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When we broke the story of Siouxsie Wiles breaking level four stay at home rules and presented a video of her beach and swimming escapade, the media finally had to do their jobs. At a daily press conference held on 10 September, Dr Ashley Bloomfield made a statement that he’d been in text contact with Siouxsie Wiles and accepted her explanation of the events, along with making a statement that Dr Nicola Gaston wasn’t really swimming and that it couldn’t really be described as swimming.
He made those statements even though he admitted that he hadn’t yet seen the video.
I have written twice to Dr Bloomfield asking him to look at the video and asking him if he still stands by his claims that Dr Nicola Gaston wasn’t swimming. I am yet to receive even the courtesy of an acknowledgement of my communications.
I did however receive a response to my Official Information Act request that sought the text messages that Dr Bloomfield mentioned at the press conference.
The texts between Siouxsie Wiles and Ashley Bloomfield are now revealed because of an OIA from us. Only one other media outlet bothered to make a similar OIA request and that was by Thomas Coughlan at the NZ Herald. He ran an article about them on Friday night, buried under the weight of news attached to the move of Northland back into Level Three. This is what dishonest Government departments do when they expect push back from what is revealed in the release. They wait until the evening before a weekend, and if it happily coincides with bigger news they release it so it gets buried.
Well, The BFD does not play those games.
Newshub, the news channel that reliably attacks the messenger of any bearer of bad news for the Government or shills the Government’s side of any story also ran a story, not about the demonstrable lies contained in the text messages, but about how the Ministry of Health and Ashley Bloomfield, in particular, had cast shade at me and our website. Such is the increasingly puerile and toxic nature of that sham news organisation.
The news outlet that has studiously ignored the story from when they were first approached, 1News have still not run anything about it. Their lack of integrity shows and their supplication to the Government is obvious.
But, the texts show very clearly that Siouxsie Wiles lied to Dr Bloomfield in order to get his protection. We have identified six less than honest claims in the text messages.
- That Nicola Gaston was alone and part of Siouxsie Wiles’s bubble when she actually lived with her own household several suburbs distant from Wiles’s own suburb of Freemans Bay.
- That Gaston went for a paddle – in no way can what was clearly swimming be described as “a paddle.”
- That the Paddle lasted 2min – This is just lying to minimize the flagrant violation.
- That Judges Bay is “super shallow”, despite there being two diving platforms behind Dr. Gaston who was up to her neck in the water.
- More than 5km away from her home, across several suburbs, this is another violation.
- No masks, no social distancing.
What is also interesting is the date and time of her text messages to Dr Bloomfield. I emailed Siouxsie Wiles on Wednesday 8 September at 3:42 pm. She replied to me the same day at 5:02 pm. The text message she sent to Dr Bloomfield was sent just six minutes later at 5.08 pm. The BFD published our story on Thursday 9 September at 7:30 am. Dr Bloomfield was not asked about this story until the 1:00 pm press conference on the 10th of September. Siouxsie Wiles then posted this piece of disinformation at 3:53 pm on 10 September:
Siouxsie Wiles has told yet another lie as she scrambles to retrieve her shattered reputation. She has claimed to have been surprised, but we now know that she was texting Dr Ashley Bloomfield two days before this story “surprised” her by becoming front-page news on every news outlet across the nation. She can hardly have been surprised because she was whining about the potential exposure of her hypocrisy and lying to Dr Bloomfield about salient details, either by omission or by minimisation or just flat out making up details.
She wasn’t surprised at all. She was seeking cover from Bloomfield, and got it!
When Ashley Bloomfield told everyone at the press conference, beamed live on every major news website that even though he hadn’t seen the video, it was his belief that no rules were broken, the evidence he had to make that statement was a short set of text messages from a dishonest Siouxsie Wiles.
So, far from being a story of how Dr Bloomfield sledged me and The BFD by stating that we didn’t “have much cred” these days, it should have been about how a senior public servant, and one of the faces of the Covid campaign, conspired together in a concerted effort to protect, defuse and deflect from the lies and actions of Siouxsie Wiles.
Bloomfield signals this in his reply to Wiles’ lies, “Keep up the great work and plenty of good people who will stand by you” [sic].
Despite their flagrant violation of level four rules, neither Siouxsie Wiles nor Dr Nicola Gaston was charged. In direct contrast, Brian Tamaki has been charged with a dubious charge while cooperating with police for a level three protest. It seems that Siouxsie Wiles has powerful friends, and Brian Tamaki does not.
What is worse is that the cover-up extended deeply into the Police ranks as well. This is an extract from the weekly Police Intelligence report which specifically names the author and The BFD:
When you also note how the Ministry of Health tried to clarify the imprudent and pejorative statement by Bloomfield about me and ends up maligning The BFD:
You can see how these arms of the state work to malign, defame and disparage those who speak truth to their power. Both the Ministry of Health and the NZ Police have sought to cover up the rule-breaking of Dr Gaston and Siouxsie Wiles.
That is the story, not how cool it is that the Ministry of Health and Dr Bloomfield sledged me.
In any case, that reassurance didn’t really help Siouxsie Wiles, firstly because The BFD has a considerably larger reach than Whaleoil ever did and secondly despite his claims to the contrary, the reach of The BFD and indeed the author is considerably larger than he thought since the story was splashed across every major news outlet in the country, including television, radio and print.
In fact, The BFD is one of the least biased and most trusted news outlets in the country.
The TRUTH is;
Trustworthy words and actions
Respect for doing the right thing.
Uncovering the full picture.
Telling it as it is.
Having all the facts.
The Ministry of Health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield and Siouxsie Wiles are the exact opposite of that, they are dishonest, disingenuous and it is them who are spreading disinformation. From the get-go, Siouxsie Wiles set out to deceive. She was enabled by Dr Bloomfield who in covering for Wiles also set out to deceive, and the NZ Police followed suit.
Their actions remind me of Matilda from Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc, which begins:
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes
In stark contrast, every single detail in our stories was true or clarified. We had the facts, we had the proof, we had the story. While the key players in this story set out to deceive the true tragedy of this whole story has been the willingness of the tamed and bought for propaganda wings of this Government, the Media Party, to ignore the truth, facts and evidence, and instead run a shabby ad hominem attack against a journalist and a news organisation that has embarrassed them time and time again, and will continue to show them up for the indolent dolts they’ve become.
Ministry of Health OIA Response – TXt messages by Cam Slater on Scribd
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