The latest 2026 Quality of Life survey is out – and it confirms the bad news for the news media.

Not only do we distrust the media, but they’re not winning back any of that lost trust

The 2026 Quality of Life survey is a collaborative local government research project which is run by Ipsos – a large international polling company.

The primary objective of the survey is to measure residents’ perceptions of aspects of living in larger urban areas. The survey provides data for councils to use as part of their planning.

But it also contributes to public knowledge and research on quality-of-life issues in New Zealand.

The Quality of Life survey was first conducted in 2003, repeated in 2004, and has been undertaken every 2 years since. The number of participating councils has varied each time. Nine councils participated in the 2024 Quality of Life survey and seven in the latest. In 2026, Christchurch City Council did not participate.

So the seven were ▪ Auckland Council ▪ Hamilton City Council ▪ Tauranga City Council ▪ Hutt City Council ▪ Porirua City Council ▪ Wellington City Council ▪ Dunedin City Council.

In 2026, a total of 5725 respondents aged 18 years and over completed the Quality of Life survey – so that’s a significant survey.

What is noteworthy is that it doesn’t include a lot of more rural areas in NZ – it’s the major cities – so I would say that this survey would already be slightly left-bias or liberal-bias – which actually makes the results even more astounding.

Now just a quick recap on trust in media

A quick recap…

In the recent 2026 global survey across 29 countries by the Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in media has slightly increased worldwide. 2% points. Blue is trust, red is distrust, grey is neutral.

For NZ specifically, in 2023, trust in NZ media was sitting at 41%. But worldwide, it averaged 50% - so we’re disproportionately low. It then plummeted to 35% last year - from 41% two years before but has had a rebound up to 39. Cause for celebration? It’s still a net loss of 2% from two years before.

Here’s the “global” rate again for trust in media. Increase of 4 points since 2023. But NZ has had a net LOSS of 2% over the same period.

I’ve circled where NZ would sit with its score of 39. 2^nd to bottom equal with the UK tabloids including the BBC, The Guardian, The Sun and the Daily Mirror.

In a statement, Acumen chief executive Adelle Keely said media could “Write accurate headlines instead of exaggerated or fear-inducing ones”; and “Dedicate equal time and coverage to different viewpoints on big issues”.

Good thinking.

A 2024 survey by academics from Victoria University and University of Otago reported that 60% of survey participants reported they sometimes, often, or almost always avoid the news. But this total of 60% is higher than any other national figure reported in other studies. The average news avoidance across the 46 countries surveyed by Reuters was 32.6%. The average. We’re almost double that! Yes – we have some of the highest rates of news avoidance in the world.

Also at the end of 2024, the Human Rights Commission released (Horizon) research on Treaty trust, and who do we trust and not trust for reliable information on the Treaty of Waitangi and the associated Treaty Principles Bill. They surveyed at the end of 2023 and then again at the end of 2024 in the heat of the Treaty Principles Bill being introduced into Parliament and the associated Hikoi.

Only 13% - one three – 13% of us trusted English-language news media to provide us with accurate information about the Treaty. It’s 16% for Maori-language news media.

So that means that 87% of us are suspicious of the information we’re receiving from the news media.

The most recent measure of trust was released in April

It’s the Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report produced by the AUT research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) in collaboration with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism – a survey of 47 countries.

In 2020, 53% of New Zealanders trusted news in general. That figure is now at 37%. A slight improvement from the low of 32%. A similar rise to what was shown in the Edelman report I referred to at the start.

But still a 16% percentage point drop from 2020 when the surveys started.

Just over 1 in 3 NZ’ers trust “most of the news most of the time”. So that’s not even “fully trust”.

The international average is 40% - so we’re below average.

BUT “news avoidance” had increased significantly - up five percentage points to 78%. News avoidance is classified as people avoiding the news “to some degree (sometimes/ occasionally/often)”.

Almost four out of five of us are avoiding the news.

Approximately 22% said they never avoid the news, which is a significant drop from 27% in 2025.

So what did the 2026 Quality of Life survey show? Did it show an increase in trust that the media could crow about?

