Jami-Lee Ross refuses to remove vaccination video despite concerns it's misleading

August 28, 2020

This is despite concerns it’s deliberately misleading.

MP Jami-Lee Ross is refusing to take down a controversial political advertisement over vaccinations, despite concerns it is deliberately misleading.

His party - Advance NZ/NZ Public Party - released a video this month with footage from Parliament captioned: "Last week Labour rushed through a law change under urgency to enable them to force our citizens to be vaccinated." 

"I could end up being fined for putting up that video and leaving it there and absolutely rejecting the decision of the Parliament Speaker that he says the we should take it down," Mr Ross said in a Facebook live video. 

The video used edited clips from Parliament over the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020. 

The Act states that the Minister or Director-General could make an order to require a person to "satisfy any specified criteria before entering New Zealand" - and gave the example of making a person register when entering a managed isolation facility. 

Those orders can only be made under a  specific set of circumstances , such as that it "does not limit or is a justified limit on the rights and freedoms in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act".  

Earlier this month , National MP Erica Stanford was asking Housing Minister Megan Woods about the provision for people entering the country. 

"Just to be absolutely clear: this legislation in this part lays the potential future groundwork for people to be required to be vaccinated before they enter New Zealand," she asked. 

"It would allow the legal instruments if that was a requirement. I’m not saying it will be. I’m saying it does allow the framework," Ms Woods said. 

However, the clip did not contain the part about the law referring to people returning from overseas. 

AFP fact checker Taylor Thompson-Fuller called the clip misleading, and told 1 NEWS there was "no mention of mandatory vaccinations or any sort of forced vaccination programme like it was claimed" during the debate in Parliament. 

Finance Minister Grant Robertson also called the claim "completely false". 

Ms Stanford told AFP the clip was "not at all representative of the exchange I had with Megan Woods and therefore it is dangerous and misleading".

"By cutting out part of my comments and questions and using selective responses from the Minister, it looks like we are discussing mandatory vaccinations for Kiwis, which was not the case."

Jami-Lee Ross will now face the Parliamentary Privileges committee on Monday over the video. 

Mr Ross' political partner, Public Party leader Billy Te Kahika Jr was dropped this week by anti-domestic violence group White Ribbon as an ambassador.

Mr Te Kahika said he was "deeply disturbed about that, because I've been an ambassador since 2012". 

The charity was worried Mr Te Kahika's talk of conspiracies would bring it in to disrepute. 

In response, Mr Te Kahika said the "questions that we are asking of this Government are very deeply serious". 

Mr Te Kahika previously claimed he had a "very, very serious threat aimed at me by a potential international assassin that had entered into New Zealand". 

Mr Te Kahika told 1 NEWS he had "some pretty amazing tier one security that look after us, they had very serious concerns."

He said he had not been reading too many Jack Reacher novels. 

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