“A dazzling new talent” with “rigour and high-hearted passion for searching out stories of injustice against people who are too often invisible in our world.” 

Tina Brown

Pete writes about geopolitics and foreign affairs around the world, with a focus on Asia and the Pacific.

He has written for The New York Times, Harper’s, TIME, The Guardian, The Washington Post and The Economist. Pete is the Sir Harry Evans Global Fellow in Investigative Journalism, working on long-form investigative projects for Reuters.

His most recent investigation for Reuters documented a humanitarian crisis on the Pacific island of Ebeye, which provides the labor for a “vital” U.S. base that monitors Chinese rockets and tests U.S. missiles. With a punishing diabetes epidemic and pervasive fish contamination, Ebeye's residents die at an average age of 52, often from flesh-eating diseases, gangrene, and blood poisoning.

Prior to that, he documented a sprawling influence campaign by individuals with ties to the Chinese government in the strategically located Pacific nation of Palau, involving killings, kidnappings and alleged “cash donations” to senior politicians, including Palau’s vice-president. 

Before Reuters, Pete largely wrote for The New York Times. In a frontpage investigation, he revealed that at least 34 Catholic priests and missionaries moved to the Pacific Islands after abusing or allegedly abusing children in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. In at least 13 cases, Church officials knew the men had been accused or convicted before the transfers. In at least three cases, the men reoffended in the Pacific. The New York Times published the investigation on the same day that Pope Francis made his first visit to a Pacific Island nation.

That year he was also a finalist for the Livingston Award for International Reporting, which recognises the best American reporting by journalists under 35, for two New York Times dispatches about the Marshall Islands. The first revealed the exhaustion through corruption and mismanagement of a multi-million dollar American trust fund for nuclear exiles, prompting inquiries in U.S. Congress and changes to a major American treaty . The second highlighted how hundreds of Pacific veterans are denied V.A. care due to decades-old regulatory barriers. The dispatch prompted the U.S. Secretaries of State and Interior to pursue reforms, which led Congress to require the V.A. to explore providing care in Micronesia or reimbursing veterans for travel. 

At the 2023 Voyager Media Awards, Pete was named New Zealand’s Reporter of the Year, the country’s most prestigious journalism award. He is the youngest person since 1981 to receive that honour. Pete has a master’s degree in global politics from Columbia University, which he attended on a Fulbright scholarship, and a law degree with first class honours from Victoria University of Wellington. Before journalism, he worked as a judge’s clerk in the New Zealand High Court and served as an infantry officer in the New Zealand Army Reserve. He has reported from thirteen nations, interviewed four prime ministers and presidents, and is yet to find any country better than New Zealand. 

He has received the Ochberg Fellowship to study trauma-informed reporting at Columbia University’s Dart Center and the FASPE Fellowship to study journalistic ethics in Germany and Poland. He has received funding to report on the Pacific from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Acland Foundation. He has also received scholarships from Universities New Zealand and the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents.

Outside of journalism, Pete aspires to complete all of the Great Walks in Aotearoa.