Ensure free speech at Auckland venues

Auckland Council is currently undertaking a review of its venue for hire services, with a view to balance the interests of various user groups. A proposal may be introduced to give ‘certain groups’ preferential treatment over others so that they may displace a prior group’s booking if they decide they want to use a certain venue at the same time.

As ratepayers, we all have the right to use the public venues we pay for to express our opinions. Some groups are not more equal than others and have no right to lay special claim to venues we all pay for and should be entitled to equal use of.

Write to Auckland Council and tell them why you feel it's so important that public venues remain places where free speech reigns free.

Dear Councillor,

I am writing to you as an Auckland resident to call on you to ensure that all public venues remain equally accessible to all groups, and that Auckland Council reasserts its commitment to free speech and tolerance for all opinions.

Presentations to the Rainbow Advisory Panel on Monday, 7 March, will suggest that priority should be given to certain groups over others, and that in cases of competing applications for use of the venue, predetermined groups should be given access. This would make it easy for activist groups to de-platform those they disagree with by ensuring that there is a competing application for the venue.

As you know, the Bill of Rights Act ensures that discrimination on the basis of thought or conscience is illegal. Those who would attempt to limit the rights of any residents to utilise Council facilities due to their speech contravene those rights. Simply put, to allow controversial or unpopular opinions to be expressed in Council venues is not to endorse them, it is simply to recognise the human rights of those who hold them.

If preferential treatment (or positive discrimination) is introduced in the Council venues policy, the Council will be liable for the speech of those who present at the facilities, unlike the current time when the Council is not liable, because they allow hyper-accessibility. All rate payers fund public venues, so all rate payers should have the right to voice their legal perspectives and opinions there. 
 
Providing minority groups with priority access to Council venues is a fraught enterprise, not least because often is if competing minority groups who are trying to access the venues. Further, once access to Council venues is not hyper-accessible, minority groups stand to be the first to suffer and be discriminated against.

Sincerely,
[full name]