[00:00:04] Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
[00:00:22] Hi everybody. Welcome along to the Friday Freebie edition of the Dispatchers podcast. It is great to be back with you again. My name is Brendan Malone. If you are new here, why not subscribe whatever platform you're listening on? If you enjoy the content, then please become a subscriber. Also, if you are able to, please give us a review. Leave us a few stars, share a few words. If your platform allows you to do that, all of that really, really helps the show. And last but not least, before we jump into today's topic of conversation, we publish a daily podcast exclusively for our
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[00:01:00] Left footmedia all you have to do to get access to daily episodes of the Dispatchers podcast is become a $5 monthly patron. That's right, less than the cost of a cup of coffee each month gets you an episode of the podcast every single day of the week from Monday through to Friday. And a lot of people, the feedback we get from them is that they really, really find it very helpful to be able to engage with current affairs, with cultural issues, with ethical questions, and with news that the media just doesn't cover in a way that isn't just reactionary but actually goes a lot deeper, which pulls things to pieces, explores the various ideologies that lie underneath it all. That talks about a bit of history, how we got where we are, and more importantly, wherever possible, talks about how we can live an authentic counterculture of goodness, truth and beauty in the midst of all of these challenges. So make sure you go to patreon.com leftfootmedia and become a $5 monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes. Righty. With that out of the way, let's talk about today's topic of conversation. This week marks the fourth anniversary of Ardern's worst policy legacy. So Jacinda Ardern, during her time as prime minister of New Zealand, copped a lot of flak and copped a lot of pushback, particularly towards the end. It got to the point where things were so bad that she left office early. It was pretty clear at the point at which she left that if she had remained in office with the Labour party, they would have crashed to a pretty resounding defeat and so the writing was absolutely well and truly on the wall at that point. And a lot of people have subsequently talked about the various policy failures or the negatives of the previous regime, and the list actually grew to be a reasonably long one by the end of their term in office. However, I would suggest to you that the worst policy legacy, the most destructive, the most harmful, was one of the earliest ones that we saw enacted by her government. And this week, the 18 March Wednesday, the 18 March 2020, in fact, was when this all happened.
[00:03:23] That anniversary passed earlier this week. On Monday, it was the fourth anniversary of the passing of the Abortion Legislation Act. A very extreme piece of legislation. As I said, a lot of criticism has been made about Jacinda Ardern's policy legacy, but by far and away the worst thing that she did, and this is something, by the way, that she was personally responsible for, was this piece of legislation. This was her pet project that she lobbied for in the lead up to the election. So before she had even been made prime minister, she was lobbying for this. She was publicly talking about this. And one of the reasons she had to sort of publicly lean into this a little bit was because the criticism was rightly leveled at her that she was going to be introducing abortion on demand up to birth in New Zealand. And she tried to push back against that. And there's one particular famous moment where she was doing a news talk ZB breakfast debate and this question was put to her and she responded quite forcefully, alleging and claiming that this was not going to be the case at all. As we'll see by the end of today's episode, that just wasn't true. Right from the outset, this law was also riddled with political manipulation and highly questionable machiavellian behaviors. The kind of stuff that actually became one of the hallmarks. Sadly, by the end of her government's reign in power, it became one of the hallmarks of their way of doing business. And I think it was a way of doing business that actually only got worse over time. But it began really, I think, in a big way with this piece of policy. This was the first time we saw the full extent to which they would be willing to go to achieve their desired outcomes. So it started, first of all with the involvement of the New Zealand Law Commission. And what happened was the Labour Party, quickly, when they got into office, wrote a letter to the law Commission asking them to prepare a ministerial briefing paper about changing New Zealand's abortion law. So straight away we've got a problem here, because this ministerial briefing paper wasn't simply an open investigation, as in, can you please mount a thorough investigation and then report back to us what your investigations have found about the state of New Zealand's abortion law? No, it was directed to a specific end. We are going to change this law. There was no investigation done to examine what might or might not be happening. Instead, we are going to change this law. So we need you to investigate and give us some options for a new version of the law. And this particular approach was a predesigned strategy. It was not a neutral act. It had all the appearances of being a group of politicians who were seeking expert counsel and advice from an outside source. But in actual fact, this was a specific and very particular strategy. Back in 2008, the state of Victoria in Australia had used the same tactic. They went to the law commission, asked them to write a review, prepare a document about abortion legislation change, and then the document came back to the victorian parliament. And what it did was it actually created a bit of a fate accompli. It became this thing where politicians and the advocates, the agitators, the activists who were working to achieve this liberalization of the law were able to say, well, the law commission has instructed us to do this. It became the situation where you're able to claim that somehow outside experts have given you the green light, have said that this needs to happen. And so it was a strategy, it was a tactic. And we know that here in New Zealand, the agitators who liberalized our law copied the victorian strategy. We know this because they published a document called a roadmap to abortion liberalization in New Zealand. And that document was the fruit of sending some people over to the state of Victoria in 2008, after they introduced what at the time was one of the more extreme abortion laws in the world, until our one actually usurped it. Our one's more extreme. And what they did was they sent some people over there to investigate on a fact finding mission to