Good

"Collateral Murder" leaker Chelsea Manning has been granted a special direction to apply for a work visa, effectively making her entry into New Zealand a formality. Good. Quite apart from showing a suitable respect for free expression, Manning is a hero whose leaks exposed war crimes and dubious decision-making by the powerful. While the party of the powerful (or rather, the party of toadying to the powerful) dislike this, New Zealand should welcome her.

Meanwhile, it seems that Australia intends to make the opposite decision and refuse her entry. Which is I think another example of how our countries are drifting apart. New Zealand is a much more liberal country than Australia, and a much more free one. Meanwhile, Australia, with its security laws and domestic religious oppression really seems to be trying to turn into a tyrannical shithole like the UK.

The legality of cancelling Nazis

The visiting Canadian Nazis were supposed to be speaking in Auckland tonight, but it appears that their venue (or at least, a venue) has cancelled on them at the last minute, apparently after a very quick but persuasive public campaign. While everyone on Twitter is cheering about this, I'm not sure its so good. To point out the obvious, we have a Human Rights Act in this country, which prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods and services such as venue hire. One of the grounds it prohibits such discrimination is "political opinion". Pretty obviously, this means that its illegal for venues to refuse to serve the Labour Party, Unite, Greenpeace, or Tamaki Anti-Fascist Action. But it also means that its illegal for venues to refuse to serve Nazis, at least insofar as Naziism, white supremacy, or simply being a money-grubbing racist arsehat is deemed to be a political opinion.

Are these things "political opinions"? The term isn't defined in the Human Rights Act, and there's no easy caselaw I can find which defines it (at least, not with a quick google). From employment law, we know it applies to being a communist and to protesting against government policy, but there's nothing specific about Nazis. OTOH, these seem to be political views: they're about what policies governments should pursue, how the state should treat its citizens, and what laws it should pass (including, ironicly, laws like the Human Rights Act which protect people from discrimination). If you think that immigration policy is a political issue, that political parties should promote a non-racist society, and that governments should respect human rights, then I think you are hard-pressed to consistently deny that opposing those positions is not also a political position, and one which is therefore deserving of legal protection. Particularly if you also think, as many on the left do, that "everything is political".

Or, to put it another way: if you don't think you should be discriminated against for opposing racism, then you can't support discriminating against racists.

So if you're cheering this, you're an idiot, undermining the very law that protects us all. I don't like Nazis, but I think that that law and our ideal of a non-discriminatory society is more important than them. We should absolutely protest against these scum, and make it clear just how repellent we find their views. But we should not encourage unlawful discrimination while doing so - because that is a weapon which can so easily be turned back on us.

If this is "victory", what would defeat look like?

When the Free Speech Coalition was formed, they promised to stand up for freedom of expression (even that of Nazis). Now, they're dropping their urgent case against Auckland Council:

The Free Speech Coalition has withdrawn its request for urgent orders and a hearing on Auckland Mayor Phil Goff's decision to ban two right-wing Canadians from council venues, it says.

The so-called Free Speech Coalition crowd-funded tens of thousands of dollars to launch the court action, which was in response to Canadians Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux being prevented from using the Bruce Mason Centre for an upcoming speaking event.

In a press release, the coalition said it was withdrawing the action because it had achieved "victory".

The coalition said its main purpose for next Monday's hearing had gone because the council had conceded that mayor Phil Goff did not make the decision and that it was in fact made by Regional Facilities Auckland.

Except that that's not actually "victory". "Victory" would be a ruling from the court saying that the Council's decision was unlawful and that it can not use "health and safety" and a heckler's veto as a pretext to discriminate on political grounds in its venue decisions. Instead, they didn't even try arguing that, because in fact they support discrimination, at least when it comes to gay people. But then, its difficult to escape the impression that for many of them this was never about free speech at all, but about finding some way to attack their ideological enemy, Phil Goff. And now they can't sue him, they've simply lost interest. As for the actual principle at stake, well, that's been pushed back into the never-never, and they'll probably lose interest in that too. After all, its not as if the likes of Stephen Franks, Don Brash, David Farrar and Jordan Williams have ever been consistent supporters of freedom of expression...

