Quotes of the week

06/04/2026

For years now, New Zealand has been stuck in a messy legal and institutional web where the most basic category underpinning women’s rights (sex) has been treated as optional, subjective, or simply too awkward or “bigoted” to define. But if the law cannot clearly say what a woman is, then it becomes increasingly difficult to justify why women-only spaces, protections, or opportunities should exist at all. Women’s rights exist for a reason and they are grounded in sex-based differences in physical vulnerability, in reproductive biology, and in the long and very real history of discrimination on that basis.

New Zealand First’s Bill doesn’t “remove rights” from trans people or from anyone. It simply restores clarity and certainty and reinforces the foundation upon which all of our sex-based rights sit. –  Ani O’Brien 

On one side, you have frontline firefighters escalating strike action, walking off the job for an hour twice a week after months of stalled negotiations and an Employment Relations Authority finding that FENZ failed to properly consult on sweeping cuts affecting hundreds of roles.

On the other side, at the very moment tensions reach peak hostility, the board signs off on pay rises of up to 79%… FOR THEMSELVES. Seventy-nine percent. The chair jumps more than 40%. This was waved through on the basis that it’s needed to “attract talent” which is a claim that might carry more weight if the organisation wasn’t, by almost every account, struggling to function properly. – Ani O’Brien 

Water is made up of countless molecules, each comprising two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. As far as I am aware, no scientific experiment has ever established that water has a spirit or memory. Such beliefs may of course be sincerely held but must not be taught as science in our schools. It is quite incredible that in recent years they have been.

The water cycle, which all children should learn in school, involves water returning to the atmosphere by transpiration from plant life, evaporation from the land, waterways, lakes and seas, and returning to Earth as rain, hail and snow. This continual cycling of water means that there is constant mixing and transfer of water molecules widely from one geographical region or local catchment to another.

As water is constantly precipitated elsewhere through atmospheric processes, it is nonsense to see its “mana” being compromised if it moves to a different catchment. Conversely, arguments about not mixing with other bodies of water of course become valid, but on clear environmental science grounds, if water is contaminated, for example with sewerage or with nitrates from agriculture.

It is a responsibility for everyone to ensure that water quality is preserved. We delegate this responsibility to government and local government, but Iwi do not have special knowledge that is otherwise unavailable through environmental science advisors to our elected officials.

Management of water in our natural environment should not be based on spiritual arguments that rest on a single cultural authority, and which is not representative of the country’s wider population. It must be science- and evidence-based, and this management must not incur costs that rest on cultural or spiritual beliefs. Such beliefs should be respected but not be embedded within our water management policies and processes. – John Raine

The coalition Government was elected with a mandate to restore practical, science-based and cost-effective regulation. This means that the only option in their present deliberations over water is to go for Option 3 and scrap Te Mana o te Wai. The Government must also rein in Councils who are enabling a rentier culture to develop around the nation’s water resources. Ultimately, water is so essential as to be sacred to all of us. No single group in our society should be able to control it on cultural grounds, or derive income from it without adding value. – John Raine

While Kiwi businesses are facing economic uncertainty, the Ministry supposedly responsible for helping businesses has been spending our money on Workplace Waiata – i.e. staff singing sessions in their Wellington offices.

MBIE waiata And this isn’t just a one-off thing: At their swanky Wellington offices, MBIE were hosting 30 minute sessions every work day, every week! MBIE employs 5,892 bureaucrats (it’s grown from 4,676 in 2020), literally being paid to sing, clap, poi, and recite Māori proverbs and hymns. – Rhys Hurley

Management eventually agreed through a “cultural negotiation” that the 30-minute sing-along sessions would not be abolished. Instead, they were reduced from five to three 30-minute sessions per week.

Only in the public service could something so ridiculous require this level of executive time, negotiation, and outcome.

This isn’t about cultural respect, it’s about the priorities of people who are funded by us, the taxpayer. Whether it is religious or cultural, you don’t go to work to be paid to sing along. Let me be crystal clear: this isn’t a criticism of waiata or Māori culture. This is about a Ministry that has lost sight of its purpose.  – Rhys Hurley

In fact, we shouldn’t really be shocked that Oxford is now threatening to prosecute locals for pinning their national flag on lampposts. If the past few years have taught Britons anything, it is that the only acceptable expression of national pride is Paddington Bear. – Hugo Timms

None of this is to say that the British establishment doesn’t like flags. It loves them – just as long as they have nothing to do with England or the United Kingdom. – Hugo Timms

There is an even greater irony in Oxfordshire, of all places, issuing a progressive fatwa on the English flag. Every year, millions of tourists descend on Oxford to essentially pay homage to the nation’s history and culture. They can see it all: England’s oldest university (which predates the Aztec Empire), the Radcliffe Camera, Christ Church college, the pub where CS Lewis and JR Tolkien drank – so much that is great about England is on display, except of course the national flag.

