New Zealand has a new government. What does this mean for sex and gender?

By Anonymous

Posted: 12th December 2023 • Legislation   New Zealand   News  

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The election

New Zealanders went to the ballot box on October 14th and voted to change the government. They ejected the two-term centre-left Labour Party, first elected before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2017, and then re-elected with a clear majority in 2020 under a (then) popular party leader Jacinda Ardern. This time, the centre-right National Party (National) gained seats, mostly at Labour’s expense—a result that surprised some pundits. Many voters had been feeling disappointed pre-election, because they believed the left had been overtaken by ideologues with a commitment to identity politics, and Labour had not delivered the socioeconomic improvements they had promised. The erosion of women’s rights was largely ignored by mainstream media and most politicians, but women voters may have been paying attention. 

To form a government, under New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP), a party needs at least 61 seats; their own, in an outright majority, or in this case, a coalition of parties can make up the final number. Under MMP a voter gets two votes: a party vote and an electorate vote. The final number of MPs in Parliament depends on the difference between the number of seats a party wins outright when their candidate succeeds in a particular electorate, compared to the number of party votes they get, which allows a party to add MPs from their ranked list. There are also special votes—those cast overseas or by new voters signing up on the day—that are counted later. The results, with the special votes added, were released on November 3rd. 

Initially, it looked like National would form a coalition just with the ACT Party, a libertarian party that had its best election night ever. After the special votes were counted, and the new results released on 3 November, National and ACT were a few seats short and needed the nationalist New Zealand First Party to form a government. This Parliament will have 123 seats, making it the largest NZ Parliament in history: National (48 seats) ACT (11 seats) and New Zealand First (8 seats). The Green Party, who, like other Green Parties internationally, endorse the most extreme trans activist policies (such as trans-identified male competitors in women’s sport) had their best night ever at the election, winning three seats outright and gaining 12 more under the party vote system. But the Greens will be members of the opposition, with a much more limited role under this new right-wing government. This role is not quite what they have become accustomed to with their Labour Party friends in power.

What does all this mean for sex and gender?

It is a fact that during the past six years, under Labour, egregious pieces of gender legislation were passed. It is also true that around the world, other governments of varied political persuasions are considering, or have passed similar pieces of legislation. This is occurring despite the legislation’s unpopularity among the majority of citizens, highlighting serious questions about the state of democracy globally where sex-based rights and gender ideology are concerned.    

In New Zealand, during Labour’s last term, Self-ID, in the form of the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill was introduced, as was the bill to ‘ban conversion therapy’—the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. Many watched Parliamentary Select Committee meetings with disappointment and horror as members of the public tried to raise sensible objections and concerns about these bills and were mocked with eye rolls and accusations of transphobia by elected MPs. These bills had some acceptance from the opposition parties. Indeed, the Self-ID law was passed unanimously to great and virtuous fanfare, with the National-based opposition, now the current government in waiting, raising no objections. The voting record on the act to ‘ban conversion therapy’ provides a bit more hope that the new government is not completely in thrall to gender ideology. The left-wing parties (Labour, Green, and Te Pāti Māori) voted as a block for that bill, along with 25 National Party MPs. Eight National MPs voted against it, and 23 of National’s MPs exercised their conscience votes and abstained. At the very least it seems that most National MPs are not enthusiastic supporters of the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022.

The civil service and education under Labour

While the left enjoyed a majority in the previous government, and could (and did) exercise its power to pass legislation favouring this new magical thinking worldview of sex and gender, it was among our unelected representatives working behind the scenes in the civil service where gender ideology arguably made its most substantial gains. The word ‘woman’ was quietly dropped from a range of government ministries and NGO policy documents. A women’s health strategy—the first ever in New Zealand—included men who identified as women while at the same time ignoring breastfeeding. New provisions to cover birth injuries under New Zealand’s health insurance scheme, the Accident Compensation Commission (ACC), could not name the group of persons who are affected by these injuries as women or mothers, instead stating, “from 1 October 2022 our accident cover includes specific injuries birthing parents can experience from the beginning of labour through to delivery of the pēpi/baby.” The Midwifery Council, the regulatory body for midwives, rewrote its midwifery scope of practice and took out these words too, ignoring negative feedback from members of the public and midwives alike. Under the Labour Government, women became a group that could not speak their name. 

One of the campaign promises made by the newly elected government was to decrease the number of civil servants and cut public sector jobs. This might account for the success of the Greens in the capital city Wellington, who for the first time won two electoral seats. Wellington has a young population with many young people employed in the public sector. They likely voted on ideological grounds, in addition to self-interest generated by the threat of potentially losing their jobs. Public sector workers are supposed to be politically neutral, and it is an open question as to whether these green-voting civil servants will be able to cope with a change in the government’s stance on gender. Will they continue to quietly influence policy in the direction of their views, when the government’s public face could look very different? 

