Quotes of the week

If we limited ourselves to those who had never said anything controversial, the list would be very small. – Paul Goldsmith

It is a small revolution but I wouldn’t want to overcook it. We have had decades of an experiment, a liberal experiment, of a child-centred, play-based, project-based, open-plan experiment that has not worked.

We absolutely need to have a shift back, a pendulum swing back to a knowledge-rich curriculum with evidence-based teaching practices. We are assessing our kids’ progress along the way to make sure they are on track and they are not falling behind and when they do fall behind, we intervene early to make sure they are catching up. – Erica Stanford

What we have had is this snowball of band-aids, that’s what I call it, that’s growing and growing and growing and we never stop doing anything because we actually don’t know if it’s working or not. – Erica Stanford

You walk into any school – you can tell by the leadership the results of the school because that is the job of the principal to drive teaching and learning and improvement and results. They were excellent leaders so excellent outcomes. – Erica Stanford

But in light of those results, I can’t look a parent in the eye and go ‘we’ll get to it next year.’

We don’t have time to waste. – Erica Stanford

I understand that having two new curricula areas in one year for our teachers is massive. It is overwhelming which is why we are providing all of these resources for the teachers: guidebooks, workbooks, resources and professional learning but I know it is a big ask, so what more can we do? –

It is so crucial that we have a knowledge-rich curriculum that lays out every single year what has to be taught and it is really important for things like English and maths where you have to build mastery over time. – Erica Stanford

I need to accelerate kids’ learning tomorrow. – Erica Stanford

Most sensible people agree that men can’t be biological women and shouldn’t be able to muscle into women’s spaces and sports – once what’s happening has been explained in clear language. 

So those of us who use clear language have to be silenced. And the bullying is often much worse if the person speaking up is a woman (the real kind). Sporting legend Daley Thompson has stood against the inclusion of males in women’s sports. But it’s his friend, fellow Olympian Sharron Davies, who is constantly harassed by people calling her a bigot and transphobe, and trying to get her fired.

The most high-profile target for such misogynistic abuse is author JK Rowling. Whenever she tweets about women’s right to single sex spaces, services and sports, the response is the vilest misogyny. This continues even as people who tweet racist abuse are being given swingeing jail terms and the new Labour Government is considering adopting a worryingly broad definition of “Islamophobia”.  – Helen Joyce

But the one group you can abuse and threaten with impunity, it seems, is “TERFs” – trans exclusionary radical feminists, as the trans mob calls gender critical women. Just as the police used to say about nagging wives who were murdered by their husbands, we apparently bring it on ourselves.

For many of those who shape our society, the desires of a tiny minority of men outweigh the rights of women, which depend on us being able to exclude all men from our spaces, whatever their paperwork and however they identify. Over the past decade the trans lobby has confused and bullied many politicians, journalists and business leaders into treating trans-identifying men as the world’s most vulnerable minority.

Women who object are told that accepting other people’s identities does them no harm, and that they must “be kind”. Well, being punched in the face by someone whose biology means they’re more than twice as strong as you looks pretty harmful to me. And insisting that women pipe down and take those punches, while threatening the unborn children of those who try to defend them, is anything but kind. – Helen Joyce

 “You do something for someone else,” he’d said. I’m regularly asked to do things for other people, and I often think about Adam and what he did for me, and say yes. I don’t know if there’s a nicer thing you can do for people than give them your time. – Matt Chisholm

Ratepayers expect local government to do the basics and to do the basics brilliantly. Pick up the rubbish. Fix the pipes. Fill in potholes. And more generally, maintain local assets quickly, carefully, and cost effectively.

But nothing in life is free, and ratepayers expect to pay for it in exchange. But what they don’t expect to pay for is the laundry-list of distractions and experiments that are plaguing council balance sheets across the country. – Christopher Luxon

It looks very nice, and it’s very nice that politicians like us have another expensive room to deliver speeches in, but can anyone seriously say it was the right financial decision or the highest priority for Wellington given all of its challenges?

Ratepayers are sick of the white elephants and non-delivery. So, my challenge to all of you is to rein in the fantasies and to get back to delivering the basics brilliantly. – Christopher Luxon

There is no magic money tree in Wellington, thanks to the previous government’s economic mismanagement and vandalism.

Shifting your costs onto taxpayers doesn’t save anyone any money. It means ratepayers pay more tax, and are left with less of their own money, to meet the cost of a slightly smaller rates bill.

Or it means we spend less on health and education so that councils can avoid tightening their belts exactly as Kiwi families, businesses and central government have had to do across New Zealand.  – Christopher Luxon

We do want to work closer together – and there will be new revenue tools for councils, where that makes sense – but the days of handouts are over. – Christopher Luxon

In central government, we’re getting on with the job. We’re stopping wasteful spending, shifting money from the back office to the frontline, setting clear delivery targets and expectations, prioritising what to do and what not to do, and letting Kiwis keep more of what they earn.

My parting message: it’s time for you to do the same.

Go line by line, stop the wasteful spending, remove the bureaucracy, focus on better customer service, and end the projects that aren’t delivering value for money.

Ratepayers don’t expect much – they just want the basics done brilliantly.

We’ll play our part – now it’s time for you to play yours.

I’m confident that working together, we can achieve a lot for New Zealanders – better infrastructure and more resilient communities, all at an affordable price for ratepayers. – Christopher Luxon

I’m a bit surprised at the clapping there, because you know what else is really crappy? The 2000 families who live in motels in this country, in grotty squalor-ridden motels.

If you don’t want to live in a 23 square metre apartment, don’t live in one. If you don’t want to live in an apartment that doesn’t have a balcony, don’t. But remember, people will only build them if there is demand. –  Chris Bishop

So here’s my thing, for the people who clapped about preventing crappy apartments and the rest of it. Where do you get off making life choices for other people and the decisions that they make that aren’t yours? – Chris Bishop

 It wasn’t unexpected, but it was still gut-wrenching to hear a judge decide that women in Australia can no longer have female-only sanctuaries. None whatsoever, not for any reason. No man can be refused entry to any women’s space if he says he’s a woman. It’s that simple – and absolutely unconscionable for a judge to condemn the entire population of women in Australia to that.

It also means that men can’t have their own sanctuaries, either, but the ramifications of that are vastly different than they are for women, of course. – Katrina Briggs

Staggeringly, the judge – who I daresay has seen many times exactly the how the physical differences between women and men can play out – stated that, according to several other court cases from around the world, sex is changeable. I doubt he has ever seen a person change their sex to back up the veracity of this statement in any way, shape, or form. However, if legal paperwork can be obtained to say a person now considers themself a different sex to that which they were born, this judge decreed that they have actually changed their sex. – Katrina Briggs

Humans have looked at faces since the dawn of time for clues and cues on who we are. This is wired into us. The judge, though, considered that Sall only decided Tickle was a man because he didn’t “appear to be a cisgendered female in photos”. Yes, the judge not only used the terms ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’ throughout his judgement, but appeared to have no, or little, understanding of how we are wired to process faces to determine women from men. – Katrina Briggs

This travesty of justice for women is what we can expect here in New Zealand if the word ‘gender’ is put into our Human Rights Act, so we must all do all we can to resist that². – Katrina Briggs

A judge in Australia has just ruled that “sex is changeable”, an utterance that flies in the face not only of common sense but also of incontestable biological facts. For those of us who have been concerned about the ongoing capture of our major institutions by an ideology that demands acquiescence in the denial of reality, we had hoped that the judiciary might be immune. In Australia at least, this is evidently not the case. – – Andrew Doyle

We can all see the problem. A women-only app quite obviously will discriminate on the basis of sex, otherwise it will cease to be a women-only service. The law in Australia insists that “gender identity” is a protected characteristic, even though the overwhelming majority of people do not believe that such a thing exists. This is due to amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act that were passed by the federal parliament under the Labour government in 2013. Fast forward eleven years, and a judge has determined that one man’s belief that he has a gendered soul should automatically grant him the right to access women’s only spaces.  – Andrew Doyle

At the very least, we can say that in the wake of this judgement the international definition of “women” still holds firm. And yet if a man can successfully take legal action for being denied access to a women’s service, this effectively means that single-sex spaces for women can no longer exist. The Australian judiciary has decided that it is illegal for women to organise in their own interests. – Andrew Doyle

We have seen countless instances of men identifying their way into women’s spaces, from sports to hospitals and, perhaps most disturbingly, prisons. Most lesbian dating apps are now mixed-sex, and the option to filter out men is not permitted because this is considered “transphobic”. In other words, lesbians are being shamed for being same-sex attracted by the very organisations that are meant to support them.

All sexuality is discriminatory. It could hardly be otherwise. To suggest that women who are attracted exclusively to other women should include men in their dating pool is about as homophobic as it gets. That this is now codified into law should surely be a cause for concern for anyone who believes in the rights of minorities. And when it comes to women more generally, it is a clear-cut matter of safeguarding. Women’s spaces exist because 99% of sex crimes are committed by men and 91% of victims of sex crimes are female. This really shouldn’t be difficult to understand. – Andrew Doyle

There will hopefully now be an appeal to the High Court, and with any luck the 2013 amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act will be deemed unlawful. There is a strong case here, as many have pointed out that it is unconstitutional to redefine “woman” as a matter of identity rather than biology.

Above all, we should all be chilled by that phrase “sex is changeable”, uttered by the judge as though any of us could possibly believe it. The law might well seek to upend reality, but that does not make it true. Not even the most senior judge in the world can simply decide that human biology no longer exists. Yet such is the power of this new religion of gender identity that even the judiciary will state falsehoods in its name. If nothing else, this ruling has settled once and for all the question of whether this ideology has seized control of our society. Case closed.  – Andrew Doyle

‘Cisgendered female’ is trans-speak for ‘real woman’, while ‘transgender women’ refers to men. – Jo Barstosch

Strip away the robes and legalese, law is supposed to uphold what we collectively agree as a society to be right. But trans activists have broken that covenant. They are twisting justice itself to meet the desire of an entitled few to be affirmed as something they are not. Perhaps Justice Bromwich ought to consider the words of the great Australian feminist, Germaine Greer: ‘Just because you lop off your dick and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a fucking woman. I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that doesn’t turn me into a fucking Cocker Spaniel.’

What ought to send a shiver down the spine of all right-thinking people is that this ruling could have huge ramifications for those in other countries across the globe. The Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the UN. It is an agreement that recognises the specific needs of women. Giggle’s defence argued that Australia’s ratification of CEDAW obliges the state to protect women’s rights, including single-sex spaces. That Justice Bromwich rejected this will have ramifications for the 186 countries that have ratified CEDAW, as judges across the world look to landmark rulings like this to inform domestic decisions.

The real cost of Justice Bromwich deciding that ‘female’ is a legal identity rather than a biological reality is likely to be felt by those in CEDAW signatory countries where violence against women is highest. Judges in countries including Pakistan, El Salvador (the femicide capital of the world) and South Africa (which has the highest reported rate of rape in the world) are now likely to take their lead on the interpretation of CEDAW from Australia. – Jo Barstosch

The human rights of the most marginalised women in the world have been put at further risk – all because an angry man in Australia wasn’t allowed to play with the girls on a social-media app. Despite the comical name, there is really nothing funny about Tickle vs Giggle. –Jo Barstosch

Women no longer exist as a separate category in Australia. Sex is “changeable”, according to the judge who has just ruled in a case that effectively destroys single-sex spaces and services for Australian women. – Joan Smith

The implications of the judgment, while not directly about sexual and domestic violence, are far-reaching. There has never been a more urgent case for single-sex services in Australia, yet the outcome confirms that “gender identity” now takes precedence over sex. One of the most shocking features of the case is that the result has been welcomed by Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, who issued a press release stuffed with familiar jargon. –  Joan Smith

The extent of the assault on women’s rights was exposed during the hearings, when a barrister acting for the Australian Human Rights Commission claimed that “sex is not a binary concept and it is not exclusively a biological concept”.

