Ben Espinar: Do Crown Owned Entities need the Rainbow Tick?

Correspondence with Airways New Zealand over drag queen DEI posting

Last week, The Platform asked some questions of Airways New Zealand, a Crown owned entity that operates our Air Navigation Services. The dialogue was prompted when the organisation posted promotional content on its social media, announcing proudly their reaccreditation to the ‘Rainbow Tick’ programme.

Rainbow Tick is an organisation operated by the Kahui Tu Kaha charitable trust in Auckland, which enjoys tax free status as a charity and is not beholden to the Official Information Act.

New Zealand plays host to a few of these grifting workshops, slinking their way through the private and public sectors and lining their pockets with the fruits of honest labour carried out by the kind of naïve suckers with neither the time nor interest to devote to the decadent affairs of board room executives.

Rainbow Tick is another stop on the same gravy train, their parent charity sucking in almost a hundred million dollars of revenue from providing goods and services in 2024.

There is no shortage of businesses that sign up to be evaluated by these grifters. A list of them appears at the bottom of their website, which reveals their clear concern for the social moral compass of oil giants like Z Energy, and the ethical dealings of Fonterra, often blamed for the majority of New Zealand’s climate pollution but at least wholly committed to being woke in board rooms.

Airways New Zealand announced their reaccreditation to the Rainbow Tick with a picture of a drag queen in an air traffic control tower, proclaiming their devotion to diversity in the workplace, and ensuring they have access to ‘the full talent pool’ in New Zealand to aid in the fight for attracting and keeping talented employees.

What followed was a series of emails, in which The Platform tried to establish what evidence Airways had of existing discrimination against the Rainbow community, or of any obstacles that drag queens or other members of the Rainbow Community might face when looking at a career in Air Traffic Control.

What we were trying to establish was whether Airways, or any business that pays thousands of dollars to Rainbow Tick per year, is genuinely trying to broaden their appeal as a workplace, or whether their middle and upper managers are just looking for another pat on the back.

You can decide for yourself based on the correspondence below:

Hi there

Ben Espiner here, producer at The Platform in Wellington. We're hoping to get an Airways NZ spokesperson for Sean Plunket’s show tomorrow morning to discuss the recent social media promotion of the gender tick re-accreditation, and the wider diversity and inclusion policies as  applied to the aviation industry. Let me know if anyone can be available for around 7:30am tomorrow by phone call

Many thanks!

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your patience with this and for the opportunity.

While we don’t have anyone available for an interview, you might find the below helpful. This can be attributed to an Airways spokesperson 

 Starts: 

Aviation is a highly complex and fast-evolving industry and we need the best and brightest talent to navigate the challenges ahead. Like the wider sector, we face increasing pressures in attracting and retaining skilled people. To meet these challenges, we need to ensure we have access to the full talent pool, ensuring no one is excluded due to bias or barriers beyond their skills and abilities to perform the role. 

 Airways aims to be an employer of choice and achieving Rainbow Tick accreditation is an important step in fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. It demonstrates our commitment to ensuring all of our people feel valued, supported, and able to bring their whole selves to work.

 The cost of attaining Rainbow Tick reaccreditation this year has been $7,700.

Hi Emma

Thanks very much for this. Sorry to come back at you on this, but has Airways NZ had any feedback at all that suggests that people who might belong to the rainbow community have either faced discrimination in the past in the hiring process at Airways NZ, or that staff from diverse communities have felt undervalued based on their gender, ethnicity or other characteristics unrelated to their ability to perform their role? Given that there are already legal implications under the human rights act in NZ for employers who discriminate based on these characteristics.

We would really appreciate an interview with CEO James Young about the reasoning behind the push for specifically gender diverse, rainbow applicants, and also on the choice to include what appears to be a drag queen in an air traffic control tower in the PR for this announcement. On that, could you also confirm whether that was a real photo/drag queen, and whether that specific drag queen was interested in a career in aviation or air traffic control…

Thanks!

Hi Ben, 

Thanks for following up. We appreciate the interest, but we won’t be putting James forward for an interview. 

But, to answer your questions:

 Rainbow Tick accreditation goes beyond legal compliance—it’s about ensuring an inclusive workplace where all of our team members feel safe, valued, and respected. We know that when people feel this way, they do their best work, which helps us deliver on our core purpose of keeping our skies safe. As mentioned, aviation is facing increasing challenges in attracting and retaining skilled people. To meet these challenges, we need access to the full talent pool. Achieving Rainbow Tick accreditation signals to prospective employees that we are committed to fostering a genuinely inclusive workplace.

No, we are not aware of any cases of active discrimination.

The photo used in our social media post was taken during the 2023 Queenstown Winter Pride event, which Airways proudly sponsored. It was selected because the person featured is a member of the Rainbow community. 

While our facilities are not typically open to the public, we occasionally host industry representatives and special guests at our discretion. During the Pride event, the person in the photo expressed interest in seeing our operations. The visit was managed in line with our strict safety and security protocols, as are all visits, to ensure there is no disruption to our operations.

We frequently share photos of visitors to our towers.

Ben Espiner produces the breakfast show on The Platform. He has a BA in Political Science and English Literature from Victoria University of Wellington. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.