Under the Labour Government, trans activist groups with substantial government funding wrote policies for the Department of Education and created resources for students. The effort to embed relationships and sexuality education in the school curriculum resulted in the promotion and endorsement of gender ideology throughout education. For example, in the science curriculum, a guide for children aged 5 to 12 suggests they be taught about puberty blockers, the changing views of sex historically, and the concept of male and female with respect to fungi. It is impossible to view these suggestions as not coming from a place of policy capture if one is aware of the trans-activist worldview.

The hijacking of indigenous rights campaigns

A unique feature of New Zealand’s politics is found in the status of its relationship with indigenous citizens. A focus of this relationship is the foundational treaty between Māori and the Crown, which has been subject to endless interpretation and review. There is little doubt that as Te Tiriti o Waitangi treaty partners the Crown has got the better deal despite promises of equality. But legitimate attempts to address the imbalance have been colonised by the largely non-Māori gender ideologues who have latched their policies to indigenous rights, ironically creating a form of neo-colonisation. NZ policy documents have substituted the Māori word whānau (family) for women or mother, despite the existence of the perfectly interchangeable Māori word for woman wahine, or the plural wāhine. The words man/men and the Māori translation for both, tāne remain intact. The likely desired effect is to make it difficult if not impossible to argue against these language changes without being accused of racism—a chilling effect designed to silence debate and discussion. Whether the new government will have a political appetite to restore women’s lost words is unknown. 

At the same time, ideologues have successfully lobbied to embed mātauranga Māori within the science curriculum. Mātauranga Māori, or Māori science, is defined by some as necessarily linked to a metaphysical interpretation of a Māori worldview. In this framing, it is a belief system that rejects the ‘Western’ scientific method, an interpretation that many actual scientists, both Māori and non-Māori would dispute. Unfortunately, the addition of this version of Mātauranga Māori has allowed trans activists the perfect cover to usher in an alternative to various accepted fields of science that they find confronting. After all, natural selection, human genetics, and evolution all rely on a solid grasp of reproductive biology, and in the case of humans, that sex is binary. If such scientific concepts can be reframed as only a ‘type’ of science (with potentially racist connotations at that) rather than as biological realities withstanding the tests of the scientific method, the field of biology can be neo-colonised too.   

The Women’s Rights Party

There are fewer women in the new government. At one stage, before the resignations of Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and MP Kiri Allen, New Zealand had 61 women MPs, the most ever. In fact, for the first time, New Zealand briefly had a majority female parliament. The total number of female MPs is now set to decline. Some believe this is a devastating blow for women and their ability to assert their rights and affect policy, but the irony is that it was a majority, or near majority female parliament, that ushered gender ideology into law and facilitated the widespread policy capture by trans activists. 

This election saw the creation of the NZ Women’s Rights Party, formed after New Zealand (and the world) watched the violence against women unfold at the Kellie Jay Keen ‘Let Women Speak’ event in Albert Park, Auckland. The mob of activists determined to silence and intimidate women included some very vocal MPs—several of them belonging to the Green Party. Politicians and journalists have continued to minimise violence against women and their valid concerns about the need for single-sex spaces. The New Zealand First Party, who spoke about women’s rights to single-sex spaces pre-election, have been rewarded at the polls by an increase in their seats from zero to eight. 

The Women’s Rights Party registered as a political party just in time for the election. They did not contest any electoral seats and achieved 2511 party votes. The Party plans to continue the fight against the erosion of women’s and girls’ rights, to push for safe single-sex spaces, safety and fairness in sports, appropriate reproduction and sex education in schools, and the right to protect and safeguard children and adolescents. They now have three years to increase their support.

Looking ahead

The new governments’ approach to gender and sex might be felt in several critical areas. Right-wing governments are fiscally conservative, which may result in austerity measures in response to the global economic situation—and National ran on a promise to cut taxes. With cost-cutting in mind, National, ACT and NZ First may be less likely to financially support expensive taxpayer-funded gender ideology-based programs, brought in under the previous government with a seriously questionable evidence base. Gender ideology has deeply permeated healthcare, education, social services, and single-sex spaces with detrimental consequences. Whether the new government has the capacity, or the political will, to do anything about the full scope of these negative changes remains to be seen. After all, gender ideology disproportionately affects women and children. There could be money to be made and favour to be gained with the government’s corporate friends from a continued ignorance as to the harms involved.

Encouragingly, National MP Erica Stanford promised in a post-election interview that if she was made education minister she would “deal with the RSE [relationships and sexuality education] document.” Now, with the new government announced on November 24th, Erica Stanford is indeed the new Minister of Education. Plans announced include a refocus of the school curriculum, to academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines. Another policy announced aims to ensure publicly funded sporting bodies support fair competition that is not compromised by rules relating to gender. Free speech is also going to be protected as the introduction of hate speech legislation has been ruled out and the NZ Law Commission’s work on hate speech legislation will also be terminated. There is already growing vocal opposition to these announcements with misleading media attack stories dominating the news. Time will tell as to how quickly the ideology can be dismantled, how committed the government is to addressing all the issues, and how much pushback there will be.

From the point of view of sex and gender, interesting times are ahead.

Related links

Mātauranga Māori and science

Select Committee hearings

The new NZ Government

Photo by Sulthan Auliya on Unsplash