance frameworks for the enforcement of Covid-19 legislation; the function and powers of enforcement officers to address non-compliance; and overall Workplace Health and Safety as Worksafe – was to now be demoted of all its agency regulator power, and executive overreach, and become reduced to a ‘dob-in a road cone’ hotline.

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden announced:

As part of a broader suite of health and safety reforms, the Government has agreed to a range of changes that will significantly refocus WorkSafe from an enforcement agency to one that engages early to support businesses and individuals to manage their critical risks,

During my public consultation, I heard many concerns from a wide range of Kiwi businesses and workers about WorkSafe’s inconsistency, culture and lack of guidance. It was a constant theme on the roadshow from all parts of the country.

I have listened to these concerns and today I am sharpening the focus of WorkSafe to change the culture of the agency. For too long, businesses and employers have asked for more guidance and help from WorkSafe on how to comply with health and safety legislation, only to be told it’s not WorkSafe’s job.

A culture where the regulator is feared for its punitive actions rather than appreciated for its ability to provide clear and consistent guidance is not conducive to positive outcomes in the workplace.

Worksafe will transition to an ‘advisory’ agency due to issues of ‘over-compliance’ and the Minister hails these reforms as celebratory back-patting and the Ministry for Workplace Relations and Safety, quietly sweeps its pretense of workplace ‘culture’ failure, and its chequered history of the previous Minister under a trail of road cones.

Thanks to Wikipedia, we now know more of the Minister’s chequered history:

Michael Wood lost his ministerial roles in June 2023 due to a failure to meet an obligation to declare financial interests that were in conflict with his ministerial responsibilities. Wood was suspended from his transport ministerial portfolio after failing to declare that he had shares in Auckland Airport, Chorus, Spark, and National Australia Bank (NAB), and then falsely advising the Cabinet Office that the shares had been divested. 

An inquiry into whether Wood had complied with obligations to declare his interests was critical of Wood for having failed to manage his conflicts of interests as a minister, including “a lack of awareness of the need to correct errors and omissions” and to do so in a timely way, and for tarnishing the reputation of Parliament. Despite being referred to the Parliament’s Privileges Committee for these failures, the committee ruled his actions did not amount to contempt. The committee simply recommended that he ‘apologise’ to Parliament for failing to declare his shareholdings and Wood was granted the use of the honorific prefix The Honourable for life, in recognition of his term as a member of the Executive Council.

No warp speed expediency or timeliness adopted by the Ministry here, and no lawful policy making either:

The Judicial Review of Yardley vs Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety which was under suppression order until 25 February 2022:

 the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Michael Wood explains in his affidavit that in October 2021 Cabinet made decisions to amend the Act to allow vaccine mandates for other reasons, such as “preventing services from being unable to function because large numbers of people are away sick for long periods”. He explains that he lodged a Cabinet paper that was considered by Cabinet on 26 October 2021 seeking legislative amendments to authorise such vaccine mandates. That paper recorded that there was public health advice that additional vaccine or testing mandates were not required. I understand this to be advice that such mandates were not considered necessary to contribute to addressing the risk of the outbreak or spread of COVID-19. The Minister explained, however, that there were justifications for mandates. The Police were given as an example of key public services where a vaccine mandate might be justified. Cabinet agreed with these recommendations, and proposed amendments were then introduced to the House of Representatives and the COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Act 2021 was duly passed in November 2021. The new s 11AB allows the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety to make orders specifying work that must only be undertaken by a worker who is vaccinated.

Law firm Anderson Lloyd noted the following from the judicial review that overturned the Government NZDF and Police vaccine mandate and ruled it was not a justified limitation of the BORA and was therefore unlawful:

In reading the Decision of Yardley v Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, there was a fundamental disconnect between the Hon Michael Woods’ affidavit evidence and the stated purpose of the Order.  Minister Woods’ evidence was that it was in the public interest to maintain the operational capacity of Police and Defence Force workforces so they can continue to play a critical role in our Covid-19 response and remain prepared to respond to a wide variety of incidents and emergencies across New Zealand and internationally.

Justice Cooke issued a cautionary note at the conclusion of his Judgement. He made it clear that the Order was not implemented for the purposes of limiting the spread of Covid-19. In fact, health advice provided to the Government was that further mandates were not required to restrict the spread of Covid-19.

