Trougher, desperate for attention, trying to re-write past again
Here we go again.
Poor old trougher Shane Kawenata Bradbrook – the trougher exposed on Whaleoil for living it up large around the world on the taxpayer, is crying to Maori media after another troughing group gets a slap from the Taxpayers Union.
This time it is taxpayer funded anti-tobacco group ASH getting a serve from the Taxpayers Union who say:
The Taxpayers’ Union believes that questions need to asked about why a lobby group, working with the Maori Party on a political campaign around tobacco plain packaging, is largely taxpayer funded. This morning’s front page of the New Zealand Herald covers the latest efforts to build political pressure to introduce a plain packaging law.
Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, says, “While civil servants operate under a duty of political neutrality, the Ministry of Health and others are awarding substantial sums of taxpayer money to health and environmental lobby groups to push particular political agendas.”
“It is wrong for special interest groups such as ASH to be using taxpayer money for political campaigns. ASH’s factual inaccuracies about the impact of plain packaging on smoking consumption in Australia suggests that they are operating outside any of the usual public sector control requiring balanced and evidenced based public statements.”
According to ASH’s most recent annual return filed with the Charities Register, more than 90% of ASH’s funding comes from the taxpayer.
Mr Williams says, “We all support funding for front line and addiction services such as Quitline. What we don’t support is funding to political organisations to operate campaigns with taxpayer money.”

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.
They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.
He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.
Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.
To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.