Candidate’s conspiracy views aired at meeting of Tasman hopefuls
A council candidate who believes in a United Nations depopulation conspiracy told a candidate meeting that climate change is not man-made and ‘‘not an emergency’’.
At a meet-the-candidates event at Richmond Town Hall on Tuesday evening, Adele Terrill, a Tasman District Council candidate standing for Richmond ward, said the climate had changed ‘‘since the year dot’’.
‘‘I’m probably not going to make a lot of friends here by saying this but I, personally, am not convinced that climate change ... is man-made.’’
Terrill said she had looked at both sides of the debate and seen ‘‘dollar signs’’. ‘‘Climate change is not an emergency,’’ she said.
On her candidate profile, Terrill’s stated concerns include ‘‘unworkable regulations put on farmers, land grabs, the travesty of Three Waters reform, and the one size fits all approach to sustainability of central government’’.
She also stated ‘‘let’s dispense with the fear narrative’’. When questioned about this phrase at the meeting, she referenced dialogue surrounding climate change and Covid-19. ‘‘Our Government and our media seem to just want to whip us all up into being afraid of something all the time.’’
A yarn dyer and maker, Terrill has posted on Facebook about ‘‘UN eugenics’’.
Terrill told a Stuff reporter she had attended freedom rallies around the region, and was concerned for New Zealanders’ freedom.
‘‘Freedom to choose what goes into your body, freedom of movement.’’
Terrill said there were ‘‘several influencers in the UN who are well-known eugenicists’’ and ‘‘one of the goals of the UN is to reduce the population in the world’’.
This refers to a debunked conspiracy theory that the UN aims to reduce the world population as part of its sustainable development goals.
If she had to address a health emergency in the future, Terrill said she would look at ‘‘all sides of the debate, not just what is handed down from Wellington’’.
‘‘There’s great thinkers in this world, but we seem to be getting one side of the equation.’’
When pressed about her views, Terrill declined to comment further.
‘‘I don’t know, I’m just a little housewife and cook.’’
Thom Monckton would like you to bring him gifts.
In the contemporary circus performer’s show, The King of Taking, the ‘‘King’’ requests wrapped gifts from his subjects, aka the audience.
He has asked for ‘‘anything that people don’t particularly want’’.
The idea, he said, was to get people invested in the show before they actually arrived at the theatre.
‘‘People get quite excited about what will happen as their gifts are unwrapped.’’
Monckton is a freelance circus artist and has been based in Europe for the past 15 years, in Finland for the last 10.
Born in Patea, South Taranaki, he trained for two years at the Christchurch circus school CircoArts and then for two years at the physical theatre school Lecoq in Paris.
Monckton spoke to Stuff shortly after he returned to Aotearoa via a plethora of exhausting flights, which went something like ‘‘Grenoble, Geneva, Munich, Helsinki, Munich, Singapore, Perth, Auckland and Wellington’’.
‘‘I love being back, I just really love being here, but for work I still need to go over to Europe, at least for summer touring,’’ he explained.
With all things royal high on the news agenda at the moment, Monckton is one of the few individuals who can claim to have climbed all over European monarchy while performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
No-one actually gave him the heads up that the Dutch royal family were watching the show – all he knew was that there were some VIPs in the audience.
As part of the performance of The Pianist, Monckton would go out and climb over the seats to get closer to the tech booth – using their shoulders and heads to lever his way through the audience.
‘‘I did that during the show, and then afterwards I realised, oh, I think I climbed on the royal family of the Netherlands,’’ he said, more specifically the queen.
While many artists were hard hit by the pandemic, Monckton said in Finland it was ‘‘virtually nonexistent’’ now and not really a topic of conversation nowadays.
‘‘Pretty much as soon as the war happened, Covid-19 just disappeared, that was not the issue any more, because obviously Finland shares the largest land border in Europe with Russia, so that was the larger story and the more concerning thing.’’
Monckton said The King of Taking was going to be fun and light-hearted and interactive ‘‘in a relaxed manner’’ – as in he won’t be bringing anyone up on stage.
The show was inspired by world leaders who he described generally as having the characteristics of a ‘‘manchild’’.
‘‘It’s kind of shocking that those personalities are in charge in the world. They’re intrinsically clowns,’’ he said.
‘‘Politicians should leave the clowning to the professionals.’’
Thom Monckton performs The King of Taking on October 25 and 26 at the Theatre Royal as part of the Nelson Arts Festival. More details at nelsonartsfestival.nz