This is edition 2026/098 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. Putting a face to the corporate influence in the Beehive
Bryce Edwards
- 🔥 A lobbying scandal has emerged over hidden corporate influence that appears to have shaped a retrospective law change blocking private climate lawsuits against companies like Z Energy and Fonterra.
- 👥 The story shifted when Matt Burgess, Christopher Luxon's senior policy adviser, was named as the official who received hard-copy briefing notes from Fonterra and Z Energy not later disclosed via OIA.
- 🔍 Burgess responded to media requests with a single line: "I have nothing to add."
- 🏢 Burgess came to the role directly from the New Zealand Initiative, a business-funded think tank and lobby group, covering resource management, energy and the Emissions Trading Scheme.
- 📰 In 2022 Burgess authored an Initiative report called "Pretence of Necessity", arguing New Zealand did not need extra climate policies beyond the ETS.
- 🔄 The Initiative's chief economist Eric Crampton joked that Luxon's office had "stolen" Burgess from them, a remark the article says captures something real about Wellington's revolving door.
- 🏛️ The New Zealand Initiative grew from the merger of the Business Roundtable and the New Zealand Institute and counts major banks, energy companies, supermarkets and Google among its corporate members.
- ⚖️ Genesis Energy, one of the defendants in the Smith v Fonterra climate lawsuit, sits inside the Initiative, and its chair Barbara Chapman serves as the Initiative's deputy chair.
- 🌿 The Initiative's climate position over the past decade has consistently favoured keeping climate accountability within statute and away from common-law litigation — the same outcome the corporate briefings sought.
- 💰 Whether Fonterra or Z Energy are current paying members of the Initiative cannot be established because the full membership list is not publicly disclosed.
- 📊 The article argues the more plausible problem is not conspiracy but the same people, institutions and assumptions circulating through the same small set of rooms.
- 🧾 When Fonterra and Z Energy delivered briefing notes in mid-2024, the material went directly to Burgess, whose policy background was unusually aligned with the companies' arguments.
- ⚠️ Journalist Audrey Young summarised the affair in two words: "It stinks."
- 🔵 Luxon faces a "nothing to see here" problem, according to the article, with further sections behind a paywall examining whether the episode constitutes a cover-up.
