David Farrar: DPMC funded Director calls Government a death cult

You can have a reasonable disagreement on whether boot camps are effective. But someone who states that the Government hates children and is a death cult is a bad faith extremist. They're the equivalent of someone on the right who thinks Jacinda did vaccine mandates because she is paid by Pfizer. Crazy conspiracy theorists.

But Professor Kidman is not some random person. She is the co-director of He Whenua Taurikura, a supposed charity that is funded mainly by the Government. Their parent body's postal address is the Dept of PM and Cabinet.

Chris Trotter: The “Us versus Them” Worldview.

The sign said it all: “No Media Access”. Whatever was going on behind these closed doors, it was not open to the scrutiny of a free and independent media. Given the meeting’s/hui’s ostensible purpose – Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism – this was rather odd. The sheer volume of government and quasi-government noise being generated on the subject of extremism surely suggests that the proceedings of He Whenua Taurikura deserved the widest possible audience.

What were the organisers of this, the second hui called into existence by the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch mosque shootings, afraid of? Were they worried that journalists not 100 percent sympathetic to the ideals animating the hui might report something untoward? Like the truth?