Never Waste a Good Crisis

Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.

What Winston Churchill actually said is “never let a good crisis go to waste” but it amounts to the same thing and is the perfect call to action for these times.

The scandal implicating top brass at NZ Police has to be a watershed moment, a moment that should not go to waste. NZ Police should seize this moment, in fact the entire coalition government should seize this moment, and embark on a wholesale clean-out of the progressive agenda that has infested government departments and agencies throughout the country for the past decade.

Should they dare to make such a bold move, the cheering from the silent majority would be heard up and down the land. They might even drown out the howls of outrage from the monocultural media and overpaid grandees in the public service and NGOs. In any case, even if they don’t, not to worry. The media’s ratings are tanking and the general resentment towards public servants, paid on average $10 an hour more than people in the private sector, is not to be under-estimated.

Where to start? Well, why not demand every government agency rescind all contracts with every rainbow and diversity group for starters? Given that police are under the kosh right now, it’s probably wise to start with them. Start by removing all documents produced by Gender Minorities Aotearoa (GMA), a gender ideological charity receiving substantial taxpayer funding, from their website. Cease all contact with GMA. Close the Rainbow 101 online training module. Get rid of diversity liaison officers and internal inclusion leads. Strip police cars of rainbow branding.

And ensure the cosplaying senior sergeant in your ranks is not on the front line. I wouldn’t want to face a cosplaying male-to-female in uniform if I’d just had a frightening experience at the hands of a male. Actually, as a woman, I wouldn’t want to face a cosplaying male-to-female officer anytime. I long for the day womanface is seen as offensive as blackface.

When your opponents seethe, remind them that so-called ‘anti-trans extremism’ is just a pejorative way of describing people who are pro-reality.

Not only would such a purge signal that this government meant business when it came to extinguishing ideological capture of the state, it would save money. Win win.

So that’s the police. But there’s more. A lot more. Last year I wrote a story about the charity industrial complex, featuring all the organisations offering woke workshops for a fee in exchange for a virtue-affirming tick or accreditation.

Here are some of the ticks on offer – rainbow, gender, cultural intelligence, wellbeing, health, accessibility, domestic violence free, the pride pledge and/or a brain badge. Not all charities offer ticks, some promise accreditation in the diversity, equity and inclusion space.

Little has changed. Look at this latest conference run in August by CARN – The Cross Agency Rainbow Network. CARN started in 2017 and is open to anyone in the public service who is LGBTTQIA+.

At a cost of $460 (paid by the taxpayer) each, public servants attended a two-day CARN conference featuring such heady topics as “The Joyful Movement: Transforming the relationship between movement and the transgender and non-binary communities of Aotearoa” or “Honouring the Acronym – Remembering the T.”

I’ve included these screenshots of the CARN programme for the humour in the workshop titles. Plus it’s part of keeping the receipts. The bios make for happy reading too. Good to know there is a Pākehā non-binary trans bisexual person in the mix while another speaker operates from the intersectional lens of being queer, trans, and intersex. Not confused at all.

The following public service agencies have representatives within CARN:

Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC)
Department of Corrections
Inland Revenue Department (IRD)
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)
Ministry for the Environment
Ministry for the Pacific People
New Zealand Police
Public Service Commission
Statistics NZ
Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand)

The Charities Register does not have information on CARN so it’s impossible to know how many taxpayer dollars have been spent supporting this ideological hub.

Others can be investigated. New Zealand has over 28,000 registered charities. Some earn in the tens of thousands while others earn hundreds of thousands or even millions, often paid by the taxpayer.

Take Diversity Works, formerly the Equal Employment Opportunities Trust. They had a total annual income of $2m earned through donations, fundraising and the like and over $700k providing services to the likes of Coca Cola, Internal Affairs, the Public Services Commission and Te Puni Kōkiri.

The sexuality and gender space is represented by many groups that offer ticks, accreditation, membership or simply education. Most promote the unscientific falsehoods inherent in gender ideology such as sex is mutable and it is possible to be born in the wrong body.

This unscientific advice doesn’t come cheap. InsideOut, a national charity representing the rainbow community, runs courses at $750 an hour plus GST for government agencies or corporates: $350 an hour plus GST for NGOs. The standard “Creating a Rainbow Inclusive Workplace” workshop is four to five hours long. In 2016 InsideOut had a total income of just over $76,000. Latest accounts show an income of $1.7m.

Rainbow Youth (RY) also has an income of $1.7m. Funding comes from services rendered to organisations, trust grants and central and local governments. Government funding made up $1.4m of that total.

Rainbow Tick (RT) is probably the most well-known of the rainbow accrediting organisations. RT now belongs to Kāhui Tū Kaha, a Ngāti Whātua owned not-for-profit. In the last financial year Kāhui Tū Kaha earned over $83m.

Over 100 organisations have the RT certification. Last year I listed organisations as diverse as Auckland Grammar, Ministry for the Environment, MinterEllisonRuddWatts, the New Zealand Intelligence Community, the New Zealand Rugby Union and Z Energy that paid for the Rainbow Tick. This year only Auckland Grammar has ditched RT certification.

The New Zealand Defence Force has held RT accreditation since 2019. In 2018/19, the programme fee was $10,000. Subsequently, the fee has risen to $12,000 per annum.

The ideology promoted by these gender and sexuality education organisations has been rejected by most New Zealanders. Polls showed that a majority of respondents did not support the introduction of sex self-ID in law. Most submissions to the select committee opposed the law change. As well, a September 2023 Curia poll showed that over 70 per cent of New Zealanders did not believe primary children should be taught gender ideology. Over half supported a ban on gender-affirming treatment for under-18s.

Membership of these ideological groups can have a chilling effect on alternative points of view. For instance, readers may remember that two years ago a concern raised by an Auckland museum staff member at the prospect of hosting the Fantastic Beasts show was that it might have an impact on the museum’s Rainbow Tick.

Fantastic Beasts is the spin-off prequel to the Harry Potter novel and film series. This is ‘problematic’ since Harry Potter was written by JK Rowling, who was one of the first people to speak out against the dangers of gender ideology.

The museum eventually opted for not hosting the show, even though it would have been immensely popular and earned it considerable income.

At the time I wrote that the concerned staff member may have recalled the RT statement on its website, that could have been regarded as a veiled threat. It said

An organisation that is seen to be discriminatory or insensitive in this area can expect fast, negative and often costly consequences.

A year later that statement is no longer on their website.

Interestingly, Auckland University Press has just published Harry Potter in Māori. Presumably, the sin of publishing a book written by the troublesome JK Rowling has been purified by publication in te reo.

So change is afoot even if the changes are minor. Auckland Grammar no longer pays for RT accreditation, RT’s veiled threat to unbelievers disappears and Auckland University Press feels confident enough to publish Harry Potter in Māori.

Better still, last week the NZ Breakers elected not to wear the rainbow Pride progress flag on their uniform. Their press release reported that: