I’m not sure handing the Right more culture war ammunition is the smartest move by Labour right now.
Just as National’s toxically venal tax plan starts to collapse under searing criticism, just as ACTs extremism becomes more apparent and as Winston flirts with antivaxers – just as there is a glimmer of hope that Labour + Greens + MP could just edge the Far Right from winning power, just as the reality of what voters might be getting from a far right Government starts to set in, Ginny Anderson steps up and says, ‘Fuck it, let’s go culture war’, and announces a change in consent laws that can easily be construed as an attack on the presumption of innocence…
Newshub can reveal Labour will campaign on a promise to overhaul sexual consent laws so it would be up to alleged offenders to prove their victim said “yes”.
…why the Christ Labour think making changes to sexual assault law that can be construed as an attack on the presumption of innocence is smart 4 weeks out from an election is anyones guess at this stage.
The second Tenet of woke dogma is ‘B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL women that ALL men are rapists’, and when you consider the gerrymandering to Sexual Assault Law already passed by Labour and the Greens, moving towards guilty until proven innocent is a natural progression of woke orthodoxy but what flies with the woke tends to go broke with everyone else.
National can’t touch the issue because they are too wet but ACT and NZ First can certainly go into a death spiral over the presumption of innocence.
ACT just announced bashing drug addicts and the mentally ill while NZ First are pushing W.H.O. conspiracy theories.
They’ll just wave around copies of ‘How to Kill a Mockingbird‘, (which is these days less a literary celebration of the values of a liberal progressive justice and is now a hate crime on women’s lived experience by heteronormative white cis male privilege).
Parents will stop fearing their daughters of being attacked and fear their sons being accused of attack.
To launch a change that redefines consent and challenges the presumption of innocence in the hope of winning back Green Party voters seems like blind panic rather than a principled position on Justice.
There is no time limit on sexual assault cases in NZ, so I’m assuming this new definition of the law will be retrospective?
Labour have just handed Winston and David an enormous amount of ammunition for very questionable gain.
The Amber Heard and Johnny Depp case showed how huge the cultural backlash to the ‘believe all women’ mantra had become.
Ginny Anderson and the Labour Party have strapped bombs to themselves with targets on each bomb and it’s not really clear why they would green light this if it is just a minimalist redefinition of consent when it can be construed as a challenge to the presumption of innocence.
Free Speech and the presumption of innocence are rights that people get very, very, very angry over.
Has someone informed the Minister that there is an election in 4 weeks?
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