Slippery BIrds of A Feather . . . New Zealand's Massey Vet 'School' & Vet Council Flock Together
Oh Gosh . . . What A Coincidence . . . Same Date, Same Slippery 'Strategy', Same Low-Character and Totally Transparent Category of Ploy
The following article was published May 6, 2026 on The Customer & The Constituent NZ as the opening piece in a three-part series documenting the co-ordinated evasion strategy deployed simultaneously by Massey University and the Veterinary Council of New Zealand on April 24, 2026 — the same date, the same flavour, the same purpose.
It is republished here as part of IIIVE's ongoing coverage of the structural relationship between these two organisations and the effective capture of the industry regulator, and its direct consequences for veterinary accountability in New Zealand.
The two detailed exposés that follow this piece — one dissecting the VCNZ's response and its built-in accountability escape hatch, and one examining Massey's evasion of its legal fees OIA — are also published on both platforms.
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There's a particular kind of coincidence that quite transparently isn't one.
On April 24, 2026, two pieces of horribly belated correspondence dropped into my inbox on the same day. One from Massey University. One from the Veterinary Council of New Zealand.
Both were insultingly late. Both were equally insultingly evasive. And both deployed the same essential strategy — the appearance of movement carefully constructed to ensure nothing actually moves.
(Sloppy, sloppy Massey and VCNZ . . . it would have been worth date-staggering them for less transparency . . . not that it really would have fooled anyone, of course.)
Frankly, though, in either case, I don’t believe their woefully transparent "strategies" took them as long as their correspondences took. My strong suspicion is that it was more than just the same ol’ same ol’ "strategic" dragging-out-the-nothingness-for-as-long-as-legally-possible playbook. I think these two slippery birds of a feather are getting their respective legal "strategies" - or the sign-off of them - from the same source. That's my theory and for now, I'll stick to it.
The Slimy Relationship That Accountability Simply Slides Off
I've already written - now in several articles - about the slimy relationship between these two organisations before:
About the conflicts of interest that make the VCNZ's independence from Massey not merely compromised but structurally impossible. About the private email from Massey's Dean of "School" of "Veterinary Science", Jon Huxley, to VCNZ "leadership", characterising my complaint as "wholly unfounded" before any investigation had been conducted (or has still ever been conducted, because both Massey and the VCNZ are in diligent cahoots to make sure it hasn't). About the code of professional conduct administered by a VCNZ advisor who holds a simultaneous role at Massey itself. And about Massey's Dean of Veterinary Education who sits on the same committee of the VCNZ as will be ruling on any complaint about her own facility's conduct.
What arrived on April 24 was perhaps the tidiest illustration yet of why I have described these two organisations as one and the same beast in different institutional clothing.
Two letters. Same day. Same flavour. Same purpose.
I'll be publishing a detailed analysis of each in the coming days — one examining VCNZ Deputy Registrar Liam Shields' long-awaited response (the response you have when you're probably not having a response at all) and one examining Massey's devious and intelligence-insulting, yet disappointingly predictable, response to my Official Information Act request regarding its legal expenditure to ensure they remain unaccountable for their atrocities.
Both will be worth reading carefully . . . because they're going to represent the kind of forensically-detailed attention that both organisations should jolly well have mentally registered by now that they're going to get.
But hey, when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, you just have to go with whatever you've got, right Massey? Right Shields? Really, what ARE you paying these external legal advisors . . . because you're throwing money down a very big pit that Massey should also be accountable to your students, your funders and taxpayers for having dug for itself.
Shame on You, 'Vice-Chancellor' Pierre Venter . . . Really, I Wholeheartedly Mean It: SHAME ON YOU
On that note, SHAME ON YOU, Vice-Chancellor Pierre Venter.
You were brought in to straighten out a big mess. Yet -as far as the Harry Kelly case goes . . . and more broadly, the entire Veterinary "School" and "Companion Animal Hospital" go . . . all you've done is presided over an out-of-control sprawling, immoral and totally inept mess.
You fool. You could have used this as an opportunity to finally address what has been going on for years at this disastrous institution and its "treatment" of dogs in particular, and its attitude towards their owners (who you have no concept of as "clients"). But you chose the easy route . . . perpetuate the pattern, the incompetence, the disastrous culture, the cover-ups . . . and the consequences to pet owners.
Why? In my view, probably four reasons:
You come from a protected corporate background where institutional shielding of management and employees is the norm (just another day in the office). Maybe you weren't told the full truth by Huxley, Weston, Nijman and Co. You didn't have either the spine or the will to do anything other than what your external legal advisors are making a great deal of money telling you to do.
And fourthly, you underestimated this little bird. Just like Huxley, you thought a scary letter with "Buddle Findlay" cc'd would see the owner of this particularly precious little dog reduced to cowering in foetal position in a corner somewhere. (By the way, the anonymous emailers - "Hugh Janus" & Co - who appear very clearly to originate from the bowels of your despicable institution, can go right on ahead and entertain themselves by ridiculing the pet/owner bond. But in my case, you and they have served only to incentivise me to rub your faces in exactly what a live-and-well pet/owner bond means in action.)
So your strategy hasn't gone well so far, has it, Venter, Huxley and legal "advisors"? You inept, strategically inferior, utterly morally bankrupt lot. The lot of you combined - and individually.
Stay tuned, readers. Neither of these two latest pieces of intellectually insulting shit from either of these two Teflon-coated institutional birds that are structurally designed to flock together so that accountability can slide straight off their combined feathers, will surprise you.
And my dissection and exposure of them won't disappoint you, either.
