Universities, councils, police, classrooms – our team is cooking with gas

What a big couple of days it’s been! While the weather is grim and chilly, we think there’s every reason to believe sunnier times (for free speech at least) can be around the corner. We’ve just got to keep the pressure up, and that’s exactly what our team is doing:

✅ Did you see my two opinion pieces in The Post and The Otago Daily Times on the importance of institutional neutrality at universities?

(That’s really just a fancy way of saying the obvious – universities should stay in their lane and not pretend they need to weigh in on every international conflict or dramatic weather event around the world).

Institutional neutrality is a new requirement for universities in New Zealand, thanks to a law change the Free Speech Union has been working on for years. It’s not the end of the fight for academics’ right to speak, but it’s a major step forward, that’s for sure!

✅ Increasingly, our team is being called on to provide expert insight to leaders of institutions who are starting to face the consequences of allowing the outfits to be captured by would-be-censors. Over the past week or so, we’ve met with:

• The Local Government Commissioner (to advise on changes to Codes of Conduct, that have been used increasingly to silence elected representatives from sharing the concerns of their communities).
• The Police Minister (Police has recently backed down on ‘non-criminal hate incidents’ and are no longer using a subjective threshold for anyone who thinks anything done to them (legal or not) is a matter for the Police to record. But we still need to ensure that the Officers of the Law respect the rights of citizens to speak freely).
• The Chief Human Rights Commissioner, who we’re told has his staff in his ear at the Human Rights Commission insisting there’s nothing special about speech rights – yeah, the right to be ‘free from offence’ is going to serve us so well! 🤦‍♂️
• The Chief Executive of the Registered Architects Board, who is implementing a new Continuing Professional Development criteria to ensure Mātauranga Māori and Te Ao Māori are part of architects' evaluations going forward. (Unfortunately, she didn’t know much about the Janet Dickson case, which should be a cautionary tale for all professional regulators who stray into trying to police what practitioners do or don’t think about contested issues. Well, we’ve been named ‘Key Stakeholders’ and you can be sure we’ll be fighting silly ideologic overreach like this every step of the way).

✅ Our fantastic Education Manager, Nick Hanne, is at a large Teachers' Conference over the next two days, ensuring teachers understand the stakes at play in their crucial sector, and that your humble Free Speech Union is ready to go classroom by classroom to take back a 'free speech generation'.

✅ That’s Nick’s second conference this week – last week, Nick and Nathan were in Palmerston North for the ‘Influence’ conference, where over 300 delegates heard from our team and others on how to take practical steps to respond to the constant erosion of basic freedoms in our country.

And that’s all in addition to the 15 cases we have on the go (psst, word has it there’s a big settlement coming up on one of our major cases… watch this space), the campaigns we’re running on the Harmful Digital Communications Act, our work to ensure InternetNZ sticks in its lane, and lots of media coverage. 💪🥳

All this adds up to impact and progress. No war is won by one battle, but every skirmish is a change to pursue our ultimate goal – to make New Zealand the freest country in the world to speak.

And you can be sure we have lots more coming next month: with that in mind, have you RSVPed to hear from Musa Al-Gharbi, the protégé of intellectual giant Jonathan Haidt, and author of We Were Never Woke (if you’re looking for a critique of the madness we’re living through, from a progressive himself no-less, you’ll be glad you came to hear him). 🎤

We have events in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. I hope we see you there!

No forward action is better than their rearguard. We’re so grateful for all the support you give us to turn wins here and wins there into a movement that is changing the history of our country.

Let’s stick at it. 📣

Jonathan Ayling | Free Speech Union