STITCH UP: New investigative podcast lays out the documentary trail behind a jury acquittal — and names names
- Grant McLachlan
- 2 days ago
- 13 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Six-part series traces four years of complaints, staged incidents and internal police records through a former ACT Party deputy leader, two sitting Cabinet ministers and the current Police Commissioner
Veteran broadcasters Liz Barry (RNZ, ZMFM) and Jon Hogan (2XS, More FM, Classic Hits) unravel the web of connections and reveal a story of dirty politics that led to serious criminal offending that originated in a Parliament office.
The story
On 18 September 2021, on a public reserve at Snells Beach, investigative writer Grant McLachlan was struck in the face by an 80-year-old stranger, Lorraine Martin, wielding her own camera. Martin returned to a nearby house and made a 111 call, coached in the background by the resident. Constable Jacqueline Fairbrass of Warkworth Police went on to charge McLachlan with male assaults female, assault with intent to rob — later upgraded to robbery — and theft.
McLachlan had, on his phone, photographs taken in the seconds before impact.
Two and a half years later, a four-day jury trial — R v McLachlan, Auckland District Court, CRI-2021-044-002983 — ended in acquittal on all charges. The jury deliberated for 86 minutes. Mid-trial, the complainant's own court-appointed support person was placed under oath in chambers, found to have lied to the judge about coaching the witness, and excluded from the courtroom — an episode recorded in a judicial minute by Judge T Singh.
Stitch Up is not the story of that trial. It is the story of the three years that led to it. Told across six fully-scripted, primary-source episodes, the series says the prosecution was the fourth in a series of escalating campaigns — complaints, harassment and staged incidents — running back through a 2020 political demotion, a 2016 council by-election, and a 2011 parliamentary selection previously documented in Nicky Hager's Dirty Politics. It closes on a 130-year-old, never-once-used provision of the Crimes Act 1961 — conspiracy to bring a false accusation, maximum penalty 14 years — which McLachlan argues explains why none of it has been prosecuted.
"Lorraine Martin lied to the 111 operator, the police, in her sworn statement, in court, and fabricated evidence. There were as many as seven different versions of those lies by the time that I was acquitted. During each of those offences, Paul Shanahan told her what to say, Diane Taylor was overheard in the background of the 111 call telling her what to say, Lois McPherson told her in front of a judge what to say, she passed a secret note to the Crown prosecutor obviously prepared by someone else telling him what to say, she admitted that others wrote her submissions to the council, a council dog ranger made an unsolicited visit to ask her to sign a prepared complaint, her friends wrote letters to the editor under her name against my campaigns, and throughout all these lies Constable Fairbrass was not only encouraging her to lie but got others to do the same. If that isn’t a conspiracy, I don’t know what is." - Grant McLachlan
Why it's newsworthy
A sitting Commissioner of Police, Richard Chambers, is shown — by his own internal email — accessing McLachlan's police file without an operational reason months before trial, and describing the evidence against him as “compelling” to a subordinate. He was appointed Commissioner around eighteen months later.
A sitting Cabinet minister, Police Minister Mark Mitchell, is the local MP for the officers involved, and told 1News in September 2024 that he was unaware his own electorate's police station had reportedly been run for a decade by unvetted civilian volunteers.
Another sitting Cabinet minister, Chris Penk, dismissed the original 2021 RNZ report on the network as “weird and ridiculous” the day it broke — while separately building a public profile campaigning against court delays, the same delays McLachlan says defined his own two-and-a-half-year bail period.
The named network, per the series, runs through a former ACT Party deputy leader Beth Houlbrooke and a dossier attributed — by document metadata — to the then-senior advisor to ACT leader David Seymour, who went on to become the party's 2023 campaign manager. Her son, Louis Houlbrooke, at the time was the Taxpayers' Union campaign manager as is currently Act's Communications Manager.
The 1News report on the Mahurangi Police Station closure (September 2024) is expanded on with what the series says is the documentary chain behind it, including internal Police emails.
