As part of AUSA’s Human Rights week at the University of Auckland, and in association with Thinking Matters, Matt and I will be giving a free public lecture with Q&A on the topic “Freedom of Religion in a Secular Society” on Monday 12 September from 7-8.30pm in Clock Tower Lecture Room 032. The Facebook page for [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Human Rights'
Freedom of Religion in a Secular Society @ Auckland University this Monday
September 8th, 2011 No Comments
Tags: Doctrine of Religious Restraint · Events · Freedom of Religion · Human Rights · John Rawls · Rights and Freedoms · Separation of Church and State · Thinking Matters
Klingon Cloaking Devices Unmasked by Boat People
July 15th, 2011 15 Comments
It was inevitable. Sooner or later a boat filled with desperate people would set out from India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, whatever, for New Zealand. We have been “protected” to date only by an accident of geography–New Zealand’s relative distance. Australia has faced the problem for decades. A group of Sri Lankan poor (allegedly Tamils previously [...]
Tags: Human Rights · Rights and Freedoms · Sri Lankan Boat People
Middleton Grange, Free Exercise and the Gay Rights Movement UPDATED
July 26th, 2010 284 Comments
Over at GayNZ.com’s Proclamations of the Red Queen blog, Craig Young is in a celebratory mood. Middleton Grange, a Reformed Evangelical Christian school has been forced by law to pay reparations and have their management undergo “human rights education” because they dismissed a netball coach on the grounds that he openly engaged in homosexual conduct. Middleton [...]
Tags: Craig Young · Free Exercise · Freedom of Religion · GayNZ.com · Homosexual Conduct · Human Rights · Human Rights Commission · Middleton Grange · Rights and Freedoms
The Foreshore and Seabed Repeal: The Inconvenience of Due Process
July 2nd, 2009 14 Comments
That the state is not above the law but also subject to it is surely one of the foundational concepts of any just and free society. This notion has found its place in the writings of many influential philosophers, jurists and theologians, it can be found in the constitutions and bills of rights of most [...]
Tags: Foreshore and Seabed · Human Rights · Jurisprudence · Justice · Liberty · Māori Land · Ngāti Apa
Blackout Victory: s92a Scrapped
March 23rd, 2009 No Comments
The NBR reports that the controversial s92A of the Copyright Amendment Act will be scrapped. If you recall its implementation was to be “delayed a month while ISPs and copyright holders continued efforts to work out a voluntary agreement on how it would be enforced … if they could not agree, the clause would be [...]
Tags: Human Rights · Justice · Liberty
They Just Want Your Money (and your Voice)
February 27th, 2009 2 Comments
My post about student association membership reminded me that just yesterday I stumbled accross this article that I wrote for Critic’s diatribe column when we were at Otago. Despite the fact that OUSA membership has probably increased since we were there, that NZUSA’s annual budget is now almost certainly much more than the figure I [...]
My Conscience Cannot be Bought with a Jelly-Shot
February 27th, 2009 5 Comments
On Monday a new University year begins for thousands of New Zealand students. If you are a student, you probably don’t even realise that when you paid your fees to enrol at University, most of you joined a political organisation; a political organisation with strident viewpoints on all sorts of controversial hot potatoes that speaks [...]
Blackout Victory: s92a Stalled
February 24th, 2009 3 Comments
The internet blackout is at an end and the government has responded; s92a of the Copyright Act has been officially stalled and looks rather doomed. The Herald reports: Section 92a was to have come into force this weekend, but Mr Key said it would be delayed a month while ISPs and copyright holders continued efforts [...]
Tags: Human Rights · Justice · Liberty
The Blogosphere Blacks Out
February 23rd, 2009 No Comments
Tumeke report that most of the NZ blogosphere has gotten behind the blackout, blacking out chunks of their pages and/or running banners highlighting the campaign. Tim made this mosaic showing the impact on the front pages of NZ’s top 50 or so blogs – you can see MandM towards the bottom right corner.The government really [...]
Tags: Human Rights · Justice · Liberty
Internet Blackout
February 18th, 2009 2 Comments
Over recent years [read: under the previous Labour government] we have been increasingly concerned at ill thought out, badly drafted legislation that removes power from the judiciary and confers it on other bodies within society that are not subject to the rules of evidence and due process. The anti-smacking bill is an obvious example. The [...]
Tags: Human Rights · Justice · Liberty
