This morning, Newsroom published a story concerning a private and anonymous blog by one of our staff, Nathan Smith.
 
Nathan joined us earlier this year from the National Business Review, where he had worked as a journalist for seven years.
 
The Newsroom story concerns his anonymous blog written outside of work and of which we had no knowledge.
 
Yesterday afternoon, Newsroom provided us with extracts from posts which set out views that are abhorrent to us. We immediately put Nathan on leave for the investigation; we have since accepted his resignation.

The statements he had made are diametrically opposed to the Initiative’s views. As concrete examples, our work on immigration has advocated a more open approach, enabling more migration from all parts of the world. We have been and continue to be advocates of enabling New Zealand to accept more refugees. 
 
Nathan had mainly worked subediting our writing. These edits are always checked by the respective authors and signed off by me before publication. Nevertheless, we will have an independent investigation to examine whether any of our material had been compromised.
 
The Initiative’s views have been the same since we started in 2012. Our mission is to help create a competitive, open and dynamic economy and a free, prosperous, fair, and cohesive society.
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch.

Dr Oliver Hartwich