Brad Flutey in 2020 when he stood in the general election for the Northland/Te Tai Tokerau seat for the Social Credit party. Photo / Tania Whyte
Brad Flutey in 2020 when he stood in the general election for the Northland/Te Tai Tokerau seat for the Social Credit party. Photo / Tania Whyte
Prolific anti-mandate activist Bradley Flutey has been ordered to remove posts he made about a nurse on social media and has been forbidden from posting about her again.
Flutey has been a prominent opposer to the Covid-19 vaccine and the associated mandates and appeared in court last year after he tried to fight off police officers who were attempting to arrest him for not wearing a mask in a liquor store.
He was tasered three times during the altercation and charged with disorderly behaviour and resisting arrest.
But that’s not his only interaction with the courts recently - he’s also been taken to court by a nurse he repeatedly posted about on social media.
The nurse, Lisa Richmond, and Flutey met several times at protests in Wellington and at Marsden point before they had a “falling out”.
Since then Flutey posted several videos to Facebook and the messaging app Telegram labelling Richmond a “grifter” and accused her of marshalling donations which she then spent on “drugs and booze”.
“There is a whole team of fake activists that get paid through WINZ to f*** up grassroots movements. Lisa Richmond is their grifter, she gets them more money from poor dumb fools and disabled people,” Flutey said in one Facebook post about her.
Brad Flutey (left) and his McKenzie Friend, former lawyer Vinay Deobhakta, outside the Whangārei District Court. Photo / Sarah Curtis
He also sent an email to Richmond saying: “If you are spotted at any major actions coming up we will wipe all of you out of it.”
Richmond told NZME that taking the case to court wasn’t about “gagging” Flutey but about holding him accountable for the defamatory comments he was making about her.
“Bullying, harassing and slandering is not free speech,” she said.
“Debating and arguing about a topic is great, it’s essential actually. But harassment isn’t ok.”
Richmond said despite multiple attempts at mediation, Flutey didn’t engage with the court process and the affidavit he filed wasn’t admissible to the court.
As for the claims she was a “grifter” and that she’d misused donated funds, Richmond said all her books had been audited multiple times and come up clean and that Flutey’s posts suggesting otherwise could have seriously damaged her reputation.
Netsafe assessed the posts and recommended that Richmond proceed with a case through the District Court system under the Harmful Digital Communications Act.
In August last year the Tauranga District Court made an interim order demanding that any post referring to Richmond should be taken down and that Flutey could not continue to post about her, nor could he encourage anyone else to either.
Those orders were made permanent by Judge Thomas Ingram in November.
However, despite the ruling, a clearly visible post subsequently remained on one of Flutey’s social media profiles with a comment about how Richmond “makes up stories” about him.
Judge Ingram said that the allegation that Richmond was a “grifter” and that she was dishonestly using donated funds was “grossly defamatory unless properly proven on reliable evidence” which had not been provided in this case.
He went on to say that repeating the allegations on multiple platforms was done to harass Richmond.
“In this case, the circle of people with access to the posts, and with enough interest in these matters to pursue them is relatively small.
“But there is clearly a community of people minded to engage in activism, and in my view that community should not be left in any doubt that the respondent has stepped well over the bounds of free speech in relation to the applicant.”
Judge Ingram said freedom of speech was a “precious constitutional artefact” but it had its limits, especially regarding harassment and menacing language.
“I am satisfied that the respondent has made false allegations which would materially damage the applicant’s reputation within the activist community, and I am satisfied that there is no public interest in false and defamatory material being available on the platforms used.”
