This Meddlesome Human Rights Commissioner.

Who Asked You? Hunt’s visit to the protesters illegal encampment sent a message to the rest of New Zealand that was as unfortunate as it was untrue. Having spurned the social obligation to be vaccinated in the midst of a global pandemic, the protesters’ demands: that the defences  erected by the government to protect their fellow citizens from the consequences of their anti-social behaviour must be abandoned; “should be acknowledged and heard”.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST SURPRISES of the recent anti-vaccination protest/riot was the visit of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. The presence of Paul Hunt, in the midst of an unlawful protest, condemned by the Speaker of the House, and which the leaders of all parties had agreed to keep at arm’s length, was jarring – to say the least.

I found myself reaching back into medieval history for a precedent. Hunt, it seemed to me, was venturing into the same dangerous territory as Thomas Becket (1118-1170) the Archbishop of Canterbury who challenged the prerogatives of King Henry II – and paid for it with his life.

It’s possible Hunt has already apprehended how badly his decision to go among the protesters has been received in certain quarters. Why else would he have risked compounding his political sins by penning an opinion piece for Stuff? Clearly, he felt he owed someone (the Prime Minister perhaps?) an explanation.

Given that Hunt’s visit was an astonishing slap in the face to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who had made it crystal clear what she thought of the reactionary gathering of law-breakers and malcontents on Parliament’s front lawn, his explanation would need to be a very good one.

It isn’t.

While acknowledging that the protesters have been “moved on” from their illegal encampment on Parliament Grounds (without, it must be said, a word of condemnation of their appalling conduct towards the Police as that process unfolded) Hunt still felt obligated to give heed to “the messages they conveyed”. In particular, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner believed that “those adversely affected by the vaccination mandates and passes (or “certificates”) should be acknowledged and heard.”

“Adversely affected”. Hunt seems to be suggesting that the vaccination refuseniks had been “adversely affected” in the same way that a farmer is “adversely affected” by a severe snowstorm at the start of the lambing season. But their failure to get vaccinated – and, hence, to fall foul of the vaccination mandates – was not an Act of God, it was an act of their own free will. An act, moreover, which came with well-advertised consequences, of which they were entirely conscious. These anti-vaxxers have not “lost” their jobs. Rather than participate in the nationwide effort to defeat Covid-19, they have given them up.

As Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Hunt knows that our Bill of Rights Act guarantees that citizens cannot be forced to undergo medical treatment against their will. But, he should also know that by exercising this human right those same citizens, having declined to be vaccinated against it, are in no way entitled to put other citizens at risk of contracting a potentially lethal virus.

Hunt’s visit to the protesters illegal encampment sent a message to the rest of New Zealand that was as unfortunate as it was untrue. Having spurned the social obligation to be vaccinated in the midst of a global pandemic, the protesters’ demands: that the defences (vaccination mandates, vaccination certificates) erected by the government to protect their fellow citizens from the consequences of their anti-social behaviour must be abandoned; “should be acknowledged and heard”.

What alternative construction can we put on Hunt’s behaviour, other than human rights in New Zealand are now whatever individuals say they are, and that no acknowledgement of the rights of other citizens is any longer required? What can it mean except that the “public welfare, peace and tranquillity of New Zealand” (to quote the old Parliamentary prayer) now counts for nothing. Certainly, there was bugger-all “peace and tranquillity” on display as the fires raged and the paving stones flew on Wednesday, 2 March 2022.

Hunt, however, is not finished: “When Covid-19 arrived in Aotearoa, the commission devised a human rights and Te Tiriti test to check whether the Government’s initiatives are striking fair and reasonable balances between competing rights.”

Talk about your Thomas Becket moment! This unelected public servant has arrogated unto himself the right to judge the actions of a democratically elected government. In the midst of a global pandemic, he, Paul Hunt, will “check” the state’s actions to determine whether they are “fair and reasonable”. Not only that, but he will deliberately flout the Prime Minister’s rāhui on meeting with representatives of an unlawful protest.

How tempted Jacinda Ardern must be to cry: “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest!”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 11 March 2022.

Not On The List.