In an article titled New Zealand government attacks workplace health and safety law, the author John Braddock raises similar concerns to the critics of the Regulatory Standards Bill:

Van Velden’s claim that employers operate in “fear” of regulations is an absurd lie, used to justify the eradication of basic protections. The government is engaged in the systematic dismantling of whatever remains of workers’ rights to enable the domination of employer prerogatives, production speedups and the removal of all impediments to profit making.

And very convenient for the State to adopt an at-arms-length approach to accountability.

4. The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill

This bill is as chaotic a debacle as it is disturbing. Not only is it contradictory in what it defines a ‘foreign power’; ‘foreign interest’; or ‘New Zealand interests’, but its definitive terminology is outright ridiculous. The terminology ‘enemy of the State’ is a hat-tip language to the Military-Industrial-Complex and our bilateral trade alliances of the US Department of Defense. Given that there are now many foreign corporations as state actors (such as Pfizer) that have more power than some nation-states, and this has not been addressed in the definitions constituting foreign power, this is disastrous on legitimate free association of advocacy and activism, and the right to protest.

RNZ reported these counter-interference reforms, designed to curb ‘foreign interference’ targeting New Zealand, were introduced as the result of the New Zealand Special Intelligence Service (NZSIS) providing a threat assessment on ‘foreign interference’ threatening communities, academia, the media, businesses and government. The Ministry of Justice, in some knee-jerk-Five-Eyes lapdog obedience, then proceeded to draft up recommendations for legislating new offences to “criminalise covert, deceptive, corruptive or coercive activities on behalf of a foreign power to intentionally or recklessly harm the country”.

When looking at the history of corporate lobbying; interference; and capture of Whistleblower Protection Legislation and Regulator Watchdogs to mitigate dissent, you can see exactly where this Bill is heading:

The following is taken from the submission by Council of Civil Liberties (CCL)

This bill creates a new offence where a person:

• knows, or ought to know, they are acting for a foreign power, and
• acts in a covert, deceptive, coercive, or corruptive manner, and
• intends to, or is aware that they are likely to, harm specific New Zealand interests or are reckless as to whether their conduct harms New Zealand interests.

As part of these new offences, new terminology is also required:

• the definition of “foreign power”;
• the definition of acting “for or on behalf of”;
• the phrase “protected New Zealand interest”;
• the phrase “improper conduct”

There are three components to “improper conduct”, and use of any of them means the test is met. To be “improper”, conduct can be any of the following:

• covert;
• deceptive; or
• coercive

The element of the test for “improper conduct” that covers actions having a “deceptive nature” includes:

• misrepresenting or obfuscating a person’s purpose in acting or not acting
• failing to disclose the consequences of acting or not acting in accordance with any representation
• making a false representation
• omitting any material particular in dealing with another person.

This can include having a confidential meeting, or concealing a person’s actions or identity, or collecting or sharing information about a person without that person’s knowledge or consent. Paragraph 142 of the RIS specifically states that using encrypted communications would meet the ‘covert’ element of the offence.

The CCL submission warns of the chill effect on legitimate protest action and the weaponization of State over-reach:

the bill creates new offences in the Crimes Act, and makes amendments to the Search and Surveillance Act and the Summary Offences Act. Unfortunately, the new offences are a significant over-reach by the state, that are wide open to abuse by governments that would find it politically convenient to suppress our rights to advocate, organise and peacefully protest. We do not have to look far into New Zealand’s history to find examples of protests and campaigns being condemned by governments or state agencies as acts of foreign interference.

Government is essentially proposing a law that will allow it to arbitrarily label people as enemies of the state, and imprison them for up to 10 years based on their advocacy of particular views and the government’s beliefs about their motivations. Being able to imprison people for 7 years based on ‘you ought to have known’. 

This bill would mean that a person arrested for an offence at such a protest is not facing a maximum of 3 months imprisonment, but 10 years if intentionally benefitting a foreign power, and 7 years if they were ‘reckless’ about whether it was ‘likely’ to provide a benefit to a foreign power.

