Crux urges Wānaka candidates to ask their MC some tough questions

Analysis.

The Wānaka Chamber of Commerce has refused to acknowledge their error of judgement in selecting Queenstown’s Mountain Scene Editor to moderate a key election debate tomorrow evening (Tuesday, September 16).

Crux will cover the 7.00 pm event at the Lake Wānaka centre but urges candidates to ask the moderator why her newspaper has failed to cover the most controversial aspects of the QLDC, and Mayor Glyn Lewers, for almost a decade.

The Mountain Scene refused to acknowledge for months and sometimes years the QLDC’s biggest scandals, including the current sewage crisis, ZQN7 and the financial failure of the $2 billion Lakeview project.

The Mountain Scene also enjoys an unusually close relationship to many local businesses and national MP’s – with their senior reporter Phillip Chandler recently taking time off to go to the UK wedding of disgraced former national MP Todd Barclay.

• The Mountain Scene enjoys unusually close ties to local MPs, business owners and property developers. Most news media outlets would go to considerable lengths to make sure these relationships did not develop - in the interests of journalistic balance and integrity. Mr Mooney, the current MP (above with Philip Chandler) , went to extraordinary lengths to reassure the community that the sewage discharges into the Shotover River were safe by staging a video “news interview” with the QLDC’s sewage manager.

Mayor Lewers has acknowledged that a former Mountain Scene owner and major Skyline shareholder, Richard Thomas, is a “trusted friend and colleague.” Mayor Lewers 2025 election camapign PR consultant Celia Crosbie of Scope Communications is a former Mountain Scene reporter.

• Mayor Lewers 2025 electoral campaign PR advisor Celia Crosbie and ““trusted friend and colleague” Richard Thomas - both with Mountain Scene connections.

A Crux official information request showed that Allied Media/Mountain Scene receives around $200,000 a year in advertising and special promotions from the QLDC (such as the Council’s four page Let’s Talk printed newsletter/insert) – enough to fund almost their entire editorial staff of three reporters each year.

Crux has also expressed concern to the Editor of the ODT about the heavy “news” promotion of commercial and residential real estate projects by the Mountain Scene without any legally-required acknowledgement that these are sponsored/advertising posts.

In the latest edition there is a thinly disguised puff-piece supporting Mayor Lewers as he “copped his fair share of criticism” from other media – but not the Mountain Scene. It is written by Editor Tracey Roxburgh (main feature image above with Philip Chandler) who is moderator at the Wānaka debate on Tuesday evening.

Even the QLDC website promotes the Mountain Scene as being “Queenstown’s most powerful media vehicle” at a time when they only print 16,000 copies a week – many of which don’t reach readers due to ongoing distribution problems, and a concerted audience shift to digital media.

The General Manager of the Wānaka Chamber of Commerce, Glenn Peat, explained the decision to Crux around their choice of the Mountain Scene Editor as debate moderator:

“The moderator for the upcoming Meet the Candidates evening is not being paid; her time has been generously donated. She has also moderated two previous events of this type for without issue, and we have full confidence that this one will be no different.”

“We want this event to be fair, respectful, and informative for all attendees, and we welcome feedback to help ensure that outcome.”

“Tracey Roxburgh has volunteered her time, as she has for the past two similar election events.”

Mr Peat obviously has chosen to ignore the fact that Ms Roxburgh is a full time, paid employee of Allied Media and that times have changed over the past ten years.

The Chair of the Wānaka Chamber of Commerce, Jo Learmonth, is also a senior infrastructure planner/manager with the Queenstown Airport Corporation at a time when the QLDC is spending $250,000 on a community survey around the future of Wānaka airport.

We hope the candidates can direct some questions back towards Ms Roxburgh on Tuesday as to why her newspaper worked with the QLDC to silence and ignore coverage of the sewage crisis for months in late 2024 and early 2025, when public health and the environment were key factors – along with QLDC’s inaction for five years and the construction of an illegal $800,000 earth wall by council funded contractors in an attempt to hide the crisis from the community.