AHNZ vs. INZ and DNC

February 20, 2026

By AHNZ

It has now been 6 months since the Domain Name Commission (DNC) closed down this website. They gave just 2 days notice for me to enter into a Digital ID process which I didn’t think was lawful or necessary or even for real. When Anarkiwi.co.nz and all the email addresses, websites, and scripts relying upon it crashed on 19/8/2025 it became real enough!

The “Keeping .nz fair for everyone” people were evidently drunk with power. More interested in steralising the .nz internet no matter who it hurt just to keep their books tidy. Or, worse, positively motivated to force everyone with a .nz in their domain name to submit to their Digital ID program. I was invited to procure a smartphone, hand over my passport or drivers license, residential address. I was required to make a GPS-tagged video of my face and film myself walking so they could conduct a gate analysis. It was only the beginning of an open-ended process of data mining which ended when they said it ended. Or, I would have my websites taken away and on-sold for not participating in a “data validation audit!”

So, it was to the “Helping New Zealand harness the power of the internet” people, Internet New Zealand (INZ) I turned to next. They are not a government entity exactly but formed an alliance with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in the dying days of John Key’s National 5.0 Ministry. INZ in turn created the company, DNC, to rake in the dollars from our fees and police us. Basically I made a formal complaint to INZ to the effect that their dog was off the leash. Within 24 hours they had my domain name working again but the trouble was not over.

DNC have continued to insist that I complete the Digital ID which they call “APLYiD.” Still don’t know why. Do they want to know I’m a real human? A New Zealander? Do you need a driver’s license to have a website now? Until I comply the domain name is in limbo and able to be taken again at any moment. So, for 6 months I have been unable to go after my usual work of deep history research, correspondence, and writing to this website. The diagram below shows the drop off. My writing here also funnels to social media so I’ve focused my efforts on re-posting content to the AHNZ Facebook page.

As an unintended consequence of not constantly posting outgoing links it seems Meta has stopped throttling that Facebook page which has allowed me to pick up 12,000 more followers. I now fully understand why many pages share pictures only and post outgoing links in the comments. Facebook punish users for leaving their site.

Sonya Trompetter of INZ wrote back on 18 September to my complaints to say “I can inform you that I have escalated your concerns to the senior management team at InternetNZ for their review.” however nothing came of them. Evidently INZ were not executing their duties. Possibly they’re busy having some sort of internal political battle over policy and board rivalry. For example, Jonathan Ayling recently stopped appearing on The Platform or acting as an exec in the Free Speech Union as some sort of trade-in for getting a more free speech voice (his) onto that board. I guess they’re busy fighting over what to do with their power, enjoying the remuneration, and dolling money out to activist groups they like. For example, $10,000 to my old mate from university Byron Clark (FACT Aotearoa) to attack political parties they don’t like. Ref. Chris Lynch Media (2025)

Too busy, then, to supervise their enforcement arm, the DNC Ltd. as it gets all up in our faces with their program to force digital IDs. This loose unit itself has operational expenditure of $15,000,000 (2024/5) of which $1,000,000 alone is given away in “community funding” or “charity.” Much of that is political. Half of it goes to Maoris and I read that 25% of the funding is going toward LGBTQIA+ causes in the next round. The DNC itself is paid a management fee of $1,650,00 (2024/5) to allow its staff to mess about with all of this while supposedly serving internet users like us.

My next resort was to use the Privacy Act to ask the DNC why they wanted all this personal information in Digital ID form anyway? Without joking they shot back that in order to tell me why they needed my Digital ID I would first need to go through their process of acquiring a Digital ID!

Had it with that! So in December 2025 I had both the INZ and DNC summoned to the Disputes Tribunal. Rather than facilitate a negotiation the Referee, Krysia Cowie, had an extremely structured formula that ate up most of the time in itself. It didn’t do much for clearing up the issue at hand but it was good to have the quangos called to account at long last. For them it was grueling and painful even though, unlike me, these Wellington corporate folk were being paid vast sums of money just to be there. There, on the phone, mind you. I was the only one in the court house.