These are shocking sentiments, elevating an undefinable — and unverifiable — “gender identity” above biological sex. But while an array of courts, politicians and human rights organisations have decided that sex is no longer obvious and immutable, the same cannot be said about the assumptions of men who murder women. – Joan Smith

This judgment will no doubt be appealed. But a senator from Tasmania, Claire Chandler, is clear about what it means for Australian women. “The Sex Discrimination Act which is supposed to protect women and girls is now a tool to punish women trying to offer female-only spaces,” she declared on X.

The reality is even starker. We are now in a bizarre situation where sexual predators and domestic abusers know what a woman is, but most of Australia’s political class can’t answer the question. – Joan Smith

We should not cower in our legal caves for fear of cancellation or disapproval.

We should deploy our training and education to help advance the peaceful and democratic society in which we are privileged to live and work. – Warren Pyke

Once something is pronounced as law by judges, as opposed to the safe harbour of remaining rooted in its traditional context (and therefore a part of Māori culture, as developed on marae), Parliament could enact and thereby modify tikanga as law, to which Māori may not agree or, if applicable to everyone, to which everyone may not agree.

Idealistic and progressively-minded judges, who consider that Māori interests are advanced by pronouncing tikanga as “first law”, may unwittingly be releasing forces that may undermine tikanga as an integral part of Māori culture, and therefore Māori culture itself.

Judicial pronouncements about the content of tikanga in live disputes, despite the doctrine of stare decisis, might modify tikanga in unpredictable ways, as judges try to bend tikanga in order to shape the basis for the just resolution of live disputes (common law judges being particularly adept at this form of judicial reasoning). – Warren Pyke

If tikanga, as a third source of law, is to be fixed by reference to tradition and as modified on the marae, it must follow that it stands outside of the democratic processes of law-making and therefore cannot be reconciled with New Zealand’s modern democratic system of government.

If this third source of law is in fact rooted in the exercise of tribal authority (rangatiratanga) on marae, it is not obvious to me how this can always harmoniously exist alongside a system of laws made by the King in Parliament as applied by judges. – Warren Pyke

In the real world, there are no principles of the Treaty. They exist only in a fantasy world created by the 1972-1975 Labour government’s Treaty of Waitangi Act. The magical possibilities of this fantasy world have expanded since then to the point where ordinary New Zealanders feel threatened by those who would claim on the basis solely of their identity, or who they identify with, that they have a superior place, and that democracy must be relegated to a subordinate position. – Gary Judd

Thank you, Imane Khelif’, says Egyptian-American feminist Mona Eltahawy. I hate to mansplain, but if you’re cheering on a biological male for making a woman shut her trap, maybe you’re feministing wrong? A writer for them relishes ‘the sound of silence’ on X now that Rowling’s moaning has been shushed. If only there was a word to describe people who love it when uppity women are gagged. – Brendan O’Neill

It’s going to be so funny when she comes back, tweets, and all the creeps will have to go back to blubbing into their macchiatos. It’s you guys who should be shitting yourself because the devil isn’t defeated – she’s on vacation.

