No, you must cease and desist, or we will take your company down.
THIS IS BLASPHEMY AGAINST TE AO MAORI FUNDAMENTALISM, the state religion of Aotearoa!
– Chants the NZ Broadcasting Standards Authority.
“Tikanga is mumbo-jumbo.”
That simple statement — a personal opinion about a belief system — is now being treated as religious blasphemy and an expression of racism in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), which was created to regulate television and radio broadcasting, has announced that it wants to investigate broadcaster Sean Plunkett over remarks made online — even though his programme, The Platform, operates entirely on the internet and therefore falls outside the BSA’s statutory jurisdiction.
So what is the alleged offence? Not defamation — but racism, racism and religious sacrilege.
The implication is that tikanga Māori (often described as “the correct way of doing things”) is now considered sacred, beyond public criticism. To describe it as superstition or mumbo-jumbo is apparently to insult something holy.
FROM FREE SPEECH TO BLASPHEMY LAW
New Zealand repealed its blasphemy law in 2019. Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 — “blasphemous libel” — was formally removed by Parliament.
Yet here we are, six years later, watching an unelected regulatory body attempt to re-create the same offence through the back door.
Under the BSA’s Discrimination and Denigration code, it is a breach to encourage hostility toward a group based on their religious beliefs.
But that clause is now being stretched to cover criticism of Mātauranga Māori, tikanga, and Te Ao Māori spirituality — systems that are explicitly spiritual and theological, not merely cultural.
In effect, the BSA is positioning itself as a guardian of sacred doctrine.
It no longer protects viewers from offensive broadcasting; it protects a state-endorsed faith from blasphemy.
A NEW STATE RELIGION
Across at least 50 statutes, government agencies are embedding Te Ao Māori spirituality into public policy, education, and law. Concepts such as wairua, mana, mauri, and tapu are invoked as guiding principles — not metaphorically, but spiritually.
What was once a neolithic belief system is now becoming a civil religion, administered through public-service codes, school curricula, and official ceremonies.
If the BSA succeeds in treating criticism of those ideas as hate speech or denigration, then New Zealand will have effectively re-introduced blasphemy law — only this time in service of Te Ao Māori fundamentalism rather than Christianity.
FREEDOM MEANS THE RIGHT TO DISAGREE
Freedom of religion includes the freedom not to believe.
Freedom of expression includes the freedom to criticise belief.
And equality before the law means that no faith — old or new — is above scrutiny.
Calling tikanga “mumbo-jumbo” may offend believers, but offence is not a crime.
The attempt to treat it as one is far more dangerous to democracy than any remark ever made by a broadcaster.
NEW ZEALAND’S REAL FREE-SPEECH EXCEPTIONS
LEGAL LIMITS
1️⃣ Hate-Speech & Incitement Laws – Human Rights Act 1993 (s61 & s131): illegal to incite hostility or contempt toward groups by race or ethnicity (Government has floated expanding this to religion, gender, and more).
2️⃣ Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 – criminalises online posts causing serious emotional distress.
3️⃣ Defamation Law – civil suits for damaging someone’s reputation.
4️⃣ Contempt of Court / Suppression Orders – speech that prejudices a trial or breaches suppression can lead to prosecution.
5️⃣ Privacy and Confidentiality Rules – publishing private data or leaked documents can breach the Privacy Act 2020.
6️⃣ Employment Codes of Conduct – speech ‘bringing an employer into disrepute’ can mean job loss, especially in public service or education.
7️⃣ Broadcasting & Advertising Standards – the BSA and ASA restrict material deemed offensive or denigrating to a group.
CULTURAL & SOCIAL TABOOS
8️⃣ ‘Cultural Blasphemy’ – criticising Te Ao Māori spirituality or political sacredness risks being labelled racist or hateful.
9️⃣ Academic & Institutional Codes – universities and ministries enforce ‘Tiriti obligations’ that chill dissent.
🔟 Social-Media Moderation / De-platforming – posts critical of state-endorsed culture or ‘disinformation’ are routinely removed.