This would turn the policing of protests into an inherently political activity, as opposed to a public order and safety issue. What are currently minor offences could be ‘laundered’ into serious criminal charges, based on whether the police view the people involved as being effectively ‘enemies of the state’

Two of the definitions of “relevant benefit” – advancing intelligence activities and supporting coercive influence — seem well-targeted at those harms. The problem is the middle definition: enhancing “the political, economic, or military capability or influence of a foreign power”.

Newsroom reported on the ‘safeguards’ that are hardly a deterrent for criminal enterprise when comparing the scale of punishments:

the definition of “improper conduct” would be amended, with an exclusion for the lawful protection of commercially sensitive information, journalists’ sources and legally privileged communications.

“improper conduct” for or on behalf of a foreign power to harm core New Zealand interests is set to become a new offence with a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment.

A separate crime, committing an imprisonable offence to benefit a foreign power, would come with a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment

Any “person who owes allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand” could be charged for assisting others in or outside the country with espionage, treason and mutiny.

 “reckless conduct” carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment.

The submissions from critics and opponents of this bill follow a similar pattern and theme of the Regulatory Standards Bill, citing disturbing and alarming breaches of Bill of Rights Act; an assault on democracy; executive secrecy; redaction; government over-reach; broad and vague terminology; and the Attorney-General’s hand at signing it off without safeguarding politically motivated enforcement.

According to Council for Civil Liberties:

this bill was sent to be assessed for its consistency with the rights affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The assessment was signed off by the Attorney-General. Because the Attorney General and Crown Law have failed to even consider them, it means the Attorney-General’s conclusion that “that the Bill does not appear to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act” cannot be sustained. The Council does not believe that the Attorney-General has properly carried out her duties under BORA, or under Parliament’s Standing Orders. Council has concerns about the bill being captured by executive secrecy non-publication is one of those set out in paragraph 25.1 of the Circular: “a decision might be made to not publish, or only publish part of the material, for matters which relate to national security, have international implications, and/or commercial, trade, or travel sensitivities”.

We should not have to rely on politicians to defend our human rights and civil liberties – the bills brought before Parliament should not infringe them in the first place.

And yet again, the repetition of reinforcing protection of corporate interest over BORA reigns supreme.

Of the submissions received, 31 Trade Unions under the CTU warned of legitimate civil society activities becoming under threat of criminal sanctions. The Socialist Equality Group condemns the legislating of a chill effect on protest and democratic free association with the bill as a State enforcement agent:

Acting against a “protected New Zealand interest” includes undermining the country’s “security,” its “economic well-being” and “international relations,” as well as interfering in the conduct of elections and jeopardising the safety and rights of the population. The law could be used to criminalise strikes and protests, including anti-war rallies, which might be deemed harmful to New Zealand’s international alliances, “national security” and the economy, i.e. corporate profits.

In prosecuting someone for “foreign interference,” the state would not be required to prove any actual connection to a foreign state. The bill says that a person commits an offence if “the person knows, or ought to know, that they are engaging in the [improper] conduct for or on behalf of a foreign power”

Nor would the state have to prove any intent to harm a “protected New Zealand interest.” A person can commit an offence if they are “reckless as to whether [their conduct] is likely to compromise a protected New Zealand interest.”

New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties points out the disparity in legislation that protects corporatism:

The definition of a “protected New Zealand interest” reflects years of work by intelligence agencies to broaden the definition of ‘national security’. It captures state interests, such as “international relations”, “security and defence” and “economic well-being”. This would mean that offending a foreign government or powerful industries and lobby groups, or advocating against increased defence spending, would also be caught by the offence.

It does not cover conduct directed by a single individual or company not connected to the government of a foreign country, but who is seeking to advance that country’s interests at the expense of New Zealand’s interests. Based on their past conduct, it clear that billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg or the companies they control could seek to interfere by corrupt means or stealth to further some other country’s interests, whether this is through covert surveillance of a select committee chair, or manipulation of an information sharing platform through its algorithms or the creation of bot accounts advocating for particular actions.

This is why the failure of Crown Law and the Attorney-General to consider the new offences in their BORA vet of the bill are so problematic. It should not be up to the courts to interpret these offences through the lens of the rights it is meant to protect. The law should be clear, and it should clearly permit people to protest without facing 7 years in prison because someone thinks the person was ‘reckless’ in not understanding the protest might be seen as benefitting a foreign power

Governments that can outlaw or chill protest on the basis of disliking the aims of the protestors are not democratic but authoritarian. At a time when democracy is being challenged in so many countries, it is shocking that New Zealand’s government is not defending democracy but seeking to shackle it.