There is some consolation in the thought that the war on the English flag is almost certain to end in failure. Because, if the Raise the Colours campaign showed us anything, it is that the English have well and truly had it with the kind of national self-loathing Oxford remains committed to. Patriotism, at long last, is no longer a dirty word. Oxford should get with the programme. – Hugo Timms

How can it be that, as a child here, it almost never crossed my mind not to be openly and fearlessly Jewish, and yet I now wait in trepidation for the day one of my young children returns home from school or an outing, asking me to explain Jew hatred? Naomi Firsht 

Anti-Semitism has had a rebrand and, honestly, activists have done a fantastic PR job. Say whatever you like about the Jews and carry out as many petty acts of anti-Semitism as you please – as long as you take care to use today’s euphemisms of ‘anti-Zionism’ or ‘Israel criticism’, you’ll get away with it. – Naomi Firsht 

The Jewish community does not have the privilege of looking away. While I can shield myself from terrifying video footage of anti-Semitic murder and destruction, I cannot avoid reckoning with the daily reality of life for Jews in Britain today.

This week, Jews celebrate the festival of Passover, when we recall how Moses led us to freedom from slavery in Egypt. It is one of our most important festivals. It celebrates the privilege of not just freedom itself, but also the ability to live freely as Jews. It is a message that has always resonated strongly with me. But this year I find myself asking: when does living with unease become living in fear? In the past, I always believed myself to be truly free, as a person, as a Jew. Today, I’m not so sure. – Naomi Firsht 

‘We’re not anti-Semitic, we’re anti-Zionist’, they’ll say. The irritation of Greens for Palestine at having to say Zionist rather than Jew surely explodes that crap once and for all. But more to the point, what do people mean when they say they’re anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic? All I hear is: ‘I don’t hate Jews, I just want to deprive them of a right enjoyed by every other people and bring about the destruction of their homeland so that they will once again be scattered across the Earth.’ – Brendan O’Neill

I’m sick of pussyfooting around this: if you dream of the Jewish nation’s destruction, and chant for the death of Jewish soldiers, and demonise Jewish nationalism as uniquely barbarous, then you have a problem with Jews. It might take 10 years, maybe 30, perhaps longer, but I am confident we will one day look back at the people who said, ‘I’m an anti-Zionist’, in the same way we look at those who said, ‘Round up the Jews’. – Brendan O’Neill

The credibility of Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins has taken yet another blow.

On Friday, the Herald exclusively revealed on its front page that Hipkins, the former Covid Response Minister, was made aware of the potential vaccine risks in March 2022, when tens of thousands of 12- to 17-year-olds had yet to get a second jab.

Hipkins had earlier claimed he never got the advice. – NZ Herald

In isolation, this Cabinet paper being revealed brings Hipkins’ credibility into question.

But it also follows a string of other incidents involving the former Prime Minister, who hopes to be in the top job again come November. – NZ Herald

Before Friday’s Cabinet paper scandal, this newspaper said Labour had to win back the middle ground to win the election. That job has only become more difficult with Hipkins at the helm.

Ultimately, each swing voter will ask themselves in the ballot box: can we trust Hipkins? – NZ Herald

From a timeline perspective, we now have three conflicting positions sitting side by side in official messaging. The Ministry of Health determined “standard”13 spacing was six weeks in August, then in early October it said “optimal”14 spacing was six to eight weeks, but then on 6 October operational urgency was used to justify returning to a three week minimum so that people could be “fully vaccinated sooner.”

The timing of this sudden halving of the recommended interval between doses appeared to come out of nowhere and is puzzling considering elsewhere in the world the trend was that intervals were being elongated. New Zealand was back to three weeks between doses when the UK was waiting four times as long.

It is difficult not to somewhat cynically note that the Health Ministry later described Super Saturday as the culmination of a “10-day campaign launched by Minister Hipkins at the 1pm stand-up on Wednesday 6 October,” aimed at increasing uptake.15 – Ani O’Brien

In fact, on 21 December 2021, Chris Hipkins declared that COVID-19 “far outweighs” risk of myocarditis in response to questions about 26 year old Dunedin plumber Rory Nairn who died from myocarditis caused by the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.21

This is significant also because just this week Chris Hipkins claimed to have never given the public medical advice.

In reality, Chris Hipkins frequently gave medical advice and asserted to the public that the Pfizer vaccine was “very safe,” arguing that “any small risk associated with the vaccine is by far outweighed by the risk of getting Covid-19” and that taking the vaccination was “absolutely the best course of action.”23 This reflects the orthodox public health position at the time, but contradicts the regulatory expectations of New Zealand’s medicines law. – Ani O’Brien

No pharmaceutical company could dream to get away with anything like the sweeping and emphatic claims about the efficacy and safety of the vaccine. Especially since, by mid 2021, both domestic and international authorities had identified a specific, non-trivial pattern of risk of myocarditis.

The issue, then, is whether repeatedly describing the vaccine as “very safe,” while collapsing the risk discussion into a generalised comparison with COVID-19, met the standard of balanced communication required under the Act. The obligation is to communicate risk with sufficient specificity that individuals, especially those in higher-risk groups, can make an informed decision. Instead, the Minister for the COVID-19 Response mandated that a double dose of the vaccine was required in order to partake in public life.

