{"id":8155,"date":"2026-10-08T19:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=8155"},"modified":"2026-10-08T19:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T06:05:22","slug":"the-missing-final-chapter-from-dirty-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=8155","title":{"rendered":"The missing final chapter from ‘Dirty Work’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work<\/em> is a slender book with an ambitious purpose: to call attention to a damaging influence on NZ democracy. The book amounts to a detailed explanation of the activities of an extremely visible network of lobby groups, all run by Jordan Williams, and all serving the same underlying agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found it arresting. I particularly appreciated the section covering one of the first persuasion campaigns undertaken by Williams in New Zealand, the 2012 effort by British American Tobacco to push against the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes. Longtime readers of the blog may remember it as something I wrote about at the time, largely concerning myself with how mystifying this campaign was, as it was clearly conducted at huge expense, and clearly destined to fail. (The two big posts were this one<\/a>, and this one<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the political and media class, however, the book has received a mixed reception. Many journalists have found it underwhelming. Hager’s exposure of how the Williams network operates is not a revelation, it seems; everything described is routine and ordinary politics. This is just what lobbying is. And the book has little else of note, lacking Hager’s customary revelations. (See this summary of media reactions by Bryce Edwards<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do think the book is incomplete, but not for these reasons. To be clear, Dirty Work<\/em>‘s clear description of the Williams network is sufficiently notable in its own right. Tze Ming Mok summarized the value of the book extremely well: It is for the public, to have summarised in one place, the story of an influential lobby group with the context, analysis and moral judgment that our gallery reporters have no incentive to provide.<\/em> (From a fantastic thread on Bluesky, read it all.)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The missing piece of this book, in my eyes, is a clear-eyed look at the other half of this ecoystem. Hager describes clearly how the Williams spiderweb produces and circulates a set of toxic messages, but does not similarly expose the operation of the media channels through which this propaganda spreads. Why is there no incentive for our media to provide a framework in which we can appreciate the nature of such a powerful influence operation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two components, the Williams cinematic universe and political media, cannot properly be considered in isolation. They have evolved to fit together like host and parasite. This is where I wanted more than Dirty Work<\/em> gave me. I wanted exposure of the media context in which Williams operates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One piece is social media. Williams’s multiplex of lobby groups exploits the vectors for propaganda and recruitment that are all that is left of the world’s two major social media channels, Facebook and Twitter\/X. These platforms are now set up to serve the goals of dark money operatives, who cultivate anger through manipulative and even misleading messaging. There is a developing global conversation on this subject, but the scale of it is out of scope for Hager’s meticulous local investigative reporting, so we can similarly set it aside for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other piece concerns our news media and the commentariat the exists around it. The tactics of the Taxpayers Union and related groups have been developed and refined specifically for our local messaging environment, not just to spread there, but in fact to influence these environments to make their messages more successful. This, then, is what I see as the missing chapter of Dirty Work<\/em>: how our news media allow themselves to be gamed by Williams<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Yes I know, it is the same thing I always want to talk about.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is actually missing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before continuing, I should make explicit that I don’t really think there is a missing chapter in any practical sense. Hager’s focus in this book is crystal clear and appropriate, and as I have noted above, the book stands alone perfectly well. Furthermore, this piece isn’t ignored; it appears throughout Dirty Work<\/em>, in the ragged edges of stories and down in the secondary paragraphs. Hager’s focus throughout is on Williams, and he is not here to expose journalism and media, particularly given he is part of both (albeit a contentious part).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I call it a missing chapter because drawing together these threads and edges into something clear and strong would add immeasurably to our understanding of what is taking place here, and round off the narrative of the book in a way that would give readers a better understanding of its significance. And if not as part of the book, these matters can be addressed by the discourse around it. Unfortunately, so far this has not happened at all. It’s not surprising as to why: the media are in no hurry to indict themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think there is a call for both a descriptive and an investigative angle to our hypothetical missing chapter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n