This is not some fanciful doctrinal pronouncement from a bunch of desiccated old men wearing weird clothes in the Vatican. It's a clinical statement from medical professionals describing a biological reality.

The point here is that it's impossible to arbitrarily determine any moment after fertilisation when a foetus suddenly and magically morphs from being a lump of tissue to becoming "human," since it's already a genetically unique and complete living being. Any such theoretical point (12 weeks? 20 weeks? The point at which the baby can survive outside the womb? The moment of actual live birth?) can be chosen only for reasons of convenience, pragmatism or sentiment - or perhaps all three.

If we accept the biological fact that life starts at the moment of conception, then it follows inexorably that abortion at any point during the development of the foetus involves extinguishing a human life. Whether you choose to call that murder is another matter. Society chooses not to, generally preferring to regard murder as a crime that can be committed only on a living, breathing, sentient human. (I say "generally" because the Crimes Act provides for a jail term of up to 14 years for someone "who causes the death of any child that has not become a human being in such a manner that he or she would have been guilty of murder if the child had become a human being". I'm not a lawyer, but I think this offence is used in cases where a pregnant woman is violently assaulted, resulting in the loss of her unborn baby.)

The idea that abortion is murder is usually dismissed as unrealistic and absolutist, even fanatical, yet it's one that can reasonably and logically be held. Society rejects it, however, because a consensus view has evolved that there are circumstances in which abortion is justified, necessary and humane. Placing time limits on it, as most abortion laws do, is essentially a pragmatic compromise aimed at making acceptable what might otherwise be unthinkable. Thus society is prepared to approve thousands of foetuses being aborted at, say, 12 weeks - although even then a baby is fully formed, with all its organs, muscles and limbs in place - but recoils in disgust at the idea of a baby being removed from the womb alive and left to die, cold and gasping for breath, in a hospital back room. (Couldn't happen? Oh, but it did.)

At whatever point the abortion takes place, the timing is still arbitrary. There is no magic line marking a point beyond which snuffing out a human life (often by violent means, including dismemberment) suddenly becomes unacceptable. But what has happened in New Zealand, as in other "progressive" democracies, is that as society has become more inured to the idea of abortion, limitations on when the procedure can be carried out have been stretched to the point where they eventually disappeared altogether. Under the Abortion Legislation Act 2020, there's nothing to prevent babies being aborted even when they are capable of surviving outside the womb. All that's required is for two doctors to agree that the late-term abortion is "clinically appropriate".

At this point, abortion really is tantamount to murder, albeit carried out with the sanction of the state; in other words with our concurrence. But we're not told how often this happens in God's Own Country, because since the passing of the Act there's no longer any provision for the collation and publication of information about abortions. It's legal now, you see, so the public is deemed to have no more interest in knowing about abortions - how many are performed, the reasons for them and the gestational age of the baby - than it has in knowing about tooth extractions, facelifts or hernia repairs.

This probably suits most people perfectly well, since what they don't know won't trouble them. Society has been conditioned by decades of feminist indoctrination into believing abortion is a human right and a women's health issue. What it actually entails - that is to say, the moral implications as well as the physical detail - is something people prefer not to dwell on. Easier just to ignore the whole thing.

The morality (or otherwise) of abortion has suddenly been brought back into sharp relief by the furore over the US Supreme Court's reversal of the Wade v Roe judgment. Much of the reaction - for example, the grotesquely hysterical scenes at American protest rallies and the ostentatious displays of hand-wringing by the likes of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi (both nominally Catholic, incidentally) was predictable. What was less so was the desperate attempt by abortion rights activists in New Zealand, assisted by their allies in the media, to make political capital out of the decision despite it being of no direct relevance here.

Even in America, the primary consequence of the majority ruling is simply that decisions on abortion laws will be handed back to the states, which is where they belonged in the first place. This has been wilfully misrepresented as a deliberate assault on American womanhood when in fact it's an acknowledgement that decisions on issues like abortion should be made by elected legislatures in state capitals, not by a judicial elite in Washington DC. (Last time I checked, American women were allowed to vote, so are free to exert influence on their politicians via the ballot box.)