What this paper trail shows is a sequence of decisions made in full view of evolving evidence, where the known trade-offs were increasingly clear, and the policy response consistently favoured speed, targets, and compliance over caution. – Ani O’Brien

The issue is no longer whether they knew everything. It is whether, given what they did know, they chose to act in a way that minimised risk or simply in a way that maximised vaccination numbers. – Ani O’Brien

You couldn’t ask for a better state-of-the-nation snapshot than the one coming out of Clapham in south-west London right now. Those clips of young, dumbfounded cops trying and failing to stop a mob of masked TikTok twats from running riot is Britain summed up. The dystopic vision of families barricaded inside shops as entitled delinquents swarm the streets for sport speaks to our crisis of social order. To see what lunacies the corrosion of adult authority can unleash, look no further than Clapham. – Brendan O’Neill

There were serious incidents. Three girls were arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker. Mistreating public servants is proper lowlife behaviour. The same group were also arrested for shoplifting. In one video, smoke can be seen billowing from Clapham Common: the fires of asocial arrogance. The police lamented the ‘disorder’ and issued a dispersal order for the youths. But I won’t be the only one wondering if those clips of masked brats escaping the clutches of floundering officers tell a worrying story about the state in the 21st century. – Brendan O’Neill

We must not turn a blind eye to such a brazen display of contempt for social norms. It speaks to a simmering nihilism among sections of our youth, one likely emboldened by adult society’s wilful abandonment of its duty to discipline, reprimand and guide the next generation.

To me, the events in Clapham flow from the breakdown of adult authority. Everywhere now, discipline is frowned upon as a borderline fascistic pursuit. Parenting experts warn mums and dads not to scold their littl’uns. Schools long ago abandoned their core duty of admonishing bad behaviour, replacing the stern telling-off with a therapeutic hand on the shoulder. And out in the wild, in everyday society, you hardly ever see adults giving kids an earful. Teens yell and swear and play their tinny music, and few if any of their elders bark: ‘BEHAVE.’ – Brendan O’Neill

There was an infrastructure of discipline that extended from the home to the school to the world itself.

That’s gone now. It feels like adults have been decommissioned, subtly instructed by society that their wisdom and firmness are no longer wanted. This mad deactivation of yesteryear’s social custodians has let infantile antics flourish. Even petty crime is now pretty much permissible. – Brendan O’Neill

If they have got the message that they can do whatever they like, whose fault is that? A society that refuses to say ‘NO’, loudly and resolutely, has no right to be shocked when its members behave like entitled children, even after childhood. Whether it’s the boy in a skirt who thinks he has the right to waltz into the girls’ bathroom or the boy in a mask who shuts down Boots for a laugh, this is what happens when we fail to tell the young to get a fucking grip.

It has bizarrely become a ‘progressive’ virtue to be anti-discipline. So what if youths steal beer or don’t pay their Tube fare – it’s no biggie, say the hipster nihilists of the bourgeois left. – Brendan O’Neill

As Slavoj Žižek says, there is unquestionably a ‘growing decay of manners’, and it really matters. Such ‘everyday insecurity hurts the poor much more than the rich who live calmly in their gated communities’, Žižek says. Well, now one of London’s better-off boroughs has been targeted by the post-manners madness stoked by the faux-progressivism of the elites. Clapham confirms that when adults vacate the terrain of moral guidance, they normalise mob behaviour. We need to get a grip before we can tell the kids to. – Brendan O’Neill

Except for Africa, the panic about population is now about its decline, not its increase. Whether this panic is more justified than was the one about overpopulation, I leave to people of the future to decide.

Two things are certain, however. The first is that mankind cannot get anything just right. The second is that man is the only species that derives pleasure from contemplating its own extinction. – Theodore Dalrymple

You do not have to agree with Sean Plunket. You do not have to like The Platform. But a four-person Wellington panel, armed with a statute older than the World Wide Web, should not be deciding what New Zealanders can say on the internet. Parliament has been declining to give the BSA this power for over 20 years. The BSA has now simply helped itself – Jillaine Heather

The BSA cannot have it both ways. If the technology is irrelevant, it is irrelevant for YouTube too. If clicking play on The Platform is not on demand, what exactly is clicking play on Netflix? The gymnastics required to claim jurisdiction over some internet publishers but not others is, to borrow a phrase, mumbo jumbo. – Jillaine Heather

The BSA has also helpfully explained that there is no audience to which it is appropriate to direct misleading and materially inaccurate information. Translation: the BSA would like to be the body that decides what counts as true. That is not the job of a broadcasting standards regulator. It is not the job of any regulator. – Jillaine Heather

If New Zealand wants to regulate online speech, that is a decision for elected representatives. Not an unelected panel reinterpreting a law from the year the Berlin Wall came down. – Jillaine Heather

From our “don’t waste a crisis” file, is it possible this Government’s handling thus far of oil events might well see them rewarded with an increased level of support as the election draws closer?  – Mike Hosking

As I said last week, New Zealand v Australia in terms of messaging, organisation, reaction, and action is not even a contest. Australia is a hot mess of confusion, claim and counterclaim, and a growing bitch session between state and Canberra. 

Here, it would seem close to faultless. 

For those upset over the lack of free money, you might not agree with it, but you can’t blame the messaging or say it hasn’t been explained.  – Mike Hosking

The oil numbers yesterday seem reassuringly well organised. We are clearly hustling and so far, it’s clearly working.

There’s messaging about what it isn’t, i.e. this isn’t Covid, this isn’t about sourdough, or animals in windows. This isn’t about hugs and kindness and all the other BS.

It’s about adults, and organisation, and getting stuff done as best you can in an environment that is largely beyond your control and in a country that is at the end of a very long supply chain at the bottom of the world.