Well, the fact that this is probably the first you’ve heard about this latest survey – and the media’s silence on it - is probably a big hint about what it shows eh

Respondents were asked to rate their general level of trust in New Zealand’s institutions. The police saw the highest level of trust among the institutions listed, with 66% of respondents saying they trust them. The media has the lowest level of trust, with 27% of respondents expressing trust in it, while almost half 46% said they do not. The other 27% were sort of in the middle. Maybe they’re on TikTok or Instagram instead.

But charteddaily – a very handy account on X which does some great analysis – has combined the results. It doesn’t look good for the media, does it.

Despite claims that media were rebuilding trust, this latest survey debunks that claim.

The media remained the least trusted institution in New Zealand.

Its 27% score is unchanged from 2024.

But trust rose 5 points for both the public education system (to 55%) and local govt (to 33%) and rose 2 points for central government – yes, trust in the government rose!

The police suffered a 2 point drop but I don’t think anybody would be surprised by that finding, given the events of the past 12-24 months.

Broken down by council, Wellingtonians were the least likely to distrust the media, while Tauranga residents were the most likely to distrust it.

But that trust in media result?

One in four of us have a decent level of trust in the media. Three in four don’t.

Perhaps the media could adopt the Labour election slogan for this year – Better Starts Now.

The problem is that I’m not sure the media want to drop the narratives and the bias and simply report the news in a non-partisan way.

They will go down kicking and screaming and blaming everyone else including misinformation, disinformation and social media – but they’ll only have themselves to blame.

The so-called experts on chemicalising and confusing children in the false attempt to make a boy a girl and a girl a boy (WPATH) made a stunning admission last week. So stunning that our NZ media ignored it. You’ll soon know why. It goes against all the narrative around so-called “gender affirmation”.

As stated in a report by Daily Signal

The transgender movement has been notorious for demonising its opposition. Groups… have suggested that disagreement with transgender ideology contributes to suicide, and social media companies have silenced critics for similar reasons.

Now, the transgender movement’s sainted authority on medical issues is effectively admitting that there is more than one position on the issue—and telling a court that preserving open debate on transgender “health care” is a public good.

Oh – good to know!

The radical activist group pushing the transing of children - WPATH - now says –

“WPATH is on one side of that debate and provides guidelines on how to best provide transgender health care. Others, such as Dr. Hilary Cass, fall on the other side of the debate and disagree with how to, or if one should, provide transgender health care to adolescents.”

Here’s the problem.

Democrats, activist groups, and medical associations have long cited WPATH - the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s - Standards of Care as the ultimate authority on a scientific “consensus” for sex-rejecting procedures,

So does the NZ Ministry of Health!

….but WPATH just made an admission in court that threatens to undermine that exalted authority.

And WPATH and their affiliate in New Zealand – PATHA (Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa) are the driving force for transing kids in NZ also.

In its case against WPATH, the Federal Trade Commission presented “core deceptive statements” based on the eighth edition of WPATH’s Standards of Care, claiming that these statements mislead consumers into self-harm. The association claims that those statements “are non-actionable opinions about subjects on which there is ‘medical and scientific uncertainty.’”

Of course, these are claims also made by Sue Bagshaw and other activists in NZ wanting to persuade children and their parents that their children can change their sex with chemicals and castrations (which I’ll come back to).

WPATH even begrudgingly admits the validity of the Department of Health and Human Services’ 400-page peer-reviewed report finding “extremely weak evidence” of any benefit for “gender-affirming care” for minors. “The federal government has thus already alerted doctors and the public to what it views as the problems with WPATH’s speech,” the association wrote. “That is the exact remedy the First Amendment envisions: ‘the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth.’”

Oh – you mean the Department of Health and Human Services’ 400-page peer-reviewed report that our media deliberately ignored. And it’s just about “free speech” now – rather than ramming down an ideology and ‘cancelling’ anyone who disagrees with transing children.

The Australian reported this significant development over the weekend (yes, we have to travel across the Tasman to find a media outlet honest enough to report this significant development….)

Medical professionals and parents are urgently calling on federal and state governments and health authorities to review their policies on gender medicine, after the World Professional Association for Transgender Health sensationally conceded its standards of care are merely “opinions” in an area of “significant medical debate”.

Standards of care for Australian patients, including children, are currently based on guidelines generated by trans health lobby group the Australian Professional Association for Transgender Health, which are closely modelled on those of WPATH.

PATHA – in NZ’s case.