I don't like Nazis, but tolerating them is the cost of a free and democratic society, the cost of the right of all of us to speak out and try and change things. And that right has been compromised. If you're happy with that, you might want to think about the precedent it sets: that a threat by people to protest against an event justifies its suppression. To point out the obvious, Nazis can also protest, and you are supporting their right to shut down progressive speech. And that doesn't seem like either a liberal or progressive position to hold.

A curious absence

The Free Speech Coalition has filed its suit against Phil Goff and the Auckland Council over their cancellation of a Nazi event, seeking to have the decision overturned. But reading the statement of claim, there's an odd omission: while they cite a variety of administrative law reasons and breach of sections 14 - 17 (freedom of expression, religion, assembly and association) of the Bill of Rights Act as reasons to overturn the decision, for some reason they don't include their strongest case: breach of the right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of political opinion. Its alluded to in passing when suggesting that Goff unlawfully directed the decision, but not otherwise mentioned. I'm not sure whether this is because they felt it would be difficult to prove, or because several of the Coalition's backers (e.g. Stephen Franks) are ideologically opposed to anti-discrimination legislation, but given that they're throwing the kitchen sink at it elsewhere, its a curious absence.

They've requested an urgent hearing and interim orders allowing the event to proceed, though whether they get it is another question. Still, hopefully we'll have a ruling and some clarification on local authority powers and freedom of speech soon.

The cost of a free and democratic society II

On Friday, we learned that a pair of Canadian Nazis had tacked New Zealand on to an Australian (of course) speaking tour, and were planning on visiting New Zealand. Cue an immediate public outcry, which was cut short by Phil Goff apparently banning them from Auckland Council venues:

.@AklCouncil venues shouldn't be used to stir up ethnic or religious tensions. Views that divide rather than unite are repugnant and I have made my views on this very clear. Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux will not be speaking at any Council venues.

— Phil Goff (@phil_goff) July 6, 2018

Auckland Council apparently acted on this and cancelled their booking, ostensibly for health and safety reasons. Which is about as credible as Donald Trump saying his anti-Muslim ban wasn't about religion. When the mayor of a city says they've given a direction, and what they want happens, I think we're entitled to take their word for it.

The problem, of course, is that this is all illegal. Auckland Council is a body performing a public function and so subject to the Bill of Rights Act. Which affirms, among other things, both the right to freedom of expression, and the right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of political opinion. The Auckland Council's actions are a prima facie violation of those rights and invite judicial review. And given Goff's tweet, the outcome of such a review is likely to be ratepayer's money spent on compensating Nazis for the breach of those rights, as well as an order that the council provide them with a venue (if they want one) on the same terms as any other customer.

Goff won't care. Like police officers who beat suspects, he will face no personal consequences for violating these rights, and there's no political downside for him because he's picking on someone everyone hates. But we should care. Because if we let the mayor of Auckland decide what speech is acceptable in public facilities, then a future mayor may decide that they don't like speech that we approve of. Like union meetings, or speeches in favour of reforming drug laws, or political movements against landlords and the rentier economy. Or speeches in favour of racial justice - because Pakeha New Zealand's neck seems to be pretty red these days, and there's votes in sticking it to "the Maoris".

That's why we need to stand up for freedom of speech, even for people whose views are repugnant. Not because we agree with those views, but because being able to express your views without interference from the government is the key to any democratic change, and giving away that principle gives politicians a veto on what we can demand from them. When push comes to shove, I'd rather put up with Nazis than trust politicians with a power so ripe for abuse.

(And, because some moron will need it to be explicitly said: threatening people is a crime and these people need to go to jail).

The cost of a free and democratic society

So, a pair of foreign racists want to visit New Zealand, and naturally some people want to have them banned to prevent them from speaking:

Pressure is mounting on Immigration New Zealand to deny entry to a controversial Canadian pair set to give a talk in Auckland next month.

Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux are best known for their far-right alternative views on everything from feminism, gender and immigration to Islam.

Earlier this year, Ms Southern was banned by from entering the UK on the grounds of her involvement "in the distribution of racist material in Luton", according to the BBC.

The Islamic community voiced their opposition to the visit last month.

New Zealand Federation of Islam Associations president Hazim Arafeh said it had written letters to the Immigration Minister, Minister for Ethnic Communities and the Human Rights Commission asking for Lauren Southern to be denied entry.

"[She] abuses her right of freedom of speech. She's just going to give a talk in which she's just going to insult all of us," Mr Arafeh said.

Unfortunately, being insulted is just something people have to put up with in a free and democratic society, and our Supreme Court is on record (in Brooker v Police) as saying so. We have a right to freedom of speech in New Zealand, which covers not just the right of these racists to speak, but also the right of their racist audience to listen. Restricting that right pre-emptively requires a very high test: basicly an announced intention on the part of the speaker to incite a riot. If that test isn't met, there's no justifiable reason to prevent them from speaking. And as I've said in other cases, the answer to speech you don't like is more speech, not less. If they're giving a speech, then protest outside, and make it damn clear to everyone that kiwis don't agree with their racism and Islamophobia.

A better way to deal with drugs

There's a major symposium on drug laws happening at Parliament this week. As part of this, the New Zealand Drug Foundation has stepped up where politicians fear to tread, and proposed a major reform of our drug laws: one based on harm-minimisation and treating drugs as a public health problem, rather than a crime:

The first part of our model drug law is based on the Law Commission’s 2011 recommendations – which proposed a model of health referral instead of criminal convictions and of removing any legal barriers to innovative harm-reduction practices – and the Portuguese model of reform. All currently illegal drugs would be decriminalised. If police find a person in possession of drugs, they would issue a ‘mandatory caution’ which includes health information and legal advice.

After one, two or three cautions (depending on the drug), the person would be required to attend a brief intervention session to assess whether further health assessment and treatment is needed. If so, a range of non-compulsory treatment options would be available. To ensure the focus remains on improving health outcomes, any legal penalty for not attending the intervention session would be restricted to an option to reschedule or a low fine.

They're also proposing a regulated cannabis market, a commercial supply model aimed at preventing the formation of a powerful industry lobby group (as has happened with alcohol and tobacco), and much more money for drug-related health issues (funded by the savings on the current pointless enforcement costs). All together, it seems like a much better way to deal with drugs than at present: one which recognises the reality of the failure of the war on drugs, respects freedom (at least much moreso than at present), and ensures that people who need help get it (while those who don't don't get harassed and criminalised). The question is whether our politicians will take this opportunity to fix a law which obviously isn't working - or whether their prejudices will cause them to keep on making the same cruel and expensive mistakes they are at present. Sadly, I think we all know which option they'll choose.

I do not care about Todd Barclay's lifestyle

The Todd Barclay saga hit the sewer this morning with a Newsroom article on Glenys Dickson's negotiations with Parliamentary Services, which included implications about Todd Barclay's lifestyle.

The Barclay scandal raises several matters of public interest. Whether Barclay broke the law against the use of interception devices. Whether the National Party perverted the course of justice by trying to heavy Dickson into dropping the matter. Barclay's shitty treatment of his employees, and whether he and the Prime Minister lied to the public about it. But what Todd Barclay (or any other MP) does in private is no part of it, and none of our concern. I keep my nose out of MP's private lives, and I'd appreciate it if they'd do the same for us.

National's creepy eugenics plan fails

Back in 2012, the National government decided that right-wing extremists fantasies of the poor "breeding for business" were a sound basis for policy, and decided to use WINZ to do something about it, by making free long-term contraception available to beneficiaries. At the time I called this "creepy eugenics", as it was about enabling state control of fertility than enabling people to control their own. The good news is that it the policy is a complete failure:

When introducing the fund, the Government estimated that up to 16,000 women would access the grant, and $500,000 was budgeted for the first four years of the fund.

But in briefing documents released under the Official Information Act, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) show only 795 grants were made from the fund in its first four years.

In total, just $143,325 was spent over that time, at an annual cost of $35,000.

The report cites a number of barriers to adoption, including WINZ's controlling bureaucracy and a reluctance of doctors to impose long-term contraception on teenagers, but its hard to escape the conclusion that people just didn't want their fertility controlled by WINZ (or indeed, for WINZ to know anything about it. Because really, who the fuck wants to talk about that with them?)

As noted in my earlier post, contraception is a great thing, and it lets people control their own lives. And it should be freely available to all via the public health system, rather than pushed by WINZ to stop some people (but not others) from having kids.

The revolution in freedom of expression law continues

Back in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brooker v. Police [PDF]. The case represented a victory for the freedom to protest, significantly raising the threshold for prosecution for the public order offence of "disorderly behaviour". A majority of the Court applied a traditional analysis, balancing the insult to the values of "right thinking" member of the public test against freedom of expression (and weighing that heavily in light of the Bill of Rights Act). But it was Chief Justice Sian Elias' judgement, which approached it as a matter of straight statutory interpretation from the basis that public order law was about public order and disruptions to the use of public space, which has been the most influential. And so a few years later, in Valerie Morse v. Police [PDF], the offense of "offensive behaviour" was viewed not as primarily about giving offence as aggression and threat which interfered with the use of public space (the upshot being that quietly burning the flag at an Anzac Day dawn service simply didn't meet the threshold).

And now we have another example, with the Court of Appeal applying the same logic to rule that non-sexualised public nudity is not "offensive behaviour":

The bench of three learned judges at the Court of Appeal said the crucial question to consider was whether a conviction for offensive behaviour required the behaviour to be seen and that it actually disrupted public order.

The crown contended that it was enough that Ker was capable of being seen and his nudity had the potential to disrupt public order.

But ​the court ruled that offensive behaviour had to be observed - otherwise it could not cause public disorder - and must actually disturb public order.

Because there was no evidence Ker had offended anyone or caused any problems, his conviction was quashed.

[Emphasis added]

Which is as it should be. If you're not causing anyone any grief, the law should leave you alone. Sadly, as with the previous rulings, it may take the police a while (and a pile of failed prosecutions) to get the message.

The government should not be prosecuting people for this

A couple in Christchurch are being prosecuted for consensual incest:

A brother and sister who met as young adults are now co-parenting a child in Christchurch and being dealt with on charges of incest.

[...]

Judge Saunders told the sister at her sentencing that it was not the more common incest situation where an older man had taken advantage of a daughter.

In this case they were siblings and there was only a small disparity in the ages. “You only came to know each other in more recent times and there was a relationship that developed of an inappropriate kind. That has resulted in you now having to take the main responsibility for bringing up the child.”

Its very hard to see why this is a crime at all. This is a relationship between consenting adults. There is no suggestion of a power imbalance or exploitation (and if there was, I'm sure the police would be pursuing much more serious charges). So what's the interest of the state in punishing it?

Basically, these people are being punished because their consensual relationship makes other people go "ick". And that's simply not a good reason, any more than it is for homosexuals, polys, multiracial couples or people who like peanut butter. People's consensual private relationships are their own business, and the state should stay out of them.

Bigotry, "offensive language", and freedom of speech

The Herald reports that an Eketahuna man has been convicted and fined for "offensive language" for subjecting a gay couple to homophobic abuse on the town's main street. The comments - calling the victims "a poofter" and alleging that they had Aids - are an appalling example of bigotry. But contrary to the judge, this is not sufficient to warrant a criminal conviction.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Brooker v. Police [PDF] that the offence of disorderly behaviour was not about its insult to the values of "right-thinking" New Zealanders, but about whether it actually disrupted public order - that is, whether it seriously interferes with the "ordinary and customary use" of an area. In 2011 in Valerie Morse v. Police [PDF] they applied the same thinking to the charge of offensive behaviour, finding that it was not about giving offence, but about aggression and threat which (again) interfered with the use of public space. Together, these rulings raised the bar on the traditional public order offences, requiring that there basically be a real risk of starting a riot in order to justify interference with the BORA-affirmed right to freedom of expression.