And yet the wrongness of their gloating over Rowling should not distract us from the disgustingness of it. The gender ideology’s mask hasn’t only slipped this past week, it’s been completely destroyed. We have just witnessed an explosion in sexist intolerance, a riot of woman-hate, a borderline medieval rush to bask in the silence of a hushed hysterical woman. If anyone ever again tries to tell you that the gender ideology is ‘progressive’, remind them that its adherents literally danced with joy in the mistaken belief that a man had terrified a woman into silence. ‘Trans rights’ is the veil misogyny wears in the 21st century and that’s the end of it. – Brendan O’Neill

Women should have every right to exclude men from their private spaces, sports, sex based statistics, prisons, medical wards etc & be able to retain proper descriptive language – no matter how men see themselves. We can’t base laws on how people personally perceive themselves over actual reality. Where does that stop? What next? Forcing society to deliberately lie will not end well. – Sharron Davies

Women’s rights can only exist upon a recognition that we are biological females. The Gillard amendments imposed the biggest game of wilful pretend imaginable on women and girls, now forced to suspend their reality and believe that a ‘penis-owner’ is a woman, because he says so. This would be laughable if it was not so serious.  – Katherine Deves

 By enabling males to self-identify into our legal category, all the gains fought for by our foremothers over centuries are rendered nugatory. Women have been again relegated to the thoughts and feelings in a man’s head – the ultimate act of misogyny. – Katherine Deves

The strength of the Prime Minister’s slap-down of profligate councils and the overwrought responses from some councillors are the only new bits in what is now a longstanding trench warfare between central and local government.

It makes sense the argument is sharper than usual. Inflation has hardened every debate around cost and who pays. Councils have stuck their necks out in voting for huge rates rises while making little effort to downsize their core cost structures. – Steven Joyce

 It would take herculean levels of restraint for a Prime Minister to speak in Wellington’s expensive new convention centre with burst water mains gushing down the street outside and not make a reference to priorities. He clearly decided not to restrain himself. Huge numbers of ratepayers up and down the country would have nodded along in agreement.

Variations of this argument have been going on for as long as I can remember. Left-leaning councils like to busy themselves on social issues like votes on the latest war and building more libraries, while being less interested in core infrastructure like water pipes and rubbish collections (unless it involves convoluted recycling schemes of course).

Right-leaning councils profess to be more interested in core business, arguing that social issues and geopolitics are the domain of central government. However they also often prioritise rates freezes, which can lead to delays in infrastructure replacement. It seems both sides can agree there are no votes in cutting a ribbon to open a water pipe, except perhaps more recently in Wellington. – Steven Joyce

Many councillors like to argue the rating model is “broken” and they need “new revenue sources”. That’s code for “we don’t like the heat we get from property owners when we put up rates”. Others see the reliance on rates as an important accountability tool. If ratepayers don’t see the impact of council decisions visibly through their rates demand, there would be no financial discipline at all.

Governments like to tell councils to “stick to their knitting”. That is, focus on core services like rubbish, water, roading and parks. Councils retort that they would but central government keeps foisting more cost on them, which is sometimes true but nothing like the whole story. Even the role of local government is politicised. The last two Labour-led governments legislated to explicitly expand the remit of councils beyond core services, with the subsequent governments seeking to repeal them. – Steven Joyce

Building assets with useful lives of 30 to 50 years is difficult when political lives are measured in three. We know that all too well with central government but it is even more acute in local government where the duelling political cycles of central and local politicians means priorities can change almost every year.

Even within a government policies can differ. Councils often have to deal with housing policy that is inconsistent with transport policy, which is inconsistent with water planning and so on. That can be almost impossible when trying to assemble the commitment and funding for a large project.

The good news is that there are mechanisms where some of this can be handled better, and the seeds of two important solutions are appearing now.

The first is in water.  – Steven Joyce

The new entities will be much more local in flavour, while obtaining the economies of scale neighbouring councils can achieve by sharing treatment stations and the like. Importantly their balance sheets will remain separate from council ones, and they will be able to borrow more over longer periods. Think Auckland’s Watercare, which is now doing a good methodical job, but with its own funding capacity.

