EOFY Update
Published on June 19, 2024 by Paul Thistoll
Tēnā koutou katoa,
Firstly, I want to thank our 100+ wonderful fiscal supporters who have helped us get this far, your support has been invaluable in launching us.
We have now been with Gift Collective since November 2023 and we would also like to thank the Gift Collective team for giving us invaluable advice during that time.
So what have we been up to and what are our future plans!?
In the last 6 months just some of the things we have done are:
- Reinforced our advisory council, which is now 9 people including distinguished academics, a human rights lawyer, a leading social justice campaigner and several LGBTQIA+ people. We are really proud of the advisory council we have put together. For security reasons - necessary in the hate speech space - their identities are confidential. The advisory council is in touch daily and is a major sounding board to our CEO - Paul Thistoll.
- Progressing securing our intellectual property - namely, the 'Countering Hate Speech Aotearoa' and 'CHSA' trademarks.
- Our CEO appeared on the Free Speech Union Podcast to discuss Hate Speech. Our CEO also wrote an article for The Spinoff on why it is time to put gender into the Human Rights Act. The article is at: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-05-2024/adding-gender-to-the-human-rights-act-whats-the-big-deal. We have published two articles on our substack.
- We have met with 8 MPs to discuss human rights, hate speech and gender issues. We have met with both opposition and Government mps.
- We worked cooperatively with the VUW VC on how to put together his free speech/academic freedom event. This assistance was gratefully received.
- We have issued 4 press releases on various topics.
- We issued detailed guidance to all schools in New Zealand on HRA and Gender topics in response to an advisory pamphlet containing misinformation sent out by Ethos Alliance NZ.
- We have grown our social media accounts from 0 followers to three hundred plus followers.
- We held a kickoff/planning strategy session in Feb 2024.
These are just some of the things we have done so far. So what are our plans for the next year.
In terms of our major themes for the future in the next year, we have four main areas of work:
(i) Write the report that the Law Commission was going to write on the adoption of hate speech laws. This report was cancelled by the incoming Coalition Government and we feel it is necessary to continue this work. We have got the support of a major legal academic who will oversee the work. Conservatively, this work will cost around 400K over one year to produce. Writing and launching this report is one of the most high impact things we can do on the trajectory to get Aotearoa adopting laws against Hate Speech.
(ii) Build a social movement for laws against hate speech. One of our advisory council members has signficant experience building social movements and we will rely heavily on their guidance.
(iii) Educate MPs on human rights and trans people to support the members bill that will put Gender explicitly into the HRA. Debbie Ngarewa-Packer's member's bill putting gender explicity into the Human Rights Act is coming up for first reading in the next year and will likely be a conscience vote - we intend to meet with a plurality of MPs from across the house to put forward our case why they should support the bill.
(iv) Educate people in general on the effects of hate speech on minorities. This will include a detailed series of articles across all media spaced throughout the year. We also hope to host events and bring speakers - funds permitting.
To achieve our ambitious goals we need to raise 500k for the next year. Writing the report alone will take around 400k. We plan to launch a major crowdfunding on chuffed.org - a leading site for nonprofit crowdfunding. We are in talks with institutional donors as well.
As you can see the next 12 months are going to be a very busy time for Countering Hate Speech Aotearoa.
The continued support of our donors is invaluable to us and we remain deeply humbled that they have chosen to support us.
Thanks everyone and please spread the word about Countering Hate Speech Aotearoa.
Paul Thistoll
CEO
Countering Hate Speech Aotearoa