The impending arrival of Kelly-Jean Keen-Minshull — aka Posie Parker — has put the spotlight on the tension between free speech and protecting vulnerable communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.

In particular, it raises questions about Immigration New Zealand’s role in limiting who can visit and speak in the country.

Keen-Minshull is an anti-transgender rights activist and founder of a group called Standing for Women. On the back of a controversial Australian tour, she is planning to speak at a series of events across Aotearoa at the end of March.

But Immigration New Zealand is now reviewing her status after about 30 members of the far-right Nationalist Socialist Movement supported her rally in Melbourne, clashing with LGBTQI supporters.

The Melbourne police were also criticised by legal observers, accused of protecting and supporting the neo-Nazis while focusing “excessive violence” on the LGBTQI supporters.

Meanwhile, National Party leader Chris Luxon has said Keen-Minshull should be allowed into New Zealand on the grounds of free speech. He argued there should be a “high bar” to stop someone entering the country because of what they say.

At the same time, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has said he condemned people who used their right to free speech in a way that deliberately sought to create division. Therein lies the core of the debate.

Members of a neo-Nazi group made Nazi salutes on Saturday on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne, Australia, during a protest against transgender rights. Political leaders said they would move to ban Nazi salutes in the state of Victoria.https://t.co/0CHFICjr93

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 20, 2023

Threat to public order
Keen-Minshull has allegedly had ties to white supremacist organisations, featuring in videos with Jean-François Gariépy, a prominent far-right YouTuber, and posting a selfie with Hans Jørgen Lysglimt Johansen, a Norwegian neo-Nazi known for Holocaust denial.

Keen-Minshull has also tweeted racist diatribes against Muslims.

The key question is whether the threat of unrest seen at Keen-Minshull’s events poses sufficient risk to public order to justify revoking her visa. It turns out there is a precedent for blocking entry to controversial figures.

In 2014, hip hop collective Odd Future was prevented from entering New Zealand on the grounds they and their audience had been implicated in violence against police and directing harassment towards opponents.

In one instance, members of Odd Future reportedly urged fans to attack police, leaving one officer hospitalised.

Odd Future member Tyler the Creator also unleashed a tirade against an activist who tried to have his Australian concert cancelled. Both instances were offered as reasons to prevent the collective from entering New Zealand.

Character judgements
The Immigration Act stipulates that individuals who are likely to be “a threat or risk” to security, public order or the public interest should not be eligible for a visa or entry permission.

In the past, good character requirements outlined by the act, including criminal background or deportation from other countries, have been used as a reason to block controversial speakers from entering New Zealand.

For example, Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church was denied entry to New Zealand after being deported from other countries.

Anderson has been known to promote Holocaust denial and has confirmed he believes in “hating homosexuals”.

On the flip side, alt-right speakers Stefan Molyneux and Lauren Southern were granted entry visas in 2018 after meeting character requirements, despite calls for the pair to be banned from entering New Zealand.

Potential harm
Arguably, Keen-Minshull should not be granted entry under the banner of free speech. Rallies like those recently held in Australia do appear to cause concrete harm.

Research after the Christchurch Call, a political summit initiated by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern in 2019 after the Christchurch massacre, found expanding extremist communities increased the risk of physical attacks in the future.

According to the 2018 Counting Ourselves survey, some 71 percent of trans people reported experiencing high or very high rates of mental distress, and 44 percent experienced harassment during the 2018 survey period.

Research shows that trans people experience “minority stress” — high levels of chronic stress faced by socially marginalised groups, caused by poor social support, low socioeconomic status and prejudice.

A key part of “minority stress” is linked to anticipating and attempting to avoid discrimination.

Being consistent
Beyond the question of free speech, Immigration New Zealand needs to be consistent in its application of the law. In the case of Odd Future, an Immigration official admitted it was unusual to ban musical acts:

Generally it’s aimed at organisations like white supremacists and neo-Nazis, people who have come in here to be public speakers, holocaust deniers – those kinds of people.

However, Immigration stood by its decision based on the lead singer’s incitement of violence against police and harassment of an activist. Considering the ruling on Odd Future as a risk to public order, it would surely be inconsistent to allow Keen-Minshull entry.

In 2018, she was spoken to by UK police for making videos criticising the chief executive of transgender charity Mermaids. And, in 2019, Keen-Minshull recorded herself in Washington DC confronting trans advocate Sarah McBride after breaking into a private meeting.

Encouraging the far-right?
In the post-covid era, New Zealand has already seen a more visible far-right anti-LGBTQI movement. There has been a rise in harassment and attacks against LGBTQI communities across the country, including the arson of the Tauranga Rainbow Youth and Gender Dynamix building.

We need to listen to those targeted by hate groups — it is their safety that is at risk from speakers who deny their existence and humanity.

The line between free speech and causing harm is complicated to draw. But this case seems clear cut. Whether you agree or disagree with the 2014 decision to bar Odd Future entry to New Zealand, the precedent has been set for visitors who pose a threat to public order.

