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 Comments Off on Freedom of Religion in a Secular Society @ Auckland University this Monday
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 Comments Off on Blackout Victory: s92a Scrapped
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 […]