Craig Stobo has been forced to resign as chair of the board of New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority.
On 4 May 2026, National Party MP and Commerce & Consumer Affairs Minister, Cameron Brewer, accepted Stobo’s offer to resign. Brewer’s acceptance was of course code for, “If he’d refused to resign, I’d’ve booted him”.
Stobo’s “resignation” come after an “independent” review and report, orchestrated and delivered by King’s Counsel Wendy Aldred, examined multiple allegations made against Stobo. You can read Aldred’s final report in full:
Try as she might, Aldred could find no evidence to support spurious, bad-faith allegations against Stobo that he’d had an inappropriate relationship with an ex-FMA staffer, hadn’t disclosed governance-related interests and had taken inappropriate FMA-funded travel.
What Aldred got Stobo for was failing to adhere to Treaty of Waitangi Critical Race Theory. She gleefully found – quoting directly from her review:
In essence, Aldred found that Stobo’s publicly expressed personal views did not align with the FMA’s official stance on the Treaty of Waitangi, and for that, Stobo had to Go Go. Aldred’s report states, chillingly:
Specifically, the FMA has formally recognised the Treaty principles as currently understood, based on judicial decisions. The vehicle for this is the FMA’s Te Ao Māori strategy, Matangirua, which had been agreed on by the FMA Board in April 2024, and is aimed at (amongst other objectives) enabling Māori to participate as Māori in financial markets, in recognition of the principle of te tino rangatiratanga (self-determination).
The reference to “recognition of the principle te tino rangatiratanga (self-determination)” is of course to the racially separatist, invented notion that there is a separate nation of Māori individuals, in partnership with a nation of non-Māori.
So, She Wolf Aldred howled for Stobo’s heretical head, and Brewer delivered it on a plate. This All Dreadful-Brewer assassination of Stobo is yet another win for Woke impregnation of New Zealand’s State institutions with ahistorical, Court-created Treaty mythology and Māori mysticism.
There’s a rich irony in Stobo being axed for an alleged lack of political impartiality, because the public service environment is of course characterised by extreme Leftie political partiality and partisanship. Stobo’s Archilles’ heel was simply that he didn’t exhibit the right type of partiality. If Stobo had submitted against ACT Leader David Seymour’s Treat Principles Bill, he’d be free (like Judge Ema Aitken) to drink martinis, and watch the sun rise.
Meanwhile, in other parts of town, the full Courts press for Judicial Supremacy rocks on. I’ve been commenting on this constitutional combat zone for quite some time:
On 22 April 2026, New Zealand’s Chief Justice and Supreme Court Supremo, Dame Helen Winkelmann, delivered Sydney University’s George Winterton Memorial Lecture.
In the not so foreign land of Australia, Winkelmann celebrated the fluidity that she feels the Treaty of Waitangi offers New Zealand judges to unilaterally change New Zealand’s laws and constitutional arrangements to suit their “progressive” ideological agendas. Winkelmann particularly trumpeted the Courts’ incorporation of Māori tikanga in common law, falsely asserting that tikanga is now pervasive in New Zealand society in general.
Dame Helen gleefully regurgitated the false mantra that it was “not a revolutionary moment” for New Zealand’s Supreme Court to purport to employ tikanga in order to posthumously overturn the criminal convictions of Peter Ellis.
(Ellis was the chap falsely convicted of child sex crimes, because he was a gay man who worked in child care during the bizarre late 1980s/early 1990s period of child-abuse hysteria and derangement. Lynley Hood masterfully described society’s collective fear, moral panic and institutional breakdown in her book A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. A sinister new breed of witch and warlock hunters now stalks the land.)
Tikanga is a perfect Trojan horse to afford New Zealand’s Courts free rein to ride roughshod (puns intended) over established, democratic notions of Parliamentary supremacy. It’s perfect because tikanga is irredeemably undefined and undefinable, and can therefore be exploited to inject whatever judicial activism the Courts wish to import into New Zealand law - regardless of the misgivings of Parliament and New Zealanders in general. Tikanga is New Zealand’s Courts’ not-so-secret weapon of mass post-modernism, in their crusading quest for constitutional ascendancy.
Speaking of which, the circle of judicial wagons around District Court Judge Ema Aitken has now done its job and dispersed.
The Judicial Conduct Panel appointed by Minister Paul Goldsmith to assess Aitken’s atrocious antics comprised retired Court of Appeal Judge Brendan Brown KC, current Court of Appeal Judge Jillian Mallon and ex-Defence Force Chief and Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae.
That Panel has predictably concluded that Aitken gate crashing a private New Zealand First function and calling Winston Peters a liar does not justify her removal as a judge. In reaching that conclusion, the Panel conveniently ignored many things, including Aitken’s manifold lying to various Court hearings and the Conduct Panel itself, stating:
“…we consider that public confidence in her as a judge or in the judiciary generally is not so affected by her conduct that it would be inimical to the administration of justice for her to remain in office or as to bring the judicial office into disrepute.”
The Panel has ostensibly convinced itself that letting a lying, bibulous, arrogant, activist judge remain a judge will not further dent the general public’s confidence in New Zealand’s judiciary. Yeah right. Or perhaps that confidence has already reached rock bottom.
What can be done about this concerted assault on personal freedoms of expression and democracy, and the judicial elite’s quest for unaccountable activism?
In the wake of Aitken’s antics, former Attorney-General Judith Collins called for augmented training for judges on “comity”. Comity is the constitutional convention that judges should remain politically neutral towards Ministers and political parties, and avoid conduct that can reasonably be seen as politically partisan or adversarial, or undermining of public confidence in judicial impartiality.
But of course judges in general, and Aitken in particular, understand full well the desirability for judges to demonstrate “comity”. They simply often choose to ignore the convention, with demonstrable impunity.
In April 2026, Deborah Chambers KC publicly criticized the watering down of legal acumen and effective advocacy as primary credentials for appointment of Kings Counsel, in favour of “soft” activities such as having done lots of pro bono (free) legal work. Wendy Aldred KC, co-executioner of Stobo, was appointed a KC in 2024. It’s not clear whether All Red Aldred has done any legal work for free. She does, however, proudly shout from the rooftop of her Ivory Tower than she cut her ivories appearing before the Waitangi Tribunal.
But in truth, politicians made of the Right Stuff, and with clear eyed determination, have all the ammunition they need to fire back against the Legalerati and judicial elitism, and restore Parliament’s democratic supremacy and the rule of law. Politicians like Cameron Brewer must step up and fight the censorious legal elites and the cancel culture they nurture, or ship out.