Chairperson's Annual Report June 2025

Here is my report, as chairman, as an overview of what has taken place with Rock The Vote NZ over the last year since our previous AGM.

A lot has happened on the RTV NZ journey over the past 11 months with a number of unforeseen twists & turns.

One thing that RTV has been passionate about & stood for is unity in the freedom community and building relationships with other like-minded groups – whether political or otherwise. We have been quite successful with this – especially from the point of view that we haven’t made any real enemies – in fact we have made a lot of really good connections & friends.

At the end of august last year RTV were invited down to Rotorua to attend the NZ O&F party’s annual conference – which included their AGM. It was a wonderful weekend of connecting & bonding -though it became apparent that they (and their party president Allan Simmons in particular) were hoping that we would join their party to give it a much-needed boost & energy.

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While this offer had some merits (especially the fact the O&F party were already a registered party and they consistently polled around 1%) the committee collectively decided that that wasn’t for us.

Following on from that RTV NZ created a hub, called the freedom alliance, which was/is intended to be a meeting place for groups to connect, share ideas & how to potentially work together – always with the 2026 general election in mind.

We had two in-person freedom alliance meetings towards the end of last year and one last May.

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Groups who have attended are RTV NZ, NZ O&F party, Reunite NZ, Direct Democracy NZ, Unify NZ, the Democratic Alliance, & Brenton Faithful from NZ Loyal.

 

These have been reasonably successful from the point of view of bringing everyone together.

We plan to have further freedom alliance meetings (Guy Slocum from Unity NZ would like to be involved in any future meetings) and these are likely to be held mostly by zoom.

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Another thing that we have been successful at, is that we have consistently put on events with a number of really good speakers – such as, Elliot Ikilei, Brad Flutey, Kirsten Murfitt, Martin Durtre, David Charalambous, Safertech, Mark Quinn, Karl Barkley, as well John Alcock with his crypto workshops.

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We also have consistently held RTV movie nights on a monthly basis.

Also, RTV, along with Reunite NZ, jointly held a freedom picnic at the Auckland domain with a wide variety of speakers. We felt this was a good start and plan to hold another one again next year – with ideas on how to improve & expand it.

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RTV NZ are in a good place with our events and we have built a reputation as being reliable event organizers – so much so that we now have a waiting list of speakers or groups who would like us to put events on for them.  

Apparently, we are the only minor political group that regularly puts on events.

We also have a number of active sub-committees such as –

• National politics sub-committee led by Daymond

• Local body politics sub-committee led by Kathryn

• Website & social media sub-committee led by Andrew.

 

RTV NZ have also made a number of submissions, both in oral & written form, for the various parliamentary bills that have been open to public input & consultation.

With regards to my earlier comment that there had been some twists & turns along the way, this includes a couple of fallen RTV soldiers.

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Earlier this year we lost our party leader John Alcock due some unresolvable issues. Unfortunately, both John & RTV lost out – but we have no hard or ill feelings towards john. We are thankful & grateful for what john contributed to RTV – which was quite a lot actually.  We are hoping to resolve the vacant party leader position later in this AGM.

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Another big loss for our committee is Fiona McEwen who put forward her resignation from the committee last month. The main reason Fiona has resigned is because she has been going hard with RTV NZ since its beginning 3 years ago & needs a break. There is no animosity and i have to say that Fiona has been nothing but extremely helpful with the transition of her roles over to the committee.  Fiona is staying on as a party member and is still going to administer our social media, and maybe as our events organizer.

It has to be said that Fiona worked tirelessly & gave everything she could to RTV NZ (she was kind of like the engine room) – her commitment was enormous. We are sincerely grateful for everything that she did – a big, big thank you to Fiona!

 

Looking forward, we are presently focussed on a number of items. These include –

1. This year’s local body elections. We have been meeting with several groups & individuals including C&R, Democracy Action, Mark Quinn, councillors Ken Turner & Mike Lee, and Viv Beck from Heart of the City, & local advocate Gael Baldock.

2. The 2026 general election, which includes building our membership base so that we become a registered political party to attract quality candidates.

3. Hosting more educational events & movies. Which includes Ian Handricks next weekend talking about the positives & dangers of artificial intelligence, and in July we have Jon from GE free to talk about the dangers of the gene technology bill.

So, its onwards & upwards from here –

I would like to say a huge thank you to all our committee members for your contributions & dedication to RTV NZ and the cause (what a fantastic team!) – and also a special thank you to all our RTV members who always consistently support us- very much appreciated.

As i said, its onwards & upwards from here – which reminds me of our theme song by journey, “don’t stop believing!”

Thank you everyone.
Michael Avenell
Chairperson

Rock The Vote NZ