Yvonne Van Dongen: Apologise For Not Lying

A male artist forced a small local paper to stop telling the truth.

Last week a small local newspaper on the Kapiti Coast apologised for correctly sexing a man who believes he is a woman.

The man is described in a media release as the “renowned multidisciplinary Indigenous artist Taupuruariki (Ariki) Whakataka Brightwell.”

Mike's Minute: We get a lot of reports from people with no power or influence

We have in this country a lot of people paid for by us that basically do a lot of talking and gesturing and do it with no real power or influence.

A lot of them are commissions. One of them is the Human Rights Commission.

Bob Edlin: Ministry in ACT’s crosshairs hands out $30,000 for Gaza lobbying

The New Zealand Herald early this week reported that a cross-party group of politicians say it is “difficult to assess” what the Ministry for Ethnic Communities is achieving for those it is meant to serve.

This reportedly led an ACT MP to ask, “what’s the point?”

Mike Butler: Rights body polls treaty thinking

A new treaty poll commissioned by the Human Rights Commission is intended to change your mind on the treaty, according to the commission's “indigenous rights governance partner”, Dayle Takitimu, who fronted the poll.

“Many of the results tell a different story to the narrative of division we have been fed over the past two years,” Takitimu said.

Zoran Rakovic: Human Rights Commission to Public: Sit Down, Shut Up, and Pay for the Treaty

The New Zealand Human Rights Commission, in its well-meaning but dangerously misleading tone, declared on its website: “The Treaty does not, as is sometimes claimed, confer ‘special privileges’ on Māori, nor does it take rights away from other New Zealanders. Rather, it affirms particular rights and responsibilities for Māori as Māori to protect and preserve their lands, forests, waters and other treasures for future generations.”

Bob Edlin: No, it’s not the Treaty which grants privileges to Māori – it’s politicians

Politicians eagerly do what the Treaty of Waitangi does not: they dispense favours and privileges to Māori.

They want to establish “partnerships” not because the Treaty demands them, but because they claim to be invoking “principles” established more than 100 years after the treaty’s signing.

The treaty’s role in treating Māori and non-Māori equally is mentioned on the Human Rights Commission’s website:

Simon O'Connor: Entitlement

Those on the 'woke left' are only tolerant of those they agree with while routinely expressing entitlement to positions of power and influence.

Another week, another set of examples of ‘woke left’ entitlement.

What I mean by this entitlement, is an increasingly explicit belief that only they (the woke left) have the right to speak freely, to exercise influence, to have power, and represent the community.

Bob McCoskrie: Human Rights Commission treds on new ‘terf’

Let me be quite clear from the outset – the Human Rights Commission is just an activist group that should be immediately defunded. But the Government has just appointed some new staff. And a bunfight has resulted.

If you want evidence of why you the taxpayer should not be funding activist groups like the Human Rights Commission – that’s the “human rights for people we like” commission – you only need to look at their recentpublication – 102 pages of pure bunkem that wasted a tree in printing. The Conversion Practices Insights Report

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 16/8/24

The govt has struck a blow for flood resilience down south – but the funding was announced by Shane Jones back in 2020

According to RNZ, the minister of climate change- Simon Watts, if we recall correctly – released the Climate Change Commission’s first report assessing the progress of the government’s national adaptation plan.

But there is no mention of the report’s release or what Watts might think of its contents on the government’s official website.

Dr Peter Winsley: Tikanga, law and information asymmetry

Justice Joe Williams in his 2013 paper Lex Aoteoroa made a case for Māori tikanga being recognized as New Zealand’s “first law”. Tikanga existed prior to New Zealand’s development of a legal system based on the British model. Without written language pre-European Māori tikanga is not well documented. However, its customs and norms governed, for example, relationships between people and the environment, property ownership, and conflict resolution.

Bob McCoskrie: “Human Rights” – just not yours

If you want evidence of why you the taxpayer should not be funding activist groups like the Human Rights Commission you only need to look at their latest publication – 102 pages of pure bunkem that wasted a tree in printing. But it’s gonna be cold tonight – so it’s the perfect fire starter

Conversion Practices Insights Report has been released by the Human Rights Commission – that’s the human rights for people we like commission. The intro says:

John McLean: Hate Packer

The Wahine Māori Party Co-Leader descends to new depths of divisive derangement

With her latest racial ranting, Te Pati Māori (Māori Party) Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer has lowered her own abjectly low standards. Faced with a person like this, it’s hard to remain civil.

