UPDATED:
In receiving the below “response” to my challenge to Veterinary Council (VCNZ) CEO Iain McLachlan to emerge from the shadows and show himself, I want to take the opportunity to offer what I genuinely hope will be valuable insight and tuition to not only any fellow pet owner who has ever sought, or may need to in the future seek, accountability from the veterinary profession . . . but, coming back to the broader function and focus of
The Customer & The Constituent, I want also to offer the same guidance to anyone anywhere seeking recognition of serious issues and honest, effective redress.
This is an article I wrote a year ago:
How Wellington REALLY Works: The '5 Ds'. A quick read will be instructive to start with. Then, if you scroll down and read McLachlan’s response before my reply to him, you’ll see the obvious deployment of (the first two “Ds” (1) Delay, and (2) Defer. That’s already been going on, as you will read in my reply, since January.
But if you read more deeply into the intent behind McLachlan’s three brief paragraphs, you’ll see the third and fifth "D's" i.e. (3) Deny and (5) Dismiss lurking there, too.
That is, the patronising,
“I recognise that you have been carrying this for some time, and I am truly sorry for your loss of Harry”, clearly doesn’t come from any place of genuine sympathy or empathy.
Had McLachlan been in the least honest, open and NOT coming from a place of needing to protect Massey, the phrasing would have been different. Only slightly different wording, but monumentally different in meaning. It would have been,
"I am truly sorry for what happened to Harry."
Notice, that more genuine phraseology wouldn't have compromised any investigation or complaint with any acknowledgement of anything other than "something happened to Harry". But even acknowledging that
anything
"happened" to Harry would have disallowed the intended "grieving pet owner not to be taken seriously" and the unspoken "owner who can't accept her dog had reached its use by date" re-frame.
Instead, McLachlan's chosen wording was a cunning but not clever sleight-of-hand; a disingenuous, and probably lawyer-directed endeavour to minimise ("Deny" the gravity and due weight of) the matter, and also, to reduce ("Dismiss") the seriousness with which the complainant themselves deserves to be taken . . . along with the unintended indication of the re-engineered manipulation of reality that will no doubt be at the core of how the VCNZ and Massey will work together to dismiss any complaints I might finally bring if ever the full list of names is released.
In the context of a matter like animal cruelty and a singular complainant, the "emotional, grieving pet owner" re-frame is a predictable strategy that hasn't placed heavy intellectual demand on the writer or their advisors, and it’s helped along by the distant, never-to-be-voiced, but clearly underlying inference of, "emotional female".
There are numerous other such manipulative "5D" textbook response "templates" in use by organisations like Massey and the VCNZ. But most of them have central strategies that are easy to spot once you've decoded a few. The key characteristic common to every single one of them is intense disingenuousness.
So, then, next question: How do you respond when you’re up against a big piece of institutional machinery with “comms advisors” and both in-house and external legal advisors adding further to the already well-entrenched bureaucratic playbooks, and even individual administrators well-versed in the deployment of deflective and/or minimising template responses?
There is only one, and one only, counter-offence: You recognise the ploy, reject the re-framed narrative, call it out openly, and return the conversation to the matter at hand. Every time.
______________________________________________________
From: editor@consumeraffairswriter.com <editor@consumeraffairswriter.com>
Sent: Friday, 12 June 2026 6:25 pm
To: 'Iain McLachlan' <iain@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Cc: 'Liam Shields' <liam@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Subject: RE: INVESTIGATION: Massey Veterinary ICU Staffing and Critical VCNZ Disclosure Failures [RE: Harry Kelly]
Dear Mr McLachlan
Your patronising opener,
“I recognise that you have been carrying this for some time, and I am truly sorry for your loss of Harry”, is unwelcome . . . and as insulting as you intended it to be.
Albeit I recognise such manipulative re-framing is not beneath you, and is in fact intended to be strategic to your organisation’s “position”, I would nonetheless ask that you refrain from such reductive and patronising insults in future.