The New Zealand government shackled protest action throughout Covid-19. Obtained via OIA, during the 2022 parliament protest and occupation labelled anti-vaccine and anti-mandate, Former Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, in an attempt to deter protestors as a de-escalation strategy, deployed military torture techniques utilized in Guantanamo Bay and Bagram, Afghanistan against advice from the New Zealand Police. Throughout the ‘occupation’, Parliament had made a unanimous agreement to prevent any dialogue with the outside protestors, and as a result, NZ First leader Winston Peters was issued with a trespass notice by Mallard, which prohibited entry to parliament grounds for two years, as a result of Peter’s eventually visiting the protestors. Mallard issued but withdrew trespass orders, which included former ACT leader Rodney Hide, former Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox and NZ First List MP Darroch Ball. Peter’s took the matter to the High Court. Justice Gwyn declared the Speaker’s exercise of power was unreasonable and irrational and that the trespass was an unjustified limitation on Peters’ right to freedom of movement under the Bill of Rights. Another example of where supposed assessment of BORA rights and infringements had been undertaken by Parliament and assessed as not having any implications but were ruled wrong. Parliament then issued the following ‘apology’ on the 25^th of August 2022.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives has apologised for a trespass notice issued to former Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. The Speaker has also retracted and apologised for comments which related to Mr Peters in a 4 May press release. The Speaker has admitted to the High Court at Wellington that the exercise of power under section 26(2) of the Parliamentary Service Act 2000 to issue Mr Peters a warning under section 4 of the Trespass Act 1980 was unreasonable and irrational.

He has further admitted to the High Court that issuing the warning was an unjustified limitation on Mr Peters’ right to freedom of movement under section 18 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and that Mr Peters had not acted in any way which justified him being issued with the warning.

The court ruling came just a few hours before Mallard was due to make his farewell valedictory speech to Parliament. After 35 years as an MP, Mallard packed his bags and headed off to Ireland as New Zealand’s second resident Ambassador. His final words to describe his time in New Zealand: “mostly enjoyable while admitting he has made more than his fair share of mistakes in politics”.

As of July 2025, Mallard is now facing another lawsuit in the High Court due to the tactics he used on protestors at the Parliament in 2022. As reported by RNZ:

According to the current Speaker of the House, any legal action against Mallard would be carried out as Speaker of the House and not for any case against him personally. University of Otago law professor Andrew Geddis said Mallard in the role of Speaker of the House had the “basic right of a property owner to exercise legal force over people on their land…however, the exercise of “reasonable force” had to be balanced against the right to protest… (and) a key focus would likely be whether the force was “reasonable” with a likely focus on the advice Mallard received at the time.

Surely Pfizer would want to prosecute any ‘protest, advocacy and industrial action’ which opposed their company or their product or property; and deter any future nation-wide protests like those New Zealand witnessed in 2022. Given the contract indemnification obligated the government to uphold and defend the vaccine, including marketing, advertising and commercialization of the product as harmless, it is no wonder the government and its media affiliates waged a war on, and weaponized the depiction of the protest and protestors as a “river of filth”. And engaged propaganda to downplay the deep divisions and trauma that New Zealand endured as a result of the unlawful vaccine mandate.

The red flag that first drew my attention to the Foreign Interference Bill, was actually the following redundant comment from Security expert Dr John Battersby, a senior fellow at Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, undermining New Zealander’s intelligence:

Battersby said he did not imagine the bill would be too controversial.

“New Zealanders are well known for their lack of interest in national security issues.”

Plenty of New Zealanders are in fact, most concerned with national security issues, and made this apparent with a number of OIAs and letters to MPs relating to social security issues during the Covid-19 response. An overlooked aspect of indemnification overreach was the social license operatives deployed to fulfil vaccine uptake requirements. No State Security assurances were employed with the digital technologies and frameworks associated with the Covid Immunisation Register, Digital Certificates, Vaccine Passports and MyVaccine Apps.