Although we wouldn’t wish any of this on our worst enemy, it’s so far so good from what looks like a seriously competent Government and one that might get some support simply because when it hit the fan they were up for it and not making it up. – Mike Hosking

The Broadcasting Standards Authority’s interlocutory decision in WK v The Platform Media NZ Ltd (Decision No. ID2025-063, 31 March 2026) has attracted controversy for good reason. In finding that it has jurisdiction to regulate The Platform’s internet livestream under the Broadcasting Act 1989, the Authority has made an interpretive leap that is difficult to reconcile with the text of the Act, its legislative history, and basic principles of statutory interpretation.

The decision is not, as some have portrayed it, a straightforward application of a purposive approach to a technologically evolving medium. It is a significant — and arguably ultra vires — expansion of regulatory power that raises serious questions about institutional overreach, rule of law, and the proper role of an administrative tribunal. – David Harvey

Beyond the doctrinal problems, the decision raises broader concerns about institutional legitimacy.

The Authority has been calling on Parliament to update the Broadcasting Act for over twenty years. It openly acknowledges there is currently no code of broadcasting standards for online content. It has not sought levies from online content providers. It has not issued any guidance specifically applicable to internet broadcasters.

And yet it now asserts jurisdiction over an online media entity based on an expansive reading of a 1989 statute — in the context of a specific, politically contentious complaint, after the complainant’s name was released and he received threats. But a tribunal’s jurisdiction cannot expand or contract based on the sympathetic nature of the complaint before it. – David Harvey

If the law genuinely covered internet broadcasting, one would expect the Authority to have acted on that position consistently over the past two decades.

Instead, it explicitly declined to seek levies from online providers and described its 2019/2020 position as provisional and subject to legislative reform. The now-abandoned policy of waiting for Parliament is difficult to reconcile with the claim that jurisdiction over online content was always clear under existing law. – David Harvey

None of this is to say that there is no public interest in regulating online broadcasting. The Platform’s talkback content reaches a substantial audience. The comments that prompted this complaint — described as “unacceptable racist” — are precisely the kind of content that broadcasting standards are designed to address. And the complainant’s experience, including having his name published and receiving threats, illustrates the real-world harm that can flow from unmoderated online content.

But the remedy for a regulatory gap is legislation, not interpretive expansion by a statutory tribunal. – David Harvey

The Broadcasting Act 1989 was enacted for a different technological era. Its language reflects that era’s assumptions about how content reaches audiences. Applying it to a 2025 internet livestreaming operation requires the kind of legislative recalibration that only Parliament can legitimately provide.

The Authority’s decision, however well-intentioned, substitutes the Authority’s policy preferences for Parliament’s role — and in doing so, undermines the institutional foundations on which its own authority rests. – David Harvey

The obvious problem with the BSA starting to redraw its own boundaries is that it may continue to do so whenever the spirit takes hold.

What if the next outrageous complaint that lands at the BSA is a popular podcast? Will it change the rules again to catch that complaint?

The fact that the BSA is trying to find work to do tells you that it is already irrelevant. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

The BSA is irrelevant. If Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith had the courage, he’d shut it down to save us all the admin costs of dealing with the body.

He doesn’t. It will continue to exist. But it is like a pair of leg warmers. A great idea in the 80s that – no matter how you try to contort it – no one wants any more. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

 

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Streisand effect will help Platform

16/10/2025

David Farrar has a call to arms against the gross overreach from the Broadcasting Standards Authority:

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has made a secret in principle decision that they have authority over any entity or person that produces audio or video content over the Internet. This is an outrageous power grab that would allow them to censor not just The Platform (which they are claiming jurisdiction over), but anyone who does video or audio content – that is podcasters, YouTubers, live streamers etc. . .

For many years I have actually advocated that we don’t need two media regulators – the Media Council (print, online, industry appointed) and the BSA (broadcast, powers to censor and fine, Govt appointed). Once upon a time broadcast media was much more powerful than other media, but no longer.

But this is now urgent. The BSA has gone power crazy. A secret decision to expand their powers is repugnant to anyone who believes in transparent law making. So I call upon the Government to introduce a law to abolish the Broadcasting Standards Authority, and the Media Council can pick up their role. As an industry body the Media Council would never attempt such an outrageous secret power grab.

The Free Speech Union says Sean Plunket is the canary in the coal mine and this overreach is a dangerous move:

The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) appears to be regulating podcasters such as Sean Plunket – a move far beyond its legal mandate. The Free Speech Union warns this is a serious threat to free expression in New Zealand, says Jillaine Heather, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union. 

“Who gave the Broadcasting Standards Authority the power to determine what Kiwis can and can’t say online? Plunket, a veteran journalist and founder of The Platform, operates entirely online after repeated clashes with regulators and mainstream media. Today, he received a complaint from the BSA that his recent online comments breached broadcasting standards. Is the BSA claiming authority over internet content? 

“If the BSA is allowed to extend its reach into podcasts and online media, it will be policing speech it was never designed to regulate. This kind of mission-creep always starts with someone controversial. Today it’s Sean Plunket. Tomorrow it could be anyone who asks the wrong questions.

“The BSA has previously published material implying that freedom of expression itself can cause ‘harm’. This risks turning regulators into censors, punishing opinions rather than protecting open debate.

“Given that the BSA is funded in part by broadcaster levies, this attempted scope creep to claim podcasts and online media raises serious questions about motivation. Is the Authority seeking to expand its revenue base as well as its regulatory reach?

“The Union calls on Parliament to make clear that the BSA has no authority over podcasts or internet content, and to ensure any future changes to broadcasting law are debated openly – not smuggled in behind closed doors.”