discover how they went about changing the law. They wrote this document, which was published and distributed around the place in New Zealand. It was put on a website, which is how those of us in the pro life movement first got to see it. And it laid out a whole strategy. And the document quite clearly indicated that the use of the law commission was one of the key strategies. The other key strategy they talked about was making sure that they got people who were pro abortion choice into key positions in the media and how essential that would be. And that's absolutely what we saw. That was one of the first moments where you saw this collaboration between Jacinda Rune's Labour government and the mainstream media. They were working hand in glove. I remember helping someone, this is some inside baseball, by the way. I remember helping someone who was on the pro life side of this issue, trying to argue against this extreme law and the introduction of this extreme law in New Zealand. And this woman was interviewed by a senior New Zealand journalist. And this journalist confessed to her before the interview started that she was absolutely shocked by the conduct of many of her colleagues regarding the abortion legislation. Well, it was a bill at the time and she said all propriety had sort of gone out the window. Balance, objectivity, it had all been thrown out the window. This was really, I think, one of the first big moments where there was foreshadowing of what was to come. And we saw that as the COVID period kicked off in a big way. And there were other issues as well, but this was one of the really big moments where. And it was all very deliberate and intentional. There was this cross strategy, this working together, hand in glove. There was no real accountability, there was no real balance, there was no real truth being told. In fact, the media would consistently repeat blatant falsehoods about the old New Zealand law and they would downplay or repeat falsehoods about the new law that was passed. And they were repeating those falsehoods. And by the way, some of them were just blatantly wrong and easily disprovable. And we're talking organizations like Radio New Zealand here were repeating those falsehoods about the new law even after it had been passed into law. And there was just no getting away from the fact that there was now a set in stone concrete document with black ink on all the pages, which explicitly spelled out what the law did and didn't do. And they were still promoting misinformation and factually wrong claims, absolutely dishonest, either ignorance or deliberate dishonesty. They were repeating those claims even after the law had been passed, and there was just no way of denying it or getting away from the fact that what they were saying was wrong. So the involvement of the law commission was the first thing. And as I said, this was a manipulation tactic that they got directly from the victorian strategy out of Australia, and they brought that here. As I said, the whole purpose of this was so that they could try and make it look like this wasn't really their doing or this wasn't really their impetus. Instead, this was something that had been actually instructed after careful investigation by experts in the Law Commission and then the Law Commission's ministerial briefing paper was published, and it contained a rather glaring and quite astounding piece of smoke and mirrors, really. It was set up in such a way to give the appearance that it was actually presenting three different options for what could happen in regard to abortion legislation in New Zealand, when in actual fact, two of those options were all but identical in outcome. There were different legislative frameworks around them, so they were wrapped in a different kind of legislative wrapping. But the outcome, the end result, would have been pretty much identical. The same thing, which was abortion on demand for any reason up to birth and even during birth in New Zealand. And when I look at this, I can't help but sense that this was a deliberate strategy to try and make it appear like they were perhaps choosing a less extreme option, when in actual fact, they were choosing to bring into this country a very extreme option. But it had a bit more verbiage, legislative wrapping around it, that made it look like it wasn't as extreme as the other option, which they didn't go with. It was one of the oldest playbooks in politics. You propose a more extreme version of policy and then you go back to the version of the policy, which apparently is less extreme, but everyone thinks that you've somehow ceded ground, that you've listened, that you've, I don't know, negotiated in the way that politics should be negotiated in order to achieve a compromised position. But in this case, it wasn't simply a case of a politician or a government that put forward an extreme piece of legislation and then went back and took steps backwards, but in actual fact, was only ever going back to what they really knew they could achieve. And they do that, by the way, because if you put out the first version of the event without an extreme counterversion, then the public push back hard and you have to go back even further to places you don't want to go. You have to actually compromise in areas you don't want to compromise. So what you do is you start with a more extreme version and then you go back to the real version and it looks like you've compromised most. But the whole time you knew you were never going to get your extreme version. And if somehow, magically, you do end up with the more extreme version, well, then you've still won. Right? But either way, you win, and it looks like, and it makes your opponents think that you were listening and you were negotiating and all that kind of stuff. But in this case, it wasn't actually a case of them putting forward this extreme version. The other version was just as extreme. It just looked a little bit different. It was wrapped and constructed in such a way that it actually didn't quite look as extreme. But still it was. Then came the next machiavellian political machination. Andrew Little, who was the minister of justice, was the sponsor of this bill, not Jacinda Ardern. Despite the fact that she had publicly declared that this was one of her personal pet projects, she was not the sponsor of this bill. And you might remember this, this was back in the day when the Labour party machine was desperately trying to protect Jacinda Ardun. This was certainly appeared to be a deliberate tactic to shield Ardun because they did this in other areas as well, where what would happen is more controversial. Pieces of legislation would not have her name directly attached to them. They would have another MP's name attached to them, even if she was intimately involved with them. You might remember this period of our recent history where there was the shielding of Ardun. And this was one of the big moments where Andrew Little is acting like this is his bill, like this has always been his initiative, like somehow this was a priority of his. The truth is this bill was given to him to put forward as the sponsor as a way of shielding Ardun because they knew a. There was going to be a very intense public debate about this very extreme piece of legislation. And abortion is one of those political hot potatoes that generally speaking, most politicians don't like to touch because they know that this can be political kryptonite for them. And so this was an attempt to shield Arduin from all of that. And secondly, the extreme nature of the bill and the way they were going to go about things was actually going to provoke a whole lot of problems. And so it's just nice and easy if you keep her well away from all of that. They wanted to try and keep her safe so they could win another term in office.
