Doyle is the first non-binary MP in New Zealand’s Parliament and also a parent. They came from a background of working closely with queer communities on sexual health issues.
In November last year, an X account began posting claims about Doyle.
At least one of those posts made reference to an “Instagram account that [they] deleted” when it became clear Doyle was heading into Parliament, which the poster alleged contained “very very disturbing posts”.
Other posts made reference to Doyle’s employment at the Burnett Foundation, the organisation that used to be known as New Zealand AIDS Foundation and aimed to educate and campaign on sexual health within the queer community.
In one video, the X account posted an interview Doyle did with TVNZ, that had later been edited from the original broadcast.
Part of the editing was to zoom in on Doyle’s blue circular spiral tattoos and to link those to an 18-year-old FBI report that associated blue triangle spirals with child sex offenders.
One of the images taken from the Instagram account of Green MP Benjamin Doyle. The dots immediately below the image show it was one of a number of images from a carousel called 'Bussy galore'.
The X account – which signalled its support for the NZ First party – said: “A journo should ask this delusional sick individual if [Doyle] thinks that pedophilia is just a ‘sexuality’.”
Those posts received fresh life in March after Doyle was appointed to the early childhood education portfolio and was outspoken on issues around puberty blockers for young people questioning their gender identity.
The same X account posted the name of Doyle’s Instagram account – “Bible Belt Bussy”. That account now says it is “ON HIATUS”.
The poster said: “In one of the pictures [Doyle] has a young child in his lap with the caption ‘Bussy Galore’.”
More on the term “bussy” later. And the fact Doyle is parent to the child in the photograph.
That was then - why has it come out now?
The X account that shared details of Doyle’s page posted again in March and this time included photographs from the account.
There are a cluster of images taken from the account, which now has only four posts still live. Screenshots shared on social media show that the account, at one point, had posted at least 56 photos.
The Herald has been told Doyle put the account on hiatus, and deleted posts, last week when they realised the images had been taken and shared.
The images shared by the X account show Doyle kissing their child on the lips, Doyle sitting with the child on their lap, Doyle sitting with the child writing Christmas cards to prisoners using the words “Meri Kirihimete Big D. Thinking of you”.
In the images, the child’s face has been blacked out.
One of the images was described on X as being captioned “Bussy Galore”, which the poster said was inappropriate.
A source who knows Doyle told the Herald that “Bussy Galore” was not a caption for a single photograph. It was the name of a folder or carousel of family photos. A series of dots on the screenshot of the image show it was part of a sequence.
That source says that “Bussy” refers to Doyle and has suggested that “Bussy Galore” refers to multiple photos of Doyle themselves.
Other photographs were posted by the X account. One is a photograph facing downwards, showing a person in jeans wearing a pair of pink Crocs. The comment attached to it invites those viewing to “swipe” so they can see an eggplant emoji – an emoji often used to symbolise a penis.
The Centrist reported the picture appears to show a child, but the Herald has been told by someone familiar with the content that it is actually a picture of the MP. It is unclear what other photos would be revealed by swiping as they are not part of the material in the public domain.
An image from the BibleBeltBussy Instagram account of Green MP Benjamin Doyle. Accusers say it is a concerning photo of a child with the eggplant emoji - those close to Doyle say it is a photo of Doyle.
How has it received such prominence?
The claims against Doyle appear to have been amplified from three places.
There was a Substack piece and a post on X from Ani O’Brien, a prominent voice in the lesbian community who is seeking to differentiate biological women from transgender women.
O’Brien explored two points through postings on X and Substack. One of those was a reference to the “MP’s dodgy online behaviour”.
On this, she said: “A lot of serious allegations are being made on X about Doyle in relation to [Doyle’s] alt Instagram account. I will not repeat those here as I have not seen concrete evidence to substantiate the very damning claims.
“What I will say is that the ‘BibleBeltBussy’ Instagram account is one big giant red flag. It is a child-safeguarding nightmare and outrageously inappropriate for a sitting MP.”
She highlighted what has since been repeated widely: that Doyle had posted a photograph of a child on their lap with the “caption … Bussy Galore”.
O’Brien also highlighted the absence of any reporting on Doyle and the associated claims in mainstream media.
“Why won’t the media report on Green MP Benjamin Doyle’s outrageously inappropriate online behaviour?
“The most simple answer is that they don’t want to. Because if they wanted to, they would. They certainly didn’t appear to have any reservations about reporting on other scandals. Even the sexual ones. Even the ones that were thin on details and evidence.”
