The NZ Green Party have some very good policies for women and low-income people, particularly ones that will help a fair number of women struggling to pay essential bills.  However, they have significant silences, confusions, and/or contradictions in their policies and plans that will have a negative impact on females.

We are living through a time of turbulence, instability, and uncertainty. The decades long neoliberal dominance within Western-European patriarchal capitalism is under extreme pressure. The four biggest political parties in NZ have all been infected to a greater or lesser degree by neoliberalism, with National and the ACT parties being the most deeply contaminated.

This is the WLA submission to the NZ government, Safer Online Practices and Media Platforms Consultation. The government was asking for feedback on their proposal, which is to be made into a Bill in 2024.

They are proposing to have a government appointed regulator to set codes of practice for social media and the NZ media. But, who will be watching the watchers?

Hyperbole Waives The Rules

Towards the end of March, Kellie-Jae Keen, aka Posie Parker, will be visiting NZ with her Let Women Speak roadshow. On cue, some members of the Green Party have called on the government to ban her, either from entry to NZ, or from speaking in public. They claim what she has to say is “hate speech”, and she’s depicted as a fascist, a white supremacist, and a transphobe.

Statistic NZ’s consultation on sex, gender, sexuality: deadline Fri 20 January 2023

Statistics NZ is still open to feedback on its inclusion of sex, gender ID and 'sexual identity' in the upcoming 2023 census. Census forms will be going out some time in February for collection in March. Consultation about the sex, sexuality and gender variables in the 2023 census has been extended to next Friday, 5.00pm 20th January 2023.

womb – Janet Charman

A poem by New Zealand poet Janet Charman.