Luxon claimed the issue was ‘complex’ and New Zealanders should not expect a decision until well after his foreign minister Winston Peters has spoken on the matter at the United Nations in New York.

Advocacy group, Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), immediately issued a statement headlined: Genocide is not ‘complex’, it’s a ‘cowards’ way out’.

It the statement, PSNA co-spokesperson John Minto said the ‘complexity’ excuse for cabinet inaction on Palestine this morning is “a cowards’ way out for the government to avoid even the most tepid policy to oppose Israeli genocide in Gaza”.

John Minto, said the New Zealand Government recognised Palestine at the United Nations in 1947.

“It’s taken nearly 80 years to work out ways to make that real and it still can’t do it.

“(Winston) Peters needed very clear and strong instructions to take to the UN, where he could have joined the calls for the growing list of sanctions to be imposed on Israel,” John Minto said.

He added: “In just over two days last week, Israel demolished fifty of the tallest residential tower blocks in Gaza City.  That’s a rate of destruction of more than one every hour and thousands more people made homeless.

“There’s nothing about defending borders, or implementing a strategy of getting hostages released in all of this barbarous onslaught by Israel.  It’s self-declared ethnic cleansing.”

Minto said the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, must face up to Israel’s blatant violations of international laws and conventions.

“At the same time, Israel has tried to kill the Hamas negotiations team by bombing them in Qatar.  New Zealand has declared that the issues can only be resolved through negotiations, but has said not one word of complaint that Israel is murdering the negotiators.”

He said there is a “yawning gap” between the government’s policy towards Russia and that towards Israel.

“Winston Peters has just implemented its thirty-second sanction measure against Russia. That does not seem to be complex,” John Minto said.

Four months ago, a group of lawyers in Aotearoa New Zealand called for a little reported inquiry into New Zealand spy agencies over whether there has been possible assistance for Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a letter to the chief of intelligence and security (IGIS) on 12 September 2024, three lawyers argued that the country was in danger of aiding international war crimes, reported RNZ News.

Inspector-General Brendan Horsley, who had previously indicated he would look into conflict-related spying this year, confirmed he would consider the request, according to the report.

• READ MORE: Behind settler colonial NZ’s paranoia about dissident ‘persons of interest’
• Other SIS security reports

At least one of the lawyers had been confident of a positive response, said the news report.

“I’m actually very optimistic,” noted University of Auckland associate professor Treasa Dunworth in the media interview about their argument that New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) intelligence might be making its way to Israel via the US, “because our request is very, detailed, backed up with credible evidence, [and] is very careful.”

But she got a disappointing result. The following month, on October 9 — just seven weeks before the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity — Inspector-General Horsley ruled out an inquiry at this time.

He said in a statement he did not want to “stop the clock” and tie up his office’s “modest resources to a deeper review of activity I have already been monitoring” while armed conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine were currently “active and dynamic”.

Rapid deterioration
Yet rapidly the 15-month Israeli war has deteriorated since then with President-elect Donald Trump due to take office in Israel’s main backer the United States later this month on January 20.

As the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens with intensified attacks on hospitals and civilians, a breakdown of law and order at the border, and more than 50 complaints filed against Israel soldiers for war crimes in multiple countries, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has urged medical professionals worldwide to sever all ties with the pariah state.

I urge medical professionals worldwide to pursue the severance of all ties with Israel as a concrete way to forcefully denounce Israel’s full destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, a critical tool of its ongoing genocide.#FreeDrHussanAbuSafiya https://t.co/qzZ7CqufI6

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) December 30, 2024

Ironically, the New Zealand intelligence “debate” has coincided with the publication of a new book that has debunked the view that the SIS and GCSB have been working in the interests of New Zealand. The reality, argues social justice movement historian and activist Maire Leadbeater in The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of the State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand is that these agencies have been working in the interests of the so-called “Five Eyes” partners, including the United States.

Her essential argument in this robust and comprehensive 427-page book is that New Zealand’s state surveillance has been part of a structure of state control that “serves to undermine movements for social change and marginalise or punish those who challenge the established order. It had a deeply destructive impact on democracy.”

As she states, her primary focus is on the work of New Zealand’s main intelligence agencies, the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) “and their forerunners, the political police”.

The author explains that she is not concerned with the “socially useful work of the contemporary police in the detection of criminal activity, including politically motivated crime”. She notes also that unlike the domestic spies, police detection work is subject to detailed warrants, there is due process over arrests, and the process is open to public scrutiny.

Leadbeater points out that while New Zealand experience with terrorism has been limited, neither of the country’s two main intelligence agencies were much help in investigating the three notorious examples — the unsolved 1984 Wellington Trades Hall bombing that killed one, the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland that also killed one (but the casualties could easily have been higher), and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that murdered 51.

The regular police were the key investigators in all three cases.

Also, there is the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.

Working for ‘Five Eyes’ interests
Instead of working for the benefit of New Zealand, the intelligence agencies were set up to work closely with the country’s traditional allies and the so-called “Five Eyes” network — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

An example of this was Algerian professor and parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui who arrived in New Zealand in 2002 as an asylum seeker after a military coup against the elected government in his home country. Within nine days of arriving, his confidentiality was breached and he was falsely branded by The New Zealand Herald as an “international terrorism suspect”.

He was jailed for two years without charge (part of that time held in solitary confinement) because of an SIS-imposed National Security Risk certificate and this could have have led to “deportation of this honourable man” but for the tireless work of his lawyers and a well-informed public campaign, as told by Leadbeater in this book, and also by journalist Selwyn Manning in his 2004 book I Almost Forgot about the Moon: The Disinformation Campaign Against Ahmed Zaoui.

Set free and granted asylum, he later became a New Zealand citizen in 2014. (However, on a visit to Algeria in 2023 he was arrested at gunpoint in a house in Médéa and charged with “subversion”).

Leadbeater says a strong case could be made that New Zealand’s democracy “would be stronger and more viable without the repressive laws that currently support the secretive operations of the SIS and the GCSB”. The author laments that the resources and focus of the intelligence agencies have focused too much, and wastefully, on ordinary people who are perceived to be “dissenters”.

“Dissent is the lifeblood of democracy but SIS operations targeted many of our brightest and best, damaging their personal and professional lives in the process,” Leadbeater says.

Among those who have been targeted have been the author herself, and others in her “left-wing family milieu” — including her late brother longtime Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Keith Locke, as well as her parents Elsie and Jack, originally Communist Party activists prior to 1956.

The core of the book is based on primary sources, including declassified police records held in the National Archives and the declassified records of the SIS which have been released to individual activists – including her and she discovered she had been spied on since the age of 10 due to state paranoia.

At the launch of her book in Auckland last November, guest speaker and retired First Union general secretary Robert Reid — whose file also features in the book — said what a fitting way the narrative begins by outlining the important role the Locke family have played in Aotearoa over the many years.

The final chapter is devoted to another “Person of interest: Keith Locke” – “Maire’s much-loved friend and comrade.”

“In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country,” Reid said.

“The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.”

Surveillance stories and files
Among others whose surveillance stories and files have been featured are trade unionist and former Socialist Action League activist Mike Treen; Halt All Racist Tours founder Trevor Richards; economics lecturer Dr Wolfgang Rosenberg’s sons George and Bill; Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) organiser Murray Horton; antiwar activist and Peace Movement research Owen Wilkes; investigative journalist Nicky Hager; Dr Bill Sutch, who was tried and acquitted on a charge laid under the Official Secrets Act in 1975; and internet entrepreneur and political activist Kim Dotcom.

State paranoia in New Zealand was driven by issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, decolonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought.

Leadbeater reflects that she had never accepted that “anyone in my family ever threatened state security. Moreover, the solidarity, antinuclear and anti-apartheid organisations that I took part in should not have been spied on. Such groups were and are a vital part of a healthy democracy.”

At one stage when many activists were seeking copies of their surveillance files in the mid-2000s through OIA requests or later under the Privacy Act, I also applied due to my association with several of the protagonists in this book and my involvement as a writer on decolonisation and environmental justice issues.

I merely received a “neither confirm or deny” form letter on the existence of a file, and never bothered to reapply later when information became more readily available.

But I have had my own brushes with surveillance and threatened arrest as a journalist in global settings such as New Caledonia, including when I was detained by soldiers in January 1987 for taking photographs of French military camps for a planned report about the systematic intimidation of pro-independence Kanak villagers.

This was perfectly legal, of course, and the attempt by authorities to silence me did not work; my articles appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Sunday Times the following weekend and featured on the cover of Fiji’s Islands Business news magazine.

Watched become the watchers
The structure of The Enemy Within is in three parts. As the author explains, the first part focuses on the period from 920 to the end of the First World War, and the second on the impact of the Cold War and the Western anti-communist hysteria between 1945 and 1955.

The final part covers the period from 1955 to the present, when the intelligence and security services have been under greater public scrutiny and faced campaigns for their reform or abolition.

As Leadbeater notes, “the watched, to some extent, have become the watchers”.

Because of my Asia-Pacific and decolonisation interests, I found a chapter on “colonial repression in Samoa” and the Black Saturday massacre of the Mau resistance of particular interest and a shameful stain on NZ history.

As Leadbeater notes, it was an “unexpected find in the Archives New Zealand” to stumble across a record of the surveillance of the “citizens who mounted an opposition to the New Zealand government’s colonial rule in Samoa”.

She pays tribute to the “vibrant solidarity movement” in the late 1920s and early 1930s, inspired by the peaceful Mau movement and its motto “Samoa mo Samoa” — Samoa for the Samoans — in their resistance to New Zealand’s colonial project.

This solidarity movement was in the face of a “prevailing attitude of white settlement” and its leaders were influenced by the Parihaka resistance of the 1880s.

Leadbeater is critical of New Zealand media, such as The New Zealand Herald, for siding with the colonial establishment and becoming “positively hostile to the Mau movement”.

New Zealand administrators under the League of Mandate to govern Samoa following German rule were arrogant and regarded Samoans as “inferior” and were “aghast” at Samoan and European leaders collaborating in resistance.

Black Saturday massacre
On 28 December 1929, what became dubbed the “Black Saturday massacre” happened in Apia. A peaceful Mau procession marches to the Apia wharf to welcome home exiled trader Alfred Smyth.

Police tried to arrest the Mau secretary, Mata’ūtia Karaunu, but the marchers protected him. More police were despatched to “assert colonial authority”, shots were fired at the crowd and in the upheaval a police constable was clubbed to death.

A police sergeant the fired a Lewis machine gun from the police station over the heads of the crowd, while other police fired directly into the crowd with their rifles.

Paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, dressed in white and calling for peace, was mortally wounded and at least eight other marchers were also killed. The massacre was chronicled in journalist Michael Field’s books Mau and later Black Saturday: New Zealand’s Tragic Blunders in Samoa.

Protests followed and the Mau Movement was declared a “seditious organisation” and the wearing of Mau outfits or badges became illegal.

A crackdown ensued on Mau activists with heavy surveillance and harassment and in New Zealand public figures and community leaders called for an “independent inquiry into Samoan affairs”.

Eventually, the Labour Party victory in the 1935 elections changed the dynamic and the following year the Mau was recognised as a legitimate political movement.

After the Second World War, New Zealand became committed to self-government in Western Samoa with indigenous custom and tradition “as an important foundation”. However, full independence did not come until 1962.

Four decades later, in 2002, Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised to the people of Samoa for the “inept and incompetent early administration of Samoa by New Zealand”.

She cited officials allowing the “influenza” ship Talune to dock in Apia in 1918, and the Black Saturday massacre as key examples of this incompetence.

However, Leadbeater notes that the “saga of surveillance and sedition charges” outlined in her book could well be added to the list. She adds that Samoans remember the Mau Movement and its martyrs with “pride and gratitude”.

“For New Zealanders, this chapter in our colonial history is one of shame that should be far better known and understood. The New Zealand Samoa Defence League was ahead of its time, and thankfully so.”

Behind settler colonial #NZ’s paranoia about dissident ‘persons of interest’ | #AsiaPacificReport #MaireLeadbeater #progressivebooks #RobertReid @miketreen #statesurveillance #dissidents #statespying @JohnJohnminto https://t.co/B9qws9s1La pic.twitter.com/5ELHTIDv4l

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) November 9, 2024

Looking for ‘subversives’ in wrong places
Leadbeater notes in her book that the SIS budget alone in 2021 was about $100 million with about 400 staff. Yet the intelligence services have been spending this sport of money for more than a century looking for “subversives and terrorists” — but in the wrong places.

This book is an excellent tribute to the many activists and dissidents who have had their lives disrupted and hounded by state spies, and is essential reading for all those committed to transparent democracy.

Following her section on more contemporary events and massive surveillance failures and wrongs, such as the 2007 Tūhoe raids, Leadbeater calls for a massive rethink on New Zealand’s approach to security.

“It is time to leave crime, including terrorist crime, to the country’s police and court system, with their built-in accountability procedures,” she concludes.

“It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics.”

• The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater. Potton & Burton, 2024. 427 pages.

And at a macro level, Paul and Selwyn assess how ‘Post-Colonial Blowback’ is a power giving rise to the Global South and its worldwide influence in global geopolitics.

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Report by Radio New Zealand.

Algerian democracy activist Ahmed Zaoui, a New Zealand citizen, has been charged with subversion by police in his homeland.

Zaoui was arrested at gunpoint three weeks ago, after holding a political meeting at his home.

He had released a statement on behalf of the Islamic Salvation Front calling for peaceful political dialogue, amid the current economic and political crisis.

Zaoui’s New Zealand lawyer, Deborah Manning, said he was a former elected member of parliament in his own country and was being “arbitrarily detained for his political opinion”.

