She was an unsuccessful candidate for the Advance NZ party in the 2020 general election, and set up the group Voices for Freedom (VFF), which distributed pamphlets that have been criticised by experts as containing COVID-19 misinformation about vaccines, lockdown and the wearing of masks.
[2][3] On a podcast with Pete Evans, Deeks later reflected that when she first changed her diet and set up a paleo food blog for kids, she became "alive to the fact that there were so many powerful interests at play and we were basically being brainwashed every day.
"[4] in 2016 Deeks used her blog to launch a petition to the Australian and New Zealand governments to ditch the Health Star Rating System for packaged foods and beverages that both were using.
[17] A Te Puke doctor, Christine Williams, said the editors should be held to account for the magazine that promoted conspiracy theories about vaccines, Bill Gates, herbal cures and lockdown.
[18] Talkback host Peter Williams on Magic Talk made comments about Voices for Freedom, saying that while he did not know who they were, the group was just asking questions about vaccines as he had done on his show, and it was the role of the media to hold discussions where there are no wrong opinions.
In an interview with Marc Daalder, a senior political reporter at Newsroom, Williams stated he was not anti-vaccine but repeated an untrue statement that the vaccine was still in a trial period.
Voices for Freedom has been linked to 'Covid Plan B', promoted by a group of anti-lockdown health professionals and academics, headed by University of Auckland epidemiology senior lecturer Simon Thornley, who in March 2020 questioned the validity of the lockdown put in place by the New Zealand Government.
[30] Helen Petousis-Harris also addressed each of the claims in an opinion piece, noting as an introduction that "the 'golden rules' of propaganda are used in the flyer – it uses intense emotions, creates a dichotomy between 'good' and 'bad' and avoids data and rational discussion".
The editorial concluded: "It is all the more important to use free speech to challenge the likes of Voices For Freedom when its positions threaten to derail the national effort for life to return to a pre-Covid normal.
"[32] When several people who lived in the town of Timaru expressed "dismay at the unsolicited pamphlet", a local health expert said that "as the Covid-19 vaccination programme ramps up towards the second half of the year we expect to see an increase in deliberate misinformation ...we can protect ourselves and our loved ones from this by sharing and re-sharing the reliable sources of information such as [what is on] the IMAC (Immunisation Advisory Centre) and Unite Against Covid-19 websites".
In the same news item, University of Otago Faculty of Law Professor Andrew Geddis, who researches constitutional and public law, said that while "people do have a right to believe and say manifestly wrong things – it shouldn't be illegal to go around telling everyone that the world is flat, for instance ...the difference here is that if these anti-vax messages get currency, they could undermine our vaccination effort and this will hurt us all collectively in a way that some people believing the earth is flat will not".
[34] Siouxsie Wiles described some of the leaflets dropped into letterboxes by groups such as Advance NZ and Voices for Freedom as containing "distressing lists of so-called facts that are designed to frighten people into not taking the vaccine ...[and these groups are taking] ...disinformation created overseas and repackaging it to make it appeal to people in New Zealand and to promote their agenda, which on the surface seems to be to erode our trust in each other, our government, and our successful response to the pandemic".
[35] When Deeks claimed Voices for Freedom had raised $50,000 toward the printing of flyers, Mark von Dadelszen, a lawyer specialising in not-for-profit law, incorporated societies and charitable trusts, warned about donating to an organisation that was not required to publicly release financial statements, and therefore lacked accountability.