I’d go further than the FSU and join David Farrar in calling for the BSA to be abolished.

The Media Council could take over its role and would do it without the risk of it taking on the broad censorship role the BSA has granted itself.

Sean Plunket launched The Platform  which is now in its second year.

Whether it lives up to its claim to be open and tolerant might be debated but it does meet its aim of covering issues that mainstream media outlets often don’t.

The BSA’s mission creep is unwelcome and dangerous. However, it’s clumsy overreach may help The Platform through the Streisand effect – in attempting to censor it, it is giving it publicity money can’t buy in doing so will lead a bigger audience to it.

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Quotes of the week

13/10/2025

We signed up for a public life, but our neighbours didn’t and our families didn’t. – Christopher Luxon

Freedom of expression is one of the most important rights in a democracy. We [Free Speech Union] exist to protect the rights of Kiwis to exercise those rights, and we oppose any suggestion of ‘hate speech’ or blasphemy laws. – Jillaine Heather

New Zealand is a hopelessly confused country where people talk past each other, use the same words to mean different things, and can’t distinguish between sentimentality and sanity. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad and dangerous.

TV and social media imagery is overloaded with couples of mixed ethnicity.  – Lindsay Mitchell

The bi-cultural images aren’t a problem. They reflect statistics ie fact, that more Maori partner with non-Maori than with Maori. There is something quite appealing and endearing about them. New Zealand is a country where the first settlers welcomed and joined together, literally, with the later settlers.

But change screens and consider the next image:

Decide together, Thrive together.

Decide together to be Separate? It’s like deciding together to a divorce. – Lindsay Mitchell

The inevitability of mixed couples is mixed children … and more mixed children. Generation after generation, of which there are already very many. Will they have to pick one identity over the other in perpetuity? For as long as there are different civic frameworks for Maori and non-Maori, that is what these children and unborn children are being condemned to.

It has to stop. – Lindsay Mitchell

To thrive together requires individuals to put their humanity before their ethnicity. That is what thousands have done by partnering and raising families together. There cannot be a stronger expression of togetherness.

But if ethnicity trumps humanity, all we face is a future filled with conflict. New Zealand will continue to be a country of hopeless confusion rather than clarity of common purpose. – Lindsay Mitchell

I’ve always thought that if you want to change the system, if you feel that the system, whatever it might be, doesn’t work for you, the best way is to change it from within. When you live in a democracy, that is one of the beauties of a democracy. You don’t have to riot in the streets, you don’t have to depose tyrannical dictators, you can use the ballot box to effect change.

You can also enter the system and change it from within. But only if you take the time to learn how the system works, and only if you’re prepared to settle for incremental change rather than spectacular seismic show-stopping change.  – Kerre Woodham

Right now, Te Pāti Māori are incompetent and impotent politically. They have their core base of voters, much the same as the Greens. The Greens, it’s hard to see how effective they could be in Parliament as part of a government.  

Dame Tariana Turia’s Te Pāti Māori was not an impotent political force. Dame Turia understood how politics worked. – Kerre Woodham

Yesterday Labour leader Chris Hipkins said Te Pāti Māori looked like they’re quite a long way away from being ready to play a constructive role in any future government.

And again, I’d say the Greens would struggle too. Since the former co-leader James Shaw left Parliament, and again, that was a man who understood how Parliament worked, how politics worked, the gentle and powerful art of compromise. But since he’s left, there’s been the sacking and/or resignation of four MPs —Elizabeth Kerekere, Darleen Tana, Golriz Ghahraman, and Benjamin Doyle— and the party’s been distracted with issues advanced by activist MPs, like their anti-police stance. That takes a lot of time to deal with when they could be furthering what the party says it stands for, when they could be advancing the causes of their voters.

Again, like Te Pāti Māori, they have a core group of voters, people who can’t imagine voting for anybody else, who would swallow a dead rat rather than vote for National or New Zealand First, who might reluctantly vote for Labour, but who are Greens through and through. But it’s knowing how to use that power, knowing how to use the system, knowing how to use that voter base, that gets causes advanced. The shouting, the posturing, the activism doesn’t work within the system. If you want to effect change, you have to know how the system works, and you have to know how to play it.  – Kerre Woodham

We can’t unpick every tax. The debt, the deficit and the damage this Labour government is creating means we cannot do everything at once. – Kemi Badenoch

I wanted to talk about a broader issue, because there’s been a lot of discussion around the world about social division, about polarisation, about incivility in politics, and about aggression in politics. If we look around the world, often the people talk about it and say that it’s the far-right that’s behind that, but the reality in New Zealand, of course, is that it’s the Greens that are driving that level of aggression in politics. It’s the Greens—it’s the sanctimonious “tofu wouldn’t melt in your mouth” Greens—who are the ones who are driving the division and acrimony within our body politic, aided and abetted by Labour.

There is no place in this democracy for intimidation, and yet that is what we have been seeing over the last few weeks, months, and years. People are lining up, banging pots, using loud hailers, and intimidating politicians in their own homes. Chlöe Swarbrick and the Greens have been behind a lot of this, and the hypocrisy is, quite frankly, outrageous.

You look at a quote from Benjamin Doyle saying that “No person should have to avoid going to the supermarket or the letterbox because they’ve been advised that doing so would expose them to violence.”, and yet, at the same time, you’ve got Ricardo Menéndez March writing letters in support of people who vandalise MPs’ offices and, at the same time, you’ve got the leader of the Greens in press conferences with a peace-loving actor who hands out the private addresses of MPs for people to go and hassle them.