ACT's Todd Stephenson on Scrapping the Human Rights Commission

Leah Panapa talks to ACT's Todd Stephenson on the Platform about scrapping the Human Rights Commission.

Click to view

John McLean: Treason, Sedition........Hate Speech

What are these Legal Leviathans, exactly?

In the turbulent seas battering New Zealand, no Leviathan serpents are more ideologically laden and hard to harpoon than “Treason”, “Sedition” and “Hate Speech”. These salty barbs are being bandied around with increasingly gay abandon.

Let’s rise from the inky depths of our ignorance, snatch Poseidon’s trident, skewer the meanings of this trio of terms and breach the surface out into Enlightenment.

Daily Telegraph NZ: Ditching Paul Hunt a good start, but not enough to fix the HRC – Act

“The Justice Minister’s decision not to reappoint Paul Hunt is a good start, but doesn’t go far enough to acknowledge the Human Rights Commission’s rot,” says Act MP Todd Stephenson.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 8/12/23

Willis fails a taxing app-titude test but govt supporters will cheer moves on Te Pukenga and the Human Rights Commission

The Minister of Defence has returned from Noumea to announce New Zealand will host next year’s South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting and (wearing another ministerial hat) to condemn malicious cyber activity conducted by the Russian Government.

A bigger cheer from people who voted for the Luxon government is likely to be generated by news that the process of disestablishing Te Pūkenga is under way.

Point of Order: Don’t accept Human Rights Commission reading of data on Treaty partnership

Wellington is braced for a “massive impact’ from the new government’s cutting public service jobs, The Post somewhat grimly reported today.

Expectations of an economic and social jolt are based on the National-Act coalition agreement to cut public service numbers in each government agency in a cost-trimming exercise “informed by” head counts in 2017.

National campaigned on a 6.5% reduction in spending across the public service.

Peter Winsley: The Human Rights Commission needs to do its job and stay out of politics

The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is charged with upholding all New Zealanders’ human rights. Fundamental rights include free speech, non-discrimination, and equality before the law.

However, the HRC has declined to take action against racist acts hostile to non-Māori. It did not defend effectively Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s free speech rights in New Zealand. Rather than focusing on its core legal obligations the HRC has now set as a strategic priority the elimination of racism from New Zealand. It believes this will require race-based constitutional change.

Bruce Moon: The Abuse of Human Rights

“Ye shall know them by their fruits” Matthew 7, 16

With a little “googling” one may discover an extensive but undated(i) article entitled “Human Rights in Aotearoa” which is quite obviously a statement issued by the “Human Rights Commission”. Now, right at the start, we may surely ask why, instead of New Zealand, our country’s authentic name since 1643, one of the oldest and most widely known in the whole Pacific Ocean, the “Human Rights Commission” uses a fanciful name, used occasionally by early Maoris for one or other of the main islands? It did happen to be used in a couple of fairy tales by two colonial writers, William Pember Reeves(ii) and Stephenson Percy Smith(iii) in the 1890s. As Michael King noted, “[F]ew Maori opted for Aotearoa”.(iv) We may conclude that “Aotearoa” was a fanciful name for our country of a few colonials! Just what is this Commission, paid for by New Zealand’s taxpayers, trying to do in using this fake so prominently?

Evidently the true name of our country, “New Zealand”, sticks in this Commission’s collective throat. Why??

Karl du Fresne: New Zealand's most useless public servant

The man masquerading as the guardian of New Zealanders’ human rights has weighed in, from his Olympian heights, on the Posie Parker affair.

As usual, Paul Hunt’s opinion is worthless and leaves us wondering once again what we did to deserve this third-rate British import and how much longer we should be expected to put up with him.

The chief human rights commissioner writes, as if we all eagerly awaited his insights, that he wants to provide a human rights perspective on the issues raised by Parker’s visit. He adds, in Uriah Heep fashion, that he does this “from where I sit with my multiple privileges and advantages”.

Oh, please. Breast-beating liberal white guilt has rarely been more cringingly displayed. We can only hope his $365,000 salary eases the pain.