Section 115 of the Crimes Act 1961 — conspiring to bring a false accusation, up to 14 years' imprisonment — has never once resulted in a prosecution in New Zealand, according to a 2025 Ministry of Justice OIA response obtained for the series.
Details
Title: STITCH UP (all capitals)
Tagline: Twelve attempts. Zero coincidences.
Producers: Liz Barry, Jon Hogan, and Grant McLachlan.
Host: Liz Barry.
Narrator: Jon Hogan.
Editor: Liz Barry.
Sources: Official documents, media footage, film and photographic evidence, and primary sources.
Available: Spotify and YouTube
Material:
Additional voices are provided by Grant McLachlan, from original film or audio footage, and actors quote from documents.
All claims regarding named individuals are attributed to specific documentary sources set out in the accompanying fact sheet.
Contents
Listen
Promotional interview
McLachlan walks through the core narrative in conversation: the assault, the contradictory witness accounts, the note passed to the Crown Prosecutor mid-trial, and the alleged political network behind it.
Episode 1 — The Astroturf.
Origins: undeclared conflicts behind 2015–2019 Rodney dog-access rules, and the 2011 and 2016 precedents — Mark Mitchell's candidate selection and the Penny Webster smear — previously documented in Dirty Politics.
Episode 2 — Miss Piggy.
A former ACT Party deputy leader's retaliation after a 2020 political demotion: smear emails, two Warkworth bar incidents, two Law Society complaints, ending in a dossier emailed to two named Warkworth police officers.
Episode 3 — The Camera.
The staged dog-fine, the 18 September 2021 assault, and the coached 111 call.
Episode 4 — Sherlock.
The complainant entered into the police database under a name she never used; alleged disclosure obstruction; the defence lawyer's conflict of interest; the media blackout ahead of trial.
Episode 5 — The Trial.
Four days at Auckland District Court: the secret note passed mid-cross-examination, the excluded support person, and the 86-minute acquittal.
Episode 6 — Section 115.
The Commissioner's file access; the Mahurangi Police Station closure; the complaint against the support person that went nowhere for two years; the never-used statute.
Each episode runs 40–45 minutes, built from primary-source cold opens — trial transcript, 111 audio, internal emails — interleaved with narration and original interview tape.
Podcast channels
The evidence
Stitch Up is built entirely from primary documents: sworn affidavits and witness statements, 111-call audio, internal Police emails and database entries obtained under the Official Information Act and Privacy Act, Auckland Council files released under LGOIMA, contemporaneous social media posts, the official trial transcript, and McLachlan's own contemporaneous reporting on Klaut Media. A full sourced fact sheet is available to media on request. Links to McLachlan's published reporting, organised by topic, are below.
1. Background to campaigns and community involvement
Prior to moving to Snells Beach, Grant McLachlan had a track record of altruism:
The carrot and the stick — In response to a current affairs article about a council dispute, McLachlan gave a submission to New Plymouth District Council to save vegetable gardens.
Hawke's Bay battler for the little people — Another article explaining McLachlan's motivation to help.
New Homes for new lives — McLachlan's care for animals included rescuing and finding new homes for abandoned dogs.
It didn't take long after moving to Snells Beach that Grant McLachlan became active in the Rodney community. Here is a list of some of the ways he helped locals:
Fix Hill Street Now: TVNZ Gutsful episode — TVNZ's Gutsful named the Hill Street/SH1 intersection at Warkworth New Zealand's worst, part of McLachlan's long-running campaign for its redesign.
Fix Hill Street Now: campaign website — McLachlan's campaign site pressing for the Hill Street intersection upgrade.
Matakana War Memorial heritage application — McLachlan's successful application to have the Matakana War Memorial given official heritage listing.
Warkworth Golf Club aerial graphics — McLachlan's pro-bono drone-mapping project for the Warkworth Golf Club, which grew into a full set of aerial graphics, a 3D course diagram and a scorecard.