“We have learned in recent days that Mr Zaoui has been charged with subversion, under a new law in Algeria… and has been transferred to Koléa Prison. This prison is known for its overcrowding and harsh conditions,” she said.

“Over the weekend, I submitted a request to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, requesting them to make an urgent appeal to the Algerian Authorities, on the basis that his detention is arbitrary (as it is for political reasons) and due to concerns for Mr Zaoui’s health.”

Zaoui was a diabetic, and his family – who were only allowed to see him for 15 minutes every two weeks – feared for his health, she said.

Recognised as a refugee by New Zealand 20 years ago, he entered Algeria on a New Zealand passport.

“Mr Zaoui returned to Algeria to be with family in recent years, as the political situation appeared to be settling,” Manning said.

“He was planning to return to New Zealand later this year and to live between Algeria and New Zealand.”

His arrest came amid a recent crackdown on political activists and journalists, including arrests and detentions.

“His arrest was not expected and has been a shock to all,” Manning said.

“Just days before Mr Zaoui’s arrest, the UN expert on the right to peaceful assembly and association made a statement at the end of a 10-day official visit to Algeria, calling on the government to allow peaceful assembly and association.”

The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was offering “advice and assistance”, Manning said.

“Mr Zaoui, and his family are grateful for the support they have received from New Zealand since his arrest.”

They wanted him to be released, so he could return to live in New Zealand with his family, she said.

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

Getty Images

Jacinda Ardern’s resignation as prime minister in January was a courageous and pragmatic decision for herself, her family and her party. Although many said she’d done a great job as leader, she rightly reminded us that a great leader is “one who knows when it’s time to go”.

Since hitting stellar heights in mid-2020, Ardern’s Labour Party had dropped significantly in the polls and was trailing the opposition National Party throughout 2022. The “Jacinda effect” had switched from being a uniting force to a polarising one. With an election coming in October, it was time for a change.

Her decision to stand down was as politically astute and timely as her elevation to leader of the Labour Party in August 2017. After all, Labour is now ahead of National in recent polls.

By the time she gives her valedictory statement to parliament later today, Ardern will have served as an MP for nearly 15 years. While the intervening period has undoubtedly changed her, she remains in many ways the same person she was as a novice backbencher.

In her maiden speech to the House of Representatives in 2008, she expressed the small-town values that got her started:

Some people have asked me whether I am a radical. My answer to that question is very simple: I am from Morrinsville. Where I come from a radical is someone who chooses to drive a Toyota rather than a Holden or a Ford.

She described herself as a social democrat who believed in human rights, social justice, equality and democracy. She spoke especially about work, education, community and the reduction of poverty – child poverty in particular.

All fine aspirations. But back then, Ardern’s Labour Party was looking at nine long years in opposition after Helen Clark’s three-term government lost power. Unable to break the run National’s John Key enjoyed as prime minister, Labour went through one leader after another while Ardern rose through the ranks.

In mid-2017, despite a mood for change, it still looked like the election wouldn’t go well for Labour, at the time polling down around 25%. Then, at the beginning of August, Andrew Little handed leadership of the party to Ardern. With just seven weeks until the election, it was either an inspired move or the ultimate hospital pass.

As history shows, however, Ardern’s elevation immediately energised Labour’s campaign. It also drew international attention to the New Zealand election, as what became known as “Jacindamania” changed the mood on the streets and in the media.

Accidents of history

Critics sometimes labelled Ardern the “accidental prime minister” – a rookie “appointed” by Winston Peters, whose New Zealand First party held the balance of power in post-election negotiations. Conventional wisdom has it that Ardern simply offered Peters a better coalition deal, despite her party having won fewer seats than National.

But Peters gave those critics some more ammunition during a recent TV interview. He appeared to reveal that New Zealand First was forced to choose coalition with Labour when then-National leader Bill English alerted him to a potential leadership coup by Judith Collins.

Read more:
NZ election 2020: Jacinda Ardern promised transformation — instead, the times transformed her

According to Peters, English had assured him Collins didn’t have the numbers to pull it off. (Collins would eventually become National leader, of course, losing spectacularly to Ardern at the 2020 election.)

This sliding-doors version of events may be conjecture. But Peters can’t have forgotten how Jenny Shipley had rolled previous National leader and prime minister Jim Bolger in 1997. That ultimately led to the breakup of the National-New Zealand First coalition in which Peters had been deputy prime minister and treasurer.

Perhaps, then, we have Collins to thank for Ardern’s elevation to the top job. We’ll probably never know.

Rise and fall

The “Jacinda effect” wasn’t a flash in the pan, however. Labour’s election support went from 25% in 2014 to 37% in 2017, and then to an extraordinary 50% in 2020. Coming on the back of Ardern’s exemplary leadership through the COVID pandemic, it was an unprecedented result under the country’s proportional MMP system.

Her belief in “kindness” as a political force appeared to have been vindicated, if not for long. While New Zealand eventually recorded the world’s lowest excess mortality rate during the pandemic, this success was far from cost-free. In particular, there was a human and political price to pay for the lockdowns and border closures.

Businesses struggled, many New Zealanders abroad couldn’t return, and many resisted the pressure to be vaccinated. No nation escaped unscathed, and in New Zealand resistance to vaccine mandates boiled over on the grounds of parliament in early 2022.

Read more:
Anniversary of a landslide: new research reveals what really swung New Zealand’s 2020 ‘COVID election’

Some protesters were angered by Ardern’s trademark empathy and kindness, which they now perceived as a false front. Due to the extremist elements among the protests, she refused to address them directly.

Ardern’s positive leadership reputation was earned on her responses to tragedies: the Christchurch terror attack, the Whakaari-White Island eruption, and the pandemic. But no sane politician would have welcomed such crises.

Nor were they part of Ardern’s social democratic plan. In fact, they hindered it. She did a lot for child poverty and family incomes, in line with her core values. But those achievements were overshadowed by a pandemic response that upended her government’s fiscal policy.

Promise unfulfilled

So, if catastrophes were the making of Jacinda’s career as prime minister, they were also the breaking of it. From her first campaign speech in August 2017, she had created a sense of promise that her government was ultimately unable to fulfil.

She claimed climate change was her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”, and that a decent, affordable home was everyone’s right. It sounded great, but on both counts progress fell short of expectation and need. Later, she would capitulate on a full capital gains tax to help solve the housing crisis. That allowed coalition partner Peters to claim credit for the backdown.

Read more:
Women leaders and coronavirus: look beyond stereotypes to find the secret to their success

But it would also be wrong if the lasting narrative was one of failure to deliver. Her government’s Child Poverty Reduction Act now mandates reporting on progress towards poverty targets, bringing the problem into the engine room of fiscal policy. The Healthy School Lunches program helped reduce food insecurity.

Future governments will encounter strong political resistance if they try to rescind those measures.

Even those tireless advocates for children, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), gave Ardern qualified approval following her resignation – although the truce didn’t last long. CPAG was back on the attack when Stats NZ reported “child poverty rates for the year ended June 2022 were unchanged compared with the previous year”.

A complex legacy

In the end, Ardern did not use the single-party majority she won in 2020 to fix the things she’d wanted to fix. When her government saw a problem, its default setting was to say “let’s centralise it” – as if that would do. Good social democratic government was sidelined by bureaucratic shakeups in healthcare, education and (before the plan was cancelled) public broadcasting.

An elaborate structural reform of water services became mired in controversy over Māori co-governance and loss of local democratic control. The sixth Labour government’s only potentially historic contribution to the development of New Zealand’s social security system – a proposed unemployment insurance scheme – was quietly shelved after criticism from both left and right.

So, will Ardern be remembered as one the great Labour leaders? To do so would put her in the pantheon of Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser, who achieved so much in social security, healthcare and education, and who led the country through the second world war.

Read more:
‘The shoes needing filling are on the large side of big’ – Jacinda Ardern’s legacy and Labour’s new challenge

It would also place her next to Norman Kirk, whose 1972-75 government universalised accident compensation, introduced the domestic purposes benefit, and stood against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

It’s a high bar, but not unreasonable to make the case. Ardern broke through barriers for women, most notably giving birth to her daughter while she held office. She united the country after the mosque shootings, soothing what could have become a divisive moment. By listening to the scientific evidence and advice about COVID, she helped save countless lives.

Ardern will undoubtedly be remembered as one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s outstanding prime ministers. This may not be for reasons of her choosing, though. Once the disaster management is accounted for, there are no major lasting achievements for which her government will be cited in the history books.

What will be remembered is Ardern’s exemplary and highly effective leadership through COVID. Yet there is no “kind” pathway through an unkind pandemic. Nevertheless, Jacinda Ardern is owed gratitude for all that she did – and acknowledgement of all she had to endure – to get her nation through it.

Grant Duncan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Jacinda Ardern says goodbye to parliament: how her politics of kindness fell on unkind times – https://theconversation.com/jacinda-ardern-says-goodbye-to-parliament-how-her-politics-of-kindness-fell-on-unkind-times-202434

Sex

Whoever would have predicted that the definition of ‘male’ and ‘female’ could ever become a matter of contention? My professional life has been in political economy, which includes social science and humanities: philosophy, economics, history, statistics, demography, and geography. Demography in particular, requires a biological definition.

The objective science of sex is simple, and genetic. Males have a Y-sex-chromosome as well as an X-sex-chromosome; females instead have two X-sex-chromosomes. To get around the fact that some people want to play-down this observation, commentators and politicians often refer to sex as ‘biological sex’ or ‘sex assigned at birth’. Some organisations refer to ‘gender’ when they mean ‘sex’. Statistics New Zealand doesn’t have any of these problems; for example, the first set of data in the New Zealand cohort life tables: March 2023 update is simply labelled ‘Estimated births, deaths, net migration by sex‘.

Confusion exists because there is a different concept, ‘gender’, which also uses male-female categorisation. When it is necessary to avoid confusion, a person’s sex may be characterised as their ‘genetic sex’ (or ‘reproductive sex’) rather than their biological sex; this is because ‘gender’ may also have a biological basis, and some people whose gender differs from their sex may gave gained this gender variation at conception, in the womb before birth, or even in the birth process itself.

Gender

Gender differs from sex in that it is subjective. A sense of divergent identity from within may arise from any mix of biological or cultural influences. On the biological side, possible influences include aspects of the species genome other than the Y-chromosome, environmental influences within the mother’s uterus, and the birth process itself (eg caesarean birth versus natural birth). Endocrinological and neurological variation can occur before, during, or after birth. One important driver of this gender variability is most likely the microbiome: the changing bacteria and other microbes which inhabit especially the gut, the brain, and the birth canal.

Unlike sex, a binary concept, gender is a spectral concept. And gender is not fixed for all time, it’s fluid. The microbiome is mutable; cultural memes amplify, deamplify and reamplify over time.

It seems to me that a good way for demographers to document gender is through a scale from one to nine. One through to three could be characterised as ‘female gender’, four-to-six as ‘non-binary gender’, and seven-to-nine as ‘male gender’. So a somewhat ‘macho’ male might be described as ‘male sex, male (9) gender. And some ‘trans’ women might be best described as ‘male sex, female (3) gender. For short, for data-coding purposes, these two example people could be listed as ‘m9’ and ‘m3’. F1 through to f3 would translate to ‘cis-female’ in the jargon now used by many as gender identifiers. The mere use of this new jargon is of itself a cultural self-identifier.

It is important to note that the prefixes ‘cis’ and ‘trans’ do indicate that the gender-diverse community does in fact make the distinction between sex and gender, and therefore does not fully deny the reality of genetic sex; the issue is deemphasis, not denial. The issue that impassions that community seems to be to render the concept of sex as unimportant, even unnecessary. But, in the sciences of biology, demography and epidemiology, sex can never be redundant.

Demography

The ‘bread and butter’ of demography is reproduction, migration and death. In this context, ‘age’ and ‘location’ are the most important statistical characteristics of people.

‘Sex’ is in the next tranche of important demographic variables, because genetic sex is an important determinant of the reproduction of populations. Sex should be an easy identifier, because sex is an objective attribute; a person’s genetic sex is a matter of observation, just as whether a person has died is a matter of observation.

Another second-tranche demographic variable is ‘ethnicity’, although to be objective it needs to be ‘ancestry’, and ancestry is often not fully-known. (Many people not know who both of their biological parents are, let-alone their great grand-parents; some people do not know that they do not know this information.) In early United States censuses, the description of a person as ‘black’ or ‘white’ was regarded as central to their demographic identity as whether they were male or female. There certainly is an argument, nowadays with most people having multiple ethnicities of different proportions, that ethnicity should be treated as a subjective ‘third-tranche’ demographic variable. Likewise, religion. (The counterargument is that people who are substantially of a single ethnicity, or who were born into particular religions, do have life outcomes – maybe health outcomes or culturally-determined food choices – which reflect in part the ethnic genetics or religious faiths of their parents.) The important thing is that persons’ designated ancestries or religions should never become the basis for differences in their democratic rights. Demographic attributes should be kept separate from democratic attributes (with the exception of the designation of a young person as a ‘minor’).

Gender, a subjective attribute, distinct from sex, may nevertheless be important in a number of social studies. From a demographic viewpoint, gender may be classed as a third-tranche variable. It may be an interesting scientific question to compare and contrast the life experiences of genetic females (ie people without a Y-chromosome) who are gender-female, gender male, or gender non-binary. Likewise, the gender-diverse life-outcomes of genetic males.

Demography is a very important, though underappreciated, social science; a sibling discipline to epidemiology, and also to human geography. Optimal public health outcomes depend on good-quality demographic research. (Demography provides the all-important denominators needed to make sense of public health data.) Further, like all social-science disciplines, demography is intrinsically historical. Demography is closely intertwined with the disciplines of economic history and economics.

