Ani O'Brien: Trouble incoming - Law Commission Ia Tangata review

A review of the protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics

When is a review not a review?

When the outcome has been baked into the process from the start, dressed up in bureaucratic neutrality, and served with a side of activist jargon. The Law Commission’s Ia Tangata Issues Paper (NZLC IP53) is a transparent case of a predetermined outcome.

There’s something deeply corrosive happening in our public institutions and it’s cloaked in the respectable language of “consultation,” “inclusion,” and “independent review.” But if you scratch the surface you’ll find a growing trend of ideologically loaded, politically predetermined ‘reviews’ dressed up as open public inquiry.

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This 200-page monster review document claims to be an open, balanced, and consultative review of whether our human rights laws properly protect transgender, non-binary, and “intersex” New Zealanders.1 It asks whether section 21 of the Human Rights Act needs updating. In reality, it reads like an announcement that it must be updated.

But let’s not insult our intelligence.

This isn’t a review, it’s a PR exercise designed to pave the way for radical reform. The outcome of this review isn’t just likely, it’s telegraphed on every page. From the terminology, to the framing, to the selection of sources, the deck has been stacked. This is not an honest, pluralistic inquiry.

Call me cynical, but I’ve got the twitches that tell me a storm is coming. The New Zealand Law Commission say they will be reporting back on their “review of the protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics” in August. The Law Commission says:

In this project, Te Aka Matua o te Ture | Law Commission is examining the protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people who have an innate variation of sex characteristics.

The Human Rights Act protects the right to freedom from discrimination — for example, when accessing education, employment, housing, and goods and services. It also covers some associated issues (such as sexual and racial harassment).

Information on the scope of the project and the timeframe for the review can be found in the terms of reference for the project.

I cannot envisage a world in which this terribly woke organisation does not recommend radical inclusion of subjective and flawed gender identity concepts into our Human Rights Act.

Read here

Who is running the show?

Perhaps if the Commission was a sensible, objective, and politically-neutral organisation I would have more confidence in the review producing a sane report, but as things are I am predicting a highly-emotive, identity-politics-riddled, and luxury-beliefs-laden set of conclusions. Unfortunately, a review is always only going to be as good as its reviewers and the people treated as experts. Or rather the tone, political-bent, and predetermined conclusions depend on the personnel.

In New Zealand, whenever there is a government or quango review/report/inquiry related to “rainbow” matters there is a small group of self-announced experts who are called in to share their monochromatic expertise on lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, asexuals, queers, non-binaries, two-spirits, intersex people, and whoever else they’ve added to the absurd acronym. Seriously, go look at every “rainbow” steering committee or advisory group; you will find the same names. It’s a good grift if you can get it, I guess. But for a lesbian like me who is a dissenter when it comes to the alphabet mafia “queer” identity crap, the invitations are highly unlikely.

This particular Law Commission review was guided by an “Expert Advisory Group” comprised of:

Ahi Wi-Hongi, Professor Claire Charters, Frances Joychild KC, Jack Byrne, Jelly O’Shea, Mani Bruce Mitchell MNZM, Professor Paul Rishworth KC, Phylesha Brown-Acton MNZM and Susan Hornsby-Geluk.

They also had a Māori pūkenga (expert group) comprised of:

Ahi Wi-Hongi, Dr Elizabeth Kerekere, Hon Justice Joseph Williams, Dr Kim McBreen, Mx Pere Wihongi, Paraone Gloyne, Dr Tāwhanga Nopera, Tu Chapman and Tu Temara.2

The Commissioner responsible for the review is Professor Claudia Geiringer. She is the Chair of Public Law at Victoria University and teaches and researches primarily in the areas of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, constitutional and administrative law, comparative constitutional law and the laws of Parliament.3 Claudia is a Fellow Ahurei of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and a barrister and solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand.

Radical language affirms outcome from the outset

One of the easiest ways to detect the ideological fingerprints on a government document is by looking at its language.

Flicking through Ia Tangata, from the outset and throughout, you’re hit with terms like “gender-affirming,” “cisnormativity,” “lived experience,” “deadnaming,” and “sex assigned at birth.” These aren’t neutral descriptors. They are activist vocabulary, and their uncritical use signals which worldview the Law Commission sees as gospel.

When your starting point is that sex is a colonial construct and gender identity is the true essence of personhood, you’ve already chosen a side. Good luck having a fair fight in a ring that one of the fighters built, owns, and referees.

The terminology is explicitly political and comes from a particular worldview; one that treats gender identity as more real than biological sex, and regards disagreement with that premise as bigotry rather than debate.

