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Yvonne van Dongen
Veteran NZ journo incredulous gender ideology escaped the lab. Won’t rest until reality makes a comeback.
The Silent Auditor’s team is quietly confident that charges against him will eventually melt away like snow in the sunshine.
Already the police have tried to downgrade the charges from common assault to disorderly conduct, which he declined. On Thursday his team gathered at the District Court for a pre-trial review of his case, which resulted in a date being set for a judge-only trial on July 29.
You may remember that the Silent Auditor is the man who was arrested for filming the rally opposed to the government ban on puberty blockers for minors at the end of last year. I was there and saw a large banner wobbling left and right. Little did I know that the banner was being used to obscure the Silent Auditor, who was attempting to film the event.
A Silent Auditor is the name given to the individual who attends and records protests silently. A silent “audit” is undertaken primarily to stress test the right to record in public.
Silent Auditing is a practice that hails from the United States, where it is often called the First Amendment Audit. Such audits focus on an individual’s right to film or photograph public officials and spaces without speaking to “audit” the enforcement of constitutional rights.
The Silent Auditor’s team consists of members of the civil liberties advocacy group PILLAR (Protecting Individual Life, Liberty And Rights). Nathan Seiuli of PILLAR said the Silent Auditor’s own footage revealed a serious failure by police. In it, a man is harassed for 40 minutes by the rally marshals while police stand by. Instead of protecting him, they arrest him.
Seiuli called it an abandonment of responsibility and said it was evidence of a pattern showing how certain events are policed in New Zealand now. That pattern includes the failure of police to protect women at the Posie Parker event in Albert Park in 2023.
In fact, the Silent Auditor’s first outing was at this event. His footage and that of Simon Anderson’s were the only records of the violence suffered by women that day. Without this and social media pressure applied by Auckland restaurateur Leo Molloy, it is unlikely any arrest would have been made.
As well, the large police turnout for the Brian Tamaki-led ‘Keep New Zealand, New Zealand’ rally last month was deemed overkill by many observers. The Silent Auditor was also there filming the event as was Simon Anderson – without any obstruction or hostility.
Also at the court fixture were two of the Block the Ban rally marshals. The marshals were two mature women, one draped in a keffiyeh and the other, highly tattooed, wearing a flax sun-visor over her top knot. If I had to invent cliches I couldn’t do better. They glared at their opponents and took photos, ironic given their efforts preventing the Silent Auditor from recording their rally.
He remains anonymous since he has already been doxxed and harassed by those who oppose him.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