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, we were subjected to the unedifying spectacle of politicians from across the spectrum scrambling to clamber aboard the abortion rights bandwagon, each trying to outdo the others with their pronouncements of woe and despair. Even David Seymour, who has arguably the least to gain and the most to lose by pandering to leftist feminists, couldn't resist joining the chorus of denunciation. It wasn't the first time Seymour had allowed his obvious antipathy toward the anti-abortion lobby to get the better of his political judgment. So much for ACT's greatest political virtue, which is that it isn't like the other parties. On this issue Seymour hunted with the pack.

Less surprising was Christopher Luxon's eagerness to convince the media that a National government would leave the abortion laws alone. This was a no-win situation for Luxon; people who hate National didn't believe him anyway, while people who might be inclined to support the party probably thought less of him for his moral equivocation, given that he has previously declared himself to be pro-life. He should have taken a less defensive stance. As it is, voters are entitled to wonder whether Luxon (a) has any bedrock values or (b) has been intimidated by the media into watering down his personal principles in order to appear more woke.

Instructing his MP Simon O'Connor to take down a tweet welcoming the Roe v Wade decision didn't help. Abortion has traditionally been treated as a personal conscience issue for MPs, so O'Connor's exercise of his right to free speech need not have been seen as a threat to the party. By censoring him, Luxon achieved the unusual feat of simultaneously appearing timid and a control freak.

As for the New Zealand media - well, needless to say they covered the issue with their customary detachment and unstinting commitment to neutrality and balance. The tone of the TV coverage was a blend of despair, denunciation, alarmism and moral panic, and overall only marginally less hysterical than the footage of a woman shown on her knees sobbing inconsolably in the streets of Washington. The dominant narrative, shared across all mainstream media but with no obvious basis in fact, was that women's abortion rights were threatened in New Zealand too, although exactly how or by whom wasn't explained.

I was able to predict with almost 100 percent accuracy the pro-choice activists who would be wheeled out to tell us what an appalling setback for women the court's decision was. Both channels had 87-year-old Dame Margaret Sparrow (Newshub honouring her with the adjective "legendary") and the voluble American Terry Bellamak - media favourites both - plus an unfamiliar (to me) American academic from the University of Otago who baldly pronounced, with no basis, that Luxon shouldn't be believed when he said National would leave the abortion law intact. In an item that took up much of the first segment of Sunday night's 6 pm news, Newshub could find no room for a single pro-life voice. (TVNZ, to its credit, did.)

At the heart of the protests over Roe v Wade is the notion that abortion is a human right - a very recent idea that has somehow taken precedence over the right to life, which is at the core of most moral values systems. This can only be explained as a triumph of ideology over humanity.

When I did a rough calculation in 2018 (the last statistics were published in 2019), the number of babies aborted in New Zealand since the law was first liberalised in 1977 was creeping up towards the half-million mark. In the US, more than 40 million babies were aborted between 1973 and 2019 - more than the population of Canada or Poland. Pro-abortion lobbyists celebrate this as a triumph for women's rights, but it seems a tragically perverse way to assert women's autonomy.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.

She lashed out in a tweet against "tokenistic" use of te reo by employees of DOC "as an attempt to show govt depts are culturally competent". She told Stuff she encouraged the use of the Maori language, but wanted it used "with integrity".

"You want to use te reo, you use it with integrity and use it responsibly," Stuff quoted Allan as saying. "This isn't a ‘everybody go out and use mahi and kaupapa' and say you have a deep and enduring relationship with te ao Maori."

Of course this shouldn't apply only to DOC, where Allan was in charge before this week's cabinet reshuffle resulted in her elevation to the justice portfolio. The same message could be directed at all government agencies where middle-class Pakeha public servants, eager to demonstrate their solidarity with the tangata whenua, indulge in an ostentatious display of virtue-signalling by using token Maori words and phrases. I wonder whether Radio New Zealand also got the memo.

Being Maori, Allan could get away with this rebuke. No Pakeha could; the cries of racism would be deafening. But to me it has always seemed patronising that many Pakeha liberals flaunt their cultural sensitivity with expressions such as "morena", "nga mihi" and "doing the mahi" (the latter a term practically unknown in the Pakeha world until a couple of years ago).

If they were truly committed to the use of te reo, they would take the trouble to learn the language. I think that's the point Allan was trying to make.

Many people do make the effort, of course, and good for them. The rest of us should stick to English, since it's our lingua franca - the language everyone knows and understands. And the primary purpose of language, as Joe Bennett reminded us in a recent column for which he predictably got caned, is to communicate, not to signal cultural empathy or indulge in a form of verbal snobbery.

I like what I've seen of Allan. She's Maori and lesbian, but she doesn't appear to play the woke card and deserves better than to be dismissed as someone who got where she is simply by ticking fashionable diversity boxes.

She's a former KFC employee who got a law degree - big ups for that, as they say - and who represents a real electorate (East Coast), so earned her seat in Parliament in the honest, old-fashioned way. She also impressed a lot of people with the gutsy, no-nonsense way in which she confronted a life-threatening cancer. And though I know we're not supposed to judge books by their covers, she has an open, honest face. We now know she's blunt too, a refreshing quality lacking in the majority of politicians on both sides of the House who prefer to play it safe.

I tested my opinion of Allan on Clive Bibby, a politically alert resident of her electorate. He largely confirmed my impression, saying that Allan had served the electorate well and National would have a hard job finding someone to stand against her (this from a retired Tolaga Bay farmer whose political inclinations are firmly to the centre-right).

Another good friend and long-term East Coast voter - again, not a natural Labour supporter - agreed that Allan was well-liked in the electorate. The fact that Gisborne's population is 50 percent Maori probably helps, although her tribal roots (Ngati Ranginui and Tuwharetoa) lie outside the district.

Clive noted that Allan had resisted any temptation to serve as a flagbearer for the radical rainbow movement, which he thought was a smart tactic in conservative Gisborne. But he wasn't sure that her impressive performance would be enough to save her in the event of the expected anti-Labour backlash in 2023, and he hoped she would secure a good position on the Labour list.

He thinks Allan is marked for higher office - a view shared by political commentator Tim Watkin, who speculated this week that she and Michael Wood, who were both promoted in the "minor" (ha!) reshuffle, might be a Labour leadership team of the future.

Wood strikes me as a bit too polished and smiley for comfort (I'm reminded of a politician from a former era of whom it was said, "Behind the thin veneer there's a thin veneer"), but Allan has an aura of authenticity - an impression reinforced by her obvious exasperation with the virtue-signallers. If we must have Labour governments - and history suggests they're the yin to National's yang - then we could probably do worse.

Then again, maybe I'm so desperate for something to feel positive about that I'm reduced to searching for promising omens on the Left. Certainly the picture is pretty bleak everywhere else.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.

The reaction was immediate and frenzied. The overwhelmingly left-liberal (i.e. pro-abortion) media, not just in America but throughout the English-speaking world, erupted with fury at the prospect that a long-entrenched feminist article of faith - namely, that a woman's right to abort a baby takes precedence over the unborn child's right to survive - might be overturned. As Kerry Wakefield (a woman, in case you're wondering) pungently put it in The Spectator Australia: "The feminist offence machine ratcheted up to full, wild-eyed stridency, with Democrat congresswoman Elizabeth Warren doing everything short of howling at the moon."

The revisiting of Roe v Wade is a rare setback for a political class that has become accustomed to calling the shots. The tone of their outrage was perfectly captured by the whiny headline on a video published on the Guardian's website: "It feels like such a betrayal". Another Guardian headline pronounced that the Alito draft, if adopted, would be a "global catastrophe for women". Such restraint ...

Well, better suck it up, folks. The anti-abortion lobby knows all too well what it's like to be on the losing side. Now the boot appears to be on the other foot and the champions of abortion rights are not taking it at all well.