While the Eketahuna bigot appears to have been charged under s4(1)(b) or (c) (relating to "threatening or insulting", "indecent or obscene", or just plain offensive words) rather than s4(1)(a) (relating to disorderly or offensive behaviour), the same principle surely applies. The law is not about protecting people from being offended in public, but about preventing breaches of the peace. Whether a breach of the peace is likely depends on exactly what is said: direct threats and intimidation are likely to be seen as disruptive, as they directly interfere with people's right to peaceably go about their business without fear of violence. But in a society which respects freedom of speech, mere insults are not enough. When insulted, "reasonable" New Zealanders are expected to respond with words or defamation lawyers, not violence (as the absence of any provocation defence for assault makes clear).

To be fair, the judge acknowledged this dependence on public order in their comments, but then flubbed it:

Judge Hastings said under the Bill of Rights, everyone has the right to freedom of expression but that was "not absolute" and was subject to reasonable limits. He said for the offence Strange was accused of committing to be upheld, it was necessary to establish that at the time, the place and in the manner of using the words, public order would have been disturbed.

That, the judge said, was "very clearly" the case.

"The words you used were offensive and homophobic and, as such, undermined the simple values New Zealand cherishes. They were used in the middle of the day in a public street and would have disturbed the public order of Eketahuna on that day."

But the issue isn't whether those insults offended against kiwi values of tolerance (they certainly do), but whether they were such that they would have driven the victims from the street or caused a riot. And that simply does not seem to be the case. The judge has misapplied the law, and entered a false conviction. It should be appealed and overturned.

A rancid style of politics

Over on A Bee of a Certain Age, Deborah takes me (and others) to task for my immediate reaction to Paula Bennett suddenly popping up with a blurt about preventing child abusers from having more children: that it was a deliberate distraction, designed to agitate the talkback morons and get them ranting about something other than the government's hypocritical plans to increase class sizes while sending their own kids to private schools. Ouch. For the record, I don't think this is "a minor matter", or that "women’s rights are always tradeable". Its a revolting suggestion, incredibly intrusive into people's lives, and laden with some fairly unpleasant assumptions about class and race. You don't have to be a civil libertarian to see that allowing the courts to issue orders deeming people to be "unfit parents" and banning them from having children gets us into some very unpleasant territory, and raises the spectre of our very own "stolen generation".

(It is also utterly redundant. As pointed out in the Herald article, CYFS already has the power to intervene when they believe a child to be in genuine danger. So what does Bennett's proposal add? Nothing, other than stigmatisation and injustice. The only kids it "saves" are those who weren't in danger. So what exactly are they being "saved" from...?)

At the same time, I can't help but notice the convenient timing of this outburst, and suspect the government's motives in raising it. Andrew Geddis makes the case here, and it is a strong one: this is a government which is not only willing to consider creepy eugenics, but is also willing to raise them purely for PR purposes, to distract from other issues. No matter which way you look at it, that's a fairly rancid style of politics.

I agree with Colin Craig

Colin Craig on same-sex marriage:

“Government needs to get out of the bedrooms of the country”.

I agree with this absolutely. The state has no business in our bedrooms, or in dictating to us the sorts of relationships we should pursue. If the parties involved are consenting adults, then it is none of the state's business what they do.

And this is exactly why I support same-sex marriage: because it puts all relationships on an equal footing, and gets the government out of people's bedrooms. Contra Craig, it is the privileging of some relationships over others that constitutes "social engineering". If Craig truly opposed that (rather than simply wanting to engineer things his way and make us all conform to his preferred lifestyle), then he'd support equality, not bigotry.

Herbert Spencer would be proud

So, the government is pushing ahead with the Welfare Working Group's recommendation for creepy eugenics, in the form of providing free contaception to women on benefits. Contraception is a great thing - it lets people control their own fertility, and enables them to make choices about their own lives, rather than being slaves to biology. Making it freely available to all, in whatever form works best for them, would be a significant advance for human freedom. But that's not what the government is planning. Instead, they're making it freely available to some, in a form which will limit their fertility for prolonged periods, in the very specific hope that they will use it. This isn't about enabling choice - its about constraining it.