Ultimately, the Greens are in the area of politics in this country that is most associated with intimidation and aggression. They need to look at themselves quite closely, and the Labour Party needs to ask itself whether they support this or not. – Paul Goldsmith

Why does this matter—why does this matter for ordinary New Zealanders? It matters because civility in politics and the ability for New Zealanders to talk to each other and to push back against that global direction of division and polarisation is an important part not only of our democracy but of how we succeed as a country.

We want to succeed as a country and we want to do well, and, yes, there are lots of challenges we face. In my area of the Treaty negotiations, there are lots of challenges. We have big debates about what sovereignty means in the modern context, but the point is that we still talk about it. We get together, we talk, we discuss, and we thrash out ideas. We don’t always agree, but we keep talking.

That is the strength of this country and it’s why we do so well, and so we need to defend that civility that we have inherited in this country. We need to preserve it. We need to do everything we can to ensure that it continues. My challenge, particularly to the Greens, is that they need to change their approach, and my challenge to Labour is to be clear about where you stand on these issues.

When it comes, ultimately, to the ongoing success of this country—which we all have a huge belief in as a country as a great place to live, and also a great place to raise a family, make a living, and do well. The economic foundation of that is so important, and that’s why we’re focused on that as a Government, but the broader democratic traditions that we’ve inherited and that we benefit from need to be preserved. My encouragement to all parties across the House is to just think twice about the approach that is taken around intimidation and, frankly, to support this legislation that we have before the House to ensure that no New Zealander has to suffer people intimidating them in their private home—in their castle—and to do the right thing by that. – Paul Goldsmith

I’d like to see us a lot higher. The reason I’d like to see us a lot higher is because I believe that the policies that we as a party wish to pursue are going to be better for New Zealand, not just in the short term, but for the kind of New Zealand that we want to see in the future. – Nicola Willis

I want to see a New Zealand where more kids are learning to write and do maths – you need structured literacy and numeracy for that, you need our Government’s reforms. I want to see a New Zealand where actually it’s not just our ag sector growing, it’s our tech sector growing. We need stable economic management for that to occur. I want to see overseas investment coming in to create jobs. You need our Government to get that,” Willis said.

I think our party represents the values of most New Zealanders, and we need to be able to pursue our maximum policy agenda for New Zealand to do well in the world. – Nicola Willis

What are they doing in Parliament? Are they in Parliament because they want to go into government; because they want to be ministers and when you’re ministers then you have the resources and the power to actually do things? And they’ll be able to do things for their people?

Or are they just in Parliament to use it as a staging ground for their theatre?

And that’s the question a lot of people want to know, why are they here? And if they’re not here to try and get some good change, what’s the point in being in Parliament?

At the moment it just seems as though they’re infighting, they haven’t really got any cohesive plan of what they’re doing.

The Labour Party and the Greens are probably looking at them going yeah, do we let them prop up our government if they’re just going to be activists and agitators? And what kind of stable government would that be?

And voters are asking that question right now. – Lloyd Burr

If identity politics and its categories divide us, then the answer must be something that unites us. What is needed is a strong concept of the nation and national citizenship. – Joanna Williams

Welfare is like an iceberg. The visible tip gets all the attention – the young and unemployed.

But below the surface is a very large group of people for whom welfare is a way of life – whether they chose it or not.

It is endemic but it’s also just part of the Kiwi wallpaper. It will remain so without major reforms.

Right now, sadly, the stats are all heading in the wrong direction and it is hard to see what will shrink the iceberg. – Lindsay Mitchell

The public is both disillusioned and disengaged.

With turnout this dire, the local government sector needs to have a long, hard look at itself.

Across New Zealand, councils are clinging to mandates delivered by barely a third.

The system is creaking under apathy and ratepayers are tapped out.

After years of double-digit increases, households are at their limit… but then so are council finances. – Andrea Vance

Technology has the potential to deliver emissions reductions, while enabling the sector to grow. It’s expected that if 30 per cent of farmers take up the technologies expected to be available before 2030, total agricultural emissions could reduce by between 7 to 14 per cent over the next decade. That’s on top of any reduction in emissions that may come from efficiency gains on-farm or changes to farm systems – Simon Watts

Our approach is clear: technology and partnership, not taxes, will deliver the reductions that we need. By investing in new tools and giving farmers practical support, we can cut emissions without cutting production or profitability – Simon Watts

The proposed law is not perfect. The problems are myriad. The most obvious is that residential property sits right next to commercial, government or other property which may be fair to protest outside. The Kate Sheppard apartments opposite Parliament’s grounds are the Wellington residence of plenty of ministers. Banning protest outside those apartments may mean legally curbing protest outside Parliament.

But the case to introduce the law – as flawed as it is – has been made by the very people who will be banned through it. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Peters may have chosen his career and the associated pros and cons, but his partner hasn’t. Nor have his neighbours. Nor have the (especially, the young) children of ministers – whether current, future or past.

The law absolutely would be a curb on the freedom to protest. But protest is not without limits. We already ban it from outside abortion clinics because we accept there are some places where protest is unreasonable, and probably only designed to intimidate and harass.

The same is true of private homes.