…WPATH further described transgender healthcare as an area of “significant medical debate”, acknowledged there were parties on both sides of that debate, and stated WPATH is “on one side of that debate”.

…The concession has prompted the Australian branch of evidence-based health charity Genspect to demand an urgent review of all medical pathways built on WPATH guidance, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery, as well as anger from parents, with one mother of a gender-distressed child writing to Health Minister Mark Butler saying her child “has been permanently altered within a healthcare environment shaped by this model of care”.

But that wasn’t the only bombshell from last week that the NZ media didn’t want to tell you about.

According to this report in Christian Post

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report Thursday alleging that hospitals and doctors used incorrect medical billing codes to obtain insurance payments for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and irreversible sex-change surgeries performed on minors.

The 64-page report, titled “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of ‘Gender Medicine,’” reviewed nationwide insurance claims from 2015 to 2025. It found that nearly $50 million was billed to public and private insurers for puberty-blocking drugs administered to patients ages 9 to 17 using the code E34.9, “Endocrine Disorder, Unspecified” — a diagnosis code that doesn’t reference gender dysphoria.

…”For years now, some hospitals and healthcare providers have been subjecting children to horrific, experimental treatments in service of radical gender ideologies,” Vance wrote on X. “Today, thanks to the Wolves in White Coats report released by @HHSGov, we know why: profit.”

It’s all about the money. Is that the case in NZ? Or is our government funding this stuff?

But remember that it was the Biden Administration that was pushing a lot of this. Remember Rachel Levine – the biological male who thought he was a woman – so did Biden of course – and was the United States assistant secretary for health.

Here’s what he was saying

VIDEO

So WPATH – and by implication PATHA – have admitted their position is debatable.

Debatable - while we pump children with puberty blockers, wrong sex hormones and lead them to mastectomies and removal of health body parts in the false belief that a child can change their sex.

But the NZ media and the Ministry of Health have told us that WPATH and PATHA are the gold standard. Trust them. They know the science.

Except they don’t.

So where does New Zealand fit into all of this. Well, New Zealand extremists have their paw print all over WPATH and their so-called “standards”.

But before we do that, let me remind you that at the end of 2022, WPATH released its so-called “Standards of Care” 8th Edition. One aspect noticeably different from previous editions was that the explicitly stated minimal age recommendations for minors to obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries had been removed. The new guidance also suggested that if parents did not affirm their child’s newly chosen identity, the state may be enabled to intervene in order to assist with the child’s transition.

Here’s the key bit. WPATH has significant influence in NZ.

Transgender research based on “Counting Ourselves survey” and policy comes out of the University of Waikato’s Trans Health Research Lab. Unfortunately, the unit is driven by activists and an agenda, rather than science and independent research. In fact, it’s now in conflict with the science.

We’ve written in detail on the weakness and flaws of the Counting Ourselves survey that the unit does
https://freetolive.nz/2021/10/22/counting-ourselves-advocacy-research-should-be-treated-with-caution/

But Guidelines for Gender Affirming Healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand comes out of the group called PATHA which is the NZ equivalent or affiliate to WPATH.

And in their Guidelines document they specifically say

WPATH is the international body responsible for producing standards of care… This guideline is not intended to replace the WPATH SOC but to present additional guidance for the provision of gender affirming healthcare in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Puberty blockers, cross sex hormones. WPATH is basically the go-to for guidelines around treatment of gender confused children in NZ.

Here’s an article from 2022 when the alarm was being sounded about the exploding number of children being prescribed puberty blockers

The number of children prescribed puberty blockers because they do not identify with their assigned gender has increased exponentially in the last decade, according to Pharmac data.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has recently updated its information on puberty blockers on its website to remove the words “safe and reversible” - but still endorses the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA) guidelines, which states they are “considered to be fully reversible”.

The Ministry of Health has been backing WPATH and PATHA.

Here’s their response to an OIA back in 2020 with reference to reliance on WPATH guidelines

Readiness assessments are as per the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards of care version 7.

And more recently in 2024, their website showed this…

For referral acceptance to be considered patients need to: meet the eligibility criteria set out in the Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender and Gender Nonconforming People, published by The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) version seven.

So WPATH is the international body. PATHA is NZ’s version which is basically a lapdog for WPATH – and are influencing the blind and flawed gender affirmation model being rammed down in NZ.