Free Speech in NZ: Legally limited; Socially punished; Politically discouraged.
You may have the right to speak – but not the right to be heard.
CONCLUSION
If the Broadcasting Standards Authority wishes to act as New Zealand’s new Inquisition, it must first obtain a ruling by the High Court of New Zealand or from Parliament and the people.
Until then, its moral policing has no lawful authority and no place in a free country.
Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.
32 comments:
The fundamental issue is that laws require specific words and specific meanings. That's why legal writings cannot include sentences such as 'This means that this requires citizens to support this '. Vague phrasings about ways of doing cannot be incorporated into legal sentences that require exactitude. Obviously those who fail to provide exactitude want elastic meanings that special interests can stretch to benefit their groups.
Given what the BSA considers Plunkett's 'hate speech', then rants against colonialism should also be seen in the same way. Add the clownish capering in parliament and the inflammatory language used by part-maoris in that place of debate and by any definition we have hate speech, expressed in neolithic mumbo jumbo terms.
Mumbo Jumbo refers to meaningless or confusing language that pretends to make sense.
In the case of Tikanga it like a lot of things differs from Iwi to Iwi and thus some would find it hard to understand how to make sense of one tribe's Tikanga with another.
The word has African roots with English explorers finding the original wording difficult to pronouce and hence Mumbo Jumbo came to life in that confusion.
Maori from 1840 transported through time would be unable to understand todays modern maori language. Did the worrd mangamangaiatua exist pre european contact to describe abracadabra, mumbo-jumbo, hocus-pocus, meaningless form of words used as a charm?
Calling a belief system you either do not prescribe to, cannot understand or find irrelevant to your identity Mumbo Jumbo is not racist as it is now just a common coin of phrase.
Some folk are way too precious and others like the BSA are buried far too deep in the identity ethno-cultural wokism that NZ is awash with.
No culture is special and beyound comment or throw away catch phrases, but it seems in the NZ Public service there exist one that is....
I agree with Anon 713 above that "laws require specific words and specific meanings".
>"Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 – criminalises online posts causing serious emotional distress."
So why defines/delineates "serious emotional distress"? The supposed 'victim'?
There is effectively no defence against a charge of "causing serious emotional distress".
For the future it is important that Shaun establishes whether or not the BSA has jurisdiction over The Platform and the like. Currently The Platform is marvellously objective and relevant. As for the words in question my Concise Collins gives, among others , the definition "meaningless or unnecessarily complex language" and "an object of superstitious awe and reverence". As very little of tikanga is documented and proponents never explain in authoritative positive clear terms, then it is largely "meaningless". And the topic has certainly been elevated to be an object of superstitious awe and reverence. (Despite the very very many horrific aspects of original traditional tikanga).
I wonder if the BSA monitors the RNZ maori programme Thurday evenings. I suspect most colonists disposed to make complaints find the programme too much for their blood pressure, as I do.
The Maori word for mumbo jumbo IS tikanga. QED.
Richard Fanselow complained to the Broadcasting Standards Authority over a broadcaster’s casual remark about tikanga Māori. Meanwhile, the new Race Relations Commissioner, Dr. Melissa Derby, remains conspicuously silent on Takuta Ferris’ openly racist comments during the Māori seat by-election. The irony is exquisite: a sensitive man uses government bureaucracy to police minor speech, while the official watchdog stays comfortably silent on actual racial discrimination. If irony were a crime, Fanselow would be in a maximum-security cell.
Fanselow’s complaint is a masterclass in what one might politely call “fanciful prose gymnastics.” He takes Sean Plunket’s offhand description of tikanga as “mumbo jumbo” and contorts it into a declaration of racism. Every sarcastic inflection, every drawn-out syllable of Māori words, becomes evidence of prejudice.
In Fanselow’s twisted dictionary and thesaurus, any cultural criticism — however mild, policy-relevant, or humorous — is suspect. It’s a linguistic black hole where thought crime is measured by the breadth of one’s imagination.