These mechanisms became at risk from sophisticated and complex cybersurveillance attacks, compromising identity protection and refugee or political persecution protection. Despite concurrent international media announcements regarding the increasing abuse of State-sponsored spyware and disrupted communications, New Zealand government officials pushed through Covid Framework responses, leaving New Zealand citizens vulnerable to identity theft and certain members of communities at risk of being tracked down, traced and targeted. The “social committee” that implemented the haphazard digital framework, resulted in the reporting of 70,000 issues with the New Zealand Vaccine Passport and 4,000 anomalies. Data breaches were reported at varying participants such as pharmacies, NGOs and community providers. This clearly did not indicate confidence or capability in data protection or security, let alone bribery or fraud. At the time, there were reports of vulnerability in the refugee and migrant communities from online abuse, targeted racism, targeted radicalization attempts and threats to their safety through social media accounts and related to phone message platforms such as messenger and Facebook. There was a total failure of adequate and sufficient consultation with language translators relating to informed consent and digital safety associated with the Red Cross, MBIE or Human Rights Commission that would have satisfied the requirements of New Zealand’s participation in receiving refugee and asylum seekers under the UNHCR, 1966 ICCPR and our own Te Tiriti relating to their rights of safety and protection. There was zero concern for foreign interference or influence in respect to rights of privacy.

As part of recommendations to enhance the bill, the suggestion was made to Government to introduce a foreign agent register, to add to transparency and accountability for foreign influence efforts. That Australia had introduced such a register for foreign political agents to record their lobbying activities.

This is not a deterrence for foreign interference, this is Surveillance Capitalism.

The last two reforms require very little explanation:

5. Crimes Act 1961 No 43 (as at 05 April 2025), Public Act 105A Corrupt use of official information

Every official is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who, whether within New Zealand or elsewhere, corruptly uses or discloses any information, acquired by him or her in his or her official capacity, to obtain, directly or indirectly, an advantage or a pecuniary gain for himself or herself or any other person

6. Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill

This bill would:

• ​transfer regulatory responsibility for credit contracts and consumer finance from the Commerce Commission to the Financial Markets Authority
• remove features of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003 (such as the due diligence duty for directors and senior managers) that are unnecessary because of, or do not fit as well with, the new regulatory approach
• limit the situations in which a creditor’s failure to make required initial or variation disclosure can mean that the debtor is not liable for the costs of borrowing

Workplace Relations and Safety – amendment to the Employment Relations Act

And lastly, I will just leave this eyebrow raiser here for final thoughts. A bill barring high earners from taking unjustified dismissal cases will mean people earning over $180,000 or over can’t claim unjustified dismissal. What could possibly warrant the New Zealand Government to limit the legal rights of high earning officials and prevent them from going to court, or encourage private contract dismissal negotiations? According to the Minister, this bill will “enable employers to ‘ensure they have the right fit for their high-impact leadership and specialist roles’”. With the recent backlash from the government discouraging sensitive information leaks and their failure to act on recommendations to improve Whistleblower Protections under the Act, this reads more like yet another legislative reform without public mandate or BORA assessment, that favours protecting corporate interests; profits; property; and control.

#PFIZERLEAK

At the time of writing the first and second article, I wrote that New Zealand appeared to have been bullied into legislative submission under duress of the pressure to retain bilateral agreements in order to secure vaccine acquisition through a complex performance of invested- interests-business as usual and controlled bureaucratic incompetence. But four years on, and a change in coalition government, legislative submission in 2025, is looking far more complicit than incompetent as, the new Attorney-General consolidates further indemnification overreach and continues to sign off Bill of Rights Act ‘assessments’ without genuine analysis of inconsistencies.

Back in 2021, whistleblower Biber’s revelations on the Pfizer contracts were subsequently published in an investigative piece titled Revealed: How Pfizer blackmails countries for shots. In a bold and damning move for the censorship at the time, the reporter accused Pfizer’s silencing of Governments in order to maximise profits as vaccine terrorism.

Fast forward to 2025, and what now looks like contract terrorism, has led me to write a fourth article. Stay tuned.

PFIZERLEAK #4: Has the New Zealand Royal Commission Covid-19 Inquiry been captured?

Nadine Connock holds a BA (Hons) in International Relations and Politics and International Development from the University of East London (UK) and a MA in Indigenous Studies from The University of Otago, New Zealand.