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.
3 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.
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