"My Happy Place": Tongue Farm Yacht Club — McLachlan's account of designing and building the clubhouse, jetty, locker and launch facilities for a model-yacht club near Matakana.
Flotilla of mini-boats berths in Matakana — Mahurangi Matters' report on the two-day Matakana model boat show that McLachlan helped organise and curate.
Pro bono work (category index) — McLachlan's published pro-bono advocacy for residents and community groups in disputes with local and central government.
Pro bono work (tag index) — A wider tag index of McLachlan's pro-bono community and legal advocacy work.
2. News coverage relevant to the podcast
Stuff — Politicians 'abuse flaws' of MMP (2013) — McLachlan's early opinion piece arguing New Zealand's MMP system is gamed by parties rather than genuinely proportional.
NZ Herald — Grant McLachlan: NZ should raise the bar on corruption — McLachlan's Herald column setting out the “soft corruption”/“mate-ocracy” thesis that underlies the podcast's central argument.
RNZ — “Ex-ACT staffer Grant McLachlan says party created fake grassroots groups” (7 April 2021) — The article the podcast says triggered the campaign against him: same-day website “fingerprint” surveillance of his site is documented evidence in Episode 1.
Environmental watchdog sorely needed — McLachlan wrote this article about the felling of trees and the pollution of waterways when clearing the site for the Boathouse Bay development in Snells Beach.
Stuff — ‘Dirty politics’ rears its ugly head in Rodney local election (2022) — Reports an attack website and covert aliases used in a 2022 Rodney council race — the same modus operandi the series traces through the network around McLachlan's case.
Stuff — Auckland's secret wars: Cat burglar raiding endangered birds' eggs causes squawk (2022) — Covers the Snells Beach shorebird-conservation dispute referenced in the podcast's account of the local bird lobby.
YouTube — the One Mahurangi Emergency Services dinner — Footage of the annual dinner hosted by One Mahurangi, the Warkworth business association the podcast says had close social ties to local police culture, as documented in “Warkworth's celebrity crooked cop culture.”
1News — “Police 'aghast' unsupervised volunteers opened community station to public” (20 September 2024) — The broadcast report on the unvetted volunteers running the Mahurangi Police Station, central to Episode 6.
3. Rodney issues
FACT CHECK: Was the Boathouse Bay decision predetermined? — Questions whether Auckland Council's resource consent decision for the 33-dwelling Boathouse Bay development was predetermined.
FACT CHECK: Did Didsbury bury his complicity in Boathouse Bay? — Examines a local board member's undisclosed involvement in the Boathouse Bay consent.
Small minds in small communities — McLachlan's account of the Snells Beach Residents and Ratepayers Association (SBRRA) and its use as a platform for local nimbyism.
Bird-brained council officials are dividing communities — Names the SBRRA network's tactics — bogus complaints, forged petition signatures, impersonating officials, fake council signage — and describes the conduct as “eco-fascism.”
The Politics of Stupid — Alleges staged predator-attack footage in the local dotterel conservation campaign, and states that the day after McLachlan published an article naming the network, he was attacked and charged — the sequence opening Episode 3.
Submission to Auckland Council in response to proposals for the northern end of Snells Beach — Names June Turner as SBRRA's 2004 founder, documents three separate attempts to unleash McLachlan's dog on 9 September, 18 September and 1 October 2021, and quotes Judge Singh's finding that Martin acted as a “busy body.”
Eco-terrorism, Snells Beach style — Published 17 September 2021, the day before the assault — names the SBRRA-connected bird lobby individuals the podcast says triggered the retaliation against him.
‘Ruling the Roost’: How a council staffer created her own private fiefdom — Names Auckland Council biodiversity official Megan Young, alleging she lives rent-free in a council-owned property and built an unaccountable personal power base around the dog-ban and dotterel programmes.
Is Auckland Council fascist? — McLachlan's column arguing the council's handling of the Snells Beach dog-access dispute shows the hallmarks of unaccountable, authoritarian governance.