If activists can’t be relied on to distinguish between protest and harassment, the law will have to do it for them. And 18 months of shouting outside the Foreign Minister’s home suggests some can’t tell the difference. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

 

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Sign for free speech & science

17/09/2025

Three questions from Free Speech Union chief executive Jillaine Heather  :

Do you want your doctor to be free to discuss sex and gender?
 
Should schools silence debate on gender in relation to uniforms or sports to avoid complaints?

Should employers be penalised for expressing (or allowing employees to express) views on pronouns or bathrooms? . . 

Regardless of your views on the issues raised by these questions, we must be able to have the conversation.

But if the Law Commission’s recommendations to the Justice Minister are accepted, we won’t be able to.

The Law Commission’s Ia Tangata Report (No. 150) proposes adding “gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics” as new protected grounds in the Human Rights Act.

At first glance, it might look like a tidy update. But in reality, this is a fundamental shift that undermines New Zealanders’ ability to openly discuss questions of sex and gender.

Inclusion is a commendable goal, of course, but it cannot come at the expense of excluding opinions and our fundamental rights to speak freely, debate openly, and dissent.

All people deserve dignity. But making disagreement unlawful and stifling debate is not the way forward. This week we’ve had a sombre wake up call in why words matter for finding middle ground. 

The Commission claims it’s not their role to settle contested debates about sex and gender. Then, in the very next breath, they go ahead and do exactly that – embedding ideological assumptions into law while pretending to simply “clarify” things… Can you believe it?!

The Law Commission: 

    • Says “gender identity is not simply a belief or ideology” – directly taking a side (and seeming to resolve) a key societal debate. 
    • Recommends providers can’t exclude someone from a single-sex facility if it “aligns with their gender identity.” 
    • Creates new exceptions in sport that only allow distinctions if “reasonably required” for safety or fair competition.

This isn’t neutrality. It’s social engineering – New Zealanders must remain free to discuss questions of sex and gender openly without fear of sanction.  

These recommendations would seriously undermine freedom of expression across critical areas of public life: 

  • Health professionals could be hauled up for expressing clinical or conscientious views on sex and gender. Even the Commission admits compulsory pronoun use raises free speech concerns, but offers no free speech safeguards!
  • Employers and employees may see ordinary conversations, about bathrooms, pronouns, or uniforms and sports,<> reframed as “detrimental treatment,” turning respectful disagreement into unlawful discrimination and most likely resulting in new workplace policies to avoid liability, encouraging self-censorship of legitimate viewpoints. 
  • Education institutions could face liability and be silenced on contested issues like bathrooms, uniforms, dress codes, sport and sexuality education. 

The Commission’s answer? Leave it to the courts. But that’s no safeguard at all.

It just means stressful, costly proceedings – a chilling effect long before a single case is decided. These recommendations, if enacted, would erode free speech and embed division and compulsion where open debate should prevail.  

And this isn’t new, is it? We warned before that when the Commission asked whether New Zealand needed expanded ‘hate speech’ or ‘hate crime’ laws, they were asking the wrong questions – questions that inevitably produce dangerous answers.

Ia Tangata is more of the same: ideology written into law, free speech written out.  . . 

The FSU wrote to the Minister asking him to reject the Law Commission’s proposals in their entirety.

The FSU also has a petition reinforcing that request. You can sign it here not just to uphold free speech but to uphold science too.

Gender ideology is just that – ideology. It’s a matter of belief, not science.

If the Law Commission’s recommendations were adopted, gender beliefs would have the same sort of protection that religion used to when blasphemy was illegal.

Ani O’Brien writes :

. . . At the heart of the Ia Tangata report is a truly astonishing proposition: that the law should enshrine gender identity, a purely subjective, self-declared, and ever-changing feeling, as a protected characteristic on par with race, age, and disability. This is not protecting something objective and measurable; it is protecting an idea inside someone’s head. The Commission’s definition is so elastic that a person can declare a gender identity at any moment, change it the next day, and demand the world rearrange itself to affirm, and reaffirm, them, with the force of law behind them.

The law usually deals in concrete categories where rights and obligations can be clearly understood. Race, sex, religion, disability; these can be observed, documented, or at least reasonably defined. Gender identity, on the other hand, rejects biological sex altogether. It is not fixed, it is not verifiable, and it can be expanded infinitely to include any number of invented identities: non-binary, demiboy, genderfae, xenogender, and whatever TikTok dreams up next week. The Law Commission has written a blank cheque for ideology, allowing activists to continually stretch the definition while the rest of society scrambles to keep up.

The scope-creep in this legal space is already obvious in practice in New Zealand and overseas. Laws meant initially to protect a tiny minority of transsexual (as they were more accurately called back then) people are now being used to force schools to teach gender identity ideology to children, to allow males into female prisons, and to punish women for stating that only females give birth. By embedding an undefined, subjective category into the Human Rights Act, they would give activists a legal crowbar to use to pry open every women’s space, every sporting category, every workplace policy, and every public debate.

And because gender identity explicitly rejects biological reality, these laws don’t just create confusion, they make it illegal to speak the truth. They create a legal fiction where sex is not what your chromosomes or body say it is, but what you feel it is, and everyone else is forced to play along. If someone insists they are a woman, the law will require you to treat them as one, no matter how obvious the contradiction is. The Law Commission want to make it discriminatory to notice reality.