A Moral Authority? The Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt, is supposed to uphold the secular character of the New Zealand state. As a public servant, he is not entitled to talk like an Archbishop. He may tell us what is lawful and unlawful. He may even reiterate the purposes of the Act of Parliament which created his office. But he has no mandate whatsoever to instruct New Zealanders on what is “Right” and what is “Wrong”.

PAUL HUNT, our British-born Chief Human Rights Commissioner, missed his calling. He would have made a much better Archbishop of Canterbury.

Archbishops are expected to use terms like Good and Evil, Right and Wrong. They subscribe to a faith in which the moral conduct of its adherents determines where they spend eternity: in Heaven, or in Hell.

Chief Human Rights Commissioners, however, are supposed to uphold the secular character of the New Zealand state. As public servants, they are not entitled to talk like Archbishops. They may tell us what is lawful and unlawful. They may even reiterate the purposes of the Act of Parliament which created their office. But they have no mandate whatsoever to instruct New Zealanders on what is “Right” and what is “Wrong”.

It is the arrogation of precisely this sort of moral authority, and the determination to instruct New Zealanders in right conduct, that makes the recent opinion piece by Mr Hunt, published in the NZ Herald of 31 August 2021, so objectionable. That, and the answers he gives to the questions he asks himself about “hate speech”.

“What’s the most effective way of stopping – or at least moderating – hate speech?” Mr Hunt self-inquires. The answer? “A fair, equitable, inclusive, diverse, plural, open, multicultural society which, in Aotearoa New Zealand, is grounded on Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”

It is difficult to imagine a sentence more loaded with concepts more likely to spark lively, not to say bitter controversy. The nature of fairness, and its first cousin, equity, has taxed humanity’s best minds of more than two millennia. What are the boundaries of inclusiveness? How much diversity is a society obliged to tolerate? Does multiculturalism tend towards unity or division? Does pluralism? How far does a society open itself before it simply collapses? Is the Treaty of Waitangi New Zealand’s “founding document”, or an historical artifact now dangerously overloaded with obligations nowhere iterated in the document itself?

Mr Hunt’s solution for hate speech – a New Zealand Utopia in which all of these controversial concepts have been debated and resolved to the satisfaction of all its citizens – is self-evidently unsatisfactory. Clearly, such an utopian state-of-affairs could only have arisen in circumstances of untrammeled freedom of expression. Only in an intellectual climate peculiarly favourable to the discussion of contentious and even painful propositions could such an astonishing level of consensus have possibly been achieved. And yet, reading the rest of Mr Hunt’s essay, it becomes increasingly clear that any form of speech which alarms, excludes, distresses, and/or “denies dignity”, is “vile” and must be prohibited by law.

Mr Hunt is very keen on establishing the “boundaries” at which the robust discussion of ideas must cease. “If you are powerful and privileged,” he writes, “it is easy to dismiss the idea of boundaries indicating what is acceptable. But if you are a member of a disadvantaged group […] boundaries matter.”

It is here, of course, that Mr Hunt, for all his fine talk of “a respectful model for relations between individuals and communities” comes unstuck. By his own admission, the proposed hate speech legislation will have, as one of its principal aims, the limitation of the ability of the “powerful and privileged” to defend their interests.

But, who are the powerful and the privileged? Mr Hunt is extremely careful not to identify those upon whom these tendentious labels should be pinned. We can, however, answer the question by a simple process of elimination. Mr Hunt identifies the “disadvantaged groups” – i.e. those without power and privilege – as: tangata whenua, ethnic minorities, faith communities, sexual minorities, women, and disabled people.

Who is missing from this list? Well, men, obviously. That is to say, men who are not brown, gay, transgendered and/or disabled. Which just leaves white men. This is the group Mr Hunt is enjoining to be “respectful, self-aware, and empathetic” as the hate speech debate heats up.

Also missing from Mr Hunt’s list of disadvantaged groups are the poor and the exploited. Which is strange, because down through the ages it is the poor and the exploited who have felt the lash of power and privilege most keenly. What’s more, the key which unlocked the shackles fastened upon them by the powerful was always and everywhere – Free Speech.