Auckland Council: too big to care, too complex to control — Argues Auckland's 'Super City' has grown too large for its own watchdogs to keep up, citing the Auckland Transport corruption case as a precedent for the culture the podcast describes.
4. The ACT Party, the Taxpayers' Union, and the Houlbrookes
Why we should have zero tolerance for Act — Catalogues sex, drugs, fraud and bullying allegations within the ACT Party, published ahead of the 2020 election.
Astroturfs: Act Three of ‘Dirty Politics’ — Traces the history of astroturf groups linked to the ACT Party — the article that led to the April 2021 RNZ report and, the podcast says, to the campaign against him.
Beware of List MPs hiding behind leaders — Reports Beth Houlbrooke's demotion from second to thirteenth on the ACT list in June 2020 — the political demotion the podcast says triggered Episode 2's retaliation.
The clandestine campaign to dismantle Jacindamania — A long-form investigation tracing the Taxpayers' Union, Free Speech Union and Groundswell to a shared network of operatives McLachlan says coordinated the downfall of Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern.
Would they go to jail? Comparing New Zealand's corruption gap with Australia's integrity framework — Examines whether conduct documented in Dirty Politics and Unleashed — involving some of the same Taxpayers' Union figures — would trigger prosecution or career-ending findings under an Australian-style anti-corruption commission.
5. R v McLachlan — the trial evidence, article by article
Browse all ‘Unleashed’-sourced reporting (tag index) — The tag index for the 50-plus articles drawing on primary documents first published in McLachlan's book, Unleashed.
Photo evidence thwarts farcical prosecution — The press release on the not-guilty verdicts delivered after the four-day jury trial, turning on the photographs McLachlan took of the confrontation.
How a right wing racket unleashed on me — McLachlan's own account of the complaints, bar confrontations, dossiers and staged incidents he says led to the prosecution, and of what happened to those involved afterwards.
R v McLachlan: The expensive camera — Tracks the camera's valuation rising from $217 to $567 to $798 across three witness statements, against the $85 McLachlan paid for an equivalent model on Amazon.
Unleashed: Paul Shanahan's perjury — Sets out the contradictions in the Crown's chief witness's account, including the leading questions in his police-drafted witness statement.
R v McLachlan: Who turned the Keasts? — Examines how two witnesses' evidence changed between their sworn statements and their evidence at trial.
R v McLachlan: The corrupt dog ranger — Alleges a council dog ranger visited the complainant hours after the assault with a pre-completed complaint form, despite Police denying any contact with the Council.
R v McLachlan: How Lois McPherson and Lorraine Martin perverted the course of justice — Details the judicial minute recording the complainant's support person whispering answers to her during cross-examination, and the note passed to the Crown Prosecutor mid-trial.
R v McLachlan: What was Constable Fairbrass thinking? — Alleges the officer in charge drafted witness statements before interviewing witnesses, and returned the “stolen” camera to the complainant the same evening without recording it in her notebook.
Warkworth's celebrity crooked cop culture — See description under section 6 above.
Stupid is as stupid does (the cover-up of the complaint against Lois McPherson) — See description under section 6 above.
6. Complaints to Police and the closure of the Mahurangi Police Station
Why Police Commissioner Richard Chambers is the problem and should resign — Publishes McLachlan's email to Commissioner Chambers alleging misuse of the National Intelligence Application to dig up material on a complainant rather than investigate the substance of his complaint.
Police shouldn't get to decide who never sees a judge — Argues Police should not have sole discretion over which complaints ever reach a courtroom, drawing on McLachlan's own unresolved complaints.
Warkworth's celebrity crooked cop culture — Names the Assistant Commissioner's internal “compelling evidence” email and documents the social ties between Warkworth Police and local business and community figures.
The serious crimes that Police won't prosecute — Sets out the alleged conspiracy and the specific Crimes Act offences — including s 115, conspiracy to bring a false accusation — that McLachlan says Police have declined to pursue.