John Key thinks this is "common sense". Well, I guess it looks that way to the 50 million dollar man, concerned about the poor doing such terrible things as starting or continuing families, or worse, presuming that they are entitled to live a normal and dignified existence despite not sharing his exalted net worth. But from this end, it looks grossly intrusive, the state sticking its nose into people's bedrooms, deciding who should have children and who should not, on the basis of occupation and rich people's myths about "breeding for business". Herbert Spencer would be proud.

Death with dignity back for another round

Euthanasia is a perennial topic of member's bills. In 1995, then-National MP Michael Laws proposed the Death With Dignity Bill. It was voted down 61 to 29. In 2003, NZ First's Peter Brown had another go, losing 60 - 57. The bill was in the ballot again for the subsequent Parliamentary term, but was never drawn. And now the issue is back for another go, this time led by Labour's Maryan Street:

Labour list MP Maryan Street, who is working on a private member's bill that would legalise some end-of-life options, told TV ONE's Breakfast that the public attitude about euthanasia has changed.

[...]

Street said her bill was "about autonomy, it's about dignity and most of all it's about compassion".

"More and more people are looking to have the kind of control at the end of their life that they like to have during their life," she said.

There's more details about the bill here.

As I've said before, I support death with dignity. It is a matter of fundamental personal autonomy. Our lives belong to us, not to some imaginary sky fairy. We should not have to starve ourselves to death if we wish to end them, or have to ask our friends to risk prosecution if we are incapable even of that. The law should provide for it (with appropriate safeguards, of course).

This is also I think an issue which could succeed this term. The margin of defeat has been narrowing over the years, as religious people have died off and social acceptance of euthanasia has grown. And with a strong generational shift in National, I think support will have increased enough to get it over the line. The question now is whether it will be drawn from the ballot...

A challenge to our new MPs

Parliament will sit on 20 December for the swearing in of new MPs and the election of a Speaker. Last time this happened, a number of MPs (including Te Ururoa Flavell and Hone Harawira) did not make their affirmations in the prescribed form, instead swearing allegiance to the Treaty of Waitangi. Over the course of the term, they were joined by others, including (IIRC) Gareth Hughes, Kevin Hague and Catherine Delahunty. This was a long-standing tradition in our Parliament; opinions on our constitution differ, and those of such views were allowed to represent their constituents and express them before mouthing the words required by law. But earlier this year, Lockwood Smith overturned that tradition, ejecting Hone Harawira from the House in an effort to erase those differences and enforce his preferred cultural and political values. Since then, he has forced through a change in Standing Orders to continue to enforce those norms.

Of course, that doesn't make those differences go away. And this election, we've had more MPs than ever elected representing the new New Zealand, whose loyalties lie not with an old woman 19,000km away, but with our founding document and their fellow citizens.

Pretty obviously, the state opening presents an opportunity for these MPs. And so I challenge them: stand up for what you believe in. Make your oath or affirmation to the Treaty, to the people, first, then do it "properly". And if the Clerk throws you out of the House for the day, so much the better! When Lockwood Smith changed the rules to enforce his values, he invited the state opening to be turned into a farce. And that is exactly what our MPs who believe in a new New Zealand and a new constitution should do.

Update: Added Kevin Hague to the list. He has some thoughts on the affirmation here:

In the past several MPs - including the Maori Party's and some in the Greens - have altered the oath to include the Treaty of Waitangi before being stopped and told to deliver the correct wording stipulated by law.

Green MP Kevin Hague said if he was re-elected he had every intention of doing so again, but would have an "ethical dilemma" if the Speaker laid down the hard word beforehand.

"For an oath to be meaningful it needs to be meaningful to the person giving the oath. What MPs in New Zealand should be swearing allegiance to is to New Zealand, and it is appropriate to include allegiance to the Treaty in that."