By embedding this language throughout the paper, the Commission isn’t creating neutral ground for discussion. It’s establishing the terms of the debate in advance. If you don’t accept this vocabulary, you’re already excluded from the conversation.

It’s linguistic gerrymandering.

But this issue goes beyond word choice. It’s baked into the review’s very terms of reference.

A genuine review starts by asking whether there’s a problem that needs solving. It considers whether existing laws are adequate and whether new ones would be justified. But this review skips that step entirely. The assumption that existing law is insufficient is already made. The only question is how to expand protections.

Should we amend the definition of “sex”? Create a new category for “gender identity”? Introduce a separate ground for “gender expression”? All of these are on the table. What’s not on the table is the possibility that none of this is needed,; that our current protections already work well enough.

This is like starting an investigation by asking, “What punishment should we give the accused?” without ever establishing guilt. It is railroading.

One-sided sources: The problem of ideological data

When the Law Commission references research, it overwhelmingly draws from activist-run surveys and advocacy reports. Chief among them is Counting Ourselves, a self-selecting survey led by lobby groups and trans academic Dr Jamie Veale. The findings are not peer-reviewed. The sample is not representative. The conclusions are written with policy change in mind, not scientific rigour.

This wouldn’t be so concerning if the Commission balanced these sources with robust data from across the spectrum. But it doesn’t. You won’t find references to the UK’s Cass Review, which raises serious concerns about gender-affirming medical pathways for minors. You won’t find hard data on detransition rates. You won’t find clinical literature questioning the validity of self-ID laws.

And you certainly won’t find any meaningful engagement with women’s rights groups, like Speak Up For Women, or religious communities who have legitimate concerns about how these changes affect them. Instead, those perspectives are sanitised, footnoted or ignored altogether. This is not balance. It’s bias by omission.

Where are the competing rights?

One of the most glaring weaknesses of the Ia Tangata paper is its cowardice in dealing with competing rights, particularly the clash between sex-based protections for women and the ideology of gender identity.

Women’s sports, women’s prisons, women’s refuges, women’s scholarships; these are all spaces and opportunities that exist because biological sex matters. They were hard-won, and they remain necessary.

So what happens when someone with a penis (you know… a man) identifies as a woman and wants access to those spaces? What happens when that claim is backed not just by assertion, but by law?

The review dances around these questions. It acknowledges they exist, but shies away from any meaningful resolution. There’s no clear guidance, no proposed test, no legal framework for adjudicating these inevitable conflicts.

In other words, the Commission is happy to open Pandora’s Box, knowing they won’t need to clean up the mess.

The illusion of consultation

The final insult is the pretence that this process is a “consultation.” Sure, the public can make submissions. Sure, there are 80 questions posed throughout the document. But the framing of those questions makes it abundantly clear what answers are expected. This is not about gathering insights. It’s about gathering justification.

And for those who dare to push back? You’re branded as “anti-trans,” “phobic,” or, ironically, accused of erasing others. The entire structure of the consultation assumes the moral and political superiority of one side, and dares the rest of us to prove we’re not hateful just for disagreeing.

That’s not democratic deliberation. That’s the wolf dressed in Grandma’s clothing: coercion disguised as civility.

Why this matters for everyone

You don’t have to be a radical feminist, a religious conservative, or a so-called (gasp) “TERF” to be alarmed by what’s going on here. This issue goes far beyond the topic of gender. It’s about how law is made and it’s about the integrity of our institutions. It’s about whether we can trust government reviews to genuinely consider a diversity of viewpoints or whether they’ve become rubber stamps for pre-approved ideology.

Because if this is how reviews are run, if the conclusions are preloaded, the questions are slanted, and dissent is stigmatised, then public trust dies.

We deserve legal reform processes that are open, intellectually honest, and grounded in reason, not ideological loyalty. We deserve reviews that treat disagreement as a feature of democracy, not a bug. And we deserve institutions that reflect the full, messy, glorious diversity of views that exist in this country and not just the ones endorsed by Wellington lobbyists.

References:

1 https://www.lawcom.govt.nz/assets/Publications/IssuesPapers/NZLC-IP53.pdf
2 https://www.lawcom.govt.nz/assets/Publications/IssuesPapers/NZLC-IP53.pdf
3 https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/Claudia.Geiringer

Ani O'Brien comes from a digital marketing background, she has been heavily involved in women's rights advocacy and is a founding council member of the Free Speech Union. This article was originally published on Ani's Substack Site and is published here with kind permission.