Some Background
Last Saturday, an Instagram account going by @bigmoneystudent took a hit at presidential candidate Troy Gibbons, labelling him a “National Party jack-up”. Shortly after, the account targeted candidate Rosie Cruickshank, labelling her “radically liberal” and “radically wrong”. The AI-generated post urged student voters to not “let her win”. Over DM, @bigmoneystudent explained why they made the ads: “Because I don’t want her to win.”
The attack ads were paid for, popping up in student Instagram feeds. “The paid social media I’ve done is going to reach most Dunedin students.”
The original post about Troy urged voters to cut through the “absolute garbage” on their feeds. “There’s always one. Every few years, a Young Nat hack rocks up to campus with a haircut paid for by his dad, pretending he cares about Scarfie culture.”
The post went on to insist that Troy didn’t care about poor housing or mental health funding – but rather “ticking a box that gets him an internship” at a Wellington lobbying firm. “He thinks students are too checked out to notice the set-up.”
Screenshots supplied to Critic Te Ārohi show @bigmoneystudent accusing Troy of ditching his ties to the National Party right before the election to appear as a “left-wing activist” – “the textbook definition of a cynical bait-and-switch.”
For context, Troy was present at a Young Nats AGM inside Parliament earlier this year, something which @bigmoneystudent cited as proof of his National affiliation. When approached, Troy told Critic that he was in the National party from high school, as it was the “only party” that operated in his home region of Stratford, Taranaki.
“After receiving complaints from the party hierarchy throughout my first year [of University] for anti-government posts, it became impossible to support this government. Throughout my second year I got involved in pro-Palestine and other progressive movements. Then, after hearing Tamatha Paul speak about the Green's plan for rural regions, I was inspired to continue exploring left wing politics,” Troy explained.
Troy was subsequently “reprimanded” and told to leave the party, as his “anti-government actions were harming the party and created a reputational risk.” According to Troy, his involvement in the party ceased at the end of July, and he joined the Green Party soon after – “where I have been active and supported their efforts for the 2026 campaign.”
When confronted with Troy’s current Green and Alliance Party memberships, @bigmoneystudent replied that being a member of three parties “utterly disqualifies" Troy. “That proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has zero core convictions and will sign up for anything if he thinks it advances his personal ambitions.”
However, Critic understands that the posts about Troy were deleted mere hours after their initial upload after many comments pointed out Troy’s change in politics. When confronted over DM, @bigmoneystudent explained they had been paid to put up the attack ads against Troy, and there were “miscommunications with my clients [...] I was approached by a candidate who wanted to run some attack ads.”
Who is @bigmoneystudent?
Oh boy.
Critic approached @bigmoneystudent with a slew of questions, the first of which asked about the misinformation regarding Troy’s status as a National Party member. The post’s caption suggested that the account was made to ensure students knew what they were voting for, but @bigmoneystudent later claimed the information was inaccurate due to “miscommunication” with a client. We asked how Big Money would respond to the suggestion that their post may have actually confused student voters and harmed healthy, informed debate about student politics for money from a client.
“The premise of your questions is absurd and biased [...] If your publication cared about the truth and ‘healthy, informed debate’, you would be asking Troy the tough questions instead of running cover for him.” They proceeded to share Troy’s record of being in the National Party, showing that he could be seen “hiding” in the background of a picture taken at a National Youth AGM.
On “private conversations and client engagements”, @bigmoneystudent told Critic that they do not comment on private, confidential discussions – “nor will we entertain bad faith fishing expeditions into commercial operations.”
“Unlike Critic Te Ārohi, we respect basic professional ethics and commercial confidentiality. We will not disclose client details, campaign costs, or unrelated activities simply to satisfy your narrative.”
At this point, you might be thinking that @bigmoneystudent is some large scale lobbyist group with a personal vendetta against Troy. You’d be partially correct in thinking so, but things go a lot deeper.
A couple of weeks ago, Victoria University of Wellington’s (VUW) student magazine, Salient, reported on a series of attack ads targeting the Victoria University Students’ Association (VUWSA) Exec candidates.
Salient identified links between two accounts involved in the attack ad campaign, @studentlobbyist and @vuwsagirl. Separately, @vuwsagirl had been linked to an earlier advertisement associated with the Save Our Clubs campaign (an ongoing opposition to transfer the administration of student clubs from VUW to VUWSA) via a URL recorded by Meta.
Save Our Clubs, spearheaded by a VUW student named Arie Joe, told Salient a former associate retained access to a dormant Instagram account associated with the campaign and later used it, without the group’s knowledge or authorisation, to publish election attack ads.
According to his LinkedIn, Arie Joe is a Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence student at VUW, and current president of the VicAI society. He ran for Vic’s University Council in August of 2026. He’s also the former Wellington president of the Taxpayers’ Union youth wing (Generation Screwed) and, as aforementioned, is the organiser of the Save Our Clubs campaign.
Save Our Clubs recently used Official Information Act requests to find out that Labour at Vic had received a $1,700 club grant from VUW. The ACT Party was in full support of the findings: “Victoria University has been caught taking compulsory fees from students and handing $1,700 to the university branch of the Labour Party. This is exactly why ACT will make Student Services Fees voluntary,” Dr Parmjeet Parmar said in a press release.
A portion of the Student Services Levy at VUW is reserved each year to help clubs operate and to run their events. Decisions are made by the Funding Panel, which is composed of University students and staff. The Tertiary Education Commission found the funding did not breach the existing Student Services Fee requirements.
Circling back to Arie’s potential links to the attack ads via Save Our Clubs, several sources that spoke independently to Salient alleged that he was involved with the @studentlobbyist and @vuwsagirl accounts. Salient has not independently established that those allegations are correct. Salient separately contacted Arie Joe directly to ask whether he was involved with either account. He did not respond to those questions before Salient’s publication.
Now over at Otago, many of the VUWSA attack ads claimed they were authorised by other candidates – similar to what @bigmoneystudent claimed. Critic has received unverified reports that @bigmoneystudent posted an Instagram story boasting that they had been seen at VUW, and were now at Otago – further bolstering a potential link. However, when approached by Critic about whether they had been active at Vic as well, @bigmoneystudent did not comment.
So, to reiterate, it appears that there is a link between Save Our Clubs, @vuwsagirl, @studentlobbyist and possibly @bigmoneystudent down at Otago. At the forefront of Save Our Clubs is Arie Joe, who hasn’t confirmed whether or not he was behind the VUWSA attack ad accounts.
However, Troy Gibbons approached Critic Te Arohi with screenshots of a conversation between Arie and himself. “Your [sic] lucky I’ve got you some free student media attention”, Arie told Troy. When Troy asked Arie what he meant by that, Arie told him that “those ads, they will work in your favour [...] People don’t remember positive things only remember negative things, but it will workout in your favor.”
Troy asked Arie “Big money politics?”, to which Arie responded “Yea [sic]”, seemingly confirming his ownership over the account. However, he warned Troy not to tell anyone about their conversation: “Don’t tell anyone otherwise going to have fucking salient [sic] and critic [sic] moaning at my doorstep.” Hi!
Critic approached Arie with questions regarding whether he was behind the @vuwsagirl and @studentlobbyist accounts, what evidence he had to confirm regarding whether someone misused a “legacy” Save Our Clubs associated account and why he made @bigmoneystudent.
Arie did not respond in time for print.