Identity Documentation

Sex or gender are widely used in identity documents; too widely, perhaps. For important demographic purposes, sex is necessary in birth certificates, death certificates, and documents used for travelling between countries (especially passports, now the basis for statistics of international migration). Demographers need to know the age and sex distributions of countries’ populations to be able to make population projections. (I congratulate Statistics New Zealand for well-crafted questions on sex and gender in the recent 2023 New Zealand census.)

Additionally, some kind of reliable documentation should be available for persons using spaces which are reserved for specific demographic subgroups. (We should note that women should not be too precious about ‘their spaces’. Those of us old enough remember the racially segregated toilets that used to exist in South Africa and parts of the USA; many white women and white men did not like their spaces to be transgressed by black women and men. Nevertheless, there is no argument at present for the removal of remaining reserved spaces.)

Does a person need to declare their sex or gender if, say, buying a flight ticket, or enrolling at an educational establishment? (How do the recipients of this information use it? Do they use it?) Sex may be useful on a document used to determine entry into restricted spaces. It may be worthwhile to have a bespoke identity document – a voluntary document – that helps people who need to inform others of their sex, gender or age.

The gender-diverse community wishes to play down excessive gendering in our administrative lives, and, for the most part, prefers to have access to unisex toilets rather than have to use sex-exclusive facilities. (Ask any parent with a young child of the ‘opposite’ sex about gauntlets they have had to run re public toilets. Unisex toilets, much more common today than last century, represent commonsense progress.) If, when buying an airline ticket, does the airline really want to know a person’s sex or gender? Yes, maybe; knowledge of their passengers’ sexes (but not genders) could help an airline to estimate the take-off weight of an aircraft.

Finally, in this section on documentation, we probably should not be using birth documents as general identity documents. While a passport should refer to birth documentation (which should designate ‘sex’), I see no reason why other identification documents – eg documents used by banks – need such information. Thankfully, we do not require a person’s ‘race’ on a drivers’ licence or an airline ticket.

Cultural Wars I

In noting that ‘gender’ is very much a subjective attribute of people (and not only people), that is not saying  there are no biological aspects to gender. Nevertheless, to use modern parlance, the confrontations about sex and gender which we are seeing at present are taking place very much in the human ‘cultural space’.

I was intrigued to read Bryce Edwards’ The ugly stoking of a culture war in election year(Evening Report and others, 27 march 2023). It’s a good non-partisan piece of writing. I was intrigued to see that an academic source to whom Edwards referred was a lawyer called Thomas Cranmer.

Much of my time this year has been spent in reading about the historical origins of modernity. It turns out that the culture wars of the sixteenth century in Europe – otherwise known as the protestant Reformation and the catholic Counterreformation – represent central events that created the global modernity which (for worse and for better) we now take for granted today.

The first true battles of that culture war took place in Tudor England, in particular in the years 1547 and 1558, during the short reigns of the young King Edward VI and then his older sister Queen Mary. (In the kinds of dramas about the Tudor period seen on television and in the movies, this critical and difficult period is rarely touched on. Instead we see various reruns of the 1530s’ story about Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and, in the later Tudor period, about the contested lives of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots.)

A central figure of the mid-sixteenth century cultural war in England was the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. In New Zealand, his role in that cultural war is commemorated through the name of Cranmer Square in Christchurch, alongside that of another protestant martyr, Hugh Latimer, who is commemorated in the same city through Latimer Square. This cultural conflict, ostensibly a war of religion but really about much more, lasted a very long time. (Port Chalmers in Otago is named after Thomas Chalmers, a central figure in the Scottish religious schism in the 1840s.) In my historical judgement, this particularly nasty war only ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast, Northern Ireland. If we start with Martin Luther in 1517 and end in 1998, we may call this the 481-years-war.

(And a piece of historical trivia that does foreshadow the events in England from the 1530s to the 1550s. So many of the prominent people in England in those days had the given name ‘Thomas’. This is because it became fashionable from the 1470s and 1480s to undertake pilgrimages to the then magnificent shrine of Thomas Becket, archbishop and martyr, who was killed in 1170 at the behest of King Henry II. See the reference to this in Chris Trotter assesses what happened on Saturday at Auckland’s Albert Park and what it means, interest.co.nz, 27 March 2023. Becket won fame for standing up to his king, speaking for the separation of church and state as institutions of authority. Indeed, a number of the later Thomases also met their ends through displeasing their monarchs. It’s too late to visit the shrine of St Thomas of Canterbury; King Henry VIII looted it to destruction in 1538.)

It is also important to note that the culture war referred to here peaked in Europe in the period from the 1560s to the 1640s; the military component being the ‘Eighty Years War’ between the Spanish Empire and the ‘rebels’ of the Dutch United Provinces (the forerunner of the modern Netherlands), with the last part of the Eighty Years War also being the descent into near-perpetual violence in central Europe known as the Thirty Years War.

While the Reformation is correctly attributed, more than anyone else, to Marty Luther from 1517, the most important figure in the ensuing culture war was Jean Calvin (cis-male), in Geneva, whose principal publication was in 1539 (the second edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion). Calvin’s disciples became evangelists for his more direct and more strident protestant variant of Christianity, becoming a direct and immediate threat to the established (Catholic) Church as well as to the Lutheran reforms. Much of the British ‘intelligentsia’ quickly became attracted to Calvin’s message. But they had to bide their time as King Henry’s administration of the Church in England became very conservative in his last years.

The evangelicals got their chance when the nine-year-old King Edward ascended the throne. They ‘came out’ and basically ran the country. The rhetorical wars commenced and much of the language was inflammatory and belligerent. The Pope who had hitherto been the leader of the Church was now routinely lambasted as the Anti-Christ, the Devil if you will, and Catholics were rhetorically condemned as ‘papists’. (The result was the creation of a climate of rumour whereby the Devil could be anywhere and in any disguise.)

Much of the conservative Establishment bit their tongues and bid their time. Many clerics had been able to go along with King Henry’s sacrilege of the Church’s property (and many of its clergy) so long as the overall doctrine remained substantially unchanged. Others of the Henrician establishment – mainly the ones who would have been seen as ‘progressive’ but who did not naturally take to belligerence – merged into the world of the radicals after 1547. Thomas Cranmer was prominent among this decreasingly ‘moderate’ group. He wrote the new Church prayerbook to fit the new prevailing culture.

Everything changed again when Edward died, aged 15, in 1553. With no male contenders for the throne, the Edwardine radicals tried to install a cousin – Jane Grey – as Queen. But the peasants – the ordinary folk – would have none of that; and for the most part the people were unconcerned about the escalating culture war. They knew very well that the next in line for the throne was Edward’s older half-sister Mary; they wanted their country’s leaders to abide by the rules (of succession), even when those rules were inconvenient. Basically, 1553 was a case of coup and counter-coup. Jane Grey’s key supporters were dispatched by her opponents, and soon enough she was executed too.

Mary was what we might call a ‘cultural conservative’ and she surrounded herself with those former establishment conservatives who had been biding their time. With the ensuing reinstatement of the ‘Heresy Laws’, things heated up, literally. I will say no more, other than to note that Thomas Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury) became the most renowned victim of this Marian prelude to the Counterreformation. There were many other evangelicals, artisans as well as intellectuals, who chose to die; rather than rejoin the catholic Church, rather than breaking with what they understood as their direct relationship with God. Passions prevailed over pragmatism.

Queen Mary and the ensuing Archbishop of Canterbury (Reginal Pole) both died on 17 November 1558, victims of a pandemic that had all the hallmarks of a coronavirus much like the Covid19 virus. The culture war in England subsequently defused, under the new Elizabethan administration. That defusal in England was facilitated by the self-exile of culture radicals and counter-radicals to Europe, especially to the lands we now call Belgium. And it was there in the 1560s that the religious massacres in Europe really got underway.

Culture Wars 2

I tell the above story as a cautionary warning about how matters can escalate in a culture war when the participants are intentionally inflammatory, belligerent, provocative, and intolerant of people who see certain issues differently. And for too many of the people who could be debating the issues to be intimidated into silence instead. Inflammatory speech, which overlaps with the contemporary concept of ‘hate-speech’, is a form of violence that can have profound consequences. (In the Nazi context, an important consequence was the Holocaust.) Inflammatory speech includes comments – especially comments about groups of people – that are true, but which are said for the purposes of initiating or exacerbating a cultural conflict.

The principal issue in today’s culture war, as I see it, is the determination of a small group of people to eradicate the demographic concept of sex – of genetic sex, of XY sex – as an identity marker.

The most poignant moment that I saw in the television coverage of the events in Auckland on Saturday (refer to Bryce Edwards and Chris Trotter above) was of an older (though not elderly) woman – probably dismissed by the cultural radicals as a TERF – with a placard which simply read:

• XX = female
• XY = male

Completely and incontestably true. The foundation facts of reproductive biology. And not in any way inflammatory.

Yet this placard-holder was crowded out, disrespectfully, by others a generation-and-a-half younger than her. Few people with access to the news media that most people see or hear have spoken-up to support her message. “Bad things happen when good people remain silent.”

And to those who unknowingly or knowingly aggravate the problems which they claim to be addressing, remember the first law of holes: ‘Stop digging’. Like other wars, culture wars drag on because few protagonists of these conflicts have a vision for what success actually looks like. If you must instigate or perpetuate a culture war, then please at least lay out your vision of your utopia. In particular, how should your cultural enemies live and behave? Should your cultural enemies live?

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Political Roundup: The Ugly stoking of a culture war in election year

This weekend saw a showdown between two tribes of contemporary gender politics: those in favour of progressing transgender rights versus women wishing to defend their spaces. It’s a debate with huge passion, outrage and consequences.

The figure at the centre of the clash was the British “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” Posie Parker, aka Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who attempted to hold a “Let Women Speak” rally at Albert Park in Auckland on Saturday. She was forced offstage by a counter-rally for trans rights and has fled back to the UK.

Saturday’s clash of cultures is a sign of where politics is heading in New Zealand – towards a fully-fledged culture war. This is something normally more associated with American politics – but also increasingly in places like the UK.

The Ugly opportunism of culture wars

There was an element of pantomime on both sides over the last week. Posie Parker thrives on controversy. She might be complaining now about her treatment in New Zealand, but by holding her rally in a public place like Albert Park she was provoking opposition and stoking tensions, hoping to become something of a martyr.

She won. She made global news, fuelling publicity in the UK and US markets where she carries out her main fundraising. She will now be even better equipped to push her particularly toxic form of gender politics.

Likewise, those opposing Parker were rather opportunistic in arguing that she is a fascist and that her beliefs were such a danger to the public that she had to be banned from the country.

They must have known they were giving the previously-unknown visitor huge amounts of free publicity and therefore helping get her views out to a wider audience. As broadcaster Heather du Plessis-Allan argued yesterday, “Parker’s opponents made sure that she was in the news most of the week”, and “They helped her spread her message. They played right into her hands.”

The Greens represent one side of the polarised divide. MP Golriz Ghahraman tweeted on her way to the rally: “So ready to fight N*zis”. Co-leader and Government Minister Marama Davidson put out a video to say that she was “so proud” of the protesters. And obviously wearing her hat of Minister for Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence she used the event to declare that only “white cis men” commit violence. Such messages will go down very well amongst the party’s support base, which is increasingly sensitive to the need to make progress on gender issues.

Will culture wars dominate the 2023 general election?

The New Zealand Herald’s Fran O’Sullivan wrote on Saturday that “The ‘culture wars’ are set to be a defining issue in the 2023 election.” And she bemoans the Posie Parker tour dominating politics in a week in which the Treasury and the Reserve Bank confirmed “that New Zealand will tip into a technical recession this year”.

According to O’Sullivan, the “rainbow community leaders went into overdrive” producing “an illustration of how quickly a cultural issue can consume public discourse.”

The implication is that the public is going into an election campaign in which there will be less debate and focus on addressing the cost of living crisis. And last week the Government released a major evaluation of their latest progress in eliminating child poverty – which tragically showed that real progress had been made. This vital issue was completely overshadowed by the Posie Parker visit, providing a warning of what type of issues might dominate the public sphere in the lead-up to the general election.

Who benefits from a heightened focus on cultural issues?

The two parliamentary parties stoking the culture wars are Act and the Greens. Those parties will gain a much higher profile if cultural issues keep rising to the fore. The Greens will pick up middle class supporters whose main focus is on social justice issues, while Act might be able to pick up more anti-woke working class supporters in provincial New Zealand.

Squeezed in the middle are the major parties of Labour and National, who are desperate to stay out of it all, aware that middle New Zealand is less enamoured by such debates and concerns. Labour, especially under new leader Chris Hipkins is trying to shuck off the woke association the party developed under Jacinda Ardern. Likewise, Christopher Luxon is trying to get rid of the reactionary image National sometimes had under Judith Collins.

On the outside is New Zealand First, with Winston Peters trying to get into the culture wars game. He’s positioned himself, along with Act, as being opposed to the woke elite’s focus on what he calls social engineering. Peters gave his State of the Nation speech on Friday in which he claimed: “There is a full-scale attack being waged on New Zealanders’ culture, identity and sense of belonging.” He complained that nowadays “there’s an awful tribalism in New Zealand politics”.

Peters pushed all the buttons on the culture war issues – claiming that the education system was the victim of “virtue signalling tinkerers”, and that government departments were more focused on relabelling themselves with Māori names than actually doing the mahi. Co-governance was also targeted as an elite agenda that would take away the “one person, one vote” Western tradition of democracy.

What are culture wars anyway?

There’s a whole new terminology that needs unpacking and defining in the new landscape of culture wars. We have been through versions associated with the “progressive” side of this debate such as political correctness, cancel culture, identity politics, and now “woke” politics. To what extent these terms are useful continues to be debated. Perhaps the better term for the milieu of more middle class progressive demands is “social justice politics”.

Much of it is associated with leftwing politics but, in reality, the left is divided over culture wars. The “cultural left” side tends to be connected with more elite, educated, and middle class activists. The more traditional, or working class orientated “old left”, is still focused on economic inequality and improving the lot of those economically disadvantaged as a whole, with a focus on universalism and civil rights.

Even the term “culture war” needs some unpacking. New Zealand lawyer Thomas Cranmer provides the following useful definition: “In essence, they are political conflicts that revolve around social and cultural issues, such as gender, race, sexuality, religion, and identity. The term was coined in the United States during the 1990s to describe the heated debates that were taking place between conservatives and progressives over issues like abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. However, the scope of culture wars has since expanded to encompass a wide range of issues, from free speech and cancel culture to critical race theory and the role of the media in shaping public opinion.”

Problems of an escalating culture war

According to Act Party deputy leader Brooke Van Velden, New Zealand risks becoming “a divided society where cancel culture spirals out of control.” Similarly, in the weekend James Shaw pointed to the Posie Parker controversy, and said “Her arrival is the kind of risk that metastasises into broader political violence.” He told Newsroom that “There’s a real possibility we will see some form of political violence this year and someone will be injured, or worse.”

Democracy might also be harmed if the culture wars dominate this year’s election. An ugly fight over transgender politics, co-governance, or race relations would be one that alienates many voters, and reduces participation in politics. Some of the public will turn away in disgust, confusion, or fear about culture wars. The intolerance and outrage that often occurs in these debates can make ordinary voters feel unwelcome taking part in discussion and debate, or even in voting.

This doesn’t mean that the issues at the heart of culture wars are unimportant or should be suppressed. For example, there are vitally important issues and reforms that need to be progressed in terms of gender and transgender rights.

This is also a point made well by Thomas Cranmer: “it is important to note that culture wars are not inherently bad. They can provide an opportunity for different groups to engage in meaningful dialogue and debate over important issues. They can also bring attention to marginalised communities and push for greater social justice and equity.”

However, he points out that culture war debates often lack genuine, good-faith engagement: “The problem arises when culture wars become polarised and divisive, with each side demonising the other and refusing to engage in productive dialogue. This is where New Zealand currently finds itself.”

Solutions to culture wars: Critical thinking and open debate

The main problem in culture wars arise when there is no room for nuanced discussion, openness or a willingness to learn from others and opponents. Overall, there is a need for healthier debate and engagement in New Zealand politics.

This is something political columnist Janet Wilson wrote about in the weekend, arguing that we have a declining culture of critical thinking and open-mindedness: “That growing inability to think critically enables what Illinois University Ilana Redstone calls The Certainty Trap, that sense of self-righteousness that comes with having brutally judged, then condemned and dismissed, someone with whom we disagree. And when it comes to political debate, Redstone says The Certainty Trap holds us back and puts up walls.”

We need to develop our skills, Wilson says, “that includes being open-minded, having a respect for evidence and reason, being able to consider other viewpoints and perspectives, not being stuck in one position, as well as clarity and precision of thought.”

Similarly, Thomas Cranmer argues that we will deal better with culture war issues when we foster a culture of humility and tolerance: “all parties, regardless of their political affiliation, need to be willing to engage in constructive dialogue and debate over important issues. This also means that we need to be willing to listen to the perspectives and experiences of those who may hold different views from our own.”

Leftwing activist and blogger Martyn Bradbury attended Saturday’s rally and counter-rally and was appalled by both sides. He says: “Right now the entire community need to actually step back and consider how the militant cancel culture element of the debate has alienated everyone else and created the environment where Posie Parker can thrive.”

New Zealand is facing huge problems which require critical thinking and debate. We won’t be well served if such political debate and the upcoming election are highjacked by the hate and tribal opportunism we saw over the weekend.

Further reading on the Posie Parker rally and protest

Scott Palmer (Newshub): National, Greens, ACT, Labour clash over Posie Parker’s rally, freedom of speech
RNZ: Posie Parker protest: Christopher Luxon says right to free speech must be protected
1News: Q+A: Deputy PM says she wouldn’t have gone to Posie Parker counter-protest
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Sooooo, is Marama Davidson right? Do white cis males cause the violence in the world?
Chris Lynch Media: “I know who causes violence in the world, and it’s white cis men” says Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Sexual Violence
———-
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Culture wars become the new front line as election nears (paywalled)
Rachel Smalley (Today FM): I feel a very lonely voice at the moment in the mainstream media
Thomas Cranmer: Violent Suppression of free speech: Kellie-Jay Keen’s assault by transgender activists in New Zealand sparks global outrage
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Posie Parker brawl highlights Woke Left have lost ability to persuade – the only winner is ACT
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Toxic Trans Troll cancelled & deplatformed (literally) – Thug Veto wins battle but loses Free Speech War
Caitlin Griffin (Kiwiblog): Posie Parker and the Week the Media Lost Its Collective Mind
Gordon Campbell: On the Keen-Minshull visit
Deborah Coddington (Stuff): Posie Parker and The Battle of The Atlantic
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): Posie Parker’s opponents played into her hands (paywalled)
Herald Editorial: Did Posie Parker get what she was after with Auckland visit? (paywalled)
Sasha Borissenko (Herald): Free speech too convenient a justification for thinly disguised hate speech (paywalled)
Steven Cowan: The heel of authoritarian politics stomps down on Posie Parker
Steven Cowan: Doing a hatchet job on Posie
Madeline Chapman (Spinoff): Anti-trans activism is extremely harmful. It’s also a confusingly wasteful use of time
Karl du Fresne: The battle for free speech won’t be won by hiding in the shadows
Karl du Fresne: A Day of Shame
Lee Suckling (Herald): Behind the Posie Parker row – The simple way to understand the trans experience
Anna Rawhiti-Connell (Spinoff): An alternative view of the ‘angry’ protest crowd
Liz Gordon: A very New Zealand protest
Tina Ngata: Transphobia is Settler-Colonialism
Jo Bartosch (Spiked-online): The Sheilas will not be silenced
———-
Stuff: Hate speech or free speech? Clashes in Auckland reignite debate
RNZ: Posie Parker departs New Zealand; JK Rowling blasts protest as ‘repellent’
Isaac Davison (Herald): Activist Posie Parker seen checking in at Auckland Airport escorted by police after counter-protest shuts down NZ tour
Tess McClure (Guardian): Anti-trans activist Posie Parker ends New Zealand tour after chaotic protests at event
Matthew Scott (Newsroom): Posie Parker drowned out by thousands
Nadine Roberts and Erin Gourley (Stuff): Thousands reject anti-trans movement at rallies against Posie Parker tour
RNZ: Marama Davidson hit by motorcyclist after Posie Parker protest
Caroline Williams (Stuff): Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson knocked over by motorcyclist
Craig Cooper (Herald): Buckle up your rainbow-coloured belt, here come the Tamakis
Herald: Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church protest collides with Posie Parker objectors in Auckland CBD
Sophie Harris (Stuff): Tomato juice thrower ‘ready to face consequences if necessary’ following Posie Parker incident
Caroline Williams (Stuff): All the weird things Kiwis have thrown at people during protests
———-
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Why did Posie’s opponents bother with the court case?
Karl du Fresne: In different circumstances, you could almost admire their chutzpah
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): Posie Parker wins the beautiful freedom to make an ugly argument
Herald Editorial: Posie Parker presents an opportunity (paywalled)
Shaneel Lal (Herald): Why I’m organising a counterprotest against Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull/Posie Parker in Auckland
1News: ‘Potential’ for violence at Posie Parker rally
Herald: Posie Parker: Police concerns for welfare, Wellington security company reprisal fears
Herald: Posie Parker: Wellington security firm pulls out at 11th hour ahead of New Zealand tour

Other items of interest and importance today

PARLIAMENT, ELECTION
Luke Malpass (Stuff): ACT declares almost $1 million in one day from big money donors
Colin Peacock (RNZ): Mediawatch: Lifting the lid on lobbying, ministers – and the media
Luke Malpass (Stuff): The week ahead in parliament: Reminders of money and some juicy select committees
Claire Trevett (Herald): How National’s Christopher Luxon and NZ First leader Winston Peter are starting the Chris Hipkins fightback (paywalled)
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): The big issues facing te ao Māori ahead of Election 2023
Grant Duncan: The Greens’ new deal
Jo Moir (Newsroom): Risk of political violence this election high – Shaw
Geraden Cann (Stuff): AI could wreak havoc on the next election – what are the parties’ policies?
1News: Inside Parliament: Bombshell in the Bay, polls, policy and demotions
Adam Pearse and Claire Trevett (Herald): Beehive Diaries: Census’ extra-marital affair, dancing queens and who won Chris of the week? (paywalled)
Victor Billot (Newsroom): An Ode for .. Poll loser Luxon
Johnny Blades (RNZ): The House: Keeping the flow: the use of te reo at Parliament

NZ FIRST
Grant Duncan: Can Winston Peters make another come-back?
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): Winston Peters claims Kiwis’ identity under ‘full-scale attack’, will ditch ‘woke virtue signalling’, takes aim at Jacinda Ardern’s resignation
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Winston Peters starts campaign with attacks on bilingualism and ‘the cultural cabal’
Felix Desmarais (1News): Winston Peters: NZ First would remove Māori names from Govt depts
RNZ: Winston Peters rails against secret ‘woke agenda’ in campaign speech
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): Newshub Nation host Rebecca Wright grills Winston Peters on choosing Labour in 2017 after claiming ‘we need to take the country back’
Amelia Wade (Newshub): Winston Peters says Labour hid He Puapua – but Newshub can reveal he was among those who commissioned it

LOCAL GOVERNMENT, THREE WATERS
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Wayne Brown just helped the Government in its grab for local power
David Farrar (Kiwiblog): Auckland Council quits LGNZ
RNZ: Auckland Local Government New Zealand exit ‘expensive and rash’, critics say
Erin Johnson (Stuff): Will the Local Government exit cost Auckland Council more than staying?
Bridie Witton, Erin Gourley and Jo Lines-MacKenzie (Stuff): Mayors push for collaboration, cooperation after Wayne Brown’s ‘disappointing’ exit from Local Government NZ
Steven Walton (Stuff): ‘Better to be in the tent’ of Local Government New Zealand, says Christchurch mayor
Bridie Witton (Stuff): ‘800 members getting pissed and dancing’? Local Government NZ says it never hosted its annual conference in the Bay of Islands
Benjamin Plummer (Herald): Auckland Council quits Local Government NZ: LGNZ chief executive refutes Wayne Brown’s claims of a ‘boozy’ conference in the Bay of Islands
Ireland Hendry-Tennent (Newshub): Local Government NZ hits back after Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says organisation’s heavy drinking not helping ratepayers
Todd Niall (Stuff): Wayne Brown launches new review of Auckland’s port future
Oliver Lewis (BusinessDesk): Auckland council doing ‘confidential’ port review (paywalled)
Andrew Bevin (Newsroom): Airport share sales fraught with difficulty – but retaining ownership is costly
Todd Niall (Stuff): Former chief science advisor to PM wants fix for Auckland’s at-risk Southern Initiative
Joseph Los’e (Herald): Independent Māori Stat Board to Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown: Leave our putea alone – and we’re not moving
Samantha Gee (RNZ): West Coast mayors have ‘heartening conversation’ over water reform fears
David Hill (RNZ): Minor tweaks expected in Three Waters ‘reset
Julie Jacobson (Stuff): Call for lower fees, with 54% of Wellington’s on-street car parks in use
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Wellington council revokes police power to trespass on Anzac Day
Hamish McNeilly (Stuff): Accusations of ‘autocratic’ leadership and creating dissent – how karakia divided a council
Jonathan Leask (Local Democracy Reporting): Fair Go’s claims about Ashburton’s recycling efforts rubbished

EDUCATION
Ben Moore (BusinessDesk): There’s nothing basic about the ‘basics’ of education (paywalled)
Luke Malspass (Stuff): Why Christopher Luxon’s education policy should have been launched by Labour
Katie Scotcher (RNZ): National’s policy aims to school Labour on education decline
Dileepa Fonseka (BusinessDesk): Education assumes its rightful place on the debate stage (paywalled)
Cathy Buntting (The Conversation): Teachers need a lot of things right now, but another curriculum ‘rewrite’ isn’t one of them
Ripu Bhatia (Stuff): National’s education policy puts neurodiverse at risk – Dyslexia Foundation
1News: Q+A: More prescriptive curriculum helps neurodiverse students – National
Mike Boon: It’s official: National have an education policy
Gabrielle McCulloch (Stuff): Inside the comms ‘mess’ of school closures during the Auckland floods
Lee Kenny (Stuff): Secondary and area school teachers will strike again next week
Lee Kenny (Stuff): Kindergarten and primary school teachers rule out strike action next week
———-
Jamie Morton (Herald): Revealed: How AUT move to shut NZ’s only radio observatory sparked a top-level Govt scramble (paywalled)
Alex Penk: From uniform fonts to uniform thoughts
Jonathan Killick (Stuff): ‘Like a family’: Artists and industry say MAINZ closure bad for Kiwi music

HEALTH
Rachel Thomas (Stuff): ‘Not a good time to get sick’: data lays bare the burgeoning crunch points in our health system
Nicholas Jones (Herald): Waikato Hospital cardiac surgery patients caught in delays; overdue cases sent to Auckland, Wellington
Michael Neilson (Herald): ‘Significant impact’: MSD dental grants near $15m in first three months of policy (paywalled)
Fiona Ellis (ODT): DCC urges public to protest hospital cuts
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Health advice scrubbed due to anti-trans pressure
Jem Traylen (BusinessDesk): $1 Billion of exports jeopardised by Therapeutic Products Bill (paywalled)
Stephen Forbes (Local Democracy Reporting): New unit aims to tackle south Auckland’s huge obesity problem
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith (Stuff): Ozempic in New Zealand: How could the drug affect Kiwis?
Helen Harvey (Stuff): A lifetime of health experience already behind new Tui Ora chief executive

COVID
Jenée Tibshraeny (Interest): Treasury still can’t say how much Covid money has physically been spent (paywalled)
Jamie Morton (Herald): Explained: What to know ahead of NZ’s next ‘big boost’ against Covid-19 (paywalled)
Sam Olley (RNZ): Negative excess mortality sign NZ got it right with Covid-19 response – Sir Ashley Bloomfield
Hannah Martin (Stuff): By the numbers: Three years since Aotearoa’s first Covid-19 lockdown

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
1News: Q+A: China’s challenge in stepping up diplomatic efforts
Thomas Manch (Stuff): New Zealand won’t ban TikTok like Australia or the US. Here’s why
Don Brash: New Zealand’s foreign policy dilemma
Jane Patterson (RNZ): Mahuta – ‘We take seriously’ NZ’s relationship with China
Reuters: China’s top diplomat: Confident about ties with New Zealand
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta meets top-ranking Chinese diplomats in Beijing
Kelvin McDonald (Whakaata Māori): China visit: Foreign Minister emphasises NZ’s interest in ‘peaceful and stable’ Pacific region
1News: Mahuta tells China of concerns over lethal aid to Russia
Agence France-Presse (Guardian): New Zealand foreign minister tells China of ‘deep concerns’ over rights abuses and Taiwan
AP: Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta tells China of concerns about lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine

EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME, FORESTRY
Anne Salmond (Newsroom): Greenwashing and the forestry industry in NZ
Aaron Smale (Newsroom): East Coast farm collapses after Māori Carbon group takes over
Angus Kebbell (Interest): David Norton says aspects of carbon farming with exotics are “ecologically fraudulent”
Brent Edwards (NBR): Treasury’s reservations about advice on ETS settings (paywalled)
Jamie Gray (Herald): Government review of Emissions Trading Scheme could be far-reaching – ANZ (paywalled)
RNZ: Businesses currently encouraged to offset emissions by planting trees – economist
Guy Trafford (Interest): Farmers and foresters need to take responsibility for the impacts their decisions have on the wider community

CLIMATE CHANGE, EXTREME WEATHER, INFRASTRUCTURE
Diane Brand (Newsroom): Bring back the Ministry of Works
Hamish Cardwell (RNZ): Managed retreat: How the rest of the world handles it
Damien Venuto (Herald): The Front Page: Adaptation vs mitigation – What should NZ do about climate change?
Brent Edwards (NBR): New Zealand’s risk assessment needs to improve (paywalled)
Tom Dillane (Herald): Inside Wayne Brown’s flood review: Staff interrogated in ‘minute detail’, no call to Minister McAnulty (paywalled)
Amanda Cropp (Stuff): DIY work on flood-damaged houses could expose asbestos, putting residents, volunteer helpers and tradies at risk
RNZ: Warning of asbestos contamination in cyclone clean-ups
RNZ: Work underway on $5m stopbank upgrade to protect Dunedin Airport, farmland

ENVIRONMENT, CONSERVATION
Tess McClure (Guardian): ‘Like you’re in a horror movie’: pollution leaves New Zealand wetlands irreversibly damaged
Kirsty Johnson (Stuff): An environmental disaster was waiting to happen in Tolaga Bay. No one listened
Craig Ashworth (Local Democracy Reporting): Lost species, missing seaweed, dead eels: 40 years on the Taranaki coast
RNZ: 1080 drops planned for Mt Messenger for pest control

INEQUALITY
Max Rashbrooke (Stuff): How will Hipkins tackle stagnating progress on child poverty?
1News: Q+A: Benefits increasing but more investment needed, minister claims

ECONOMY
Jenée Tibshraeny (Herald): Revealed: Finance Minister Grant Robertson sought advice from Reserve Bank on introducing a bank tax (paywalled)
Dan Brunskill (Interest): The pandemic made you poorer but public policy made you feel rich
Liam Dann (Herald): The big squeeze – RBNZ warning to Kiwis needs to include Government spending (paywalled)
Jenny Ruth (BusinessDesk): Inflation winners and breaking things (paywalled)
Shane Te Pou (Herald): Don’t cast workers on the scrapheap (paywalled)
Gordon Stuart (Stuff): Global banking crisis: we won’t escape the fallout
Hillmarè Schulze (NBR): We have a recession every 10 years – it should not be a surprise (paywalled)

HOUSING
Benn Bathgate (Stuff): ‘Unintended consequences’ – Ministry admits Rotorua MSD motels did spike crime
Laura Smith (Local Democracy Reporting): Rotorua emergency housing motels positive experience for many – government-commissioned report
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Homelessness, housing insecurity remain significant for Māori – study
Duncan Greive (Spinoff): Inside the radical plan to build ‘the new state house’ and change renting forever
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): Kids versus a mortgage? Why getting into your first home is harder with children
Susan Edmunds (Stuff): How much higher are home loan rates going to go?
Erin Gourley (Stuff): Housing plan for former prison site ‘not an exclusive enclave’

In this, the 23rd episode of A View from Afar for 2022 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning analyse the significance of public protests that have challenged authoritarian rule in both the People’s Republic of China and in the Republic of Iran.

Paul takes us through the causes of the resistance, and how, in each nation, the reasons differ, but the impact is the same.

In 2022, authoritarian leadership is being challenged by the rise of street protest and resistance to centralised control.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn welcome interaction while live with questions and comments. They recommend you can keep the debate going via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook is undergoing significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

LIVE@MIDDAY NZ Time – 6pm USEST – In this, the 23rd episode of A View from Afar for 2022 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning will analyse the significance of public protests that have challenged authoritarian rule in both the People’s Republic of China and in the Republic of Iran.

Paul will take us through the causes of the resistance, and how, in each nation, the reasons differ, but the impact is the same.

In 2022, authoritarian leadership is being challenged by the rise of street protest and resistance to centralised control.

INTERACTION WHILE LIVE: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact while they are live with questions and comments. They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, as Facebook is undergoing significant changes. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A View from Afar – Bannonism-Trumpism, a cultural ideological export – Political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning deep-dive into how Aotearoa New Zealand is in the cross-hairs of two distinct political powers – one has been around for awhile and applies influence operations aimed at elites; and the other is new to this part of the world and uses cultural and ideological diffusion that is aimed at civil society and aims to change the character of democracy itself. Can countries like New Zealand resist the slide into US-styled political chaos?

In this podcast we explore the under-defined, but hardly hidden, ideology that we will refer to as Bannonism-Trumpism.

So what is taking shape in New Zealand? Why is New Zealand a political lab-rat of sorts?

How is this battle taking place for the minds and political thinking of New Zealand voters?

What should you be aware of?

What political parties are most vulnerable to these two powerful external influences?

What is the end-game?

Is resistance achievable?

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast while they consider these big issues, and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

When significant voices on the political left start speaking out against Labour’s proposed hate speech laws it’s a sign that they’re in big trouble. With criticisms now coming from across the political spectrum, it’s much more likely that the Government will ditch the botched speech regulation reforms.

The latest leftwing activist to speak out against the proposals is unionist Matt McCarten. He is encouraging the public to make submissions against the proposals (submissions close tomorrow).

McCarten’s leftwing credentials are strong – not only has he been involved in progressive and socialist organising for decades, he was the Labour Party’s Chief of Staff at Parliament for two years from 2014. His opposition will carry a lot weight.

This week he made the following statement: “Free speech is not a left-right political issue. It’s about democratic civil society where everyone has a right to have their say. Sometimes your opinion can make other people uncomfortable and even create conflict. But sharing your views can start a real conversation of ideas that often leads to positive societal change. If we risk free speech then we risk progress. We must not allow that.”

McCarten also gave a lengthy interview with another leftwing activist, Dane Giraud, of the Free Speech Union, on the problems he sees with the proposals, as well as wider criticisms of the contemporary left – see: Interview with legend of the NZ Union movement Matt McCarten.

McCarten’s views in this interview have also been discussed by leftwing blogger Steven Cowan – see: Matt McCarten: The liberal left has abandoned working class politics.

Cowan has also written about his own opposition to what he sees as a clampdown on political activity and expression – see: We need more democracy, not less. He argues the hate speech laws are just a continuation of the growth of a “liberal support for authoritarian identity or woke politics and for cancel culture”. In contrast, he points to historic socialist figures who have battled for free speech.

In this regard, it’s also worth reading Victoria University of Wellington academics Michael Johnston and James Kierstead who explain how free speech has been vital to not just democracy and progress, but for marginal groups liberating themselves – see: Hate speech law a threat to democracy. They say: “The historical record, from the suffragettes to the civil rights movement to gay liberation, makes it clear: free speech has been a vital – perhaps the vital – tool in the struggle of marginalised peoples to defend their rights.”

They have written this week about their opposition to the proposals – see: Why the new ‘hate speech’ legislation should be scrapped. They argue that leftwing governments should be concerned with advancing leftwing policies and dealing with problems faced by those at the bottom, but Ardern’s Government is instead pursuing an illiberal programme on political expression. They say the Government is siding with a more illiberal movement around the world that is concerned with suppressing open debate.

The political commentator who has led the fight against the hate speech laws is Chris Trotter. Last week he reported on the only authoritative public survey that has been carried out on the hate speech proposals, which shows the public is clearly more opposed than supportive – see: Free speech vs hate speech – by numbers.

The survey commissioned by the Free Speech Union shows that 43 per cent are either strongly or somewhat opposed, 31 per cent are somewhat or strongly in favour, and 15 per cent are neutral. The survey shows that Labour and Green voters are much more inclined to support the proposals, and National and Act supports much less so. There are some other interesting demographic skews as well – in terms of gender, ethnicity, income, and geography.

Trotter has written at length about the problems with the hate speech proposals. His latest column on this is a plea to the Prime Minister not to go ahead with the ill-thought-out changes to the law – see: I understand why you want to do it, Jacinda – but don’t.

Trotter explains that the horrors of the Mosque attacks have made this a personal quest for Ardern, but argues it’s a mistaken response that won’t achieve its objective and will have many undemocratic and harmful consequences.

The Government-friendly blogsite The Standard has also published a strong critique of the new law, pointing out that the existence of free speech has allowed radical political organisation to occur, and “we need our existing freedom of expression protected more, not less” – see: Oppose this new hate speech bill. They point out that the Labour Party was able to be founded because of free speech, and “I doubt the Labour Party would have been able to exist today if this proposed control of speech had occurred then.”

Others on the left have also been outspoken. Martyn Bradbury, the editor of the Daily Blog, has written frequently about how the left should be opposing the Government’s reform ideas. In a recent blog post he says: “we are the Left, we should be championing free speech, not repressing it! We can’t allow brittle millennial trigger culture to hand the State powers that history tells us will be used against us!” – see: Kris Faafoi has gone into hiding over Hate Speech law & would Debbie Ngarewa-Packer get prosecuted?.

Also writing on the Daily Blog, John Minto has labelled the proposed hate speech laws “feel good legislation” that “comes with its own awful side effects” – see: Challenging hate speech – yes but let’s adapt our existing legislation.

Minto argues that, although the Government thinks the reforms would protect minorities, it’s possible minorities would be the victims of clamp downs. For example, “I think it will be the Muslim community and progressive voices who are more likely to feel the harsh edge of this law”, and other activist groups such as pro-Palestine movements would easily be labelled hateful and threatened with prosecution.

This last point has also been made by media law scholar Steven Price, who pointed out on TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday “Hate-speech laws are often used to prosecute the very minorities that they are designed to protect” such as “gay people who are attacking religions who are attacking them”. You can watch this here: Q+A with Jack Tame – Lawyers ‘tearing their hair out’ over proposed hate speech laws.

For an excellent review of the Q+A debate, see Graham Adams’ latest column: The thorny hate-speech debate sorts sheep from goats. He discusses Price’s negative evaluations of the possible law changes – especially his view that it would be difficult to establish what is and isn’t a crime under the Government proposals.

Adams also highlights the appearance on the Q+A panel of former Labour MP Sue Moroney, who grapples with the lack of clarity in the proposals, essentially recommending that people self-censor to avoid prosecution. He quotes Moroney: “Well here’s a tip for middle New Zealand. If you think that what you’re about to do or say or tweet might actually be hate speech or might be captured by the law, don’t do it… and we’ll all be better off… If you’re making that judgement – ‘Could this be illegal?’ – don’t do it!”

Adams also points to a recently published video of police officer warning a street preacher: “There is a difference between preaching and hate speech and you are very close to crossing the line”. On this video, barrister and legal commentator Graeme Edgeler has tweeted to say: “The police officer is recorded saying there’s a fine line between preaching and hate speech. He then explicitly acknowledges they had not crossed that line, and still thinks he has a role in policing what they are saying. That is concerning.”

Edgeler has written frequently about the Government’s new proposals. His concluding blog post is a must-read, as he argues strongly against the hate speech laws in their current form, and he is highly critical of how the Government has gone about the reform process – see: The New New Prohibition.

Edgeler draws parallels with other draconian attempts to outlaw harmful activities such as alcohol and drugs, which have been counterproductive. He says: “We may be facing a similar issue with hate speech.”

Amongst his many problems with the proposals, Edgeler highlights the lack of certainty over what would actually qualify as illegal hate speech in the new rules, which he says would have a chilling impact on public debate: “An important component of the rule of law (perhaps the most important) is certainty. The law should be declared in advance so that people can comply with it. And the biggest problem for people who will try to moderate their behaviour in response to a new criminal law isn’t whether they can recognise a bunch of things that will be covered by it, it’s whether they can recognise what things won’t. Because if it is not clear, then important, protected speech will be chilled.”

Edgeler points to another lawyer’s strong arguments about the problems of enforcement – the idea that even if the legal system ends up absolving an individual of hate speech crimes, the mere fact of having to fight a prosecution will be extremely chilling – see Liam Hehir’s Hate speech and what legal elites sometimes miss about the law.

This roundup column has focused on some of the hate speech law dissenters, most of whom are firmly on the left of the political spectrum. But there are other progressives who have been very favourable to the new rules, and are worth checking out – see Donna Miles’ New hate speech law needs our love, Eddie Clark’s Why ‘inciting violence’ should not be the only threshold for defining hate speech in New Zealand, Joel Maxwell’s Hate speech proposals should have started with Te Tiriti, and Guled Mire’s When we’re afraid to speak, democracy is threatened.

Ultimately it seems likely that Ardern will pragmatically decide to ditch the proposals, given that they have turned out to be such a mess. This will be hard to do, since Ardern has made much of her promise and it’s a Labour Party manifesto commitment. Nonetheless, according to Graham Adams there are signs the Prime Minister is trying to find a way out – see: Is Ardern preparing her escape route from hate speech laws?.

Finally, the Minister of Justice responsible for the hate speech proposals gave a train wreck of an interview about the reforms and then went to ground – or as one commentator recently said is probably “tied up in a basement somewhere by the Prime Minister’s staff and not allowed to do interviews”. But his failure to front on this and other important issues is explained today by Jo Moir – see: What’s eating Kris Faafoi?.

It’s nearly a week since the “Howl of a Protest” took place throughout the country, and we’re still talking about the rural revolt. What are the farmers’ concerns? Are they legitimate? Has the rural-urban divide has become too deep, and will any of this have an impact on politics in Wellington?

What’s behind the rural revolt?

One of the best pieces on what’s behind the rural revolt is today’s article by Laura Walters: How real is the rural-urban divide?. She argues division is being stoked between farm and town, including by the media and those who wish to explain the protests as farmers being out of touch. Instead, she paints a picture of farmers who are on board with environmental issues but have problems with a government that they believe isn’t listening.

Walters reports Federated Farmers national president Andrew Hoggard saying: “Everyone agrees with the big picture direction, but these policies, regulations and legislation are coming out in random orders. It’s like there’s not a workplan behind it.” And given that his own organisation wasn’t behind the protests, but instead focused on behind-doors talks in Wellington, Hoggard concedes: “Maybe we’ve just been a little too polite. Maybe we need to be blunter.”

Yesterday, Canterbury farmer Craig Hickman gave a good explanation for the protests in his opinion piece, This might have been our first successful farmer protest.

He starts out by explaining his aversion to such protests: “I’ve never made a secret of the fact I’m no fan of farmer protests; there had never been a successful one in my living memory and there has been a tendency recently for them to backfire and paint farmers in a bad light, usually as ignorant racist misogynists.” But last week was different, as “the sheer volume of frustrated and disillusioned farmers drowned out the minority of fringe idiots, turning them into an irrelevant sideshow.”

Here’s his summary of farmer feeling: “The common theme was that the pace and change of Government reform has been overwhelming and is taking its toll. A relentless tidal wave of change that often seems to occur with little consultation and without any clue as to how they will be practically implemented, and no comprehension of the flow on effects they will have. It was a collective outpouring of anger at being constantly painted as convenient villains for political gain.”

Farmer complaints

Groundswell New Zealand, who organised the protests, has published a list of seven concerns, including policies on freshwater management, the “ute tax”, the lack of overseas workers, changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme, the Significant Natural Areas programme, new rules about indigenous biodiversity, and the high country land reforms. This is explored in depth by Georgia Forrester in her article: What are Aotearoa’s farmers actually protesting about this Friday?.

Farmer Shelley Krieger has usefully outlined Why farmers protested in NZ towns and cities. She explains that some of the more prominent issues aren’t actually so central to concerns: “The ute tax was just an add-on. It was new legislation that came out after the protest had already been organised.”

For Krieger, the Significant Natural Areas rules are a particular concern: “These are areas of people’s farm land or lifestyle blocks that the Government is getting the councils to survey. This is native blocks of land that have wild flora and wild animals that pass through it. Once parts of land are classified as an SNA you lose your rights to that land, cannot farm it or build on it. You have to fence it off at your own cost and still pay the rates on it but you can no longer use it. In some instances it is 80-90 per cent of people’s land.”

For a deeper exploration of this, see yesterday’s article by George Driver: What are SNAs and why are farmers protesting them?.

Looking at the complaints of farmers, Herald political editor Claire Trevett writes: “The ute tax came to be seen as the main thrust of the protest. But for the farmers at least, it was not about the ute tax. The ute tax was simply the salt being rubbed into the wound. It would not have escaped them that the Prime Minister said Cabinet considered exempting farm and work utes from the fee, but decided it was too complicated. Farmers will not have the luxury of opting out of Government regulations because they are too complicated. And that is why the farmers protested. The protest was the rural sector making it clear they felt besieged by the pace and scale of Government reforms” – see: Dismiss protesting farmers as rednecks at your peril, Prime Minister (paywalled).

Trevett explains that farmers aren’t opposed to the Government’s land reform and environmental goals, but rather, some of the details and process: “Farmers have accepted the need for some reform, and have worked with the Government on it. But farmers are caught up in almost all of the various streams of reform on the environment and climate change. They will be hit by moves to reduce transport emissions, pricing on agricultural emissions, higher environmental standards on water, and protection of sensitive land. No matter how well signalled much of it has been, it is now all hitting at once. It is hitting at the same time as other reforms in workplace relations, immigration, the Resource Management Act and local government, all of which also impact on farmers.”

The Herald also ran an editorial explaining that farmers feel they are having to carry too much of the environmental reform effort, while others face fewer sacrifices: “Most of the protesters – likely to number thousands – will be farmers, coming in force to town because they’re fed up with being targeted for spiralling environmental compliance costs and taxes – and as they see it, doing the heavy lifting for New Zealand’s climate change response… They feel dumped on as easy targets and an unappreciated minority” – see: All is not well down on the farm as city people will find out today (paywalled).

Writing in the Herald on Sunday, columnist Kerre McIvor also explained the long list of farmer complaints – from the “ute tax” through to a feeling that the Government is prioritizing other voters in its spending decisions: “It’s the Ashburton Bridge being out of commission with no plans to build a better, safer link to the rest of the South Island, when $785 million has been announced for the Boomers’ Bike Bridge to Birkenhead” – see: Farmers are riled up over everything – and they’ve got a point (paywalled).

Environmentalist rebuttals

There has been some strong pushback against the farmer protests, mostly from those advocating that more needs to be done for the environment, and farmers need to accept the reality of the urgency the country faces on issues like climate change and water reform.

Broadcaster Jack Tame challenged what he sees as farmers being ungrateful for the special treatment they get, given that they are protesting about the lack of government support: “did those protesting farmers feel the same way when their industry received the best part of a billion dollars in support for Mycoplasma Bovis? Did they take to the streets to protest hundreds of millions of dollars they received in irrigation subsidies? Did protestors turn out in anger at drought relief packages, or flood relief, or the Covid-19 wage support? If the agriculture sector is concerned about special treatment, just wait until it hears about the Emissions Trading Scheme” – see: Protesting farmers are hypocrites – but so am I.

He concludes: “the sector has been well-supported for a very long time. I don’t think a few thousand extra dollars for a ute and some environmental compliance expenses are going to be so devastating that they fundamentally threaten farming communities’ way of life.”

Similarly, the Herald’s Simon Wilson points out that farmers are actually doing very well “when beef and lamb prices are strong and Fonterra says there will be another near-record dairy payout” – see: Farm tractors, Ponsonby lattes and the true gulf between us (paywalled).

He argues the Government is going very easy on farmers: “Water reforms have been amended and so have the plans for wetlands. Targets for biogenic methane, aka the belching of ruminant animals, are much softer than they are for carbon emissions. It does rather seem both the Government and the Climate Change Commission have decided the rural sector can’t be asked to carry the main weight of our environmental goals.”

For Wilson, the farmer revolt is simply down to the National Party irresponsibly fostering backward attitudes in the rural communities. Because this has created resistance to change for so long, the Government now has to move more quickly on environmental issues.

Newsroom political journalist Marc Daalder makes some similar arguments, saying that in terms of climate change what the Government is asking of farmers is “no different from the sacrifices that everyone will have to make to decarbonise” – see: Feebate won’t bankrupt farmers, but climate change might. In fact, compared to urban dwellers, Daalder says “farmers, whose footprint is partly made up of biogenic methane from livestock, face a more lenient target.”

And in today’s Otago Daily Times, two environmentalists take issue with the protests in Dunedin, suggesting protesting farmers aren’t sufficiently concerned with climate change – see Mark McGuire’s Climate change denial shocks and Bruce Mahalskiis’ Call to calm rhetoric in face of common climate threat.

For a more sympathetic environmental critique of farmers, see Philip McKibbin’s opinion piece, New Zealand farmers’ demands are unrealistic – but they are suffering and deserve support. In this he agrees that the Government should be doing much more for farmers to help them transition away from the production of dairy and meat.

Danger for the Labour Government

Writing in Stuff newspapers today, centre-right political commentator Ben Thomas asks how much impact the protests will have on the Labour Government: “The demonstrations, in themselves, will not cause the Beehive undue worry. The makeup of the protests (however well attended) suggested few disgruntled Labour voters. And the question of how the organisers, after a logistically impressive first effort, can maintain momentum remains up in the air” – see: Will a winter of discontent prove glorious summer for Judith Collins?. But Thomas concludes that other Government reforms might also start to bite.

Other commentators believe Labour have a lot to lose if they ignore the messages from the protests. In Claire Trevett’s column (cited above), she says that although Labour might hope that the public see the farmers as cranks, this isn’t necessarily happening. What’s more, the farmers might just be the first part of society to start revolting against the Government’s bigger reforms: “Labour has stood accused of failing to deliver in some policy areas, most notably housing and transport. But it is driving ahead with major reforms programmes in almost every sphere of government – and local government. That is now starting to have a cumulative effect. The farmers are simply the first to break.”

Similarly, Kerre McIvor suggests Labour would be “very foolish” to ignore these protests, and she draws a comparison with the “nanny state” messages, especially over the “shower regulations” that helped bring to an end Helen Clark’s government.

For a similar argument in more detail, see Karl du Fresne’s prediction of a provincial backlash where at the next election Labour loses the blue seats it won when the red-tide swept through at last year’s contest: An early prediction for 2023.

The Otago Daily Times’ Mike Houlahan also says Labour should be very concerned about the farmer protests: “the party would be wise not to ignore these rumblings of discontent. The mood of unity engendered by the ‘team of five million’ was never going to endure, but phenomena like Groundswell chip away at the carefully nurtured popularity of the prime minister, and given there are two years before the next election that offers ample time for Labour’s regional party vote to be erode” – see: Labour cannot afford to ignore rural concerns.

Houlahan points to a dangerous tendency of Government ministers to be dismissive of rural concerns, which was epitomised by Climate Change Minister James Shaw dismissing the Groundswell protester organisers as “a group of Pakeha farmers from down south who have always pushed back against the idea that they should observe any kind of regulation about what they can do to protect the environmental conditions on their land”. Houlahan suggests that this comment has only helped drive rural concerns about the orientation of the Beehive, and he argues that Labour can’t afford to be as flippant as Shaw.

The Herald’s David Fisher has also reported on the protests, arguing that Shaw’s words against the protestors have “deepened the divide” between farmers and the Government – see: Howl of a Protest as town and country talk past each other (paywalled). He also argues that Labour isn’t persuading these rural voters about its reforms: “What it signals, though, is that The Great Communicator – Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – really needs to work on her communication, or have her Cabinet do so.”

And for another example of how Labour’s dismissive attitude to farmers could alienate rural votes – see the rather patronising blog post by party activist Greg Presland on the pro-Government blog The Standard: Mother Nature gives Groundswell NZ the middle finger. In this, he portrays the recent protest as just a “grumpy” National Party attempt to “disrupt” the country, saying that the farmers just “need to get over it”.

So, what happens next? Officially, the Groundswell protest organisers have given the Government a month to respond to their demands. After that, more protest action is planned. For a useful report on what this might involve, it’s worth reading a media report from one of the early organisational meetings – see Natasha Holland’s Is anyone actually listening to the farmers?.

In this, other protest actions are discussed: “some farmers may boycott rates and or not apply for resource consents”. A mention is made of the 1978 “Bloody Friday”, “when farmers, in protest, ran 1300 ewes down Dee St, Invercargill, before slaughtering them on a Victoria Ave section.”

Finally, for some poetry about the politics of the apparently growing urban-rural divide, see Victor Billot’s An ode for the farmers’ protest.

The extraordinary Māori land protest at Ihumātao in Auckland is symbolic of our time. It is unlikely to have occurred, say, five years ago. It perfectly reflects heightened concerns and increased radicalism over racism, economic inequality, and the history of colonialism in New Zealand. This meant that when the police moved in last week to evict a long-running protest about the confiscation of Māori land, it suddenly ignited those values that have been brewing in many about injustice and a need to take a stand.

Today’s Otago Daily Times editorial argues the protest has been snowballing due to rising radicalism in society: “The emotional pull is compelling. Those with leftish and anti-establishment sentiments join in enthusiastically. The evils of colonialism, capitalism and racism are laid bare” – see: The Ihumatao cause celebre.

Like much of the radicalism – leftwing, rightwing, or otherwise – we’re seeing around the world, the editorial points out that the movement at Ihumātao doesn’t fit into a traditional box. This is because it involves complex issues, difficult history, unusual alliances, and some big potential ramifications for race relations in this country.

There have been a number of useful attempts to explain the complexities of the Ihumātao clash. The best of these were actually published some time ago – see Leonie Hayden’s National Geographic feature article from 2017: When Worlds Collide and Geoff Chapple’s article for the Listener from 2016: Ihumātao and the Ōtuataua Stonefields: A very special area.

Today on RNZ, Alex Ashton and Sharon Brett-Kelly detail some of the background issues and explain how local iwi and hapu are split on the issue of Fletcher Building constructing houses on the land – see: Ihumātao explained.

This piece lays out a “tale of skulduggery” in which Māori land was unjustly confiscated in 1863, leading to the Ihumātao farmland remaining in private hands ever since – first with the Wallace family, and today with Fletchers. And it’s now part of the Auckland City Council’s recognised Special Housing Area, meaning that a development is set to proceed.

As Ashton and Brett-Kelly’s piece explains, Fletchers has worked with local Māori (mana whenua) who have been regarded as having a mandate to negotiate. The local iwi, Te Kawerau a Maki, “accepted the inevitability of the Fletchers development and struck a deal with the corporation that negotiator Te Warena Taua describes as ‘better than anything we have ever achieved from Housing New Zealand or the Crown’. Eight hectares, or 25 percent of the land, will be handed back as a buffer against Otuataua, views of the maunga protected which has meant scaling back the height of some homes, and some of the homes placed into a shared equity scheme with the iwi. It’s unusually generous. Fletchers isn’t putting up a spokesperson during this protest but would it would be unfair to paint the corporation as the villain.”

However, not everyone agrees that the iwi, and its leadership, are the only mana whenua who should be discussing or deciding what happens to the land. Other claimants to the role have now become involved in asserting their rights, including some from within Te Kawerau a Maki. You can also listen to today’s 22-minute RNZ podcast: Ihumātao explained podcast.

To read the perspective of the local iwi who favour the Fletchers development, see Pita Turei’s opinion piece: Leave Ihumātao land decisions to iwi. In this he outlines the history of the land, and how local iwi leaders have worked to get Fletchers to give concessions in the development.

Turei, who’s been involved in activism for decades including the Land March and occupation of Bastion Point, says he understands the desire to protest, but argues that the protestors have got it wrong, and are unnecessarily splitting the unity of Māori. He also challenges the protestors to consider what they are really achieving, which he argues would be worse for local Māori.

The protestors believe that the deal struck between the Māori leaders and Fletchers isn’t sufficient, and the return of the land is necessary. A group called Save Our Unique Landscape (SOUL) has been at the forefront of the whole campaign – see Matthew Rosenberg’s Ihumātao eviction protest: An occupation 150 years in the making.

In this he profiles SOUL’s main spokesperson, Pania Newton, who says: “We will remain here until the bulldozers come. I’ve already planned to sacrifice my life for this campaign… I’m willing to die for it. It’s so important to my identity and to the history of our nation and my nieces and nephews.”

A lot of media coverage has emphasised the generational clash involved, as the protests have been centred on younger people. And as an illustration of this divide, although Pania Newton is leading the protests, it’s her uncle, Te Warena Taua, who is the chairperson of the Makaurau Marae Trust and executive chairperson of Te Kawerau Iwi Tribal Authority, and has fronted much of the defence of the arrangement with Fletchers – see Kendall Hutt’s Ihumātao eviction: Generations of Māori divided in dispute.

Another way to look at the divide is to view the traditional iwi leadership as having been incorporated into the business establishment, which is what socialist intellectual Alex Birchall argues in his blog post, Ihumātao: The class conflict in Māori politics opens up. He says that the dispute is not simply between protesting Māori versus Fletchers and the police, but also between the local Māori Establishment versus disaffected Māori.

Similarly, John Moore has argued that this new protest represents a growing disillusionment with the Treaty process: “What Ihumātao points to in a deeper political sense is that deep dissatisfaction with how the whole treaty process has played out. With billions of dollars of land, resources and money transferred to certain Māori iwi, we have seen the enrichment and empowerment of certain Māori leaders, while we also have the reality of general poverty within te ao Māori. Most Māori don’t seem to of benefited particularly from the treaty process. So, in a sense this occupation is a cry and rallying point for those Māori who feel they haven’t gained form the enrichment and empowerment of official iwi leaders” – see: Ihumātao – a rallying cry for disaffected Māori.

Mounting pressure on politicians to fix the problem

The protestors at Ihumātao have called on the Government to intervene, and they’ve been supported by coalition partner the Green Party, who have formally written to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to request action. So far, the Government’s response has been to try as hard as possible to keep out of the issue.

Ardern has indicated her preference for the status quo: “Ultimately we are falling on the side of the local iwi and their position… They are not the ones leading the protest here and so if we come in over the top, it really would be undermining the local iwi in this case.”

On Friday, however, the Prime Minister gave an assurance that construction on the Ihumātao development wouldn’t proceed in the meantime while an attempt was made at finding a resolution.

While this has been appreciated by many of the protesters, it doesn’t get the Government off the hook. Many protestors won’t be satisfied until the Government arranges to buy the land off Fletchers to be made into a public reserve, which may or may not include housing as well.

Critics have been scathing about the Government’s attempts to sit on the fence on the issue. Morgan Godfery has argued that: Ihumātao is Jacinda Ardern’s foreshore and seabed moment. And she’s failing.

Writing prior to the PM’s Friday intervention, Godfery questioned the authenticity of Ardern’s commitment to biculturalism: “It’s an intolerable position, especially from a Prime Minister who’ll wrap herself in Māori iconography for the international press. Do you take your kahu huruhuru off when land at Auckland Airport? When the Governor-General said in the Speech from the Throne that your government will work to ‘honour the original treaty promise’ did you have your fingers crossed?”

The PM is now overseas, and is to some extent able to avoid the ongoing debate. But it’s a sign of just how fraught the issue is for her that she is making some extraordinary attempts to prevent being questioned over it. Anna Bracewell-Worrall reported last night: “Jacinda Ardern has personally tried to prevent media from asking about the Ihumātao dispute while on a charm offensive in the Pacific. Her staff threatened journalists with restricted access to the PM if they did, forcing her Beehive team to intervene from Wellington. After crisis calls from the Capital, media were allowed a second shot” – see: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern tried to prevent media asking about Ihumātao.

It looks as if the Government is still very disinclined to step into the issue in a more radical way, such as buying the land off Fletchers. Today on the AM Show, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters spoke out strongly against the protestors and in favour of the iwi who had negotiated with Fletchers, saying “Let’s not have some of the statements by, in particular, people who don’t belong there, who have not kept the land warm all these centuries, who are not in authority or do not have the mana to speak on behalf of them, let’s not have this sort of media circus” – see: Ihumātao protest: Winston Peters critical of ‘imposters’ protesting.

According to the above article, Peters “said in the ‘Māori world’, if people turn up to protest on land they haven’t personally safeguarded or are connected to, they are regarded as strangers and shouldn’t be making statements on the land.”

This follows on from Labour MP Peeni Henare going on TV on Saturday saying “that every Treaty settlement ever completed could be undermined if the Government purchased the Ihumātao land for use as a public heritage space.”

For more arguments on why a special deal on Ihumātao would be a problem for other iwi, see Ben Thomas’ Here’s why the Government can’t return Ihumātao to Iwi.

Not everyone agrees with this, however. Today, former indigenous studies academic at the University of Auckland, John McCaffery has argued that there is a misunderstanding in terms of Treaty settlements at Ihumātao: “the Government is claiming that issues at Ihumātao cannot be further discussed, litigated or reopened because of the precedent it would create. This is not historically supported by evidence held by the Crown. The fact is, there has not been any such Waitangi settlement of the Wai 8 1986 Manukau area claim, so attempts now to find a just solution are not constrained by a previous full and final Treaty settlement over this land” – see: Finding a solution to the tragedy of Ihumātao (paywalled).

McCaffery also challenges the mana whenua status that the Government says the iwi has: “According to the written decisions, Te Kawerau a Maki was never mandated by the Crown to have prime tangata whenua or Government’s mandated mana whenua status at Ihumātao, and Ihumātao is not within their agreed tribal mandated boundaries in their settlement either.”

There’s obviously also the potential for this to blow up as a larger political issue. And Chris Trotter writes about this today – see: Ihumātao watched by unfriendly eyes. He looks at whether the land occupation could spark a conservative backlash, and then a deeper clash that impacts significantly on the Treaty settlements process, Labour’s hold on the Māori seats, and ultimately creating something of an “iwi/Kiwi”-style culture war that raises the stark question of whether the nation proceeds towards becoming “The Bi-Cultural Republic of Aotearoa”.

Finally, what does the controversy say about how this country does its urban planning? Business journalist Rob Stock investigated by going along to a Fletchers annual general meeting, and then visiting the site of the housing development. He was less than impressed with the company. He concludes that not only is Ihumātao a “remarkable place, and is something quite unique in a city that has a tendency to bulldoze its history”, but also that “The truth is Fletcher is building at Ihumātao not because it is a good idea, but because it is convenient” – see: The real reason Fletchers is building at Ihumātao .

by Dr Bryce Edwards

There has been a striking mood of positivity and optimism in the commentary about Waitangi Day, and race relations in general, this year. It’s as if we have turned a corner as a nation. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern epitomised this in her prayer yesterday in which she said God “made us of one blood, now make us of one people”. Of course, the question is whether the feel-good mood at Waitangi translates into meaningful change for Māori, who remain severely disadvantaged compared to Pākehā in almost every indicator of well-being.

The new mood in race relations, so clearly enunciated by politicians and commentators over the last few days, was thrown into stark relief by broadcaster Mike Hosking’s column today which seemed entirely out-of-sync with other readings of race relations at the moment – see: Waitangi isn’t our national day, it’s our grievance day.

Hosking made this observation: “It’s not really our national day, it’s our grievance day. And not even a national grievance day, because the vast, vast majority of us don’t actually have a grievance. The vast, vast majority of us love our lives, love our country, feel blessed to be here, and understand just how lucky we are.”

Similarly, Lizzie Marvelly’s column at the weekend portrayed race relations around Waitangi Day as deeply negative, and she seemed pessimistic about the debates and discussions – see: For many, Waitangi Day is just a day off work.

Marvelly says her negative view is based on personal experience: “being Māori, Waitangi Day is always inevitably charged for me. It looms in my mind. Early in January, I subconsciously wait for controversy to erupt. Whatever happens, inevitably Māori bear the brunt of the negative publicity. We’re often cast as bloody Mowries with our hands out. We can’t even stop the grievance machine for one day of national significance. We’re an embarrassment. A joke.”

In fact, what was most striking about the public debate and discussions this week is they were not about grievance nor about “Māori bashing”, but about celebration of race relations progress. Two newspaper editorials were particularly interesting in this regard.

The Otago Daily Times declared yesterday that something new was happening: “For much of the past few decades, Waitangi Day has served as a pulpit from which differences have been shouted. This has been healthy, necessary and, at times, effective. But there is a feeling times are changing” – see: Waitangi Day about us all.

This editorial makes a controversial point reminiscent of Don Brash: “the most effective and lasting way each of us can celebrate is to see ourselves as one people, as simply ‘us’, without a ‘them’.” But the declaration of New Zealand being “one people” is made in the context of what the newspaper sees as a history of disadvantage for Maori, albeit one that is now being taken seriously and remedied.

The editorial applauds the widespread embrace of Māori culture: “We should celebrate Maori education, health and social services for the unique and effective role they play in New Zealand. We should celebrate Maori business, cultural and sporting successes, and the shifting role of Maori culture as a reverently respected bedrock of our national identity. Maori success is New Zealand success, after all.”

The New Zealand Herald also has a very interesting editorial drawing attention to the increasing entrenchment of bi-culturalism, improved political representation of Māori, increased usage of te reo Māori, and the fact that iwi have been strengthened by Treaty settlements – see: Celebration in order on our special day.

Unlike in the past, the newspaper declares, “New Zealand is in good heart, politically stable, economically prospering and capable of doing even better. This is a day to celebrate.”

Journalist Karl du Fresne is in sync with this new outlook of celebration and positivity about race relations and Waitangi Day – see his column, Waitangi Day: We’ve come a long way, with further to go.

Du Fresne looks at the wrongs and the continued ill-effects of colonisation for Māori, complains that we “still don’t know nearly enough about our incredibly rich and colourful history”, but also says we need to acknowledge that the “British were relatively humane, enlightened colonisers” and “colonisation brought benefits too”, helping make New Zealand “one of the world’s most civilised liberal democracies.”

Māori commentators have also been offering accounts of progress and positivity about race relations in 2019. Treaty educator Te Huia Bill Hamilton says “I have noticed over time that public reactions to announcements of claims being settled are not as negative as they were. People are learning more about our history and seeing the fairness of the settlement programme” – see: NZ moving into positive territory with Tiriti.

Hamilton is now 70 years old, but says “I resisted being Māori until I was 32” because his Māori mother discouraged him. But given his observations of the nation embracing Māori culture and identity, he says that if his mother was alive today she would say “This is great. I was wrong”.

Amongst a long list of progress for race relations, Hamilton makes the following point, worth quoting at length: “There are more attempts to respect tikanga Māori (cultural practices) and for organisations to engage effectively with tangata whenua. It is becoming normal for buildings to be opened and events to begin with karakia. Many institutions have their favourite waiata which they use to support their manager or CEO who begins his or her address with a mihi. The haka is now not only the entrée to an All Blacks game, but also an expression of success by other victorious sports teams. When asked to do something ‘Kiwi’ on our overseas trips, we say ‘Kia ora’ and as a group we sing Pokarekare Ana. The Crown has created post settlement governance entities which corporate Māori can work with to receive and administer funds and assets. Treaty settlement payments have made iwi significant commercial players in their communities. Most have invested carefully and their assets have increased. Everyone wants to do business with iwi.”

Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere is also full of optimism about the state of race relations, and says New Zealand should rejoice at the progress made and where New Zealand is today – see: The Treaty as a roadmap .

Tamihere argues that Treaty promises are being properly realised, that Maori culture is recognised and embraced by wider society, and he points to all politicians supporting the Treaty process and the settlements achieved.

However, he says that it’s time for Maori leaders to move on from a focus on past injustices towards action on economic inequality: “Maori leadership is also going to have to invest in lifting the performance of our people across the board. If this does not happen, we simply copy the levels of inequality now evident in non-Maori communities”.

It’s not just commentators who are suggesting the arrival of a new era. The events at Waitangi yesterday provides some evidence – especially in terms of the official ceremonies – that there may be a move towards greater political harmony instead of protest and conflict.

Simon Wilson’s coverage is particularly useful. In his article, All together now: The main parties walk the walk at Waitangi, Wilson explains that the two separate marae at Waitangi served two different purposes: “A spirit of unified purpose on the upper grounds; the conflict of old on the lower.” And it was on the upper marae that history was being made: “It was the first time that all the political parties had been formally welcomed to the upper marae on the treaty grounds together.”

In a second account, When the kotuku appears: Waitangi unity on show, Wilson coveys the immense civility and unity that was on show at a place where “it’s easier to obsess about the conflict”. Wilson explains that the “theme of the pōwhiri, officially, was political unity of purpose, as symbolised by the joint walk-on of the parties.”

Much of the focus is on the leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, who Wilson observes “made an excellent speech”. He says “Bridges is Ngāti Maniapoto and his mihi was delivered with enormous pride. The first Māori leader of a major political party, his first time as leader at Waitangi.”

But Jacinda Ardern was still the star of the show. Wilson explains that a waiata sung about her in the ceremony has the following translation: “Oh beautiful woman with a full heart and a peaceful soul, the matriarch of the world”. However, in this article, Wilson challenges Ardern on her suggestion that progress can be made in a non-partisan fashion, and finds her elaboration on this goal disappointing.

For another useful account of the peacefulness of the ceremonies, see Henry Cooke and Amanda Saxton’s Waitangi Day commemorations begin under the starlight. This article quotes Māori warden Rebecca Heti: “I’ve been coming to Waitangi Day here for 20 solid years… These days it’s so much better. More peaceful. There’s no one down at the flagpole, protesting… I don’t feel that’s befitting”.

But are the Waitangi events in danger of losing the colour and substance of the past? RNZ’s Jo Moir reports Whanau Ora Minister Peeni Henare having some concerns: “I’d hate for it to become rather bland and I’d like to see a little bit more intermingling between the forum tent down there and what goes on up here” – see: ‘I’d hate for it to become rather bland’ – Labour minister on Waitangi day.

Henare also responds to questions about the Prime Minister’s grasp of the Treaty principles and her use of te reo Maori: “It’s bloody impressive to see her understanding of those concepts and her ability to interplay between English and Māori is important. She always apologises for her Pakeha tongue but she does well.”

Of course a more culturally progressive world is one thing, but for many Māori who  continue to suffer severe economic and social deprivation it will take more than a harmonious and polite Waitangi Day events to justify feeling good about race relations in this country. It could be argued that even Maori political leaders are taking the easier option through concentrating on culture instead of economics. I’ve written about this in previous years, see for example, Is the new Government already failing Māori?

Finally, there’s been some interesting cartoons published this year about the week’s events – see my blogpost, Cartoons about Waitangi 2019. And for a discussion of the history of such cartoons, together with some more historic examples, see Colin Peacock’s How cartoonists framed Waitangi Day.

by Dr Bryce Edwards

The week before Christmas was dominated by what may actually have been the most important political issue of the year in New Zealand – revelations that government agencies have spied on New Zealanders through the use of private investigators. The matter ended up being somewhat buried in the end-of-year chaos, and perhaps conveniently forgotten about by politicians with an interest in the issue remaining unresolved.

Yet the story isn’t going away. Today, the Herald published revelations about how the private investigations firm Thompson & Clark was previously employed by government-owned Southern Response insurance to review Official Information Act answers about the use of the private investigations firm itself – see Lucy Bennett’s Megan Woods seeks answers on Southern Response’s use of private investigators.

Here’s the key part of the story: “In January 2017, when Woods was the opposition spokeswoman on the Christchurch quake recovery, Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd (TCIL) invoiced Southern Response $2070 for reviewing a response to an Official Information Act request from the Labour Party research unit on its use of TCIL.”

The article reports on how “TCIL also appears to advise Southern Response on how to circumvent public scrutiny.” For example, Thompson & Clark gave the following advice to Southern Response’s chief executive: “to get around disclosure, privacy and OIA issues, we normally set up a discreet email address for you – in Gmail or similar … do you want us to set up a discreet email account for you – or do you want to?”

The original “explosive” SSC report

Despite the State Services Commission report being released during the busy period just prior to Christmas – leading to what some see as a lack of media coverage and scrutiny of the issues – there have been some excellent articles and columns published about it.

Andrea Vance produced some of the best coverage of the report and the aftermath. Her first report, Security firm spied on politicians, activists and earthquake victims, detailed the full extent of what had been uncovered by the report into government agencies using private investigators. Overall, she said that the “explosive report details a slew of damning revelations”.

Vance followed this up with an in-depth article, Public service bosses ignored warnings about Thompson & Clark for years, which revealed that “for a decade public service bosses ignored the warnings about Thompson & Clark. Their tentacles were everywhere. Dozens of ministries and agencies used their services – and yet no-one in the upper echelons of the public service questioned their reach or influence.”

According to Vance, “officials became drunk on the power of the information offered up by security firms like Thompson & Clark. It allowed them to keep tabs on their critics and stave off any reputational damage.” She also argues that “A cavalier attitude to personal and sensitive information, and a troubling disregard for the democratic right to protest, was allowed to flourish within the public service over 15 years and successive governments.”

Hamish Rutherford produced some excellent analysis, explaining: “In an age where the use of contractors is already under scrutiny, a string of government agencies have effectively outsourced snooping, in some cases for highly questionable reasons. In some cases this was done with a lack of clear contracts, creating a fertile atmosphere for mission creep” – see: Use of private investigators exposes carelessness about role of the government.

Rutherford writes about how remarkable it is that public servants weren’t aware (according to the report) that what was going on was unacceptable. He therefore concludes: “we are reading about public servants who appeared to be seduced by private investigators, who decided to make their job easier without considering the implications for democratic rights, or the need to remain neutral. Weeding out improper behaviour may take work, but it seems the report exposes examples where public servants need to be told what their job involves, which would be a far more fundamental problem.”

RNZ’s Tim Watkin also has some strong analysis of what occurred, saying that the report on the state snooping “is a bit of a page-turner and a terrifying read for anyone who cares about the integrity of the public sector” – see: Heart of Darkness in the public sector.

According to Watkin, the situation is perplexing, given the risk-averse nature of the public service: “My concern is what this says about the culture at the heart of our public service. How did leaders who are by the very definition of their roles meant to be servants of the public decide that this level of covert surveillance was a good idea? Government agencies are typically so risk averse these days that they have multiple managers signing off press statements and an inability to make a decision on which pencils or toilet paper to buy without first clearing it with the minister’s office. Yet they are willing to subject those ‘ordinary New Zealanders” to secret surveillance.”

Possibly, Watkin says it’s the very risk-averse nature of the current public service that has caused them to be more open to snooping on citizens: “there seems to be a deep-seated sense of butt-covering and paranoia”. This is the very point made by Gordon Campbell in his blogpost, On why Thompson + Clark are just the tip of the iceberg.

In recent years, according to Campbell, the public service has become politicised, meaning that public servants have become more sensitive to the political needs of their ministers rather than the public good. This means that snooping on citizens and protestors starts becoming sensible, and to dissent against breaches of ethics in the public service has become much more dangerous for your career.

Not surprisingly, some of the strongest condemnation of state snooping on citizens has come from those organisations known to be affected – especially environmental groups. Former Green co-leader, and now Greenpeace head, Russel Norman emphasises the anti-democratic nature of what has been going on: “The chilling effect of being under constant and intrusive surveillance for simply campaigning on important social issues, fundamentally corrodes what it means to live in a free and democratic society. We’ve learnt that under the previous government, no-one was safe from being spied on if they disagreed with government policy” – see: Rotten to the core: The chilling truth revealed by the SSC report.

Norman concludes: “The State Services Commission (SSC) investigation may well be one of the most important examinations into the inner workings of the state that we’ve seen in New Zealand. I’d go as far as to call it our Watergate moment.”

If that sounds like the expected complaints of an activist, then it’s also worth reading what former United Future leader Peter Dunne had to say in his column, Only a first step in the data battle.

Dunne explains what has occurred as being “a gross breach of that implicit covenant between the Government and its citizens”, and he raises serious questions about how much more privacy is being curtailed by government agencies. In particular: “Was any information provided, formally or informally, to the intelligence services by Thompson and Clark, and was any information gathered at the behest of the intelligence services?”

Newspaper editorials have also condemned what has been uncovered in the public service. The Otago Daily Times has a strongly-worded editorial about the dangers to democracy uncovered in the report: “It blasts a warning about the insidious nature of state power and the need for vigilance and protection. Those who would disregard civil liberties for what they might think is the greater good should think again. Big brother and big sister are an ever-present threat. This is even more so in the electronic age. It was first thought the internet might lead to more freedom and more opportunity for dissent. But the massive losses of privacy, the ease with which data is collected and modern data analysis all hand more potential power and surveillance ability to big business and big government” – see: An ‘affront to democracy’.

In Christchurch, The Press has been asking important questions about what the report has revealed – see the editorial: More questions about spies and the public service. Here are the concluding questions: “The public needs to know more about this scandal that is so contrary to the way we expect our public servants to behave on our behalf. The public wants to know who approved of this surveillance, why it was considered necessary in a democracy and, perhaps most important of all, how much was really known about it by the ministers in charge.”

Will anything actually be done about the spying scandal?

The biggest risk to arise out of the controversial investigation into government agencies’ misuse of spying on citizens is that nothing further will now occur. So despite new stories being published about the state surveillance, there’s a danger that we are coming towards the end of the scandal, with no significant reform being offered to correct the problems.

Although the Thompson & Clark firm has been discredited by the scandal, many are arguing that they are not actually the real problem. For example, Andrea Vance says: “although they took advantage, Thompson & Clark aren’t responsible for public service culture and the undermining of democratic rights. That lies with Peter Hughes. For public confidence to be fully restored, the public service must demonstrate accountability and accept culpability, starting from the top down.”

Perhaps it’s time for a proper official and independent commission of inquiry into the spying problems in the public service. Security analyst Paul Buchanan has been arguing for this. And Gordon Campbell agrees: “given that the Thompson+ Clark problem is a by-product of the politicisation of the public service, security analyst Paul Buchanan is dead right in calling for a public inquiry. Only a wide-ranging investigation can address the attitudinal issues and power relationships between ministerial staff and public servants, of which Thompson + Clark are merely one of the end results.”

Tim Watkin has also argued that more needs to happen: “The proper response to this report is not a few hours of tut-tuting, the Prime Minister expressing formulaic concern that the spying was “disturbing” and the symbolic resignation of a single chair. No, the proper response is a change to the public sector culture. So who will lead that?”

Long-time political activist Murray Horton also proposes an inquiry – see: Thompson & Clark just tip of spyberg. Let’s have an inquiry into whole covert world of state spying. Horton explains the significance of the latest changes in state surveillance of citizens, saying that there’s been two major changes: contracting the spying out (perhaps deliberately in order to escape rules), and expanding the targets beyond just activists.

Other activists – especially those affected by the state spying – put forward proposals for reform in Jessie Chiang’s article, Environmental groups call for change after security firm revelations. For example, Russel Norman calls for prosecutions of those involved, and for the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment to be broken up. And Kevin Hague from Forest and Bird says: “I’m encouraging state services to go back to [learning] how to operate as a state service… and your obligations to the public and not just to the government of the day”.

For more thorough reform suggestions, also see blogger No Right Turn’s A private Stasi. He says “Businesses like Thompson and Clark, whose service is explicitly anti-democratic, need to be made illegal and put out of business.”

Finally, there’s the issue of the breaches of rules by Crown Law when working for the Ministry of Social Development – which Andrea Vance has described as “one of the most shocking findings”. The chief executive of MSD at the time was Peter Hughes, who of course is now chief executive of the State Services Commission, and therefore in charge of the whole of the public service. There will therefore be suspicions of conflicts of interest in terms of resolving that issue, and Hughes has handed the ongoing task to his own deputy at the SSC. For the best discussion of all this, see Aaron Smale’s Hypocrisy at the highest levels.