I'm hoping he'll stand by this on December 20.

Protest and Parliament

Some people have objected to my last two posts about Lockwood Smith's refusal to swear Hone Harawira in as an MP today. According to them, Smith was simply enforcing the law, and it is unfair to portray him as a white supremacist for doing so.

To put it politely, fuck them.

To point out the obvious, not everyone accepts our current constitutional provisions. Some people, such as Harawira, want a greater role for Maori and the Treaty. Others (including myself) are republicans, and do not see why we should swear allegiance to a foreign monarch. We are entitled to hold those views, and express them in public, and those rights do not suddenly end if someone is elected to Parliament. In fact, an MP elected with such views would be failing their voters if they did not use the opportunity presented by being sworn in to make a symbolic statement of dissent.

As previously noted, our Parliament has long had an accepted practice for dealing with this. MPs make their statement, then they do it again "properly". This respects the diversity of MP's views, while ensuring that the law is complied with. But suddenly, out of the blue, Smith has changed that practice, and is now requiring that MPs be sworn in in the legal form from the outset. No symbolic dissent is permissible. While cloaked in petty legalism, at its heart this is about cultural supremacy, and in particular the supremacy of Smith's dead white male monarchist culture over the new New Zealand culture which has been growing here for the last 40 years.

To claim that it is somehow "disrespecting Parliament" to symbolically refuse to take the affirmation in its proper form (and then do it) is an exact reversal of the truth. It is disrespecting Parliament, disrespecting our democracy, to forbid it. And it is disrespecting the people of New Zealand to try and erase our differences and enforce a monolithic culture upon those who represent us.

These are real disagreements, and they are to be solved by argument, the way we do things in a democracy. Symbolic protests such as Harawira's are part of that process. They highlight the absurdity of the current situation, and hopefully provoke us to think about why "our" representatives are promising to obey an old lady 19,000km away rather than the people who elected them. Or why our public oaths of office and our constitution still do not reflect our founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi. Outlawing such protests, and seeking to erase them, will not make those questions go away. All it does is bring our Parliament, and its Speaker, into disrepute.

Schools and abortion

Others have already posted about the Sunday Star-Times' hatchet job on schools and "secret" abortions, but I think its worth highlighting anyway. The thrust of the article was that it is wrong for schools to enables their student's choices in this way, and that they should inform the parents. This is wrong for two reasons. First, as the statistics at the bottom of the article show, the vast majority of schoolkids having abortions are legally adults, sexually speaking. They're considered to be legally competent to decide who they fuck. Why shouldn't they also be legally competent to decide to have a private medical procedure? It is, bluntly, none of their parents fucking business anymore. Whether they choose to tell them or not is up to them, and no-one else.

What about those who aren't legal adults? Its still none of their parents fucking business, for the simple reason that pregnancy is a fundamental matter of personal autonomy, and no-one other than the person involved has a right to make those decisions for them. As I pointed out back in 2004, when Judith Collins was banging her conservative drum about this, the enormous coercive power of parents over their children means parents forcing kids to have kids. It means treating young girls in bad circumstances as brood mares. That is a morally repugnant position, and one that children need to be protected from. The current law, which allows privacy, does that.

If parents are concerned that their children may have an abortion without telling them, then perhaps they should ask themselves why their kids don't trust them, and work on fixing that relationship, rather than demanding a law change to create morally repulsive proprietorial rights over other people's bodies.

Creepy

Buried in the Welfare Working Group's report [PDF]: a call for eugenics:

The Welfare Working Group recommends that ready access to free long-acting reversible contraception be provided for parents who are receiving welfare.

Free contraception for all would be a good thing; it would enable human choice and give everyone control over their fertility. But that is not what we're talking about here. Instead, we're talking about free contraception for some, given in the hope they will use it. Instead of individuals controlling their own fertility, this is an attempt to impose state control, on the basis of socioeconomic status, along the lines of the creepiest of C19th eugenic theories. But then, did we really expect anything different from a group advised by Peter Saunders?