The Manchurian Minister
In The Manchurian Candidate, the most useful asset is the one everybody mistakes for an obstacle. Meet Simon Watts: Minister of Revenue, Local Government, Climate Change and for Auckland — and the Taxpayers’ Union’s most dependable leading man.
The partnership began on tour. In mid-2022 the union’s Stop Three Waters roadshow rolled through 43 towns.
Watts, then National’s local government spokesman, shared its stage in Tauranga and Ellerslie, signed the union’s “Community Leaders’ Appeal” and gave it a co-governance “bottom line”. The union turned his words into a graphic with a promise: “We won’t be letting them forget it!”
They didn’t. When Watts landed Local Government in January 2025, the union declared he “was instrumental in helping ‘Stop Three Waters’” and looked forward to “reviving our partnership”.
What followed played out like a two-hander.
First, cast the minister as the villain. In February 2025 the union accused Watts of getting “cosy” with Greenpeace and WWF. In April it complained he had “refused to engage with us” on rates while meeting Local Government New Zealand. In June it launched Cap Rates Now at Fieldays, aimed squarely at him. Even his Antarctic trip got lumped into a union post about “taxpayer-funded” getaways, alongside Chris Penk, an MP who has hosted union events at Parliament.
The minister who supposedly wouldn’t engage? His own proactively released ministerial diary records a meeting with the Taxpayers’ Union on 25 June 2025, the day after he posted that his rates-capping model was coming “quickly”.
Three weeks later, Watts was on the back of the union’s ute, beneath its “Cap Rates Now” billboard truck outside the LGNZ gathering in Christchurch, telling the crowd, “this is your money”.
Then the minister delivers. The union campaigned against Inland Revenue’s “Nosey Parker” powers; Watts announced their repeal; the union hailed a “TAXPAYER VICTORY”. The union demanded a rates cap; Watts announced one — in election year. The union’s verdict: “Watts has delivered, minus the ‘now’ part.”
Even the stumbles became trophies. When the union exposed IRD work on taxing work utes, it boasted that “within six hours, the PM’s team overruled Watts”. Its Facebook caption: “Watt the f*%k?!”
At Fieldays this year, Watts, in his “MP for North Shore” campaign jacket, fronted a video carrying the Taxpayers’ Union’s own authorisation statement, chatting about taxes and the perils of a Green finance minister.
Compare how others are treated. ACC claimants lobbied successive ministers for more than a decade to stop Inland Revenue over-taxing backdated compensation. Watts fixed the law but refused to make it retrospective, calling that “too fiscally prohibitive”. Injured claimants waited ten years and got nothing back. The union waited six hours.
Then came the mergers. In May, Watts and Chris Bishop gave councils three months to plan their own amalgamations, a deadline landing three months before the 7 November election. The union demanded ratepayers get “a seat at the table”. Councils spent an estimated $9.1 million. In September, the whole exercise was shelved until after the election. This week, councillors at the LGNZ conference let him have it.
Nicky Hager’s new book, Dirty Work, describes how Stop Three Waters transformed the union, with former staff recalling Jordan Williams asking, “How can we make money from this?” as donations poured in “like a pokie machine”.
Meanwhile, as National’s polling sank, Christopher Luxon reached for captain’s calls that read like Jordan Williams’ wish list:
Promising a referendum on MMP (In 2011, Williams was a spokesman for Vote for Change, the main campaign to dump MMP);
Ruling out working with the Opportunity Party because its policies would raise taxes; and
Dumping his bed and bank tax ideas for a “no new taxes” pledge, less than a fortnight after the union mocked his “no new taxes on working people” fudge.
The union’s verdict: “they listened, changed course.”
Look at the order:
On 12 August, Luxon survived a caucus confidence vote, unsucessfully led by Taxpayers' Union crony Chris Penk;
On 23 August, he gave the union its tax pledge; and
On 24 August, Watts gave it the rates cap.
Two union wins in two days.
When a lobby group can cast a minister as its villain, script his comeback and write his rave reviews, the tentacles are visible from the cheap seats.
Councils can’t get a straight answer. ACC claimants can’t get their money back. The Taxpayers’ Union gets results in six hours and a minister on its truck.
Watt the f*%k, indeed.