Then again, as all Archbishops know: “The poor are always with us.”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 3 September 2021.

Drawing The Heat.

A Matter Of Signals: What is a government saying about itself when it parlays with known criminals? What is it signalling about its willingness to openly confront them? More to the point, what message does it send to all the decent, law-abiding, charity-workers who struggle every day to convince their neighbours that gangs are a curse upon their community to be resisted and shunned? 

TIME WAS when people observing the transfer of funds from politicians to gangsters knew what they were looking at – graft. The “Five Families” of the New York Mafia were justly notorious for the number of politicians, judges and cops they had “in their pockets”. One suspects, however, that even Lucky Luciano and Joe Bonanno would have raised their eyebrows at a transfer of $2.7 million from the US Government to La Cosa Nostra! Such outlandish behaviour was bound to “draw the heat”.

So what was Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson thinking of when they approved a $2.7 million grant to a chapter of the Mongrel Mob? Officially, they were hoping to enlist at least some members of the Mongrel Mob in the fight against methamphetamine abuse and addiction. Working, presumably, on the principle that “it takes a thief to catch a thief”, or, in this case, “it takes the sellers of a dangerous illegal drug to reduce the harm of a dangerous illegal drug”, the Government has clearly decided that there is more to be gained by working with the gangs than against them.

References have even been made to the strong working relationship that developed between the former National Party Prime Minister, Rob Muldoon, and Black Power gangsters back in the early 1980s. But, one might as easily describe the Anglo-Saxons’ payment of the “Danegeld” to the marauding northmen as evidence of their “strong working relationship”. Certainly, Muldoon’s intervention was instrumental in persuading Black Power to keep the peace vis-à-vis Pakeha New Zealand. Such arrangements, however, can only ever be temporary. At some point the “price” of peace becomes too high – even for Rob.

It all boils down to signals. What is a government saying about itself when it parlays with known criminals? What is it signalling about its willingness to openly confront them? More to the point, what message does it send to all the decent, law-abiding, charity-workers who struggle every day to convince their neighbours that gangs are a curse upon their community to be resisted and shunned? What do they tell them when they see millions of dollars handed over to (allegedly) “reformed” gangsters, while charities are forced to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops to secure a few thousand?

In a recent web posting, the veteran left-wing journalist Gordon Campbell wrote: “Engaging with gangs doesn’t mean you’re coddling them or condoning their criminal actions or granting them a legitimacy they otherwise lack. But because they exist, and because they are in contact with other, marginalised members of society, it is worth talking to them, at least.”

I could not disagree more strongly. Those other “marginalised members of society” the gangs are in contact with are their victims: the people upon whom their criminality heaps all manner of pain and sorrow. Dear God! One might just as easily observe that Neville Chamberlain “engaged” with Adolf Hitler at Munich! Not to coddle him, you understand, or condone his criminal actions, or lend his naked gangsterism toward the Czechs a legitimacy it would otherwise have lacked. No. Chamberlain “engaged” with Hitler because he wasn’t ready to fight him. What’s more, Hitler knew it.

What must Hamilton’s Mongrel Mobsters have been thinking as they pocketed the $200 “koha” from Paul Hunt, New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner? Were they nodding sagely and silently praising the soft-spoken bureaucrat for his willingness to engage so fulsomely with their organisation? (Unlike the Green co-leader, Marama Davidson, who declined to offer this customary gratuity?) Or, did their lips curl in scorn at Hunt’s pusillanimous naiveté? Were they thinking to themselves: what a funny old world it is when, one week, the cops bust you for distributing “P”, and the next you’re being patronised – and paid! – by the Chief Human Rights Commissioner himself!

Either way, the message conveyed was the same: weakness and confusion.

In addition to the Anglo-Saxons’ silver and gold, the Danes would have carried away a very similar message. Likewise, Lucky Luciano and Joe Bonanno, in their gangster paradise, would have lamented the unbelievable stupidity and cowardice of the authorities. “Saps!”

Jacinda Ardern must understand that organised crime is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop – until her Government decides to stop it.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 16 July 2021.