Crooked cop culture: how New Zealand Police condoned a culture of wrongful convictions — Places McLachlan's case in the context of a wider pattern of alleged Police misconduct.
Stupid is as stupid does: how the Police buried a complaint, only implicating themselves — A 24-minute-read investigation into the 15-month delay and eventual closure, without charge, of the perverting-justice complaint against Lois McPherson — the same complaint at the centre of Episode 6.
Why does it take a foreign watchdog to catch a New Zealand official? — Examines a wider pattern of unaccountable senior officials, including Commissioner Chambers's Victoria Police helicopter trip, arguing New Zealand lacks independent oversight mechanisms.
7. The case for an independent anti-corruption commission
Two bills that could end New Zealand's dirty politics era — if politicians have the courage to pass them — Sets out two draft government bills — the Independent Crime and Corruption Commission Bill 2026 and an Electoral Integrity Amendment Bill — that McLachlan has prepared to address the failures documented across this series.
Kiwis are more corrupted than they think — McLachlan's 2020 column arguing New Zealanders trust their politicians and press more than the evidence — from Rodger Kerr-Newell to the NZ First Foundation prosecution — actually warrants.
Is New Zealand the best democracy money can buy? — Argues that low campaign-spending caps, unlimited donations and under-resourced watchdogs make political influence in New Zealand unusually cheap to buy and unusually hard to detect.
The kids who lit matches in the mine — Traces a Christchurch developer's donations-for-access playbook back to the same Auckland-north corridor network of donors, ministers and fast-track approvals documented elsewhere in McLachlan's reporting.
A simpler council? Auckland tried that — and got the country's biggest bribery case — Argues Auckland's 2010 'Super City' amalgamation did not end Rodney District Council's bribery culture — it scaled it into the country's largest corruption prosecution — and warns against Hawke's Bay repeating the experiment.
Marking their own homework: Why the Anti-Corruption Taskforce pilot makes the case for a truly independent agency — Examines the Serious Fraud Office's Anti-Corruption Taskforce pilot, in which six agencies graded their own integrity controls, and argues the exercise makes the case for an independent commission rather than more self-assessment.
Why does it take a foreign watchdog to catch a New Zealand official? — Examines a wider pattern of unaccountable senior officials, including Commissioner Chambers's Victoria Police helicopter trip, arguing New Zealand lacks independent oversight mechanisms. (Cross-listed with section 6 above.)
An independent anti-corruption commission: who keeps blocking it? — Traces three decades of cross-party promises for an anti-corruption commission that have never survived a coalition negotiation, and argues the five percent MMP threshold gives major parties the leverage to keep trading it away.
When the journalist is the target — A feature documenting how the same astroturf network profiled elsewhere in this series was used to force the resignation of TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman, arguing the technique is now being turned on journalists as well as politicians.
Status of related legal proceedings
McLachlan was acquitted on all charges on 9 February 2024.
An application for costs was lodged on 10 August 2026 following the eventual disclosure of information from the Police, Meredith Connell, and the Court.
Nothing in this release should be read as a finding of any court.
About Grant McLachlan and Klaut Media
Grant McLachlan is a trained lawyer (he has not practised), a town planner, a former hearings commissioner, Parliamentary researcher, campaign manager, and an investigative writer based in Hastings, New Zealand, who holds a marketing management post graduate diploma, finance degree, law degree, and was admitted as a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand in 2000. He is the author of Unleashed (2025) and publishes through Klaut Media, a Fortis Fidus™ company. Stitch Up is produced independently by McLachlan with two former radio broadcasters.
Media contact
Grant McLachlan LLB BCom DipGrad
Email: grant@klaut.media
Website: www.klaut.media
Notes to editors: A full sourced fact sheet, episode scripts, and underlying primary-source documents are available to accredited media on request, on an embargo to be agreed. Direct interview access to Grant McLachlan is available.