First up was Barbara Pearse (left) ‘The Domain Name Commissioner’. Barb has taken over the job of refusing to cooperate after her underling bullies ran out of tricks. Apparently they were working me though some textbook on organised control called VADE (Voluntary, Assist, Direct, Enforce.) Most people, not being radical Libertarians, would have jumped through her hoops for fear of having their business destroyed by the sharp end of VADE. In fact, the November 2025 newsletter for DNC states 494 “audits” were conducted which led to 42 having their domain names suspended. Everyone else probably just wanted to get their internet back from Barbara. Instead, I added a nice E for Escalate by going over the DNC’s head. E-VADE.

Pearse had prepared a ridiculous amount of case law which nobody bothered to read. I received it all but could see right away it was the ravings of someone who didn’t understand the process she was in. The Disputes Tribunal isn’t a law exam. Cowie kindly explained that this was a layman’s tribunal and her LLB couldn’t help her here. Barbara had been trying on some nonsense about the Tribunal not being able to consider anything that involved the internet but evidently dropped that idea after reconsidering it. Many man hours seem to have gone into her preparation but it was all for nothing. Turns out that Barbara is a barrister of the High Court of Auckland! As such she is unqualified to represent a party at the Disputes Tribunal at all and was sent on her way. She said nobody else in her office was able to step up.

Next we had a duo from INZ: David Parker (Business Operations Lead) and and Catherine Fenwick (General Manager of Organisational Performance.) Even between them they had no ability to negotiate the fairly pedestrian maze they found themselves in at the Tribunal. Fenwick, seemingly one of the Irish diaspora, let David do most of the talking. Barbara had apparently done his homework for him but the team at INZ didn’t really understand half of it and stuttered through. They were trying to make out that they had no responsibility for the .nz side of things and no supervisory role. They’d handed it all over to DNC so could they please be excused? They know how to talk Maori and wear lanyards but dealing with customers isn’t part of the job! It was like a high school kid trying to get out of PE without a note from Mum. Cowie wasn’t having it and offered a basic explanation about how civil contracts work that anyone could have picked up from high school if not year 1 polytech.

Barbara must have wanted to interject but she didn’t have Cowie’s talking stick! Besides, as a member of the bar she was benched permanently anyhow.

I wanted to interject to point out the very numerous times that the INZ’s own submission papers referred to themselves as the ones who delegate/appoint/manage their powers to the DNC. I did somehow slip in that INZ pays a substantial management fee to Barbara’s crew to operate on their behalf. Generally poor old David was left puzzled and wishing some other sucker had been in the office that day. He’s only been in the job 8 weeks.

None of these people seem to understand their organisational structure. The sort of push-back offered here is evidently way out of their comfort zone or experience. I can now understand why they didn’t choose to communicate or work together to resolve the dispute in the first place. They live a lavish life of junkets and celebrity tech talks. It’s a quazi-State organism with lots of money and power to slosh around but no oversight. Nothing to fear from government change or Official Information Act requests or media scrutiny (except perhaps for David Harvey in the Listener from time to time.) They are not customer facing so are happy to squash us on short notice at the tip of their VADE cudgel. Internet users? A pest!

Because of Barbara the 11 December Hearing was unable to conclude. They’re going to need another Barbara for 20 February, today. I’m seeking clarification on what, if anything, these people want from me so they can go back to twirling lanyards and stop harassing people. Also, institutional change. An apology. Even a financial penalty for the damage. Agreement to terms that don’t involve them threatening to nuke my websites to extort personal information from me? In the last gasp of the Tribunal I asked the DNC and INZ if they would at least lift their threat to de-register anarkiwi.co.nz until the next Tribunal hearing but they wouldn’t.

I think if anyone in their Wellington suites at Willis Street had come to their senses they would have contacted me by now. I don’t think they will be any more prepared or their arguments any better. I think it’s just a drop in the bucket, a bug on the windshield, a c’est la vie. The expected damage of being ruled against by the Disputes Tribunal, they think, will be easy to walk off and put into the rear view mirror. After all, money is no object. Barbara doesn’t think a little thing like this is going to lead to her resignation or even hard questions from the board. They don’t see it as a Free Speech issue. They don’t think I have the agency to be a problem or that their power can be checked. Whereas, I think it will be.

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