We need to make a statement about an RNZ article yesterday - about the alleged death threat that Sam Bennett received last week.

We need to make a statement about an RNZ Local Democracy Reporting article, as one paragraph of this article – which has absolutely no connection to any of the events which occurred for Sam Bennett on Thursday 18^th September - tries to imply – somehow – that the Ratepayers Alliance and the Taxpayer’s Union had some sort of influence on the alleged death threat that Sam Bennett received last week.

We want to acknowledge that this incident for Sam must have been very disturbing and very worrying for his family. Our thoughts are with Sam, and his family, with how troubling this situation is for them.

There are several statements though that we need to make:

• Sam Bennett has chosen not to attend any of our events, so any information anyone has received about Sam has not come from any questions at our events.
• Sam put a candidate profile on our website. This makes no mention about Sam supporting Maori Wards.
• We sent a survey to Sam, which he didn’t reply to. So, no one would have worked out Sam supported Maori Wards through this survey - as we had no answers to display from Sam.
• None of the stories we have ever written have mentioned Sam supporting Maori Wards.

We do see the NPDC asked questions of this years’ candidates, and one of those questions was do they support Maori Wards. Sam answered Yes to supporting Maori Wards on the NPDC site.

Does this mean the person who allegedly threatened Sam in fact got the information about Sam from the NPDC site ?

Does that mean that this question by the NPDC caused “the cycle of fear that needs to stop” ? mentioned in this article.

Last week’s story in the news mentions no one knew who this person was who made the alleged threat to Sam. No one recognised the man and he left after making the alleged threat.

So, no one has any information to suggest this person was connected to the Ratepayers Alliance at all, but this is being implied with a totally random comment in a paragraph in this article on the 24th.

In 9 months, we have written 88 stories – all still showing on our website and Facebook page. 4 of those stories ask a question that relates to a Maori project. 4.5% of our content has any mention about any Maori initiatives.

How is this a “divisive and hateful election campaign” being put together by the New Plymouth District Ratepayers Alliance ?

In our view, this is unbalanced and disgraceful reporting from the RNZ Local Democracy Reporting office, which borders on defamatory.

We think this type of reporting is inflaming an already unsettling situation for Sam and his family, rather than trying to calm the situation down.

The link to the story from RNZ Local Democracy Reporting is here:

https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360834276/death:threat-councillor-stays-new-plymouth-mayoral-race

P.S Did you know Local Democracy Reporting is funded with your Taxpayer Dollars by Radio NZ and NZ on Air.