From FreeNZ @ Substack

Liz Gunn speaks with Tony Pascoe, Marie Gibbs, and Russell Gibbs in this powerful interview exposing the scandalous and corrupt New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), and its “Roads of National Significance”. There is also another, lesser known organisation involved in this story, called The Property Group….

Our first interview with Tony Pascoe & Marie Gibbs in 2023: https://rumble.com/v3ts5ki-tony-pasco…
Below, the latest…

This discussion is crucial viewing for all New Zealanders in order that, if you yourself find you have a knock at the door and an arrogant message that your land will be forced from you – in effect pilfered – by either of these organisations, you now have the strongest of legal precedents in the Pascoe case, to defend your rights as a landowner.

Tony Pascoe, a lifelong farmer north of New Plymouth, has spent the last exhausting decade fighting the NZTA’s Mount Messenger Bypass Project.

This wasteful NZTA plan centred on a mere 5.3 kilometres of roading, gaining little advantage for the motorist but causing a massive trauma and environmental cost to Tony’s land by cutting through his family’s ancient forest valley and their ecologically unique 18 hectare Wetlands, which serve as home to a number of rare native species.

The Pascoe Family was subjected to inordinate pressures, amounting to severe bullying – including a total disrespect for their rights and privacy as landowners, repeated Trespass Without Notice, intimidation, psychological game playing, threatened and actual heavy costs if they did not comply, a drive-by shooting, and other sordid and unethical tactics designed to break them psychologically.

So severe was the bullying in the Pascoe’s case, that there needs to be a full and independent investigation into NZTA, involving this and other cases of their unacceptable behaviours, along with a full exposure of those who are behind the decisions to act with such blatant disregard for human dignity and respect when it comes to seeking rights for roading over Kiwis’ private land.

If such bullying is to be brought to an immediate cessation, should those at the top of these organisations and who have sanctioned corrupt ways of treating landowners, be held personally liable for the emotional and physical damage that their corporate decision making has created?

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This is not a good look for NZTA, and it comes at a time when they are being exposed on another front, for their profligate financial spending.

In this interview you will hear of the eye-watering waste of money from NZTA on the Mt Messenger Project, and on the ensuing court action, to mentally break the Pascoes.

Yet in the clip below, we see a bland bureaucrat smugly explain why New Zealand taxpayers should pay a back-breaking additional tax so NZTA can indulge themselves in yet more disgraceful and wasteful spending on our roading, from their bloated budgets.

Kiwis must stand up, say no to this demand, and in turn insist on full accountability for the billions already lost to our incompetent and arrogant groups involved in roading in New Zealand .

There is clear evidence of manifestly inadequate government oversight of our roading.

The Redbaiter@TheRedbaiter

The govt’s road tolling plan was exposed for the BS it really is on Q and A today. Afraid to source the money from general revenue, the govt wants to slug you extra to build roads. Something that should be one of its basic duties. So its setting up an expensive & cumbersome

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When you listen to this clip above and hear that the NZTA are demanding $49 BILLION in extra funding, and then you listen to the Pascoe interview and see how much money has already been wasted on a totally impractical plan for this tiny, 5.3 km piece of roading – a vanity project for a local politician – then the call for a full blown Inquiry into NZTA, with total transparency to the public, becomes even more pressing.

When Tony was almost breaking under the multiple scare and intimidation and legal tactics employed, Marie and Russell Gibbs, local siblings with deep farming and iwi roots, joined the Pascoes’ legal fight.

They share their own experiences with Public Works Act land pressures, calmly explaining the enormous legal complexities and the months and months of work that went in to voluntarily helping the Pascoes.

For these gifted siblings, it has been a matter of friendship and community, as well as legal principle, for them to offer help to the Pascoes. Their dogged determination to garner an important legal victory for all the other New Zealanders who find themselves threatened and bullied by NZTA, mirrors the courage and hard work of Tony Pascoe and his wife Debbie, whose lives have been absolutely upended for ten years of trauma over this unjustifiable roading debacle in Taranaki.

In terms of the roading itself, the interview covers cheaper roading options, of which NZTA was aware but which they hid from the Pisces, unlawful delegated authority by NZTA and The Property Group, and the relentless pressure that was kept on the Pascoe Family.

It is a disturbing saga and has more than a little flavour of sadistic cruelty towards a humble but hugely brave single farmer who was not going to be hounded off his land by people with no scruples, and even less integrity or humanity.

On 18 December 2025, the New Zealand Supreme Court – our highest court – ruled 3 to 2 in the Pascoe Family’s favour.

The decision found that NZTA and the Property Group had been operating on an invalid basis: they lacked proper Ministerial delegation, under section 18 of the Public Works Act.

The implications of this decision are enormous. For the last 30 years, land confiscations for roading projects have, in effect, been operated under an illegal and illicit model.

This landmark ruling is a precedent that protects landowners. It means that any roading confiscations of private property require Good Faith Negotiation by the Minister for Land Information.

It’s shocking to hear of the enormity of the human and financial toll on all three of these heroic Kiwi battlers, as well as the systemic issues in the Public Works Act process. The whole story highlights the need for accountability from NZTA, and our Ministers involved in roading and land issues.

There are also issues of alarm about the decision making in some of our lower courts, and you will hear that a very dubious judge has since resigned- but not before he delivered heavy injustice to the Pascoes. The need for stringent oversight of our judges is long overdue. That will require a strict systems overhaul and much public discussion and feedback. For that to happen, we need new people in government who care about ethics, morality and most of all, the rights of The People.

Above all, this story serves as both a warning and a guide for other New Zealanders facing similar land acquisition threats.

It should one day be made into a film on a par with Australia’s “ The Castle” fable, in which one brave and heroic man can show millions of his fellow countrymen and women what a difference you can make when you refuse to cave in to bullies- especially those representing themselves as having governance powers.

We at FreeNZ hold these three Kiwis in the highest regard for all of their work, their collegiality, and mutual friendship and support and their unstoppable determination to secure a just outcome in a country where corruption has made that far less assured than it once was.

Thank you to those of you who have supported the Pascoes and the Gibbs so far.

If you can, please offer them your support now, as much of their work was on their own time and to their own great personal cost over ten draining years. A donation from you would underline to them how much you value their courage and dignity and achievement.

Please consider supporting Tony Pascoe to help cover his legal costs:

Account number: 06-0789-0179609-00
Name: TJS & DA PASCOE
Bank: ANZ

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EWNZ comment:
Note this scenario is well known to Maori who were subjected to massive and multiple land grabs ‘for public works’, frequently not reimbursed, frequently never returned as promised. Eg Tolaga Bay theft. The Raglan Golf Course another. The 1975 Land March was on account of these scenarios … ‘not one more acre’ being their tag line. So as recently as 1975 it was happening. Right now of course we are seeing more of it. Read about the Shaws in Hamilton and the confiscation of their bird park. Still in motion. Also the SNA scenarios. Matata is another. Under the Agenda 2030 plan which all NZ Councils are signed up to, the real narrative they do not openly disclose, is their intention to own everthing. Insane as that may sound it is no longer conspiracy but fact.
Read our Agenda 21/30 and One World Govt/New World Order pages at the main menu. Under Local Govt Watch take a look at the goings on in the Horowhenua (here also) and Mangawhai. It’s all been ticking along for quite some time.
Finally, note also how Agenda 2030 driven Councils spout ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ in their narratives, yet in this case blatantly intending the destruction of habitat for native birdlife. How sustainable is that? The rhetoric on their websites is mere lipservice.