Kevin Veale, Lecturer in Media Studies, part of the Digital Cultures Laboratory in the School of Humanities, Media, and Creative Communication, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The covid-19 pandemic has already generated its own mythology. In Britain, they talk of the “myth of the blitz” – the idea of a society that pulled together in the Second World War to withstand the bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe with pluck, bravery and humour.

In Australia, our covid-19 myth is about a cohesive and caring society that patiently endured lockdowns, border closures and other ordeals. Like many myths, ours has some foundation in reality.

It might be a poor thing when considered alongside wartime Britain’s wartime sacrifices, and you have to ignore the empty toilet paper shelves in the local supermarket, but it still has its own force. It might be especially potent in Melbourne, where the restrictions were most severe and prolonged.

The covid-19 myth is now presenting its puzzles to true believers. If you imagined we all pulled together for the common good, and because we have the good sense to look after our own health, you are likely to find it strange that we are now apparently prepared to tolerate dozens of deaths in a day.

Australia’s total covid death toll is now above 11,000 – New Zealand’s has topped 2000.

More than tolerate: there has been a preparedness to pretend nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

All of this seems a far cry from those days when we hung on the daily premiers’ media conferences and experienced horror as the number of new infections rose above a few dozen a day, a few hundred, and then a thousand or so. Have our senses been blunted, our consciences tamed?

A product of power
Public discourse is never neutral. It is always a product of power. Some people are good at making their voices heard and ensuring their interests are looked after.

Others are in a weak position to frame the terms of debate or to have media or government take their concerns seriously.

The elderly — especially the elderly in aged-care facilities — have carried a much larger burden of sacrifice than most of us during 2020 and 2021. They often endured isolation, loneliness and anxiety.

They were the most vulnerable to losing their lives — because of the nature of the virus itself, but also due to regulatory failure and, in a few places, gross mismanagement.

Aged Care Minister Anika Wells has provided @abcnews with new details on COVID cases in residential aged care homes:

983 current outbreaks
6000+ residents infected
3250 staff are positive

ADF support for aged care homes will be continued until the end of September.

— Henry Belot (@Henry_Belot) July 24, 2022

Casual and gig economy workers, too, struggle to have their voices heard. On his short journey to an about-face over the question of paid pandemic leave, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at first said the payment was unnecessary because employers were allowing their staff to work from home.

Yet the conditions of those in poorly paid and insecure work have been repeatedly identified as a problem for them as well as for the wider community, because they are unable easily to isolate.

Up to his point, however, our democracy has spoken: we want our pizzas delivered and we want to be able to head for the pub and the restaurant. And we are prepared to accept a number of casualties along the way to have lives that bear some resemblance to those of the pre-covid era.

The “we” in this statement is doing a lot of heavy lifting. There is a fierce debate going on about whether governments — and by extension, the rest of us — are doing enough to counter the spread of the virus.

Political leadership matters
Political leadership matters enormously in these things.

In the years following the Second World War, Australia’s roads became places of carnage, as car ownership increased and provision for road safety was exposed as inadequate. It peaked around 1970, with almost 3800 deaths — more than 30 for every 100,000 people.

Road fatalities touched the lives of many Australians. If not for the death of my father’s first wife in a vehicle accident on New Year’s Day in 1954, I would not be around to write this article today.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the coming of mandatory seatbelt wearing and random breath-testing helped bring the numbers down. Manufacturers made their cars safer.

Public campaigns urged drivers to slow down and stay sober. These were decisions aimed at avoiding avoidable deaths, despite the curtailment of freedom involved.

A British seat belt advertisement from the 1970s.

These decisions were also in the Australian utilitarian tradition of government, “whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number” – as the historian W.K. Hancock famously explained in 1930.

The citizen claimed not “natural rights”, but rights received “from the State and through the State”. Governments made decisions about how their authority could be deployed to preserve the common good and protect individuals — from themselves as well as from others.

Pragmatic position
Governments have during the present surge so far been willing to take what they regard as a pragmatic position that the number of infections and fatalities is acceptable to “the greatest number”, so long as “the greatest number” can continue to go about something like their normal lives.

But this utilitarian political culture also has its dark side. It has been revealed persistently throughout the history of this country — and long before anyone had heard of covid-19 — as poorly equipped to look after the most vulnerable.

The casualties of the current policy are those who have consistently had their voices muted and their interests set aside during this pandemic — and often before it, as well.

These are difficult matters for governments that would much prefer to get on with something other than boring old pandemic management. The issue is entangled in electoral politics — we have just had a federal contest in which major party leaders studiously ignored the issue, and the nation’s two most populous states are to hold elections in the next few months.

Governments also realise that restrictions and mandates will meet civil disobedience.

But covid cannot be wished away. At a minimum, governments need to show they are serious about it to the extent of spending serious money on a campaign of public information and advice on issues like mask-wearing and staying home when ill.

They usually manage to find a sufficient stash of public money ahead of each election when they want to tell us what a beaut job they’ve been doing. They might now consider whether something similar might help to save lives.