[00:15:36] Then what they did was the next piece of machiavellian machination was they created a brand new select committee just for this bill. Now this is highly unusual in regards to the circumstances that we were facing at that time and in relation to this bill. Remember, Andrew Little was the sponsor of this bill. He's the minister of justice. So really everyone I knew who was politically savvy and the MPs that I spoke to as well said that under the normal state of affairs, this should have either gone to the justice select committee because it was proposing law change, or it should have gone to the health select committee. But it didn't go to either of those two select committees. Instead, a brand new select committee was created from whole cloth. And that select committee, which had one piece of business, one sole piece of business. And it was the passing of this legislation was stacked with pro abortion choice ideologues, not just people who were pro choice, but people who were militant, ardent proponents of this extreme law change. It was just unbelievable. It was such a blatant manipulation of the process. And the reason that you would manipulate the process in this way is so that you can push the bill through a whole lot faster and you can control the process a whole lot more intently, because those other select committees, they have other business to attend to. And what that means is that the abortion legislation bill is just one of several bits of legislation that they are dealing with over the months and years, and that has the potential to slow the whole process down. Secondly, those other select committees are not stacked. And so what they did was they created this new select committee just for this bill. And the chair of that select committee was none other than Ruth Dyson, militant promoter of the bill, militantly pro abortion choice. And she really ran things in regards to the select committee. The other members of that select committee were Jan Logi, Tracy Martin, Nikki Kay, and David Seymour, all militant, ardent promoters of this bill. And there were only two members of the select committee who were not in that camp, and they were anaheeler. And I apologize, Anaheeler, if you were listening or people who know and love you, I apologize. I am not going to make a mess of your last name by trying to pronounce it, because I will make a mess of it. But she was an absolutely lovely Pacifica MP, and she was on the committee, and Agnes Lohini. And Agnes Loheny was a new MP. She was new to parliament, and she was thrown into this very challenging role. And it's fair to say that Agnes Lahini in particular, acquitted herself with absolute dedication to goodness, truth and beauty in her work on the select committee. It was amazing what she did and her defense of goodness and truth. She really went above and beyond. And this is an MP who is new to parliament and who is thrown into this absolute tempest. She's chucked into the eye of the hurricane as one of her first moments of, I guess, big and serious responsibility in parliament. But apart from those two, the rest of the select committee was stacked. As I said, it wasn't just pro choice people, it was militantly pro abortion choice ideologues who were absolute, ardent, frothing at the mouth promoters of this law change. There was nothing balanced about this at all. 71% of the members of that brand new select committee were militant pro abortion liberalization advocates. And it showed in what happened next that select committee refused to hear the overwhelming majority of people who asked to make oral submissions. That select committee received around 25,000 written submissions, the majority of which were opposed to this legislation. And then of that 25,000, 2890 or so people asked to make oral submissions. They asked to be heard to come before the select committee, and either that would be online or in person, and they would present orally their views and their points regarding this proposed legislation. Of that 2890 or so people, almost 3000 people who asked to make an oral submission, only 139 oral submissions were heard. Initially. I think they had about 150 they approved. That was it. In total, they only heard about 139. In the end, that is shameful. Absolutely shameful. What that means is approximately 95% of oral submission requests were refused by the select committee. And this is astounding because there was recent precedent that you could compare this situation to, which showed just how shameful this was. The climate change response zero carbon amendment bill had been a bill that had been through parliament in the previous months, so very close to this piece of legislation. And it had been with the environment select Committee, and it had been the responsibility of the environment select committee. It had received 10,000 written submissions. So that is only. Well, it's less than half the number of written submissions that were sent to the abortion Legislation act select committee. And they heard 1500 oral submissions. One, five oral submissions was heard by the environment select Committee on that piece of legislation. But here we had a situation where only 150 initially and 139 in total of the oral submissions were actually heard. Now what makes this so stark is not just the proximity with which these two bills were to each other as far as chronology and historical timeline goes, but more importantly, the environment select committee had other business to attend to. The environment select committee isn't just a select committee that was created specifically for the climate change response zero carbon amendment bill. It had other business as well. And despite that, they still heard 1500 oral submissions. This select committee for the Abortion Legislation act had no other business, just this bill. So you'd think that they would have absolutely zero reasons to be denying any submissions. If you exist solely to actually serve the democratic process around this bill, why would you not have all the time and the ability to actually serve that democratic process?