But here's the thing. In the weeks since the leak, I've listened to hours of discussion, analysis and speculation on the BBC and America's left-leaning National Public Radio. Not once did I hear a pro-life voice. (Correction: the BBC's Stephen Sackur included a question about the Alito draft at the very tail end of an interview with Victoria Sparz, a pro-life Congresswoman, but left no time for her to expand on her answer.)

Not surprisingly, Roe v Wade has aroused less interest in the New Zealand media. Why should it, when the New Zealand abortion rights lobby has achieved its aim of making abortion as simple, at least in legal terms, as a tooth extraction (and treats it as if it's no more morally complicated)?

But there has been a certain amount of venting in solidarity with the American sisterhood. On TV Three's dependably woke The Project, I saw an over-excited Kate Rodger shrieking with incoherent rage while her fellow panellists nodded and murmured in agreement. No surprises there.

Media coverage of the Alito draft, in other words, has been overwhelmingly and egregiously one-sided - a perfect illustration of where the media sit in the culture wars. Even people who believe in a woman's right to have an abortion would struggle to argue that the controversy has been reported in a fair and balanced way.

As with climate change, a stifling and oppressive media groupthink prevails. And what's particularly striking about the tone of media commentary is the obvious assumption that everyone shares the media elite's anger, as if no half-intelligent or reasonable person could possibly be opposed to unrestricted abortion rights.

These are the new bigots - people who are not only intolerant of dissenting views but so convinced of their own rightness that they don't even acknowledge the existence of counter-arguments.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone. One thing that did surprise me, however, was to learn that the supposedly neutral and "fiercely independent" Wellington-based online news site Scoop declined to publish two news releases on Roe v Wade from the anti-abortion group Right to Life - this after running a pro-choice column by Scoop's leftist in-house commentator Gordon Campbell and two statements from abortion rights groups attacking the Alito draft.

I've admired Scoop in the past, naively believing it was willing to publish all shades of news and opinion, but its credibility now is shot - a shame, because if it had the guts and integrity to live up to its own hype, it could serve as a valuable platform for groups unable to gain traction in the mainstream media.

As for Alito's draft decision, some pertinent facts appear to have been overlooked amid the backlash. The first and most important is that if the Supreme Court goes ahead and overturns Roe v Wade, abortion rights will become a matter for each state to decide. In other words, decisions on abortion law will be handed back to the elected representatives of the people - which, in a properly functioning democracy, is surely where they belonged in the first place. The 1973 decision overrode states' rights to determine their own laws and now they may get them back. But far from applauding this judicial nod to people power, the pro-abortion camp is aghast. Leftist ideologues tend to be distrustful of democracy because they can never be sure that people will vote the correct way.

To put it another way, a reversal of Roe v Wade would be only a partial unspooling of the law. It's not as if the court is likely to rule that abortion will become illegal everywhere and in any circumstances (although some abortion rights activists, desperate to stir up opposition even if it means telling porkies, are suggesting that's exactly what will happen).

On that note, it's amusing - in an ironic way - to hear activists wailing that a bunch of mostly male judges in Washington DC have made what they condemn as an "ideological" decision. Isn't that pretty much what happened in 1973 when the court (which was then entirely male) ruled in favour of women's right to terminate a pregnancy? The only thing different is that the dominant ideology on the court bench has been reversed. The current is now running in the other direction and the feminists, having had things their way for 50 years, don't like it.

As my friend and former colleague Bob Edlin observed, "the ruling effectively demonstrates that one bunch of judges can determine something one day, based on what they argue the US constitution allows or disallows. Another bunch of judges with different ideological leanings can rule to the contrary several years [or in this case decades] later."

As Bob points out, the US constitution hasn't changed; only the composition of the court has. This highlights a fundamental flaw in a system that places enormous power in the hands of judges appointed on the basis of their political and ideological leanings in the expectation that they will interpret the constitution accordingly.

The court is expected to release its final decision next month or in July. In the meantime we can expect to be bombarded with canards such as "abortion is a health issue". (Not for the unborn baby it's not. And in any case, since when were pregnancy and childbirth classified as illnesses?)

Placards waved by Roe v Wade demonstrators also assert that "abortion is a human right". Since when? The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948, which was the distillation of centuries of thinking and writing about the subject, makes no mention of abortion. It does, however, unequivocally assert the right to life. The fiction that abortion is a human right is an invention of late 20th century feminism, but the slogan has an undeniably catchy appeal to people incapable of thinking above bumper-sticker level.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.

The Bill, sponsored by Labour MP Louisa Wall and subject to a conscience vote, would allow the Minister of Health to designate 150-metre "safe areas" around abortion clinics from which protesters would be barred. It appears to be a unique protection accorded no other public buildings.

Officially named the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill, the legislation threatens to curtail the right of anti-abortion activists to maintain even silent, passive vigils near abortion clinics.

It has been promoted on the pretext that vulnerable patients attending abortion clinics risk being intimidated, obstructed and harassed. Yet the Christchurch-based anti-abortion group Right to Life submitted Official Information Requests to 20 district health boards inquiring whether patients or staff had suffered any such harassment or intimidation during the two years from 2019 to 2021, and none reported any.

So the need for "safe areas" has not been demonstrated and the Bill should be seen for what it is: an attempt to shut down legitimate protest against a practice that conservative Christians regard as profoundly wrong, but which is celebrated by the political Left as a defining triumph of feminism.

The Bill passed its first reading last March by a margin of 100 to 15 with two abstentions, but that's not necessarily an indication of how MPs will vote the second time around. ACT's 10 MPs all voted in favour of the Bill then, but party leader David Seymour said he had concerns about freedom of expression and wanted the Bill properly examined by a select committee.

Only three Labour MPs - Anahila Kanongata'a Suisuiki, Jamie Strange and Rino Tirikatene - voted against it. All Green MPs supported it and National was split: 19 in favour and 12 against. Christopher Luxon, who has since become the party leader, was one of those opposed.

Trevor Mallard and Chris Hipkins supported the Bill. Both were arrested for protest activity before they launched their political careers but later had their convictions overturned. They apparently see no inconsistency in denying others a right they once vigorously asserted for themselves.

The Bill is bound to become law because of its overwhelming support from Labour and the Greens, but interest will centre on whether any MPs change their position now that the Bill has been through the select committee process. The vote will be a test of their commitment to the principles not just of free speech but of freedom of assembly and religion.

Seymour wasn't the only person concerned about the threat to free speech. Even David Parker, who as Attorney-General was statutorily obliged to report to the House on whether the Bill complied with the Bill of Rights Act (BORA), conceded that a clause which would have criminalised the act of "communicating" with abortion patients in a manner likely to cause distress was "overly broad" and appeared inconsistent with BORA.

In its submission opposing the Bill, the Free Speech Union agreed with that conclusion but pointed out to the select committee that the legislation wasn't necessary in the first place because protection against intimidation or threats is provided under existing law. The Summary Offences Act, for example, makes it an offence to direct insulting or threatening words at another person. There is also a legal prohibition against harassment - a word whose definition, the union said, would be expanded under Wall's Bill.

The union went on to say: "It is not the speech of the majority that requires vigilant protection. It is the speech of the few that must be jealously guarded." The union cautioned that the traditional legal test of what is "reasonable" was in danger of becoming one of what was "comfortable".

In a spirited defence of the right to dissent, it said: "We are flummoxed by the suggestion that in a democracy, where government is created by people of different interests and beliefs, some ideas are deemed too different or disagreeable to be allowed. This suggestion is antithetical to democracy."

The Bill that's returning to the House today gives the impression of having been toned down, but it's illusory. While the clause that failed the BORA test has gone, that doesn't make the Bill any more palatable. Under the amended version, any person who "engages in protest about matters relating to the provision of abortion services" within a "safe areas" zone would be committing a criminal act.

It's hard to imagine a more sweeping provision. The new section would give activist judges - who have proliferated in the 32 years since the passage of BORA, as the union noted in its submission - licence to convict people for doing nothing more menacing than silently praying on a public street anywhere within 150 metres of an abortion facility. This can only have a chilling effect on the right to protest.