Dr Frank Bongiorno is professor of history, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University.  This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new report on the economic impacts of climate change faced by the world’s most at-risk countries has found the climate crisis has made vulnerable economies poorer.

The Climate Vulnerable Economies Loss Report has found climate-threatened nations, including those in the Pacific, lost approximately US$525 billion in damage over the last two decades.

It reveals climate change wiped out one-fifth of the wealth of poor countries, which would be twice as wealthy today if not for climate change.

Marshall Islands climate envoy Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner said the findings of the report were “staggering”.

She said climate change affected every facet of human society and the effects went far beyond the economic, especially for those in the Pacific.

She said the non-economic damages might not be counted in dollars and cents but they were significant for people and communities.

“I think for us in the Pacific, we’re trying our hardest to make sure that the non-economic losses are just as much highlighted, you know, as some of this more large scale and that slow-onset event such as what we’re seeing in the atoll, nations, like the Marshall Islands, in particular, are also highlighted as really important,” she said.

The study was launched by the Vulnerable 20 Group or V-20, which represents 55 climate-threatened countries from across the world, at the UN climate talks currently taking place in the German city of Bonn.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Auckland’s move to alert level 3 has also triggered speculation about whether the national covid-19 elimination strategy has failed or is even being abandoned. While the New Zealand government denies it, others clearly believe it is at least a possibility.

The uncertainty is troubling. If elimination fails or is abandoned, it would suggest we have not learnt the lessons of history, particularly when it comes to our more vulnerable populations.

In 1918, the mortality rate among Māori from the influenza pandemic was eight times that of Europeans. The avoidable introduction of influenza to Samoa from Aotearoa resulted in the deaths of about 22 percent of the population.

Similar observations were seen in subsequent influenza outbreaks in Aotearoa in 1957 and 2009 for both Māori and Pasifika people. These trends are well known and documented.

And yet, despite concerns we could see the same thing happen again, there have been repeated claims that an elimination strategy cannot succeed. Some business owners, politicians and media commentators have called for a change in approach that would see Aotearoa “learn to live with the virus”.

This is premature and likely to expose vulnerable members of our communities to the disease. Abandoning the elimination strategy while vaccine coverage rates remain low among the most vulnerable people would be reckless and irresponsible.

In short, more Māori and Pasifika people would die.

Far better will be to stick to the original plan that has served the country well, lift vaccination coverage rates with more urgency, and revise the strategy when vaccination rates among Māori and Pasifika people are as high as possible — no less than 90 percent.

Least worst options
After 18 months of dealing with the pandemic, it’s important to remember that Aotearoa’s response has been based on sound science and strong political leadership. The elimination strategy has proved effective at home and been admired internationally.

Of course, it has come with a price. In particular, the restrictions have had a major impact on small businesses and personal incomes, student life and learning, and well-being in general.

Many families have needed additional food parcels and social support, and there are reports of an increasing incidence of family harm.

The latest delta outbreak has also seen the longest level 4 lockdown in Auckland, with at least two further weeks at level 3, and there is no doubt many people are struggling to cope with the restrictions. The “long tail” of infections will test everyone further.

There is no easy way to protect the most vulnerable people from the life-threatening risk of covid-19, and the likely impact on the public health system if it were to get out of control. The alternative, however, is worse.

We know Māori and Pasifika people are most at risk of infection from covid-19, of being hospitalised and of dying from the disease.

Various studies have confirmed this, but we also must acknowledge why — entrenched socioeconomic disadvantage, overcrowded housing and higher prevalence of underlying health conditions.

More than 50 percent of all new cases in the current outbreak are among Pasifika people and the number of new cases among Māori is increasing. If and when the pandemic is over, the implications of these socioeconomic factors must be part of any review of the pandemic strategy.

Lowest vaccination rates, highest risk
Furthermore, the national vaccination rollout has again shown up the chronic entrenched inequities in the health system. While the rollout is finally gaining momentum, with more and better options offered by and for Māori and Pasifika people, their comparative vaccination rates have lagged significantly.

Community leaders and health professionals have long called for Māori and Pasifika vaccination to be prioritised. But the official rhetoric has not been matched by the reality, as evidenced by our most at-risk communities still having the lowest vaccination coverage rates in the country.

Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā (the National Māori Pandemic Group) and the Pasifika Medical Association have repeatedly called for their communities to be empowered and resourced to own, lead and deliver vaccination rollouts in ways that work for their communities.

Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā have also said Auckland should have remained at level 4, with the border extended to include the areas of concern in the Waikato.

As has been pointed out by those closest to those communities, however, their advice has consistently not been heeded. The resulting delays only risk increasing the need for the kinds of lockdowns and restrictions everyone must endure until vaccination rates are higher.

There is a reason we do not hear many voices in Māori and Pasifika communities asking for an end to elimination. Left unchecked, covid-19 disproportionately affects minority communities and the most vulnerable.

“Living with the virus” effectively means some people dying with it. We know who many of them would be.

Dr Collin Tukuitonga is associate dean Pacific and associate professor of public health, University of Auckland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz