Graeme Reeves: Freedom of speech under attack

Democracy cannot exist without FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Freedom of Speech is enshrined in New Zealand law.

Section 14 of The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 is explicit, “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

Nonetheless it seems that the right is restricted to expressions that are approved by any identity (woke) group that may be offended by the expression.

A recent example was the violent reaction by the Transgender community to the visit to New Zealand by Posie Parker the British female –rights activist.

We now have the phenomenon of Maori activists reacting violently to Julian Batchelor exercising his right to freedom of expression and his concomitant right to impart his information and opinions.

Maori activists, of course, have the same right to express themselves. But not violently.

The following is an account from an attendee at Batchelor’s recent Palmerston North meeting.

“When we got to the Chinese venue, there were people there directing everyone to the new venue, which was Park Rd right next to the Lido indoor swimming complex. I never actually got to get into the venue, but was pushed, shoved, spat at, elbowed and jammed into the gate by protesters.  The elderly chap in front of me got the same, and had his spectacle knocked off his face and then deliberately scrunched into the ground. The cops stood there in front of the gates and did absolutely nothing, just watched. After an hour I managed to sneak away and get back to my vehicle and went home.

“We were called racists, white honky mongrels and that their ancestors should have wiped all us white pakeha pigs out when they had the chance. It was extremely intimidating and you didn’t know how far out of hand it was going to get. And like I said, the cops (about a dozen of them, including one that has 3 stars on each shoulder) just stood and watched and did nothing at all.”

The above description of events is extremely distressing. It concerns me as it should every New Zealander.

It is self-evident that New Zealand has become divided by race in a way that I have never seen before in this Country. The level of  toxicity has become extreme.

I regret to say, that the Ardern Government and its allies have fomented the deep division in our society by adopting policies that have been reckless, even cavalier, to the feeling of the nation as a whole.

Prime Minister Hipkins said as much when he admitted that the Government had not taken the people with them at the time he moved Minister Mahuta aside.

What the Arden Government failed to do, and we know why, was to act transparently as it promised to do. It has become obvious to everyone who has the slightest interest in our democracy that Ardern and her allies knew that if they revealed the content of the He Puapua road map to a 50/50 co- governance structure for New Zealand by 2040 there would have been an outcry from the majority of the people.

Undeterred they made a conscious, scurrilous decision to deceive the people of New Zealand and  proceeded surreptitiously to implement what can only be described as a revolutionary overthrow of one the longest continuous democracies in the world.

New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant all adult women the vote in 1893.

Barabara F. Walter in her book “How Civil Wars Start And How to Stop Them” published in 2022 observed that one of the best predictors of whether a country will experience a civil war is whether it is moving toward or away from democracy. The states that are in this middle ground have been given the title of “anocracies”.

My question is, is New Zealand on a journey to no longer being a Democracy and moving into a state of anocracy?

We know that the prevailing view of the Labour Government (2014 – 2023) is not what New Zealanders have considered to be a democracy since 1893 with the introduction of the universal franchise.

We know this because of their clandestine implementation of He Puapua  and from statements made by senior Ministers Willy Jackson and Kieran McAnulty.

For example on Q+A on 23 April 2023 in answer to Jack Tame’s question , Do all New Zealanders, Maori and non-Maori, have the same level of representation as a proportion of the population in those regional representative groups? McAnulty said, “No, they don’t, because obviously we’re proposing that mana whenua have 50-50, alongside local government reps. We signed a Treaty. The Treaty recognises that Maori have special rights, in water in particular and that’s been tested in the courts and found to part of New Zealand law.”

The only thing that is true in McAnulty’s statement is that representation on the regional representation groups will be 50-50 Maori and other.

The idea that the Treaty of Waitangi established that the government of New Zealand would be based on Maori having a 50% unelected partnership with non-Maori is a monstrous lie.

Walter records a conversation she had with an Iraqi woman called Noor. “When I asked Noor to describe what changed before civil war erupted in her home land, she looked at me for a moment. Soft-spoken and reserved, she radiated the quiet confidence of someone who doesn’t break easily. Her face, however, was heavy with sadness. ‘People began asking whether you were Shai or Sunnie,’ she said.”

Noor’s story is telling. It tells us where critical race theory will take us.

For me it is sad that identity politics has infected us in New Zealand. We are no longer New Zealanders. We are now either Maori or other. Moreover if one is Maori one must identify one’s tribal affiliations which not only divides us as other or Maori but also divides Maori into tribal groups.

We can no longer look someone in the eye and say categorically, “I’m a New Zealander”.

The result is that we have allowed ourselves to become factionalised. We cannot say any more that we are a secular society. We have become a sectarian society.

Sectarianism inevitably leads to conflict and there are numerous examples around the world to provide the evidence.

I started this piece with an example of what is happening in our Country now.

It is not hard to imagine the escalation of such events unless we take serious action to reverse the divisions manifesting in our society.

 We must restore the foundations of our democracy and honour the sacrifices made by generations of New Zealanders in the noble cause of defeating the enemies of our precious democracy.

I will end with the words of the former Labour Party Prime Minister David Lange who said in a speech in 2000, “… What we cannot do is acknowledge the existence of a separate sovereignty. As soon as we do that, it isn’t a democracy. We can have a democratic form of government or we can have indigenous sovereignty. They can’t coexist and we can’t have then both.”

Graeme Reeves is a lawyer and former National MP.