Fortunately the current coalition Government and especially the Minister of Health Simeon Brown and also lobbying from NZ First leader Winston Peters has started to turn this around.

Who is PATHA?

It was formed in 2018 and is a group of transactivists – some of whom have found their way into the medical professional setting.

Here’s just some of the executive committee (although interestingly this information is now hidden on their website. Hmm – wonder why that is. Perhaps the blowtorch of reality and accountability?? So some of these may have actually changed. They don’t want to seem to tell us.

Dr Jaimie Veale (she/her) – a transgender woman. He is an Associate Editor of International Journal of Transgenderism, a member of the Global Board of Directors of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and he is one of the authors of the latest revision of the WPATH Standards of Care.

So a NZ activist is on the global board of directors for WPATH.

Dr Rachel Johnson (she/her) - a general paediatrician and Adolescent Health physician now working at CMDHB Centre For Youth Health. She has been involved in trans health care for over 10 years and in that time have been a member of WPATH

And she was actually featured on an atrociously bias piece of trans advocacy by the Sunday programme a couple of years ago – pushing the normality of puberty blockers – just based on what the child wants

VIDEO

There’s also Jennifer Shields – a trans advocate and non-binary trans woman

Dion Reid who’s a trans man and registered nurse

And Phoebe Horton Andrews - a transgender activist from RainbowYouth – who’s studying towards… an accounting degree.

And there’s also Jack Byrne (he/him), a trans man who oversees the flawed Counting Ourselves research

Taine Polkinghorne (he/him) who is the New Zealand Human Rights Commission’s advisor on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics

Yes – now you know why the Human Rights Commission is so keen to chemicalise and confuse children.

And Moira Clunie (they/them)

Yep – all radical activists for transing your children.

And the media have been their greatest cheerleaders

Back in April 2024, FIVE independent mainstream media outlets (Radio NZ, Newshub, 1News, NZ Herald & Newstalk ZB) who all apparently add to democracy, reprinted the same exact story. “Criticism of puberty blockers misguided, trans girl’s mother says”. All five mainstream media outlets. Exactly same article. Same narrative.

Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora has commissioned the Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare Aotearoa (PATHA) to update its guidelines for gender-affirming care for healthcare professionals, including the use puberty blockers.

But here’s what one of the lead NZ doctors in this radical experiment says. This is from Patrick Gower’s Paddy Gower Has Issues when they talked about the issues of puberty blockers. This is from the middle of last year – and it was after the Ministry of Health quietly removed the statement about puberty blockers being safe and reversible – but we were watching and called them out on it.

Have a watch – and note that the doctor is a member of none other than the radical activist group PATHA which is associated with WPATH!

VIDEO

Just refuses to acknowledge the science. Deep in the ideology. They’ll have a lot to answer for.

PATHA were part of a group wanting to keep the radical RSE curriculum.

According to 1News in April 2024, …

An open letter is calling on the Government to keep the current relationship and sexuality education guidelines in schools and kura, despite coalition promises to do otherwise. Twenty-six mental health and rainbow organisations have written an open letter to the Government this week, asking it to retain the current RSE guidelines. The letter said the guidelines were beneficial for schools and students.

Who are the organisations

Of course, Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), are part of this radical list of signatories.

This is a report from The Centrist news service in 2024 – one of the many new news services to pop up as trust in the mainstream media plummets. Here’s what their report said

Oranga Tamariki has just signalled it’s ready to knock on family doors if they refuse to let their children change gender.

…While OT says that parental resistance to a young person’s transitioning “would not normally be a concern in and of itself in the absence of any other risk factors”, they elaborate:

“There may be times where a situation involving a rangatahi [young person] who is actively considering or is in the process of transitioning is facing resistance from whānau that may be having an impact on their safety and wellbeing.”

So the resistance to protect a child from confusion, chemicalisation and castration is a problem.