Conversely don’t think of Wellington Water, which is a hodge-podge mess where each Wellington council votes on its financial contribution every year.  – Steven Joyce

Genuinely separate water agencies will free councils up to focus more on other issues of genuine local political interest, while retaining oversight over the water companies. They should be lining up to create them. – Steven Joyce

The second important change being talked about is city and regional deals, which are proposed as long-term infrastructure partnerships between local councils and central government. A lot of people have been pretty cynical about these, and some will remain so given the lack of a “funding pot” with which to activate them.

But the idea is a strong one, in that it can be an arrangement both sides can sign up to that can survive political changes in either entity, and that can co-ordinate housing and transport policies, in particular at the central government end. After all the logical extension of requiring 30 years of housing supply is providing 30 years of agreed transport infrastructure investment to get people to and from those houses.

It won’t be easy to make these deals enduring. There will need to be a mechanism for evolving priorities, political and otherwise. – Steven Joyce

If I was both National and Labour, I’d sign up to making these deals work. As well as limiting the see-saw of expensive infrastructure priority changes, it’s a way of working with local councils constructively and putting behind us at least some of the mudslinging between the two arms of government. – Steven Joyce

I stick to the process and stay humble and supportive of our party leadership. I’m someone who commits to the notion of collective responsibility. For the system we have, that is a very important principle and precept. – Tama Potaka

So I saw the power of actually doing things with people, and for people. That sense of community really drives a lot of my responsibilities to my own whānau, to my own iwi. – Tama Potaka

Ultimately we can do it all for ourselves or we could do it for everyone. And that’s where I’m at. Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari taku toa he toa takitini (my purpose is not for me alone, but for everybody). – Tama Potaka

What I believe in is not necessarily the institution of religion, but the values and the principles that go with nearly all religions, and the notion that there is something bigger than us. – Tama Potaka

It’s like marriage. I married my wife, and what we were in 2008 is different to what we are today, but our commitment remains tight. We’re probably not as fast as we were in 2008, and we have a greater awareness of what works for us together and as individuals and what doesn’t. – Tama Potaka

A lot of matters were resolved through the coalition negotiations by the leadership of the parties. Obviously I wasn’t part of that discussion, but the settings have been established and we’re working through things one by one,” he says.

People can describe that as a hospital pass but I’m part of a team effort, and our team absolutely supports Christopher Luxon as the Prime Minister in the decisions that he has made. – Tama Potaka

People have different views, and that’s kei te pai. I’m part of a team, support Christopher Luxon, respect everyone, not just people in our own team, but also the other coalition partners and other parties, and try and be the best Māori and New Zealander that I can be. – Tama Potaka

Part of my role is to try to have a contest of ideas to ensure that people are aware of the evidence. I’ve been persuasive and respectful in presenting my concerns on different issues – sometimes people agree and sometimes they don’t. – Tama Potaka

The biggest change that we can effect is to the economy . If we can recalibrate the economy, then Māori families will be better off. Ditto law and order – the biggest victims are Māori. – Tama Potaka

Fifty per cent have gone into social and transitional housing. Nearly 30% are in private housing arrangements … and 20% we actually don’t know because they are under no obligation to tell us. And to be fair, I don’t think you want the Government to know where every single person lives every single night, every single day. – Tama Potaka

How do you balance that sense of obligation to your upbringing with the broader, more profound responsibilities you have to serve the entire country? It’s a mark of political maturity. Every single politician has their personal preferences, but we’re all bound by collective outcomes. – Shane Jones

There’s a dynamic out there in the Māori commentariat that we’re selling both ourselves and our Māori blood short. It’s alien thinking,” Jones says.

How you cope with epithets and doubts and vilification, well, you can learn political skill but you can never teach political character. You’ve either got it or you haven’t.

He only just came into the political world. But I think his education, his background, his upbringing – the character is there. – Shane Jones

Christopher Luxon 1. Mayors and councillors 0.