The matter gained more traction on Saturday when the Deputy Prime Minister and NZ First leader Winston Peters wrote on X: “The media need to start asking serious questions about Green MP Benjamin Doyle and his ‘alternate’ social media account ‘BibleBeltBussy’ – what that really means and his posts – some of which have apparently been deleted. If it were any MP from a government party the media would’ve already headlined it.”
A third significant voice was that of Destiny Church leader, Apostle Brian Tamaki.
Tamaki posted to Twitter: “Social media is now awash with screenshots and Instagram posts referencing vulgar, sexually-charged slang like ‘bussy’ – paired with photo after photo of Doyle posing with toddlers and children”.
To date, the images that are in the public domain show one child. Someone who knows Doyle has told the Herald itis Doyle’s child at different ages. When Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick spoke to media on Monday she also referred to one child.
What is ‘bussy’
“Bussy” is a conflation of “boy” and a slang term for female genitalia. It is commonly understood to mean a male’s anus.
Bhenjamin Goodsir, chair of Auckland Pride, says the term has a more nuanced meaning as one of many phrases to have developed inside the multitude of sub-groups that exist within the wider queer community.
Those who were not a part of that community, or who did not have links to it, might not realise that meaning, Goodsir told the Herald.
“Marginalised communities right across the world use provocative language to challenge the status quo, and signify their identities within their communities.”
Those groups have developed their own slang terms, he says, such as “twink”, “bear”, “femme”, “otter” and “dyke” while others have sought to “reclaim” words like “queer”, “sissy” and “f****t”.
“All of these words might seem shocking to many people - but for most of the past 200 years the very existence of queer people was shocking to many people as well.”
Along with terms to describe themselves, Goodsir says queer communities have developed their own language which can have specific meanings within their own particular group. Some of that queer slang has worked its way into mainstream use – “slay” and “yassification” are among words that have crossed even as “queer communities have been one step ahead in inventing new words”.
Auckland's Pride March. Photo / Auckland Pride
“The queer community is not homogeneous – there are hundreds of different sub-groups.” And, like any community, the disparate and varied communities do not necessarily inhabit each other’s spaces.
The term “bussy”, says Goodsir, is a meme added to many words.
He points out “-ussy” was the 2022 word of the year for the American Dialect Society, which explained its choice of the term as highlighting “creativity in new word formation”.
“Within some queer communities “-ussy” is a meme that gets added to all sorts of words,” he says. As the American Dialect Society described the “-ussification” process as using “-ussy” is a “playful suffix” to generate new slang terms.
Its examples included a calzone as a “pizzussy” or a wine bottle as “winussy”.
Goodsir pointed to Doyle’s work at the Burnett Foundation, where they were “well-respected” in the queer community.
“Within public health advocacy, and Aids advocacy in particular, it is very common to see this sort of meme-ified language used to communicate important health messages.”
Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlour that was central to a baseless conspiracy theory targeting Democrats, dubbed PizzaGate. Photo / Justin T. Gellerson, The New York Times
It was no surprise to see such “community-specific language” being used by Doyle, said Goodsir.
“They are also part of a family, and so what we’re seeing here sits in the context of their job as a public health campaigner, a queer community member, and a parent.”
What about ‘hidden in plain sight’?
Some people discussing Doyle have pointed to the blue spiral tattoo on their arms. Journalist Ian Wishart pointed to an online guide to emojis of concern published by ActiveFence, which offers AI-led internet safety tools, which it says are “used by pedophiles to describe ‘boylove’ or sexual attraction towards underaged boys”.
Wishart – in an article published on the Centrist on Monday – included a photograph of Doyle’s arms which feature tattoos of eyes containing blue spirals. Wishart posed the question in his piece: “Hidden in plain sight?”
Doyle explained the spirals in their Masters thesis, saying they drew “inspiration from Te Takarangi, the double spiral motif common in both Toi Māori (Māori arts and crafts) and Te Tai Ao (the natural world)”.
Eleanor Parkes of ECPAT NZ – the agency that works with government to end exploitation of children – says “one of the least helpful” recent practices “is how people in particular political movements have sought to paint their opponents as child predators”.
“This conspiracy movement often incorrectly assigns the openly-queer and openly-trans community as being inherently predatory, when we know that being queer does not make someone a threat to children, whether an MP, or a drag queen in a library.
“It is disappointing that the messages of this conspiracy movement are being amplified locally in New Zealand, because we know better.
“If an MP has a handle that is provocative, that’s a question for themself and their political party, and not a reflection of a threat to children.”
The hands of Green MP Benjamin Doyle including the spiral tattoos on their arms.