I went to the Practice Centre of Oranga Tamariki and there was this page

Affirming gender-diverse Tamariki and rangatahi

Link to Rainbow Youth

Guidelines for gender affirming healthcare for gender diverse tamariki and rangatahi – none other than WPATH (the radical international group which has been discredited) and PATHA & Waikato Trans Unit which is a radical group of activists that we’ve discussed previously – with their deeply flawed guidelines

In fact, on their latest resource on their website they continue to list PATHA

But remember – here in NZ at the end of last year just before Christmas, a decision by Justice Wilkinson-Smith in the Wellington High Court to grant an injunction on the government’s ban on puberty blockers until a judicial review takes place repeated all the talking points of the discredited ‘Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA)’ (aligned with WPATH*), and the Judge based her decision on statements which are in direct conflict with the United Kingdom’s CASS Review and the Ministry of Health’s Evidence Brief.

Here’s the NZ Herald campaigning for PATHA back in March, reporting on the judicial review of the ban on puberty blockers.

PATHA is an interdisciplinary professional organisation that works to promote the health, wellbeing and rights of transgender people.

And also in the NZ Herald in July

The Government’s attempt to ban puberty blockers for gender-diverse young people would be both unethical and harmful, a group of concerned doctors says. Their views have been published in the paper A clinical ethics approach to the use of puberty blockers in gender incongruence in today’s New Zealand Medical Journal.

…It comes as a group of health professionals working in this area, the Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA), has taken a judicial review to challenge the Ministry of Health’s decision to ban new prescriptions for puberty blockers in November last year.

… The authors of the paper are Associate Professor Cindy Towns, Dr Rona Carroll, Dr Jemima Bullock, Professor Paul Hofman, Dr Richard Carroll and Dr Andrew Linton. Some work directly with gender-diverse young people, and Rona Carroll is a member of the PATHA executive committee.

Campaigners for chemicalisation and castratrion of confused young people and telling boys they can be girls, and girls they can be boys.

Associate Professor Cindy Towns said puberty blockers are and should continue to be prescribed only by experienced doctors working within multi-disciplinary teams.

The medications are safe and reversible and have been used since the 1980s for a variety of conditions, not just gender incongruence, Towns said.

Sorry Cindy – that kind of argument belongs back in the early 2020’s. It’s been well and truly debunked now – thankfully.

And by the way, just to really make your day, Tourism NZ is helping sponsor and bring the 2028 WPATH conference to New Zealand.

Unbelievable!!!!!!

Hopefully they’ll have been sued into oblivion by then.

So just a reminder – the so-called “experts” have conceded its standards of ‘care’ relating to flawed attempts to change the sex of children are merely “opinions”.

We already knew that. It’s time the Government acted swiftly to instruct the Ministry of Health to take what PATHA says as merely an opinion of activists – and to ignore them.

They have no credibility. The game is up.

It’s time to protect children from gender ideology.

Once and for all.

Dr Jillian Spencer, a respected Queensland child and adolescent psychiatrist, is continuing her courageous fight against the growing culture of censorship and ideological conformity in Australia’s medical profession. In 2023, she was stood down from her job as a senior staff specialist at a public children’s hospital in Queensland. In September 2025, Queensland Health issued Dr Spencer a termination notice from her position. Her only “offence” was refusing to comply with an automatic “affirmative” approach to children experiencing gender distress. Instead, she advocated for a careful, evidence-based, and holistic approach that considers each child’s broader mental health and family circumstances. Rather than being commended for her professionalism and compassion, Dr Spencer was stood down and investigated.
NOTE: Jillian will bring an important update on her case to the Forum on the Family!

Dr Andrew Amos was until recently an academic psychiatrist at James Cook University and chair of the Queensland Section of Rural Psychiatry with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. He has published peer-reviewed critiques of the gender-affirming model of care in Australasian Psychiatry, but has been prevented from practicing clinically and forbidden from participating in public discussion on the very subject he has researched and published on. Dr Amos has argued in academic publications that gender-affirming care is incompatible with evidence-based psychiatric practice. He has questioned whether the model allows psychiatrists to properly assess whether mental illness may be contributing to a patient’s gender distress. The Medical Board of Australia and the Australian Health Practitioner

Regulation Agency (AHPRA) has imposed conditions on the registration of Dr Amos, banning him from posting on social media about gender medicine, gender identity, or transgender persons. He is also barred from any role involving direct or indirect clinical patient contact.

Drs Spencer & Amos will be speaking on: Conviction, Courage, And Then ‘Cancellation’ – The Cost of Truth

More info: https://familyfirst.org.nz/2026/07/22/nz-forum-on-the-family-2026-register/