The BSA, astonishingly, has accepted the premise. Its draft decision treats the remark as a “broadcast” under the 1989 Broadcasting Act and signals that it will adjudicate the complaint accordingly.
By asserting jurisdiction over The Platform, the BSA is doing what Parliament never authorised: inventing novel interpretations of the law to which it owes its existence.
Stacey Wood, chief executive of the BSA, insists this is all within the Act and not censorship. Technically correct, but misleading.
The Act may not literally forbid online adjudication, yet stretching decades-old language to police digital speech about cultural issues is legislative work masquerading as regulatory oversight. And calling critics “hysterical” hardly lends credibility; it suggests irritation, not reasoned legal confidence. The Authority appears more interested in demonstrating bureaucratic muscle than in restrained application of the law.
Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith has offered the usual hand-washing line: he cannot “comment on operational matters or individual cases,” though his officials will monitor potential media regulation impacts. That’s faint praise for what is essentially a constitutional question. When an unelected regulator stretches statutory language to dictate what can or cannot be said about culture, it is no longer operational — it is a threat to free speech. Goldsmith’s silence, whether cautious or timid, leaves the Authority free to set a dangerous precedent.
The implications are chilling. If the BSA can claim jurisdiction over online-only platforms and adopt Fanselow’s expansive definition of racism, then any digital commentator, podcaster, or citizen with a microphone or webcam in New Zealand could suddenly be considered a potential offender. Minor critiques of policy or culture might now carry regulatory consequences. Freedom of expression becomes conditional on bureaucratic interpretation.
All the while, the real machinery designed to address racial discrimination — the Race Relations Commissioner — is nowhere to be seen. Even Willie Jackson agrees Ferris’ tirade is racist.
Derby’s silence on Ferris’s blatant comments underscores the absurdity: the system prioritises policing cultural critique over confronting actual racial abuse. It’s a bureaucratic version of misplaced heroism: minor infractions are magnified, systemic problems are ignored.
Fanciful Fanselow has already achieved the notoriety he sought. The BSA’s complicity has given him an institutional megaphone for his ideological gymnastics, elevating a private academic’s wordplay into official government action. The public, meanwhile, is left to wonder: in a country that prides itself on free speech, how long before any casual remark about culture or policy triggers a regulatory inquisition?
If there is a lesson here, it is blunt: the BSA is testing limits it does not own, a citizen can manufacture a grievance and turn it into law by proxy.
—PB
The BSA leads the Government entities that should have the door locked and be disbanded . Goodbye , good riddance .
A bubble is about to burst.... we will be soaking in befuddled with mumbofumbojumbo..... and maybe the last of this rot...[please God?] And TPM.... wants guns???
PB @ 8.23am absolutely nailed the issues here, including Fanselow's attention seeking. The BSA are engaging in Bureaucratic Overreach 101. Somebody needs to kick the stool out from under them.
And let's not forget, tikanga actually is mumbo jumbo.
And this in a country that did away with its sedition laws in the belief it was protecting free speech? And where was the likes of Fanselow when Plunkett recited Tusiata Avia's vile and obscene poem - "The 250th anniversary of James Cook’s arrival in New Zealand" - featuring at its very essence, racial hatred and violence? Mr Fanselow, a very selective, woke snowflake methinks. Then we have the BSA, a 'bastion of balance' with its Board of three females and one male, all supported by an Executive team of seven females and another lonely male. An outfit that's going well beyond its purview, but then, not unlike the Waitangi Tribunal, it's 'all good' justifying one's existence when it's all paid for by someone else. What a nonsense and a very dangerous and, no doubt, potentially costly one at that. And if it ever gets to Court, who wants to wager where our tikanga loving judiciary might go?
This is outrageous, but maybe it's what this country needs to bring it back to its senses?
This BSA over reach is a hangover from Comrade Ardern’s days, when she wailed “I liken Freedom of Speech as weapons of War” on the second day of a UN conference to an audience of seven.
To be blunt, NZ especially the Government, and every Maori organization is openly racist.