The “loss” of my dog is the direct result of a complexity of serious clinical, managerial, and ethical issues entrenched in the practices and culture of your conjoint organisation i.e. Massey University’s Veterinary “Teaching Hospital” aka Companion Animal “Hospital”.
I do not require your sympathy – which, in any case, is entirely disingenuous and farcical.
I DO require that you take the action you are mandated to take, to properly carry out the duties of your position, and in doing so, provide the New Zealand pet-owning public with the confidence that true accountability exists within the industry’s regulatory framework. Not only does it not currently, but in fact, the reverse is the case under your “leadership” and that of Liam Shields.
I recommend your focus remain on the severe, demonstrable lackings and ethical compromises of the organisation you "lead", and the honest and effective execution of your mandated role and duties, rather than narrative deflection and unwelcome familiarity.
I would also take this opportunity to point out that your response and your “position” has confirmed the most concerning aspect of the entire, ongoing, deep-rooted-in-cultural-issues matter:
That your 1.5% complaint prosecution rate is almost certainly achieved on the basis of re-framing even the most egregious, systemic and lethal cases of malpractice, misfeasance, animal cruelty, and criminal acts, as low-importance, grief-driven, “consumer complaints”.
Under your leadership, Mr McLachlan, the rot in the foundations of organisations like your conjoint partner, will persist – at great cost both to the New Zealand pet-owning public, and also to the levels of clinical competence and the ethical standards of the students trained at, and graduating from, Massey University’s Veterinary “Teaching Hospital”.
In the meantime, regarding your patronisation i.e.
“I recognise that you have been carrying this for some time”: Indeed. And that infuriating reality is entirely, 100% attributable to your and Mr Shields’ collusion with the management of the Massey institution to ensure against the release of the identities of those that I seek to lay formal complaints about to your (albeit, conjoint) organisations.
Thus, I would bring you back to the central questions of my June 9 email, the answers to which are necessary to enable me to lay the required series of complaints in the first instance – with the central information requirement (which I have been pursuing through you, and in the face of your unkept commitments), being the provision to me of the entire, uncompressed, unsummarised, unredacted list of licensed operatives who were in any way involved with my dog’s case.
I await this information from either yourself or Mr Shields, and again leave you with my previous communication’s comment i.e. that you almost certainly already possess the answers to these core questions, which are essential to the enabling of natural justice. Thus, I trust I will be receiving these from you without too much further delay . . . noting that my first communication to you to seek such core elements of information, to enable the laying of formal complaints, stretches back as far as January 2026.
On this note and regarding your closing statement, “The substantive questions you have raised are for Liam to address, and he will respond to you as necessary.”
Yes, they ARE substantive questions, Mr McLachlan.
And ALL of them MUST, therefore, be considered “necessary” . . . with a timely, complete, honest and transparent response to EACH of these questions.
Yours sincerely
Jordan Kelly
From: Iain McLachlan <iain@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Sent: Friday, 12 June 2026 4:52 pm
To:
editor@consumeraffairswriter.com
Cc: Liam Shields <liam@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Subject: Re: INVESTIGATION: Massey Veterinary ICU Staffing and Critical VCNZ Disclosure Failures [RE: Harry Kelly]
Dear Ms Kelly
Thank you for writing. I recognise that you have been carrying this for some time, and I am truly sorry for your loss of Harry.
Liam Shields acts on my behalf in complaints-related matters, and his responses to you represent the Vet Council's position. That is not a deflection, it reflects the proper allocation of responsibilities within our organisation. My involvement in individual correspondence is not appropriate.
The substantive questions you have raised are for Liam to address, and he will respond to you as necessary.
Yours sincerely
Iain McLachlan
He | Him
Kaiwhakahaere Matua me Pouroki | CEO & Registrar
Te Kaunihera Rata Kararehe o Aotearoa | Veterinary Council of New Zealand
Level 6, Midland Chambers, 45 Johnston Street, Wellington 6011 | New Zealand
P 04 473 9600 | DDI 04 894 3705 | W www.vetcouncil.org.nz
From: editor@consumeraffairswriter.com
Sent: Tuesday, 9 June 2026 7:38 pm
To: 'Iain McLachlan' <iain@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Cc: 'Liam Shields' <liam@vetcouncil.org.nz>
Subject: INVESTIGATION: Massey Veterinary ICU Staffing and Critical VCNZ Disclosure Failures [RE: Harry Kelly]
Mr McLachlan
You have been hiding in the shadows for too long on this matter of extreme gravity – now drawing, rightly – significant national and international attention.
