By refusing to accept for publication the following paid for advertisement:
Bugger it is another click on the link job – but definitely worth a look.
Following is the link to the accompanying NZTaxpayers Union email.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/?ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGxTPDrlvwvXGMvhLPxlZttSsWS
This time I mean for you to click on this one because it gives the reasons why Stuff and The DomPost (same people probably) rejected the advertisement.
No Minister 
The google mail link doesnt work for me.
Having looked at the advertisement, I am not surprised it got rejected.
IMHO Looks lie a mickey mouse conspiracy theory rant.
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: No confidentiality notice here. No warnings about the terrible things that I wish would happen to you if you were to take advantage of my typing something inadvertently and sending it to you and then wishing I hadn’t, and then the cold, icy trickle of fear and shame down the back of my neck as I try to turn back time and suck the email out of the ether. No, none of that. No attempts to impose order on this fundamentally chaotic universe by using law (threats of sanctions, injunctions, or confidentiality notices) to fix the cracks in my own uselessness or your own naughtiness
You lost me with your last para.
As far as the link is concerned it is for the NZTaxpayers email that came to me (and many others I would think) elaborating on the ad, It is fairly long – hence the link and I would think info will be on their webpage tomorrow.
Reply from the Taxpayers union is below….
As you know, with the Budget only a week away, we’ve been hard at work hammering out some key common-sense messages:
Stop borrowing. The Government is borrowing $75 million per day! Government Debt is now more than $90,000 for every Kiwi household. Nicola Willis needs to Stop the Debt Clock, and balance the books.
Cut the waste and huge growth in bureaucracy. After COVID was over, instead of rolling back spending, Labour doubled down. There are now 18,000 extra bureaucrats compared to 2017 – delivering worse results for New Zealanders.
Reverse Grant Robertson’s tax hikes. The average wage earner pays $49 more per week in tax because income tax thresholds haven’t been adjusted for inflation since 2010. $49/week is the minimum Nicola Willis needs to deliver next week.
I’m emailing you because, despite all that’s going on, we’re facing yet again a media absolutely determined on giving New Zealanders a one-eyed view of the world. As you’ll see below, yet again they are trying to exclude centre-right messages, and we’re asking our supporters to help with the fight back.
Our advert designed to get cut-through 🗡️
Last week, I asked the team to come up with ideas to raise public awareness about the explosion in Wellington’s back office bureaucrat numbers.
We need to balance the alarmist media and usual groaners harping on about the terrible ‘cuts’ and deliver a message that it’s about time Wellington got real and faced up to the economic realities facing New Zealand.
So we thought, what better than a full page ‘eviction notice’ to Wellington’s fat cat, back office, faceless, bloated bureaucrats on behalf of taxpayers.
So that’s what we did – an advert that we knew would get under the skin of the public sector unions and the ‘blob’ to hopefully start a genuine debate about whether the Government’s half hearted ‘cuts’ are really all that bad? In fact, we say they are both justified and don’t go nearly far enough.
Here’s the advert we had in mind:
Sack the Bureaucrats Advert
Click here for larger version.
Stuff refuse to publish advert on basis that it might ‘upset’ some people in Wellington
After booking the advert for Wellington’s The Post newspaper, we provided the file ready for print.
Then all hell broke lose.
While Stuff acknowledged that our advertisement is totally in line with Advertising Standards Authority rules, they outright refused to publish it anyway.
They pulled the ad on the basis that the “inflammatory and provocative” advert could result in them having to respond to audience complaints.
…while it is clear that the opinion in the ad creative belongs to the advertiser, it falls into the guidelines as an: ‘ad which is controversial and/or likely to elicit audience complaints’…
On that basis, they pulled the advert at the last minute.
Remember all of the offensive/abusive anti-Christopher Luxon advertisements that the unions ran during the election campaign? Why does our media have such a double standard?
In my follow-up emails with Stuff, it is rather illustrative what words they can’t cope with. Here are some of the specific terms they required removing before reconsidering publication (their emphasis, not ours):
“….public service gravy train.”
“….government grifter job scheme….”
“Mickey Mouse degrees,”
“Flat White Marxists…..”
This is what we are up against ⛰️
Look, I get that we have a leftwing media and that it can be hard to ensure that taxpayers (and the Taxpayers’ Union!) get a fair suck of the sav in terms of what stories the media does and doesn’t cover.
But how is it right that now just the excuse of ‘we might get a few complaints’ justifies censoring paid-up advertising because the lefties at Stuff don’t like the message?
Saying that a political advertisement can’t be ‘controversial’ or use terms that are emotive or hyperbolic basically makes political advertising pointless.
The very purpose of any effective political advertisement is to illicit strong feelings, be ‘controversial’ in the eyes of some, and (God help us) elicit some letters to the editor! That is the whole point of both advocacy advertising, and a local paper!
We want to fight this decision, and (at minimum) go to other advertising channels to show up how ridiculous, biased, and unreasonable Stuff are being. But we need your support to do it.
Remember, this is the same media organisation that took five million as part of the so-called ‘Public Interest Journalism Fund’.
Last month, Stuff was also before a Select Committee begging for a “Digital News Bargaining Bill” to tax companies who linked to their website. They said that without the bill/tax, Stuff and other media organisations are ‘unviable’.
So they scream poverty, take taxpayer money, but are more than happy to turn down paid advertising because they simply don’t like it.
Thank you – I wanted to keep the original post short and to the point.
Much as I dislike Stuff’d and wish the owners and managers a life of misery and pain I’m actually on their side here.
Much of he intended text is in fairly poor taste and, dare I say it, the kind of rhetoric one woul expect to see on the The Daily Bogroll.
The bloating and mismanagement of the public service is a disgrace which needs to be rolled back but taking aim at people who are as much the victims as us taxpayers is beyond acceptable.
I know a number of good people who have recently lost their jobs through no fault of their own – they worked hard in good faith – but were screwed by the higher reaches of their organisations.
This is not why I joined, and support the Taxpayers Union. D- here peepul.
Is that legit? I don’t think it is helpful.
And they spelled “bureaucracy” wrong.