If there is any argument at all for legal protection of gender identity (which I contend there is not), it is not as a stand-alone category trumping biological sex, it is as a belief, similar to a religious or philosophical conviction. People have the right to believe that gender is innate, that men can become women, that sex is on a spectrum, or that pronouns are a matter of identity rather than grammar. In a free society, you are entitled to hold those beliefs, express them, and live by them. But the right to believe something is not the same as the right to have everyone else believe it too.

We already recognise this principle with religion. The law protects your right to practice your faith, but it does not compel your employer, your neighbour, or your children’s teacher to worship your god, recite your prayers, or agree with your doctrine. We do not make it illegal to say you don’t believe in the resurrection, or to refuse to eat halal meat, or to opt out of religious rituals. The same could apply here: protect the right of individual adults to believe in gender identity, to transition, to express themselves, but do not compel the entire country to participate in affirming that belief.

Framing gender identity as a belief rather than an objective reality also allows space for pluralism. Those who share the belief can live in accordance with it; those who do not can politely dissent. That is how a diverse democracy works. What the Law Commission proposes instead is state-mandated orthodoxy; the elevation of one contested worldview above all others, enforced by tribunals and HR departments. Not freedom, but a compelled belief. . . 

Not just a compelled belief but one that endangers free speech and science.

Please sign the petition to protect both.

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Can we grieve for someone we didn’t know?

12/09/2025

A friend asked if I’d heard that Charlie Kirk had been killed.

I said I had but I didn’t know who he was.

Since then I’ve found out:

He was a young man with conservative views who wasn’t afraid to speak out about them.

He was a young man who had challenging conversations in public.

He was a young man who promoted and strove for courteous discourse.

He was a young man who was killed for doing that.

He was a husband and a father.

The actions of someone who couldn’t, or wouldn’t answer words with which he or she disagreed, with words, chose to answer them by shooting him, leaving his wife a widow and his children fatherless.

Those who knew him will be grieving.

Can we who didn’t know him also grieve?

In The Grief That Isn’t Ours, Donna Ashworth wrote:

Not all grief comes from reciprocated love; sometimes it comes from respect, gratitude, humanity, familiarity, – or the simple fact of having a heart that beats and breaks . . .

Without diminishing in anyway the pain of the grief of those who knew and love Charlie, we who didn’t know him can grieve for a life cut short, his death and the manner in which it happened.

We can grieve for what it says about intolerance,.

We can grieve for the evil of politically motivated violence from people who can’t, or won’t, seek to counter words and ideas with which they disagree with more words and ideas, rather than violence.

Jillaine Heather, chief executive of the Free Speech Union wrote words are not violence, but violence is:

Charlie Kirk was tragically killed this week for speaking his mind.

A well-known conservative activist gunned down while giving a speech at Utah Valley University, leaving behind his wife and two young children.

Think about that: a man killed for exercising his democratic right to speak. Not shouted down, not protested – shot.

That is violence.

And if we need a reminder of why it matters to keep our categories straight, this is it. Violence takes away lives. It ends debate permanently. It shuts someone up forever.

There’s a dangerous idea floating around these days: ‘words are violence’. We hear it in classrooms, from administrators, and in training sessions where university students are told that hearing the ‘wrong’ idea is a form of harm. That uncomfortable debates are too much to bear. That students must be shielded from words that make them feel unsafe.

This is nonsense – and dangerous nonsense at that. Words are not violence. Words don’t break bones or put people in hospital. They don’t leave children without parents.

Words can hurt feelings, yes. They can anger, offend, even shock. But treating speech like violence cheapens the meaning of actual violence, weakens people’s ability to handle debate, and turns disagreement into a crisis.

If we teach young people that being exposed to tough ideas is the same as being attacked, we make them more fragile, not stronger. And we send the toxic message that the only way to truly be safe is to shut people up. That’s not education – it’s indoctrination.

And here’s the real danger: when you tell people long enough that words are violence, someone will eventually treat violence as a reasonable response to words. If speech is an ‘attack’, then a bullet starts to look like self-defense. That twisted logic is how free societies crumble.

The reaction to Kirk’s assassination showed that most people, left and right, still know the difference. Leaders across the spectrum condemned the killing and called for civility. But civility isn’t enough. We need courage. Courage to say that speech – even offensive speech – is not a threat, not a weapon, not violence.

Because if we can’t say that, then we can’t have debate. We can’t have universities that are places of learning instead of indoctrination. We can’t have a society where disagreements are settled with words instead of fists, knives, or guns.

This is why together at the Free Speech Union, we push back so hard against the trend of treating words as harm. If we only allow ‘safe’ speech, speech everyone approves of, we don’t have free speech at all. And if we keep telling young people that words are dangerous, we make them fragile, fearful, and easy prey for those who believe silencing opponents by force is justified.

Charlie Kirk’s death is a tragedy. But it’s also a warning. We cannot let the line between speech and violence get blurred. We cannot let fear or fragility turn free expression into a crime.

The only way forward is a recommitment: to free speech, to open debate, to the right to disagree and ability to hold differing views. To show future generations that resilience comes from grappling with hard ideas, not hiding from them.

Charlie Kirk should be alive today. His ideas should be debated, challenged, even ridiculed if you like – but not silenced with a gun. The right to speak should not come at the risk of death.

The right to speak must be protected, defended, and celebrated. If we have the courage to hold that line, then there’s hope: that the next generation won’t fear words, but embrace them; that disagreement won’t end in violence, but in deeper understanding; and that free speech will remain the cornerstone of a free society.

 

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