The director of a publicly funded centre set up to combat extremism in New Zealand has called the government a “death cult” that “hates children” in a post on X (formerly Twitter). She has since made the post private, along with the rest of her account.
Many people, however, were able to take screenshots of the post before it was hidden, with Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour replying and writing, “Some interesting views from a Jacinda Ardern and Labour appointee.”
Professor Joanna Kidman was appointed a director of the Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, by then-Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2022 as part of the government’s response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry report into the Christchurch terrorist attack.
Government ‘Hates Children’
Professor Kidman was responding to the government’s announcement that it would implement its pre-election promise to reintroduce youth offender “boot camps” by mid-2024.She wrote that she could “only assume that this government hates children, most of whom will be poor and brown” because “there is so much evidence that military-style youth boot camps don’t work and are expensive.”
She characterised the government as “want[ing] to snatch children’s lunches” in response to comments from Mr. Seymour, also the associate education minister, who described free school lunches as “wasteful” and that they should be cut.
“Is this a government or a death cult?” Ms. Kidman said.
In response, Mr. Seymour stressed that he believed in freedom of speech and that the government “should never lock someone up for their opinion,” but added that employees had to set standards with their behaviour.
“You would think she’d be smart enough to figure out that what she says in any capacity, if it relates to extreme rhetoric, is going to be a problem,” Mr. Seymour said. He added that it was “really strange” that such comments came from the head of an organisation funded to bring people together.
“If people want to have arguments about the merits of the school lunch programme or the government’s boot camps for prisoners, there’s lots of arguments they can make if they’d like to without getting into these kinds of personal attacks,” Mr. Seymour said. “Once you start doing that you’re actually promoting division and extremism.
“That level of name-calling is not actually advancing the debate. It is actually advancing a more divided society which is, ironically, the opposite of what she’s supposed to be about.”
When asked if Ms. Kidman should apologise for her comments, Mr. Seymour said she “doesn’t have a very good track record” and that he finds it easier to ignore her.
ACT Party Calls for Professor’s Dismissal
But the ACT Party’s public service spokesman Todd Stephenson has called on the board of the Centre to “move immediately to sack the extremist in their midst.”“Kidman’s salary is paid by taxpayers via the prime minister’s department, which means Christopher Luxon has just been delivered some potential savings on a silver platter,” he said.
“While ACT supports her right to spew deranged garbage as a private citizen, she shouldn’t be doing it on the taxpayer dollar, and certainly not with the borrowed credibility of the prime minister’s department,” Mr. Stephenson said.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Bridget White, said Professor Kidman was employed by Victoria University and not a public servant.
“However, the Department ... has conveyed to the university via the Trust its concerns that Professor Kidman’s comments may bring the centre into disrepute.”
Public Servants Critical of Conservative Policies
This is just the most recent example of high-level public officials taking issue with the policies of the new tri-party conservative government.Earlier this week, the Health Coalition Aotearoa co-chair Professor Lisa Te Morenga said she viewed the coalition as a “fascist-white supremacist government” after Mr. Seymour raised the issue of free school lunches.
In February last year, Rob Campbell resigned as Chair of Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) after using LinkedIn to publish his views on the National Party and its leader, implying they were racist.
He initially argued that there was a “big difference between being ‘politically impartial’ and being ‘politically neutered’” and refused to apologise because there was “nothing to apologise for and nobody I need to apologise to.” However, ministerial and public pressure eventually secured his resignation.
In response, Mr. Seymour said: “The reality is that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Much of the Wellington bureaucracy is openly sympathetic to the left and that is a real concern.”