As of course you will have seen, my reply to Liam Shields’s totally inadequate “response” of yesterday (regarding my request for your Council’s provision of the names of any and all licensed individuals involved in any capacity with my dog’s case), was published
here
and
here.
From now on, I require that you respond to my communications personally. If Mr Shields continues to cover for you, I will continue to respond to you as my primary addressee. As a practising lawyer holding a current New Zealand Law Society practising certificate, you are personally bound by professional obligations of transparency and integrity that your subordinate is not. You cannot hide behind a non-lawyer deputy to evade answering questions that directly engage your own professional conduct – particularly while a Law Society complaint against you is active.
On which note, I have three outstanding questions that I wish to be answered individually and separately from the overarching issue of the continually withheld names – and whether or not Massey University’s Companion Animal Hospital’s Intensive “Care” Unit is staffed by any licensed veterinarians overnight.
To cut off at the pass your deflection efforts by directing me back to Massey for the answers to these questions, I remind you, that you were apparently quite happy to accept these two clinicians’ names as being the only ones relevant to the laying of any formal complaints. Of course, I have made clear that that is unacceptable, and I await Mr Shields’s response with the FULL list, so as to ensure the conduct of proper and full natural justice . . . and that such may not continue to be prevented as it has been for now six months and counting.
But since you accepted these two names at all and in any case, regardless of the requirement for the full list, I require you to answer the following questions yourself – as they are directly relevant to the formal complaints that will be laid regarding these two operators specifically:
Question One: Massey's response states that Dr Steffi Jalava's role is "primarily clinical associated with clinical teaching of the BVSc5 student cohort”. Does that mean it was by her own decision that she converted Harry to a teaching resource? (A straightforward YES or NO, will suffice. Answer with a checkbox beside this question, if you will otherwise find it difficult to provide me with a straightforward answer. For the avoidance of doubt, any failure to select a binary option or any attempt to dilute this question with narrative deflection will be formally logged and published as an administrative refusal to answer a direct question.)
Question Two: Since the only "treatment" Harry required was the 24-hour rehydration that was prescribed upon his admission and that I was charged for, but that he was disconnected from after 8.5 hours – what was the specific "treatment" that Dr Anita Shea oversaw? (A simple bullet point list with the list of “treatments” and the specific reason or objective for each “treatment” will suffice. Please indicate clearly if Harry’s various forms of utilisation for student observation and/or student manipulation and participation and/or filming comprised any of these “treatments”.)
Question Three: Which of these two practitioners, or if not either of them, then who specifically approved the third dose (i.e. 9am) sedative/s to Harry, and any subsequent to that? With regard to the 9am administration of sedative/s, what was the relationship of this to the student activities and filming of him that commenced 2.5 hours later? And what was the purpose of any subsequent sedative administrations?
I look forward to the answers that, of course, you would surely already have. You cannot reasonably expect me to believe that the strategy behind the provision of these two names (and only to date these two names) has not been the subject of considerable discussion with Massey University’s Veterinary School Dean Jon Huxley and others, including Massey’s legal counsel.
Notwithstanding, I look forward to your answers . . . but not “in due course”, Mr McLachlan, per your now four-month-old February 26 email. The variations between our respective definitions of that undertaking make it untenable here. In fact, given that you surely already know the answers to the above three questions, there is no reason not to provide them by return email.
In closing, let me take the opportunity to be 100% clear about the following: I do not expect – and will not accept – any reply to this email as being a substitute for
the clear question I asked Mr Liam Shields in my June 8 email to him. These two matters are interlocked, but at the same time, separate.
Sincerely
Jordan Kelly
