“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 the human side of geopolitics and foreign affairs around the world, with a focus on the Pacific.

He writes for The New York Times, Harper’s, TIME, The Guardian, The Washington Post and The Economist, among others. His photography has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian. 

In 2024, Pete was selected as the Sir Harry Evans Global Fellow in Investigative Journalism. In that role, he works on long-term, long-form investigative projects for Reuters.

His most recent investigation for Reuters documented a sprawling influence campaign in the strategically located Pacific nation of Palau by individuals with ties to the Chinese government and to Chinese organised crime groups.

Prior to that, in a front page investigation for The New York Times, Pete 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 its front page on the same day that Pope Francis made his first visit to a Pacific Island nation.

In 2024, he was a lead author on a story for The Outlaw Ocean Project that revealed how China’s foreign fishing fleet has infiltrated the domestic industries of vulnerable nations around the world. The story was a finalist in the video category at the National Magazine Awards, which recognises the best American magazine storytelling.

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 dispatches about the Marshall Islands for The New York Times. The first revealed the exhaustion through corruption and mismanagement of a multi-million dollar American trust fund for nuclear exiles, prompting inquiries in Congress and changes to a major treaty between the United States and the Marshall Islands. The second highlighted how hundreds of Pacific veterans were being denied V.A. care due to decades-old regulatory barriers. According to the Marshall Islands’ foreign minister, the dispatch prompted the U.S. Secretaries of State and Interior to pursue reforms, which led Congress to require the V.A. to provide care in Micronesia and reimburse veterans who travel for treatment. 

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 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, the FASPE Fellowship to study journalistic ethics in Germany and Poland, and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing from Columbia University. He has received funding to report on colonization and the environment in the Pacific from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and the Acland Foundation. In 2022, Pete was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Columbia Journalism School in New York. He also received scholarships from Universities New Zealand and the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents for his study.

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