[00:22:24] Well, I'll tell you why. Because basically they didn't want to really serve the democratic process. My contention is. My contention instead is that they wanted to rush this through parliament and they wanted to clearly steer and manipulate the public perception regarding this bill. Now I could be totally wrong about that, but I would say as a betting man that that's why this was happening.
[00:22:53] And so when people talk about our current New Zealand government and there's this cry of violations of the democratic process because they have rushed so many bills through parliament under urgency in the first 100 days. And by the way, those bills, as I understand things, are actually to reverse the policies of the previous government so they can then get on with the business of doing what they have promised the people that they would do. But when I hear people decrying this and saying this is a violation of the democratic process, I just think to myself, where were you when this was going on with the Abortion Legislation act? And when people say we've never seen anything like this, I say, hold on a minute, we've seen worse than this. We've seen a whole lot worse than this. Remember during the COVID period how the labor government was conducting itself? Remember it was doing things that were actually illegal and then it would retrospectively change legislation to justify what it had already done that was illegal, I don't think you can claim that what's going on right now is worse. Basically this, what we saw with the Abortion Legislation act, was an absolutely shocking manipulation of the democratic process. I would argue the end result of this was really quite tragic when you think about it, because it created a new cynicism and distrust in New Zealand's political processes and it really set a template that just got worse and worse. I still talk to people now who just say things to me like I'm not ever going to submit on any future legislation because they just don't believe they will ever be taken seriously and they won't be listened to. They just don't have any trust anymore in the political process of making submissions to a select committee. People now see it as a complete waste of time because the select committees just ignore the politicians, don't listen, and they just do what they're going to do. And that's the sad reality of what is going on in a lot of cases. And it's not a good thing to have a situation where the people don't actually have faith in the democratic processes. That is really not a good and safe place to be as a country.
[00:24:55] The other thing that was interesting about all of this was the law commission. There was one, I guess, silver lining, you might call it, in the law Commission report. And that was the law commission investigation into the question of whether or not we should have safe areas, sometimes called safe zones or bubble zones or exclusion zones. And what they are is bubbles that you place on a map, metaphorical bubbles that you place on a map, a brand new boundary that you create around any facility that performs abortions. And what you say is that in this case in New Zealand, if you are within 150 meters of the property boundary of an abortion facility, then you are not allowed to protest or voice views about abortion. So you can't wear a t shirt, so you can't do it silently. You can't say anything, you can't be doing anything that is opposed to abortion that speaks about abortion. You can't offer sidewalk counseling to women who might be in need of that, who might have never had anybody else talk to them. And this might be their last chance to actually find a humane alternative to abortion. You're not allowed to do any of that. It's illegal in New Zealand. Instant $1,000 fine. And that piece of or that particular legislative proposal. The law commission and their ministerial briefing paper said, we've investigated this, we've talked to abortion providers, they talked to all sorts of experts. They surveyed quite widely, according to the summary in that particular part of the document. And they came back and they said, there is no need for this in New Zealand. They said the conversations that they had had with abortion providers was that there just was no need for this. There was no regular thing happening in New Zealand that necessitated such an extreme law change. But despite the fact that the Law Commission recommended that this was not necessary, what did Ardern's Labour government do? They still put safe areas legislation into their abortion Legislation act. This shows you what was really going on. The Law Commission were not the experts that they were using as their guiding light. They were simply a vehicle for them to manipulatively use to achieve their own desired extreme political outcomes. That's what was going on there because they inserted it into the bill anyway, despite not just the recommendations of the Law Commission, but the investigations that they had conducted, which showed quite clearly there was no justification or need for any of this. They still went ahead with it anyway. It was quite funny around that particular clause of the legislation in the end, because they made an absolute stuff up when it came to voting on the night for that, David Seymour was pushing back against it. This was when he was trying to present himself as the great champion of free speech in New Zealand. He was never consistent in this regard, by the way, but he was trying to champion himself in that way. And so he was an absolute ardent supporter of the law, but he opposed this one particular part of it. And so he managed to basically, I would say he fooled them, really. They made an absolute mistake. Jan Logie was running things on the night, on the floor, and they voted in such a way as they removed the safe areas clause out of the bill. And then they quickly realized that they'd stuffed up and they tried to actually, in the House, get the speaker to let them go back and have a bit of a do over. And as the speaker rightly said to them, no, you can't do that. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do that. You'll have to actually come back another time with a new piece of legislation. And sadly, that is what happened when Larissa Wall promoted her safe areas amendment bill. And then that was restored back into, in fact, a slightly worse version of things was restored back into the Abortion Legislation act. And here's the grand irony in all of this. David Seymour, the supposed champion of free speech, voted for the second, more extreme version of that free speech outlawing piece of legislation. Unbelievable, right? So what was the end result of all of this? Well, the end result of all of this was the introduction of the Abortion Legislation Act 2020 on the 18 March Wednesday night. The 18 March 2020. And what the previous New Zealand law did was it said that late term after 20 weeks. So late term abortions after 20 weeks were only legal to, quote unquote, save the life of the woman or girl or to prevent serious permanent injury to her physical or mental health. That was all struck down.
[00:29:11] And if you wanted to have a late term abortion, it had to be approved by two certifying consultants. Those certifying consultants had to be doctors. If the first two doctors, the certifying consultants, disagreed about whether or not this particular case actually met the criteria of the law, a third doctor had to come in and review the case and give their opinion and break the deadlock. So you can see that what was going on here, even though the old law was far from perfect and was not something that anyone on the pro life side was crowing about or supportive of, at least you can say that the old law was trying to strike a balance and was recognizing that this notion of unlimited abortion all through nine months was not a good and moral thing at all. And in actual fact, we needed to recognize that even if we disagreed about the point at which that began, there was a point at which the unborn child actually should have rights and should be recognized under New Zealand law as having some very minimal protections. So that was the old law. Well, they got rid of all of that and this is what makes the new law so extreme. The new law removed all of those very small and I guess you'd say in many ways basic, very, very rudimentary protections that existed for the unborn child under the old law, the minimal attention that they were given under the old law, the basic recognitions were all removed and now there is zero recognition for the rights of the unborn child in the new legislation. So what the new legislation did, and I will quote directly from it here, when it comes to abortion after 20 weeks, it now says that, number one, a qualified health practitioner may only provide abortion services to a woman who is more than 20 weeks pregnant if the health practitioner reasonably believes that the abortion is clinically appropriate in the circumstances. Now you'll notice that the framing and the language here presents a particular narrative, but that narrative is not correct. So the narrative it presents when it says things like may only provide abortion services is that it presents the narrative that there is some sort of restriction going on here. You can only do a certain thing under these circumstances, but in actual fact, when you look at the criteria, you realize there's no meaningful restriction here. And what do I mean by that? Well, first of all it says a qualified health practitioner. Now this doesn't need to be a doctor. So under the old legislation it had to be a doctor. The new legislation doesn't have to be a doctor. A qualified health practitioner in New Zealand is actually a very, very broad criteria under New Zealand law. As I've been informed and as I understand it, according to the expert advice I've had from people who are legal experts in this country, in this, a qualified health practitioner in New Zealand is someone who is qualified under a practitioner's body like that could be a podiatrist. In theory it probably wouldn't be right, but it could be in theory. That's how broad that criteria is. I believe a chiropractor would qualify as a qualified health practitioner. That's how broad the category is that they have now applied. And they say that the provider must then consult with another health practitioner. Remember, this health practitioner doesn't actually have to be a doctor. And they also have to believe that the abortion is clinically appropriate. Now this is not the same as medically necessary. When you say something is medically necessary, you're talking about something that would be right, an essential to save a life or to prevent serious permanent injury or something serious from happening, right? No, clinically appropriate is a much much more subjective and poorly defined definition. So basically, in other words, unlike the old law, there doesn't need to be any threat to life, there doesn't need to be any serious health threat at all, any serious threat to mental health. There doesn't need to be any risk under this new definition. Number two, in considering whether the abortion is clinically appropriate in the circumstances, the qualified health practitioner must. A and again, the narrative with the language here makes it sound like there's a whole lot of strict criteria about to be put on all of this. But when you stop and consider what's actually in the legislation, you realize that, no, this is all just smoke and mirrors. It looks like a active restriction. And this is why you have people I meet today who are