That is the only way to describe National's shock appointments to the Human Rights Commission on Friday. New Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow is on-record as a terf and a supporter of Israel's genocide in Gaza; new Race Relations Commissioner Melissa Derby is a terf whose chief "human rights" achievements seem to be supporting white supremacists and arguing that the "trans movement" - that is, people just trying to live their lives without being molested by bigots like her - should not be tolerated in civil society. These are not appointments which give confidence that the Commission will fulfil its purpose of supporting everyone's human rights. Instead, they're the sort of appointments seemingly designed to undermine the Commission's work, destroy public confidence, and bring it into disrepute. Which makes perfect sense when you remember that one of the government parties wants the Commission to be abolished. While National does not publicly share that agenda, these appointments suggest they're on-board with it, and are willing to appoint commissioners who will sabotage the work of the Commission.
Interestingly, Paul Goldsmith, who made the appointments, said that his appointees had been subjected to "appropriate background checks". It will be interesting to see if these checks included their repugnant views, and whether they were seen as a positive or a negative. But I expect National will try and hide that as "free and frank advice" from the inevitable flood of OIAs.
As for what to do about this: the immediate problem of bigots on the Human Rights Commission can be resolved by the next government simply sacking them. People with these views are unable to credibly perform the functions of the office, which is just cause for removal.
As for the long-term, there's a long-standing problem of political appointments to key constitutional offices, and this incident makes it clear that politicians can no longer be trusted with the job. So, we should take it off them, and give it to a permanent independent appointments panel, tasked with ensuring that appointments are based on merit rather than cronyism or political agendas. We know how to do this: we use an independent process for appointment of the Government Statistician (but not other public service CEOs), with criminal penalties for any Minister who attempts to interfere in it. And we know how to set up a permanent, non-partisan body because we do that for the Representation Commission, which ensures our electorates are not gerrymandered. We could, with the political will, establish such a process for the Human Rights Commission and other independent crown entities of an important or constitutional nature (such as the Privacy Commissioner, Children's Commissioner, Electoral Commission, IPCA, Waitangi Tribunal, and Climate Change Commission) to ensure merit-based appointments, insulated from cronyism and political sabotage. But I guess the problem is: why would any politician vote for that?
