In good faith
This is a story with questionable characters. You've met some of them before.
In February this year, a Hutt City Council official sent an email marked URGENT to colleagues. The email went like this:
Kia ora everyone,
It has been brought to our attention that there is [a] racist and upsetting insert that refers to Te Tiriti in the current issue of the Hutt News.
This insert is not in line with Hutt City Council values, so please make sure you remove this from every available copy immediately.
Can you please reply to this email with confirmation this has been actioned in your Hub.
Thanks in advance.
The official’s colleagues acted quickly. Not everyone was on board: a librarian later said the directive went against libraries’ professional responsibility to provide equitable access to information. But whatever the case, the inserts were removed from every copy of the Hutt News held in a council facility, within the space of hours.1
What exactly was the insert? A group called the New Zealand Centre for Political Research (NZCPR) had reproduced, across eight pages of the crappiest typesetting you’ve ever seen, part of a piece written by Sir Āpirana Ngata in 1922.2
OK: on the face of it, this seems strange. Why would the writing of Sir Āpirana Ngata - an eminent Ngāti Porou politician and scholar - be seen as racist and upsetting? And why would the NZCPR, a right-wing think tank, even want to promote Ngata?
Well, this is another of my slightly bonkers stories. And if I’m falling down this rabbit hole, readers, then dammit: you’re coming with me.
[Picture description: The actual typesetting of the NZCPR insert. If their views are from another century, so too is the version of Microsoft Word they’re running.]
Let’s start by talking briefly about Ngata’s writing. Just after the NZCPR’s insert was circulated - not just in the Hutt News, but the New Zealand Herald, The Post, and various community newspapers - Dr Carwyn Jones wrote a short and sweet explanation of Ngata’s original piece.3
Jones says, “Ngata views the first article of the Treaty as a “complete cession” of governmental authority to the British Crown”. That sounds like a slam dunk - and now you can see why a right-wing thinktank might like it. Of course, things are more nuanced than that. Jones goes on to explain how, even though Ngata is an important person of mana, his is just one perspective. Since Ngata’s time, decades of scholarship, including a 2014 report by the Waitangi Tribunal, have found Māori did not cede sovereignty.4
There’s some complexity here, for sure. Was the Hutt City Council official right or wrong? Should they have directed the removal of the NZCPR insert from the Hutt News?
I don’t want to give this person, or any official, a hard time: I’ve been in their shoes, and it’s not easy. I think I would’ve made a different decision; but I believe the person acted in good faith, trying to weigh competing rights, exactly as officials are called on to do when they serve the public. Free speech is important. So too is everybody feeling welcome and respected in a public place.
If you knew nothing about the NZCPR, you might’ve looked at the insert, Ngata’s words, and wondered why anyone would feel bothered. But the thing is, the NZCPR’s support for Māori perspectives is incredibly selective. It’s New Zealand, they say, not Aotearoa. Treaty settlements are a gravy train. Māori spirituality is ‘cultural mumbo jumbo’. Māori fail to take personal responsibility, refusing to see that the disparities they face come from their own “elitist race-based attitudes”. I’m reluctant to share this crap - if thieving oxygen was an actual crime, I’d be aiding and abetting - but it’s important context for the official’s directive.
We’re going to come back to the NZCPR later. For now, we need make a couple of comments about the competing rights at play - the tension the official had to navigate as they decided what to do with the insert.
Free speech is a grey area, but people’s right to feel welcome and respected is a whole lot greyer. The greyer something is, the harder it becomes to codify in law or institutions. That doesn’t make welcome or respect unimportant: if they’re eroded enough, the societal harm is as catastrophic as the loss of free speech. But the way our laws and institutions work gives even an irresponsible, unethical, individualistic idea of free speech the edge over other, more collective, rights.
Defenders of rubbish human behaviour love this version of free speech: irresponsible, unethical and individualistic. When other types of free speech are under attack - say by threats against libraries who want to host rainbow story time - well, they seem to lose interest.
The official had a tricky call to make. Because when people complained to Hutt City Council about the insert, it wasn’t just the insert, but the intent behind it and the baggage that came with it: all the stuff the NZCPR constantly says about Māori. They didn’t want echoes of that stuff in a public place, making it feel less welcoming and respectful to some.
People aren’t stupid. They can tell a lack of good faith when they see it.
In the scheme of things, the insert issue was pretty minor. It could, and should, have been resolved pretty quickly. It wasn’t. Enter the Free Speech Union.
First, a bit of untangling.