still confused. They think that what Jacinda Ardern's labor government did was legalize abortion on demand up to 20 weeks. And then after 20 weeks you have to have permission from a doctor and there's all these restrictions that are in place, but in actual fact that's not the case at all. So let me carry on with the list of criteria. So in considering whether abortion is clinically appropriate in the circumstances, the qualified health practitioner must a consult at least one other qualified health practitioner. Now that again, remember, that doesn't need to be a doctor. So in theory, you can have a situation where an abortionist could be consulting with an anesthetist at an abortion who is working at that same abortion facility. There's no requirement for independence at all. It doesn't have to be one doctor talking to another doctor, b they must have regard to one all relevant legal, professional and ethical standards to which the qualified health practitioner is subject. Well, that's pretty standard, right? That's basically saying that if you're in the business of providing services in New Zealand and your body has a whole set of legal requirements, professional requirements, ethical standards, codes of conduct, all that kind of stuff, you must follow those. Well, that was always going to be the case anyway. Number two, the woman's a physical health and b mental health, and c overall well being. And that term overall well being is a vague, loose and extremely subjective criteria that could be interpreted to include almost anything. In fact, if you look at the official world Health definition of health, it includes even social conditions as part of health. So it's a very, very broad criteria. And number three, the gestational age of the fetus. And when you read, oh, they must have regard for the gestational age of the fetus, you kind of think, oh, maybe that's an age restriction. So you can't abort after a certain point. That's not what that means at all. Again, this is smoke and mirrors. It looks like there might be a gestational limit, so you're not allowed to abort after a certain point, but there is no gestational limit. Have regard to the gestational age of the fetus is basically meaningless. I would argue it does not set any upper limit on when an abortion can take place. And that's why the legal experts that I have spoken to have told me that this piece of legislation allows for abortion right up to and even during birth. If you could find an abortionist who is willing to carry out the act, there is nothing in the legislation to prevent that from happening. Not just that, but certain amendments or proposed amendments that would have limited the extremes of this bill or put certain issues beyond a shadow of a doubt.
[00:36:14] Like a clause in the bill that very specifically removed all doubt about the fact that sex selective abortions would be illegal in New Zealand.
[00:36:24] Clauses that would have required the guarantee that a child born alive after a failed abortion would be provided the appropriate care, like it was required under law for that to happen. Those clauses were all rejected.
[00:36:41] So we really ended up with this very extreme version of the legislation with no cribbing back of those extremes. What was even worse, I think, was to witness, and I witnessed this myself firsthand in the House, the number of proxy votes that were passed through this process, that is, MPs who did not show up, who gave their vote to other MPs to use on their behalf. The law also contained new and harsher penalties against the rights of medical professionals to exercise freedom of conscience. And there was a perversity in that, because this piece of legislation removed the requirement for anyone seeking an abortion to have to go first to a doctor, you can go directly to an abortion provider and get an abortion under the new legislation. So what it was doing is, on the one hand, it's removing the requirement for doctors to actually be involved, and then on the other hand, it is enforcing brand new restrictions and impositions upon the right of medical professionals when it comes to freedom of conscience. So the very moment where they don't actually need to be involved, all of a sudden they are facing the prospect of even harsher penalties for not being involved in this process. So you can see what's going on here. It's not simply a liberalization of abortion. It's an attempt to punish those people who have a conscientious objection and who politely and charitably refuse to participate in this moral act.
[00:38:12] The fruit of all of this. Well, last year, abortions rose by approximately 7% with the number of abortions per 1000 pregnancies climbing to a level that we have not seen since 2012. Millions and millions of taxpayer dollars have now been pumped into more than doubling the abortion industry in New Zealand. Labor did that.
[00:38:35] So when people talk about wasteful spending and not prioritizing spending with the new government, just remember that millions of dollars has been pumped into the abortion industry in this country to more than doubling the abortion industry workforce. There have also been the introduction of draconian policies which target people with a pro life ethic, the latest of which some months ago was a new policy regarding who can be a abortion counselor in New Zealand and who can provide post abortion counseling in New Zealand. And both of those specifically make reference to people who have pro life views, people who have views, philosophical views against abortion being excluded from this process.
[00:39:22] They also set up a DIY abortion hotline. An 800 DIY abortion service was set up where you can ring an 800 number and they will send you the abortion pills for you to carry out an abortion on yourself at home.
