On a quiet Friday afternoon in August, justice minister Paul Goldsmith announced the appointment of three leadership roles at the Human Rights Commission: Stephen Rainbow as chief human rights commissioner, Gail Pacheco as equal employment opportunities commissioner and Melissa Derby as race relations commissioner. The three are scheduled to take up their new roles next month.
Human rights commissioner appointments have historically been uncontroversial, even if the commissioners themselves sometimes court controversy in the role.
This is nonsense for a start. What they mean is that when the appointments are the normal left-wingers, then the media don’t cover it. There was in fact lots of criticism of Paul Hunt being appointed considering he was in the Corbyn faction of the UK Labour Party, but it is only controversial if it is left wingers who are upset.
But documents released under OIA to The Spinoff last week suggest the recruitment process wasn’t straightforward, with neither Rainbow nor Derby being put forward as shortlisted candidates by the independent panel tasked with conducting the “transparent process”.
Of course not. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. The Government wants Commissioners who believe in equality, while the officials want ones who only believe in equity.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
10 comments:
Equality means all have equal opportunity.
Equity means all have same outcome.
Because all humans have different abilities, attitudes and intelligence, equity is not possible in the same way that all sports have winners, losers and second and third etc.
The only way to achieve "equity is" to handicap the population down to the lowest denominator.
Hey - that's Marxism !!
Melissa Derby is someone who believes that things like good manners and hard work are key factors in achieving success, rather than systemic racism. She made that clear in a presentation she did for the short-lived series 'The Conversation' a couple of years ago. Whatever you think of that view, it'd have chimed in with the present government's take on things, especially that of ACT. It's all Realpolitik. Albeit if I were Sir Terence Arnold (chair of advisory panel) or Chris Finlayson (a member), I might be bemused to considered too much of a raging leftie for my views to be considered worth taking into account.
There is only one way of managing the Human Rights Commission and that is to scrap it altogether. That will be the best way if promoting human rights in NZ.
HRC staff may not be "raging Lefties" in their style - but they are in their intentions. Two " lead persons " now exist ( for Maori and Pakeha issues) - so clearly a separatist approach. Also, Claire Charters (main He Puapua author) has a specially created brief at the HRC established before the previous commissioner departed. Like Moana Jackson, she has close contacts with the UN/HRC - and no doubt can " summon" support such as visits to check progress, " please explain" letters on contentions issues etc. She is a Constitutional law expert and has worked closely with Supreme Court Judge Willims on a Ti Tiriti -based constitution based on partnership/co-governance ( which would then morph into the tribal rule where Maori hold final veto as per the He Puapua model )
The aim is to relentlessly demonstrate that NZ is racist and Maori victimhood must be compensated. The result is to depict - whether subtly or overtly - a divided society.
Sir Terence Arnold is a former Supreme Court Judge and Solicitor-General and Chris Finlayson is of course a former Attorney-General under National, not HRC staff - so not raging lefties. Claire Charters had a one-year brief on the HRC from March 2023, so is presumably now gone back to her job as a Professor at Auckland Uni. So nothing really to worry about if He Puapua is your bogey.
Finlayson - a List MP never selected /elected by the people ( why not?) - will go down as having done enormous damage. He was also the lawyer for Ngai Tahu settlements . Conflict of interest is obvious. He has the right to his views - but not to foist them on NZers.
Yeah, he's a lawyer. Anyway, this is my last response to anonymous posts - it's too confusing. I think the site would be best advised to require commenters to offer a moniker: doesn't have to identify then personally, but it should enable people to distinguish one respondent from another. Quite a few people already already use non-identifiable titlles.
Any anonymous comment being responded to can be identified by using the time the comment was submitted e.g. the one preceding you would be Anon 3:09.
If we were to insist on personal identiers we might as well shut down Breaking Views altogether. This is NZ where people are afraid to be seen offering opinions that may not meet the approval of the ideological ruling class and so might cost them their jobs or whatever other sanction may be applied. Sad, that, as it used to be a country where freedom of conscience and expression were once cherished..........
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Thanks for the comment. What I was advocating was not names that identified a person as an individual, but some kind of moniker that, for responders, made it possible to distinguish one anonymous commenter from another. If there are several anonymous posts on the one thread, it can be hard to figure out whether you're engaging in a discussion with one person or with more, regardless of when they post. I use an alias on X, to avoid being abused in my professional capacity -but I assume it's an alias unique to me. I think what I'll do in future is just respond to the thread, or to someone who is identifiable as an individual.
You are quite right, Joanne. Pardon me for misreading your earlier comment. I too would prefer to see Comments arranged in threads but the programme we use doesn't allow for that.
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