Even before the Prime Minister went to Wellington’s Tākina convention centre to give local body politicians a bollocking, he must’ve known he’d come out the winner. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Luxon only said what many ratepayers have themselves said – councils should stick to doing the basics, picking up the rubbish, fixing the pipes, filling the potholes. They should cut out the weird fantasies and luxuries.

And then he asked for the kind of accountability that anyone putting money into any venture would think perfectly reasonable: rein in the spending or there will be no new money from his Government. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

But what Luxon probably didn’t bank on was how easily those mayors and councillors would hand him the win when they immediately started whinging like spoiled children stopped from helping themselves to the contents of daddy’s wallet unsupervised. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

In a room full of dozens of mayors and scores of councillors, none came close to mounting a decent argument against Luxon.

Instead, they spoke about Māori wards and the Government’s over-reach in bringing back democracy there, once again reinforcing to ratepayers struggling through a cost of living crisis that councils think other things are more important.

There was a day when ratepayers may have come to the defence of their local council and told the Beehive to keep its nose out of our communities. Those days are gone.

There are too many examples of idiotic spending. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

These councils might find a tiny bit of sympathy if there wasn’t a prominent council setting an example for them. Auckland Council’s rates have only increased by 6.8%, less than half the national average. It wasn’t easy. The cuts it took to get there were painful and public, but Auckland ratepayers were protected from yet another increase in their bills. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

Before Luxon went into that room, he was in touch with the vibe of the country’s ratepayers. He knew he was picking a fight he was odds-on to win.

What’s remarkable is how out of touch the mayors and councillors were. But that’s not a surprise, is it? – Heather du Plessis-Allan

This isn’t, in my view, a free speech issue. NZME, the owner of the Herald, is a private company. No one has a right to advertise their wares, ideas or policies in a private newspaper. In a decentralised media market, there are other forums open to groups like Hobson’s Pledge.

But it does bring into focus how we conduct debate; not by challenging ideas but by seeking to silence those whose ideas we dislike. The open letter mentioned above wrote that the Herald should “… have known or investigated, whether the information or deceptive before the advertisement was published.”

This isn’t the case. The Herald is not responsible for the contents of the ads it carries, any more than they should verify the returns offered by the dodgy financial institutions or the veracity of claims made in the personals.

It assumes a degree of gullibility on behalf of the consumer that requires protection from the ideas of Dr Brash and others like him and we must rely on the wisdom of self-selected members of the legal community for our own good.

This is also a useful reminder that one of the roles of the fourth estate in civil society is to allow groups like Hobsons Pledge and the Council of Trade Unions a platform to promote issues important to them, but not considered newsworthy, into the national conversation.

Ironically, Matthew Tukai from Waatea News invited Dr Brash into the studio for an interview and had a civil discussion as to the merits of the issue. Both gentlemen appeared to gain something valuable from the exchange.

This, surely, is a more constructive approach to challenging ideas that you disagree with than demanding the local paper only carry advertising from those who deem to be politically acceptable, because even if you succeed you make the society in which you live a little less pleasant. – Damien Grant

Pretty rich coming from the man responsible for s9 of the State Owned Enterprises Act, with its stupid reliance on undefined ‘principles’. It launched the courts into inventing their partnership metaphor for the Treaty. Lange raged to me in 1994 that Sir Geoffrey had assured him s9 was just ‘comfort’ to settle down iwi leaders. ‘It doesn’t have real legal effect’. I’m not aware of any apology from Sir Geoffrey for this grotesque error. Or even hindsight repudiation to limit the damage. Probably among the worst toxins you can inject into the democratic constitution of a trusting people in a trust based egalitarian law abiding society, with an extraordinary level of intermarriage and other evidence of respectful race relations. Setting lawyers free to make law instead of applying it. Enabling corrupt bullies to trash property rights (incidentally negating Article 2). And empowering courts and bureaucrats to exploit undefined (therefore unlimited) race privilege to trump equality before the law. – Stephen Franks

This entry was posted on Monday, August 26th, 2024 at 7:00 am and is filed under politics, quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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