[00:39:38] What does that sound like? That sounds awfully like a backstreet abortion service, doesn't it? Now, yes, other MPs voted for this bill and they are responsible for putting their name in the ballot in favor of this extreme legislation. But the simple fact is that this was a personal pet project of Jacinda Ardun. It was a Labour party bill. And if they had not introduced this bill and managed the process in the way that they did with this machiavellian machinations that went on around it, it either would not have come before the house or it would not have succeeded. I don't think. Because I think what would have probably happened was it would have ended up with one of the other select committees and there would have been less manipulation of the process and I think it would have actually slowed things down and allowed for a proper examination. Because what was happening was there was a growing sense of unease about this bill as it carried on longer in the House.
[00:40:41] Here's the greatest, and I think most perverse irony in all of this. Just 96 hours later, or approximately 96 hours later after the Abortion Legislation act was passed into law on Wednesday night, the 18 March 2020 New Zealand's very first COVID lockdown began on Monday, the 23 March. Now what makes this so perverse is that all through the preceding weeks and months of the Abortion Legislation act process, we had consistently heard MPs chanting, my body, my choice. That was their justification. No one should tell you what to do with your body, you know best.
[00:41:31] And then just days after passing a piece of legislation based on that supposed principle, which is supposedly ironclad, rock solid, and allows us to introduce an extreme abortion law and must never ever be violated, this particular principle, they then turned around and said, well, in actual fact, it's not okay to do whatever you want to with your body if the choices that you make with your body are going to expose other people to harm. So you must all stay home, you must shut down your businesses, you're not allowed to have people over, you're not allowed to worship all of the things that they did, a complete and perverse 180 degree on this supposed principle. And when they did that, they proved that this abortion legislation is built on a farcical philosophical house of cards. It is ideology and slogans, not philosophy and reality. Because the truth is, it isn't morally right to do whatever you want to with your body if what you are going to do with your body will result in deliberate harm to another human being. So what can we do in the meantime? Well, this is probably the important bit. First things I think you got to recognize that there's a long game that we need to understand here. National is not on point on this issue.
[00:42:48] National is not at all focused on this. National at the moment has been captured by the liberal wing of the party. These are people who are liberals and who could quite easily be at home in the Labour party, perhaps if it wasn't for the fact that certain economic policies or desired outcomes are not really as favorable in that particular party. But on all other issues, they are very much sympathetic with their labour compatriots. They are both Liberals, and so the liberal wing has control. National's not on point on this at the moment. And there is also a bit of a tendency in New Zealand politics where a piece of legislation gets passed and MPs of all stripes and flavors don't want to revisit it too quickly. So the reality is there needs to be a focus on a long game here. You need to look at the long game here and understand that this is actually something that is going to take a lifetime of commitment from those of us who are people of goodwill to actually see positive change. I don't know about you, but I'm okay with that. It's not easy. I wish it wasn't so. But you know what? Doing the right thing is still the most important thing that we must and should do. I would also encourage you to consider getting along, particularly if you're in Wellington, to things like the voice for life call for justice vigil. They have this every year to mark the anniversary of the passing of the Abortion Legislation act. Now, this week they held the vigil on Wednesday night outside parliament. It's a prayerful, peaceful experience. What happens is there's some music, usually there's the singing of the national anthem. As part of that, there are some local speakers who get up to the podium and talk about this issue. One or two of those, there is a time of prayer and then there is a time of silent reflection. And what usually happens is there are roses to symbolize the loss of unborn lives that are placed on the steps of parliament. Very peaceful, very symbolic, but I think a very important marking of this very tragic anniversary. And they have committed to doing this each year. This year there were other areas of the country where there were call for justice vigils. So there were two or three other places that held their own vigil on the same day, some at different times of the day. So there were opportunities for those who wanted to, to attend one of those vigils. I would encourage you to definitely get involved with those. All you have to do is show up and just be a presence. There's no major commitment required of us to do that. It's a very simple and straightforward thing to do, just to stand there and to be a presence. Next thing I would advise is that if you're a praying person, pray regularly for change. Just consistently pray for change. Next, I would recommend that you get involved in your local pro life activities. In most parts of the country, there is something pro life happening that you can be involved with a local group or local events that happen. Get involved with those activities and events. Make sure that you give of your time to be present, even if it's only once or twice a year. This all makes a difference. The more of us that give this kind of commitment, the more the momentum starts to build, the more positive the outcomes will be. One big way, if you have the ability to do that, is to get to Wellington. The first weekend of December every year is the national March for Life again, a peaceful, joyful celebration of human life, which marches through the centre of Wellington right up to the steps of parliament for some speeches. Usually there's different groups will break off at the end