Right-wing advocacy organisations in Aotearoa tend to involve the same handful of folks - including people who served as MPs in the 2000s.5 You will see the same names connected with different groups: Hobson’s Pledge, Stop Co-Governance, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union, The Platform, any of the ragged anti-trans groups that seem to last a week before comically imploding with infighting. Sometimes these groups invent new organisations or media that obscure who’s involved and their interests.
For example, Jordan Williams is on the board of the Free Speech Union (as well as being the executive director of the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union). He was found out as the creator, alongside Hobson’s Pledge, of a website called ‘We belong’. The website seemed intended to appeal to immigrants to Aotearoa, and used whakataukī and an image of Dame Whina, but was actually advocating against co-governance. This drew accusations of 'astroturfing’, a US political tactic that misleads people by setting up what seem like grassroots organisations.6 More recently, local government representatives were sent a survey by an organisation called Civic Pulse that turned out to be created only the day before - again, by a Jordan Williams organisation.7 Williams’ activities are longstanding: he was a character in Nicky Hager’s infamous book, Dirty Politics, and an associate of Cameron Slater.8 He even lost in a two-horse race with Colin Craig, Conservative Party leader, and was forced to pay Craig for defamation, raising questions about his actual understanding of free speech.9
I digress, but only a little bit. Like I said, the Hutt City Council official made their directive in a context, and this is it: a tangled network of people whose criss-crossing activities raise significant questions about good faith.
OK: back to the Free Speech Union, and how they became involved with the matter of the NZCPR insert and the Hutt City Council.10
The Free Speech Union invites approaches from people and organisations who believe they’re victims of censorship. They took up the NZCPR’s cause and complained to Hutt City Council about the removal of the insert. In the council’s telling at least, Jo Miller, the council chief executive, took it on the chin. She replied to the Free Speech Union in early March, maintaining that the official who made the directive acted in good faith, genuinely believing the insert contained misinformation; but Miller conceded that council facilities should be “gateways rather than gatekeepers of knowledge”.11
You’ve got to wonder: if this conversation was in good faith, should it not have ended there and then?
Last week, on 9 December, the Free Speech Union published a media release titled, Free Speech Union to sue Hutt City Council over breach of Bill of Rights Act. In a parallel media release, they claimed the chief executive had refused to back down, and made this extraordinary statement:
We're suing not only Hutt City Council, but Jo Miller, too, personally.
Now, Jo Miller had nothing to do with the official’s directive to remove the insert - she was on sick leave the day it happened. But that’s not even why this is sinister. Read on.
All very dramatic, isn’t it - the idea that Hutt City Council has broken the law and taken away people’s right to free speech? It’s possible things will get as far as court, but for now, the council has made public its legal position.12 I’m no lawyer, but I think it makes sense.
In short, and in (my) plain language, the council says:
It has no obligation to share the Hutt News (a non-council publication by Stuff), its inserts, or any other similar publication. It can choose to host these things or not.
The inserts weren’t a part of the publication anyway. They weren’t actually news.
People can get the Hutt News, and any inserts, pretty much anywhere - so it’s hard to argue the insert was censored.
The insert has been added to the council’s library collection, so it’s right there if anyone wants it.
It’s not clear what harm has been done to public by any of this.
The Free Speech Union should ask themselves whether their legal action is a good use of anyone’s time or of ratepayers’ money. Yep.
The more I ponder it, the more bizarre it seems: the Free Speech Union seems to be saying organisations should be compelled to carry what they themselves call ‘advertising’. That’s a unique definition of ‘freedom’, for sure.
If the council is correct, then the Free Speech Union doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Why are they bothering?
I won’t speculate. Instead, I’ll just comment on what worries me.
Even if the legal action gets chucked out, it might have a chilling effect - especially the action against the chief executive as an individual. Normally, an employer is responsible for their employee’s actions, so long as the employee has acted in good faith. That doesn’t mean the employee won’t get in trouble with the boss if they’ve got it wrong - but it does mean they shouldn’t get sued. Without that protection, no one would want a hard job: not ever.
What could happen as a result of this legal action? People may not want to become local government officials anymore, seeing it as a risky career. Those who do may be afraid to speak up on the job. It’ll get harder for them to uphold collective values, represent Māori or honour Te Tiriti. With local government’s wings clipped, maybe people will lose confidence in it - and maybe private provision of key services will gain a greater foothold.
Who’d benefit from that?
Like I said, I won’t speculate.
Honestly, no one wishes this crappy story was over more than I do. But I’m sorry. There’s one more chapter - and it’s the thing that caught my attention in the first place.
