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Two seats, nine candidates: who is standing for the InternetNZ board, and who they are connected to

· 13 min read
Ron Amosa
Ron Amosa
Hacker/Engineer/Geek

InternetNZ 2026 board election — nine candidates, two seats

Two seats on the InternetNZ board are up for election. Nine people are standing. Voting closes at noon on Monday 10 August 2026, and the result is announced at the AGM on 13 August.

InternetNZ is not a hobby society. It is the designated manager of the .nz domain, it runs the registry that some 750,000 domains depend on, and it carries a public policy voice into select committees and into ICANN. Who sits on its board matters more than the turnout usually suggests.

Here is what the public record shows about the nine candidates and the organisations they belong to. I have linked every source. Where I could not verify something, I have left it out and said so.

Disclosure

I am a voting member of InternetNZ. I am not standing for the board, hold no office in any organisation named below, and have no financial interest in the outcome. This post is published during the voting window (24 July–10 August 2026); whatever the intent, that timing makes it election-adjacent commentary.

🤖 AI Collaboration

This post was co-written with AI assistance. All sourcing, verification decisions, and editorial judgement are the author's. AI helped with structure, clarity, and documentation formatting.

The short version​

Two of the nine candidates hold office in the Free Speech Union, and each was nominated by another person from the FSU. This is the second consecutive year the FSU has had candidates in this election; last year it ran an open campaign, recruited several hundred new InternetNZ members, published preference-ordering instructions to its supporters, and won one of the two seats.

The other seven candidates have no FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT connection that I could find.

That is the whole finding. The rest of this post is the evidence.

The two FSU candidates​

Jillaine Heather is the Free Speech Union's chief executive. She says so plainly in her candidate statement, and the FSU's own team page lists her leading its strategy, campaigning and advocacy programme, under the title Executive Director. She was nominated by Adam Waugh — the FSU website lists a staff member of that name working in communications.

Douglas Brown is a Canterbury barrister and a member of the FSU's governing council, which he also discloses. The FSU lists him on its council as a criminal defence barrister. He was nominated by Jillaine Heather.

So the two candidacies are nominated by, respectively, an FSU staffer and the FSU's chief executive. Neither candidate has hidden the affiliation, and neither should be criticised for standing. But a member reading the ballot alphabetically, one profile at a time, would not necessarily notice that two of the nine names come from the same small organisation and vouched for each other.

What happened in 2025​

This is the context that makes the 2026 slate legible.

In February 2025 the FSU began campaigning against InternetNZ's proposed new constitution, which followed a review into systemic racism at the organisation. Its supporters joined InternetNZ en masse. The NZ Herald reported that membership went from roughly 360 at the start of February to 2,110 by mid-March, and that the FSU's then-chief executive Jonathan Ayling said his organisation had signed up around 500 people as InternetNZ members on their behalf. The Post put the figure at 2,196 a few weeks later.

In July 2025 the FSU announced that it had nominated two candidates for the board: Ayling and Douglas Brown. It also published step-by-step voting instructions telling supporters to vote only for its two nominees, and to split their first preferences between the two by birth month — odd months rank Brown first, even months rank Ayling first.

That is competent single transferable vote management. It is what a disciplined bloc does when it wants two seats rather than one.

It half-worked. InternetNZ's 2025 results record 2,785 ballots cast, a turnout of 62.4% against 43% the previous year, and an election threshold of 929 votes. Ayling was elected in round five; Dylan Reeve took the second seat in round eight. Brown was not elected. Ayling's term runs to 2028, so he is on the board now and is not up for re-election.

Douglas Brown is standing again. Jillaine Heather has joined him.

Where the Free Speech Union comes from​

Two candidates belong to this organisation, so its composition and lineage are fair game. Three things are on the public record.

It was founded out of the Taxpayers' Union. The FSU began life as the Free Speech Coalition in July 2018. Per Wikipedia, drawing on Yvonne van Dongen's 2022 North & South profile, it was set up out of the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union office by four colleagues, one of whom was Taxpayers' Union founder Jordan Williams. The two organisations' Wellington offices sit next to each other. Newsroom's November 2025 investigation, Who Benefits: The rise and rise of the Free Speech Union, described the relationship as direct, reporting that Williams sits on the FSU council and that the two bodies share a financial resource.

Its chair is a former ACT MP. Stephen Franks chairs the FSU council. He served six years in Parliament as an ACT list MP, was the party's justice spokesman, and contested the ACT leadership in 2004 before later standing for National. Bryce Edwards' Integrity Institute profile of the FSU lists him the same way. The FSU has also aligned publicly with ACT policy: in June 2026 it welcomed ACT's professional regulator neutrality policy and called on other parties to back it.

Its council includes advocacy figures from adjacent causes. The FSU's council lists, among others: Franks as chair; Jordan Williams, described on the FSU's own page as founder of the NZ Taxpayers' Union; commentator Ani O'Brien; and screenwriter Dane Giraud as deputy chair.

None of this makes the FSU illegitimate, and none of it disqualifies anyone from standing. It does mean that a vote for either candidate is a vote for a director who arrives with an existing organisational programme for InternetNZ. Members are entitled to know that and weigh it.

The full slate​

Nabil Sabio Azadi — Artist, writer and anthropologist; co-directs the access and inclusion consultancy Tîr Aho Studio. Ten years as a human rights law researcher on refugee and asylum casework; two years of qualitative research with Kanaka ʻŌiwi online communities under the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. He writes publicly on offshore detention — most recently in Crikey this month. Self-nominated. No FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT link found.

David Chisholm — Palmerston North IT specialist, standing explicitly against what he calls an attempt to submerge InternetNZ in a culture war. The NZ Herald reported in 2020 that he joined Labour in 2014 and stood as one of its candidates for Palmerston North City Council, describing him as a self-employed Apple IT specialist. Self-nominated. No FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT link found.

Annette Culpan — 25 years across corporate, philanthropy and non-profit. Ran the Vodafone NZ Foundation for close to a decade, served three terms on the Philanthropy New Zealand board, six years as a Gift Trust trustee, and worked at the Tindall Foundation. Nominated by Kate Frykberg, a former Philanthropy NZ chair. No FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT link found.

Bianca Grizhar — 25 years in software as a developer, product manager, UX designer and AI/ML researcher. In her own candidate statement she cites governance experience from committee roles in the Green Party, the advisory board of libre software company Magnificent, and the board of St Gerard's Limited. She stood in 2025 and did not win; she says she has attended every board meeting since. She is the only candidate campaigning explicitly on stopping what she calls a right-wing takeover of InternetNZ. Nominated by Steven Ensslen.

Jillaine Heather — see above.

Keoni Mahelona — Chief technology officer of Te Hiku Media and co-creator of the Kaitiakitanga License, the Māori data sovereignty licence built on Te Mana Raraunga's principles, now widely cited internationally. Native Hawaiian, arrived in New Zealand as a Fulbright scholar. His published work is sharply critical of extractive AI training practices. Nominated by Ezzera Houghton. No FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT link found.

Jan Rivers — Former public servant across ICT policy, business analysis and knowledge management; longstanding InternetNZ member; founder of the advocacy network Public Good. Her candidate statement says she has worked closely with the directors of Genspect to set its strategic direction. The public record is somewhat more embedded than that: she appears on Genspect's own team page, which says she helped found some of New Zealand's gender-critical organisations, and she has appeared in media as a Genspect NZ spokeswoman. Her statement also argues that InternetNZ assessing views as mis- or disinformation should be anathema for a regulator. Self-nominated. No FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT link found.

Daniel Spector — The incumbent, seeking a second term. Elected in 2024; the board's August 2025 meeting pack records his term as AGM 2024–2026 and his declared interests, including advisory roles at APIContext, Familiar Robotics and BlockIdentity, and the chair of Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions of NZ. Founded NZRise, the NZ-owned ICT sector body. Served on the Audit and Risk Committee through the constitution review. Nominated by Nathan Torkington. No FSU, Taxpayers' Union or ACT link found.

What is different this year​

In 2025 the FSU announced its slate by press release, published voting instructions, and issued a statement claiming the win. In 2026, as at the date of this post, I can find no equivalent: no InternetNZ campaign page on fsu.nz/campaigns, no slate announcement, no voting guidance.

That is an absence, not a fact. I have no visibility into what the FSU sends its own members and supporters by email, and an absence of public campaigning is not evidence of an absence of campaigning. But it is a change from last year, and it is worth noting either way.

How the voting actually works​

Two seats, single transferable vote. Under STV your lower preferences are not wasted — they transfer when your higher choices are either elected with a surplus or eliminated. Which means the useful thing you can do is rank as many candidates as you genuinely have a view on, in order, rather than ranking one or two and stopping.

Plumping — giving one candidate your single preference and leaving the rest blank — feels like a strong signal and is usually a weak one. It removes your ballot from the count as soon as that candidate is elected or eliminated. A disciplined bloc that ranks its own candidates one and two, in a coordinated split, extracts more value per vote than a larger but unordered field. That is the arithmetic that nearly delivered two seats in 2025 and may again.

Rank as deep as your preferences go.

Method and limits​

Everything above comes from public sources, linked inline. I have not interviewed any candidate and did not seek right of reply.

Some things I looked for and did not find, which are worth stating because absence of evidence gets read as evidence of absence:

  • No Taxpayers' Union role for any of the nine candidates personally. The Taxpayers' Union link is organisational — it runs through the FSU's founding and its council, not through Heather or Brown.
  • No ACT Party membership, candidacy or office for any of the nine. The ACT link is likewise organisational, via Franks' chairmanship.

If you can correct or extend any of this, tell me and I will update the post with attribution.

Key dates​

DateWhat
24 July 2026Voting opened (12 noon)
10 August 2026Voting closes (12 noon)
11 August 2026AGM Zoom registrations close (5pm)
13 August 2026Results announced at the AGM

Returning Officer: Michele Day, [email protected]

Sources​

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