of it and head to local pubs or restaurants, know, have a meal together, things like that. It's a very, very sort of beautiful, positive, prayerful and festive event. What you have is the major pro life organizations in New Zealand. They all work together and collaborate to organize and fund this event. And it's not a big ask to be there. It's not a big time commitment. It's once a year. It's a great way to actually get involved and to bring the whole family along too, as well. And speaking of family, I would say have conversations with friends and family members about the content of this new law. A lot of people are absolutely shocked when they discover just how bad this legislation is. Even people who might call themselves pro choice, they are shocked when they discover the extent of what was done by the previous labor government. A lot of people just are not aware. And a big reason why a lot of people are not aware is because the media, as we saw we talked about earlier, did not do their job properly. They ran cover, they ran interference. They actually propagandized for this piece of legislation. It was one of the first glaring moments that there were some big problems on the horizon, and oh boy, did they only get worse after that point. So have conversations with people, it might not seem like much, and don't be forced about it. Don't have those weird kind of conversations where suddenly you just sort of shoehorn it into the conversation in a way that really doesn't make sense and feels a bit awkward and unwelcome. But when the moments arise, and there usually are plenty of them, have that conversation with people and let them know about the reality of what's actually in the law. Make sure that you form your family and yourself in the pro life ethic, and that you live that out faithfully. And that's a really important thing to do. It's no good just to talk about the culture of life, to talk about what's wrong with the abortion legislation act. If we are not aware and not living a counterculture of goodness, truth and beauty, a counterculture of life in our own life. And so you need to be aware of that, and you need to live that out faithfully. And that's really, really important. That's the most powerful witness we can give, is to live that counterculture of life where we seek to help those who are in need facing unplanned or cris pregnancy, when we provide care and nurture and support to those women and couples who have experienced the pain of post abortion grief and often just don't know where to go to find redemption after that. To be that voice is absolutely essential. There's a couple of things that you can do, practical things. I run something called the activate pro life training week twice a year. I run that in conjunction with a couple of other organizations in New Zealand and it's a five day formation event where you can come and get really good intensive formation in the pro life ethic. We've been running that event in New Zealand for 13 years now. There's one coming up, in fact, in Wellington. If you're listening to this podcast before Tuesday, the 26 March, then you can actually register to be at that event. There are still some places left, but registrations close at midnight on Tuesday, so make sure that you get in before 11:59 p.m. On Tuesday night. If you want to be part of that, go to activatenz.org. I'll place the link for that in today's show notes. Or maybe, you know, people who might benefit from being there, encourage them, maybe if you can offer them some sponsorship, financial support to get there. But that's a really great event. We've got another one coming up in Auckland. If you go to the website activatenz.org, you'll see all the details for that. But a lot of people have been through that program now and they talk about just how beneficial it was for them to understand the pro life ethic and how to live out a counterculture of goodness, truth and beauty. And it's not just these particular issues like abortion and euthanasia. It's really that question of human dignity and how to live that out fully in our daily lives. Last but not least, I am currently setting up a brand new video formation website called the Forge. It has a splash page right now. You can find
[email protected] nz but hopefully sometime around August, we'll be launching the Forge with the first slew of. Is that the right word? Slew? I suppose sounds a bit negative, but the first tranche, the first round of video formation sessions. So what I do regularly in my work is I travel around and I speak at events and conferences and churches and groups and universities and all sorts of places about these particular types of issues. And so the Forge website is going to be a place where that content, like video versions of those presentations, will be available so that you can actually digest them. You can form yourself, you can share them with others, you can use them at your church home group, or you can get a group of friends together over a beer and dissect it bit by bit, things like that. And so that will be going live later this year. There'd be a whole ton of topics on there, but that's a very practical way of getting some formation so if you want to find out more, just go to theforge.org nz and make sure that you leave your name in the email box which is on the splash page right now. The website has not been built, it's being built as we speak. The video process, the branding, all that sort of stuff is being developed as we speak. But the splash page on the website is now live and you can leave your email address there and you'll get a notification as soon as that site goes live. I think that's all I really want to say. So don't forget, if you're new here and you enjoyed the content, please become a subscriber. Also, if you're listening and you haven't done so already on whatever platform you're listening on right now, if it allows you to leave a review, give us some stars, share a few words. Please do that. That all really, really helps the show. And last but not least, don't forget, if you want to get access to a daily episode Monday to Friday of the Dispatchers podcast, then go to patreon.com leftfoot Media and become a $5 monthly patron. The link is in today's show notes thanks for tuning in. Don't forget live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies, and I will see you next time on the dispatchers.
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