A few months ago, I published a piece called Ake ake ake.13 It was the tale of a travesty and a tragedy: a frenzy of racism for which Aotearoa never really atoned. I used the piece to argue there’s the finest of lines between fringe white supremacy and mainstream racism, and the two work together - including through a network of organisations.
When I saw the NZCPR in the news, it reminded me of the research I did for Ake ake ake.
Here’s the email I sent today to the Free Speech Union.
Kia ora
I write regarding the Free Speech Union’s recent media release about its legal action against Hutt City Council, in relation to an insert removed from copies of the Hutt News in council facilities. I see the insert was published by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research.
You might be aware of the case of Alan Titford, in the 1980s and 1990s. The reason I raise the case is because of the link between an NZCPR staffer and Titford.
In short, Alan Titford made out that local iwi were trying to drive him off his land. Media picked up his story, and following a campaign of misinformation he became a kind of folk hero, while the iwi was reviled. The truth was something quite different.
Eventually, in 2013, Titford was convicted on two counts of arson. At sentencing, the judge said:
“You attempted to burn down your homestead on one occasion, and on the second occasion you succeeded - all the while by blaming local Māori. These incidents received nation-wide publicity and, as a result of your actions, the local Māori people earned the anger of many people in New Zealand who sympathised with you because of what they saw as a grave injustice.”
Titford was also convicted on multiple accounts of sexual violation for raping his wife throughout their marriage, starting only months after their wedding.
And he was convicted on multiple counts of assaulting his own children with a belt, plastic pipe, hammer, shovel, his fists and his feet.
His other convictions included perjury, wilful obstruction of justice, using a document for pecuniary advantage, reckless discharge of a firearm and threatening to kill.
Titford’s wife and some of his children waived their right to name suppression so they could speak freely about what he had done to them. Titford appealed his sentence in 2017 and 2019, losing both times. No serious concerns about the safety of his conviction have ever been raised by any reputable commentator.
Mike Butler, who is named on the NZCPR website as a founder and director, has taken up Titford’s cause many times - including after his convictions. As a perjurer, Titford was found to be untruthful, so to persist with his claims seems to be a questionable use of free speech. The NZCPR website continues to host a document written by Butler stating that “Te Roroa (the iwi) claimants oust[ed] farmers”. Butler has also written in support of Titford in other places, including publishing two books.
When people who’ve experienced sexual or child abuse are disbelieved, it harms them further. This leads me to question whether the Free Speech Union is aware that an NZCPR staffer is using its free speech in support of Titford - and if not, whether it gives you cause to rethink your advocacy for the NZCPR and its speech.
Part of the reason I raise these issues is that the Free Speech Union advertises that it speaks to schools. As a parent, I would personally feel more comfortable knowing school speakers can draw a very clear line in the sand - ruling out any connection with a person or organisation who supports someone who’s abused children, committed a sexual offence, or committed perjury or another serious offence. I would welcome this reassurance if you are willing to give it.
I hope you will consider my concerns in good faith.
Ngā mihi
Anna
I hold out little hope for my email.
Good faith is a funny old thing. It can feel a little grey: not strident, like the right to free speech, or a thing you’d paint on a placard and protest for.
Good faith is quiet and considered, the foundation on which people build trust in one another, our organisations and our public institutions. It can be a hard thing to pinpoint exactly, but you know when it’s not there.
It’s the better part of being human, not the easy part; but it’s as important, morally at least, as any other right we might wish to have.
Whether or not it’ll change their minds, perhaps you’d like to email the Free Speech Union on team@fsu.nz. You might urge them to help make responsible use of public money. You could challenge them to respect officials and their work; the fact that officials have to take tough calls. You might suggest they set aside their grievance and act for the public good.
Free speech, after all: you can say what you like.
I won’t be gratifying any ding-a-lings in this piece by linking to their writing.
For example, Don Brash of Hobson’s Pledge, and Muriel Newman and Stephen Frank of ACT.
What follows comes largely from this article:
And all these intertwined astroturf groups link back to a political party who currently appear to weld highly disproportionate power over the government relative to their vote share.
Brilliant summation Anna. Jordan Williams (FSU) and Muriel Newman (NZCPR) are thick as thieves and tight with Hobsons Pledge. Try and post a polite but contrary view on the NZCPR Facebook page and you get deleted - so much for free speech. Jo Miller has been subjected to the most vile, crude, misogynistic, abusive verbal attacks by FSU and NZCPR followers and Jordan and Muriel are fine with that. Ghastly people.