And none of them have any intention of refraining from pushing their own racist agendas.
I believe many government departments still persist in performing "Karakia" before and after major meetings.
Not only is it a waste of time but for many who don't want to participate there is an awkwardness to acknowledging pagan rituals and chants.
If criticizing this so called "spirituality" is deemed "cultural blasphemy" then guilty as charged.
Come and arrest me.
Anon@10.32, I'm sure these overpaid and overzealous complete nincompoops would come looking, if they only knew who you were?
Such an obvious setup between Richard "Patsy" Fanselow (who, let's be honest, would only have taken such interest in The Platform for nefarious reasons), and the BSA itself, that this is almost laughable. That regular folk might consider Tikanga as "mumbo jumbo" is because it seems to mean whatever Maori want it to on any particular day. Lacking any logical or decipherable foundation in such way definitely puts it firmly under the (rather large) leftie mumbo jumbo umbrella.
The BSA's draft decision is a daft decision.
this piece and the supportive comments that follow are blatantly racist because. They mock and dismiss māori cultural beliefs as superstition, using language that degrades an indigenous worldview. comments like this keep alive the colonial mindset that māori culture should have to justify its existence to a pākehā standard. if people can read this and still say it isn’t racist, they don’t understand that racism is about power and history, and it doesn’t work in reverse when one culture has been systematically devalued by another.
>"... the colonial mindset that māori culture should have to justify its existence to a pākehā standard."
Not at all, mate. We ourselves went through a Neolithic phase thousands of years ago which does not "have to justify its existence" to anyone. It was just a developmental phase.
I have come across neo-paganism in Western societies but I have never come across anyone who would like to turn the clock back and live like that again. Now of course if you want to live according to your Neolithic belief system, go ahead - we're not stopping you. I'll bet you won't, though. I'll bet you will continue to avail yourself of the benefits of the modern world while at the same demanding 'respect' (mostly in the form of $$$, that other wonderful post-Neolithic innovation) for the culture and lifestyle of your forebears. So what does that make you?
"The 1917", I appreciate the quality of the English that makes up your submission but unfortunately it is 100% ad hominem and 0% substance directed at the topic under discussion. Perhaps you would like to resubmit and address the substance of the article at hand.
MODERATOR
Barand, you’re proving my point of exactly why the conversation about racism matters. Calling Māori culture a “Neolithic phase” is patronizing and racist. It treats a LIVING Indigenous culture as something primitive that should have been left behind, instead of recognizing it as equal and alive today. Māori people aren’t asking to live in the past, just for their culture and worldview to be respected rather than dismissed as primitive.
>"Calling Māori culture a “Neolithic phase” is patronizing and racist"
How can it be when every society on Earth went through it? 'Neolithic' means 'New Stone Age' i.e. after 'Palaeolithic' (Old Stone Age) and before the Age of Metals (the earliest of which historically was the Bronze Age). The Neolithic stage of development was one of several stages recorded by archaeology and history. Simple fact. If you want to get upset about it, go ahead, but it changes nothing.
There is nothing "equal" about Neolithic and Atomic Age cultures. Well, to be precise, certainly not about their technologies - the Space Shuttle beats the stone axe hands down. Likewise, there is nothing "equal" about modern medicine and what preceded it a century ago, let alone several millennia ago. I don't regard my ancestors' culture/technology to be 'equal' to today's either.
You are obviously of Maori descent and I am Dutch. So you attend to your heritage and I will attend to mine. I am not demanding that you run around in wooden clogs to show 'respect' for my Dutch heritage and you'd better not demand that I go through any make-believe motions associated with your heritage because I don't see that I am under any moral obligation to do so. There is no reason why we can't coexist and prosper together, each one of us minding our own cultural business.
I hear you Barend but what I think you’re missing is that what you’re calling it considering “neutral” isn’t actually neutral at all. Its reinforcing Western norms as the default. Whether it’s skipping a karakia or rejecting Māori ways of doing things, that’s not creating balance, it’s erasing another culture and pretending the Western one is the baseline. Valuing your own heritage is fine, but calling another “less evolved” is exactly the mindset that justified colonization and the erasure of entire peoples and worldviews.
