What you are witnessing in real time with Brian Tamaki is the further erosion of free speech, and the persecution of a person for his beliefs. What happens when you say something just publicly enough to have the cops turn up at your door? Don’t think it would happen to you? Think again.
Universities have become engines of ideological reproduction, increasingly insulated from scrutiny and detached from the society they are meant to serve. They will not regain public trust without serious reform.
It’s more than the public shaming of unimportant people – it’s a warning that they can do it to you, too.
I am tired of it. Millions of us are. And no amount of rainbow branding or speech policing will make the facts go away.
Let’s be clear. Auckland Council doesn’t own council venues. Ratepayers own them. Auckland Council can’t stop people using them without good reason. And having opposing ideological views isn’t one of them.
We need a state confident enough to say that no mosque, church, temple, synagogue, prophet, scripture, imam, pastor or ideology is above criticism. Not one.
If we take everything that is said too seriously, we are in danger of completely losing our sense of humour.
The Karen Class destroys a good man, just for speaking plainly.
I’m saying it without my name attached, in a publication built specifically to defend my right to say it with my name attached. If that strikes you as a contradiction, it should.
From making the population stupid to replacing the natives and then acting surprised when it explodes in your face.
Robert Nola, Michael Corballis and John Werry – have died since the letter was published. But the stand they took alongside their fellow professors Kendall Clements, Dame Elizabeth Rata, Douglas Elliffe and Garth Cooper continues to reverberate in public debate and government policy.
Smuggling in a regime of pre-emptive speech control. The right response is therefore the simplest one. Support the deepfake amendment for exactly what it is – a narrow, sound, self-contained closing of a gap in the law – and refuse, flatly, to let the commission’s wider regime ride in on its back.
The NZPB is not alone. The Real Estate Authority, the Teaching Council and the Nursing Council have all adopted provisions that threaten practitioners with consequences if they don’t toe the ideological line.
