Praneeta Mahajan
Hamilton, October 11, 2023
New Zealand has a long-standing reputation for being an inclusive and progressive nation with a rich tapestry of cultures and ethnicities. While constant efforts to ensure fair treatment, recognition and inclusion by marginalised groups continue, in recent years, these struggles have overlapped with debates around the limits and responsibilities of free speech.
Debates and campaigns for elections 2023 have seen more detailed discussions around the rainbow communities and the way forward as a society to make New Zealand a role model in policymaking.
Indian Newslink brings the key policies by some of the political parties on crucial matters, that impact the voters and their choice.
While the National Party has not been too vocal about their stance on the matters concerning the rainbow community, the Labour Party and Green Party are all in favour of ensuring more support to the community, while NZ First and New Conservative Party have been vocal about how indoctrination and education about sexuality and gender identity needs to be stopped in schools.
Labour Party
The Labour Party has announced that it has already taken initial steps to reform outdated surrogacy laws. It has said on several occasions how it is committed to making these laws more accessible and it would ensure that any changes mean Rainbow people who want to form a family are treated on the same basis as heterosexual couples.
To ensure its implementation, the party would progress legislation to reform adoption laws. It would also work to improve and streamline the way surrogacy arrangements work in New Zealand.
The Labour Party has said that it would also ensure the healthcare system is responsive to the needs of trans, intersex, and gender-diverse people. The party has committed to developing and implementing a nationwide informed consent model for gender-affirming healthcare. It would also review the cost of gender-affirming surgeries and treatment, to lower the cost and ensure more equitable access.
The party has also highlighted that intersex children must be protected with a child rights-based healthcare protocol. To ensure that, the party said it would implement a healthcare protocol for intersex children so that no one is subjected to unnecessary medical or surgical treatment during infancy or childhood. It said that under this protocol, assigning children a binary gender would not be automatically presumed to be the best-case outcome.
Green Party
Green party has been the most vocal participant in discussions involving the Rainbow and Takatāpui communities and it wants to tackle conscious and unconscious biases in the health system, including ableism, racism, queerphobia, and ageism.
The Green Party believes that by establishing a dedicated ministry, Rainbow and Takatāpui communities would have a significant voice in government, ensuring a stronger representation and a louder voice in the development and evaluation of policies that directly affect them.
The Green Party also believes that these communities require unique healthcare services that respect and integrate cultural and holistic approaches.
The party has announced it would reform laws to ensure Rainbow asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants can access legal gender recognition, partnership recognition, family reunification, and resettlement support.
The Green Party would also aim to resource and promote clear pathways to ensure timely, free and non-discriminatory access to all gender-affirming healthcare services, emphasising informed consent and self-determination.
NZ First
NZ First has emphasised that school children are being taught about relationships, gender, and sexuality, and that amounts to indoctrination. It says this must be stopped and would include removing what the party describes as ‘gender ideology’ from the curriculum altogether.
NZ First has also brought the discussion in the domain of publicly funded sporting bodies and believes that they should have competition and league categories exclusively for people assigned female at birth. The party has announced that it would amend the Sports and Recreation Act so that public funding could be withdrawn from publicly funded sports organisations that do not offer a category only for those assigned female at birth.
New Conservative
The New Conservative Party has repeatedly asserted that there are only two genders, and these are assigned at birth. The party has announced that it would ensure genders cannot be changed on birth certificates.
The party has also highlighted the need to ban education on gender and gender identity to protect the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of children.
It says children should be allowed to be children and not be sexualised. The New Conservative Party would ban gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapies for children and young people.
Discussions on Gender identity and the scope of freedom of choice in alignment with fair societal functioning is a prevalent discussion in many countries including the U.S., Canada and the UK and it will be interesting to watch how voters in New Zealand respond to the varied policies by the parties.
Praneeta Mahajan is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Hamilton.