>"Its reinforcing Western norms as the default."
Hm, I think that reads better as "reinforcing what have become global norms as the default."
The Japanese are particularly adept at observing universal norms (while beating the West at its own game!) while not betraying their cultural heritage and identity. Take a leaf out of their book.
>"Whether it’s skipping a karakia or rejecting Māori ways of doing things, that’s not creating balance..."
I have always absented myself when prayers or scriptural readings are conducted by supposedly secular institutions. I will likewise absent myself from religious rituals emanating from your cultural heritage when those are conducted in an ostensibly secular setting. Well, at least I'm consistent - NO gods, NO mumbling to the clouds, not on my behalf anyway.
>"..... it’s erasing another culture and pretending the Western one is the baseline."
No, it's just contextualising it. If I am a guest at a marae, I will go along with whatever rituals are being conducted (albeit passively - no make-believe). If it is a State institution, I expect secular norms to be observed - the alternative being the promotion of a religious belief system by the State, which is a no-no. Again, the word 'secular' would be more appropriate here than 'Western'.
Colonisation is something every civilisation has been into from Day 1, including yours. Tirading against it makes as much sense as tirading against the ageing process. As for "eras[ing] entire peoples and world views", the former has happened very rarely, and when it has, it has mostly been inadvertent, such as through the introduction of exotic diseases in the days before the spread of those was understood. The "erasure of worldviews" has been a lot more common - usually because people have come to see that introduced 'worldviews' beat the old endemic ones hands down with regard to people's wellbeing.
I live for decades among people to whom being born in a mud hut and having a 1 in 5 chance of perishing as a child (not to mention 1 in 10 women dying of childbirth complications) are 'traditional norms'. Given a choice between that and modern medicine and hygiene, what do you think they choose?
Quite exhausting. You’re mistaking dominance for universality. What spread through colonization isn’t proof of superiority, it’s proof of power.
Any how do you think the imperial powers, be they European, Turkish, Chinese, Mongol, Arab, whatever, got that power?
The mother of all tautologies is coming up!
Exactly. They got that power through domination, exploitation, and erasure. Power taken through violence doesn’t make a worldview universal, it makes it enforced. The fact those systems spread so widely isn’t proof of superiority, it’s proof of how hard they were imposed. That’s the legacy you’re defending and perpetuating. Keep evolving.
I did keep evolving - from stone axe to space shuttle.
Domination, exploitation and erasure? Describes most empires pretty well - the Aztecs, the Zulu, the Assyrian, the Mongol........ this could become a long list and most of them are not Western European!
Hi Barend, when it comes to a discussion about power, ask your desperate Anon. what they feel about the morioris, or what the morioris feel about maoris. Further, how anyone can defend a culture that brought so little to the 'human table' and yet seems to thinks its entrenched backwardness must be preserved and enter the mainstream 21st century? Your protagonist is on a hiding to nothing.
I think he realises that, Allen - note how he avoids every substantive issue I raise and stays with his marxofascist-approved mantra.
Not that I would deny him the privilege of preserving his cultural heritage (well, the cherry-picked bits) - but that's his issue, not mine and not yours.
You have described the situation in NZ well Barend. We are a secular nation, albeit based on Christian principles. Also multi cultural. If Maori just followed their own culture themselves instead of expecting everyone to also follow it at the expense of other cultures, NZ would be better off. Maori radicals do not want to admit they have benefited more than they have lost in the past two hundred years.For example, life expectancy has doubled, due to such factors as better medicines, better housing, warm clothing etc. Considering they didn't know what a wheel was, had no metal tools or implements and a limited diet, one wonders why they think that all of us should embrace and adapt to their world view now. To each his own. They have marae's and other groups to practise and observe their culture, the same as anyone in this country. Time has marched on, for better or for worse and we cannot wind the clock back. Live with the past, or live in the past but you can't do both
Post a Comment