The deleted images troubling Peters
Peters said to The Platform host Sean Plunket: “Let me ask you this question, why would you pull 52 posts if they were respectable?”
Disinformation researcher Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa said among those online following the developing issue, the deleted posts were “a major point of suspicion”.
“This is widely interpreted as evidence of guilt or consciousness of wrongdoing, with the logic that innocent content would not need to be hidden. The mass deletion is seen as an admission through action that the content was inappropriate, undermining the Green Party’s defence of Doyle.”
It was a question addressed when the Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Swarbrick spoke to media around midday on Monday.
Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick address media following the online abuse of MP Benjamin Doyle. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Swarbrick told reporters that Doyle’s BibleBeltBussy Instagram was private and from their time prior to politics – and that removing content from that account was a reasonable reaction to having found photographs of them with their child were being used for “misinformation”.
Why is Winston Peters involved?
The NZ First leader cut off a reporter on Monday who questioned Peters over not using Doyle’s preferred “they” pronoun.
“Don’t give me this pronoun rubbish,” said Peters.
Peters has spoken against the use of puberty blockers and the use of toilets by trans people when they differ from their birth sex – issues on which Doyle takes the opposite view.
Peters has accused media of ignoring the Doyle accusations, of being selective in its reporting and that police should investigate.
At the same time, Peters has also said: “We are not accusing [Doyle] of anything”.
Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and NZ First leader Winston Peters. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Goodsir from Auckland Pride said Peters was using “the same rhetoric as Brian Tamaki – rhetoric which we would categorise as stochastic terrorism”.
“Stochastic” is a term used in statistics to refer to the chance or probability of something happening.
“Stochastic terrorism” refers to a political leader or public figure vilifying an individual or group in a way that could inspire supporters to carry out hate crimes or other acts of violence.
Rather than incitement, which offers explicit direction, the manner of speech from the political leader or public figure lacks specifics and leaves followers or supporters to follow their own impulses.
“This type of language causes real harm to our communities - and it was only last month that a drag show was violently interrupted by people inspired by exactly these messages.”
Goodsir pointed out that in 1986 Peters referred to Homosexual Law Reform as a “perversity” and voted against it to protect “children yet unborn”.
“He has since voted against Civil Unions [and] Marriage Equality”.
Why the criticism of the mainstream media?
The issue gained widespread attention through social media overnight on Friday. The Herald’s inquiries began in earnest on Saturday and have extended through to this piece.
“It may be that questions were asked, and answers were given,” she wrote.
“Sometimes decisions not to cover stories are made not to protect the subject of the story or to protect a political party but because of journalistic ethics.”
One other factor built into mainstream media considerations when reporting on sensitive issues – especially involving identifiable children – is to ensure that haste in publication does not create collateral damage.
Are the police or lawyers involved?
Peters and others say police should investigate. At this stage, police have not signalled an intention to do so.
The Green Party has told the Herald at the moment its focus is on Doyle’s safety and there has been no talk of legal action.
If Doyle believed their reputation had been defamed it would need to be Doyle who would take any case.
Top defamation lawyer Robert Stewart KC told the Herald: “Obviously to suggest or imply someone has an unhealthy interest in children is a defamatory imputation. In this day and age, to say someone - any adult – has a sexual interest in children is very defamatory in my view.”
Barrister Robert Stewart KC. Photo / File
On the scale of defamatory things that could be said about a person, “that would be right up there”.
Defending such a claim would require the person making, or inferring, the defamatory claim to prove it was true.
There had previously been a degree of leeway when it came to claims against politicians but those defences had been subsumed by “public interest” grounds in the 2018 Durie v Gardiner case.
That required someone who had made a defamatory claim to show doing so was in the public interest and also that the communication of that information was responsible.
By “responsible”, the courts would consider the information replied on and require whoever made the claim to show they had sought comment from the person facing the claim with subsequent reporting happening in a reasonable, measured way.
“That’s where most of these online communications fall down because no approach for comment is sought. When you have a pile-on and someone makes an allegation with many, many comments echoing approval, unless the allegation is true, it would be very hard to see there is a defence.”
What happens next?
Doyle is not returning to Parliament this week. The Greens have told the Herald that, having faced an onslaught of accusations and death threats, Doyle is taking time to make sure they and their child are safe.
The online investigators who have built a case – or raised questions – about Doyle are demanding police get involved. There is no sign yet of that occurring.
When Parliament sits, Doyle will be absent but Peters has said he will prosecute his concerns at Green Party leadership.
If Doyle was an MP in NZ First, says Peters, they would be gone already.
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
