NZ Post refuses to deliver anti-Wellington City Council pamphlet

Part of a pamphlet from campaign group Better Wellington that contains claims about wasteful council spending. Photo / RNZ

By Kate Green of RNZ

Posties in Wellington have refused once to deliver pamphlets containing misinformation about the city council and Islamic calls to prayer, but the leaflets could be hitting letterboxes today.

Written by political campaign group Better Wellington, they contain claims about wasteful council spending, city-wide speed limits, and the assertion that the council “wants the city’s six mosques to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer across the city”.

Postal Workers Union national co-president John Maynard said he visited three branches in Wellington on Monday morning, and posties told him they did not feel comfortable delivering the pamphlet.

It would do harm to community relationships, and it went against NZ Post’s mandate to “be an organisation that exhibits a sense of social responsibility”, he said.

The pamphlet was set to be delivered to 80,000 houses, but he understood none of them were delivered on Monday; instead, the issue was escalated to NZ Post management.

NZ Post said in a statement: “It is not appropriate for NZ Post to act as a censor in determining what it will and won’t deliver.”

Maynard disagreed. “Just to accept any flyer from anybody is hardly exercising social responsibility,” he said.

“We know what happened in the mosques in Christchurch. There is a lot of sensitivity about Islamophobia, and this looks to us like a dog whistle about exactly that.”

Wellington city councillor Rebecca Matthews said the pamphlet’s claim was likely to be a reference to recent changes to the district plan that sought to change the rules to allow mosques to use speakers to broadcast a call to prayer on special occasions.

“Currently, mosques in Wellington can never broadcast a call to prayer,” she said.

“My understanding is the community are thinking about perhaps a couple of times a year, for a short period of time, at not-antisocial hours, to be able to broadcast.”

She said the pamphlet was clearly an attempt to make people angry, and was to some extent fuelled by Islamophobia.

“There is a lot that should be fact-checked, and if I was getting it in my letterbox, I would take it with a very hearty grain of salt.”

The council said in a statement staff had been asked to clarify district plan rules relating to calls to prayer.

“Officers have not been asked to investigate daily calls to prayer; rather, the rules as they relate to specific events such as future commemorations of the 15 March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Officers will be reporting back next month.”