Regardless of their views on abortion, those who believe in free speech and the associated right to protest should take careful note of how MPs vote. National and ACT MPs, in particular, will be watched to see whether their votes align with their parties' supposed commitment to freedom.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne on 15 February. Republished with permission.

On the way home, rather than avoid the CBD and take the most direct route onto the Hutt motorway, I decided for no particular reason to go through town.

I knew about the protest convoy that had rolled into town earlier that day but assumed it would have been all over by four in the afternoon.

Ha! More fool me.

I intended to drive up Molesworth St but found my way blocked by protest vehicles of all shapes and sizes, from massive trucks down to cars that looked as if they were rarely driven further than the nearest supermarket.

Most were bedecked with flags - New Zealand flags, tino rangatiratanga flags and others that I didn't recognise - and slogans.

The area around Parliament was hopelessly clogged.

No one was directing traffic (I didn't see a single cop), but an escape route opened up through the bus marshalling area at the bottom of Lambton Quay and I followed a line of cars through to Thorndon Quay and the open road.

Five days later, the protesters are still there.

More than 120 have been arrested for trespassing, and some illegally parked vehicles have been moved.

Others have been ticketed by council parking wardens, escorted by police. But despite violent clashes with the police on Thursday, more demonstrators kept arriving yesterday and it was obvious the occupants of the protest camp on the lawn in front of Parliament were in no hurry to leave.

What the hell is going on here? Wellington district police commander Superintendent Corrie Parnell described the protest as unprecedented, and I think he's probably right.

Admittedly there have been bigger protest rallies.

I remember massive union marches to Parliament during the industrial unrest of the late 1960s and 70s - in particular, one that followed the Arbitration Court's nil wage order in 1968.

Protests against the Vietnam War, the Security Intelligence Service and the 1981 Springbok tour also attracted thousands - far more, I would guess, than we saw on Tuesday*.

Students and unionists typically made up the bulk of the protesters.

But what happened in Wellington this week was different.

The protesters of the 60s, 70s and 80s made their point, let off steam and drifted off to the pub.

There was anger, but it was often tempered by jollity and humour, especially on those union marches. The mood this time seems darker and more febrile.

And the differences go far beyond that.

The public always knew what those protests were about. It was generally clear who organised them and what they were trying to achieve, even if their objectives were sometimes fanciful.

By way of contrast, the organisers of the so-called Freedom Convoy have kept a profile so low as to be invisible.

There seems to be no official spokesman or spokeswoman. Not until today did I learn on Stuff about the identity of at least one of the key figures.

Parnell has remarked on an "absence of leadership" that made it hard for police to deal with organisers.

Yet someone initiated and co-ordinated it.

These things don't happen magically and spontaneously.

Who's behind the protest, and why have they apparently been reluctant to step out from the shadows?

Public understanding of the protest, and possibly even sympathy for it, might be enhanced if someone was prepared to step forward and coherently explain their purpose.

It's called transparency, and its absence breeds suspicion.

Ah yes, their purpose.

That's another thing.

While the protest is nominally about the unfairness of the vaccination mandate that stops the unvaxxed from participating in society, even to the point of preventing them from earning a living, the message has been blurred by a miscellany of other grievances, not all of them related: Three Waters, Donald Trump's supposedly stolen election and Maori sovereignty, to name just three. Plus there's a strong element of religious fervour.

If there's a common factor, it's resentment and distrust of what is seen as an authoritarian government.

This hostility extends to people who are seen as agents of those in power - most notably the news media.

In fact it's possible that the reason we haven't heard much from the protest organisers is that reporters have been unwilling, or perhaps too frightened, to seek them out, preferring to get their information from official sources such as the police and politicians.

The result is a one-sided view that leaves us inadequately informed about the nature of the event, and the protesters more convinced than ever that the media are aligned with the government against them.

And just as the motivation for the protest hasn't always been obvious, so too there has been a lack of clarity about the objective - a point made by John Minto, who should know a thing or two about protests.

Minto says the Freedom Convoy lacks a strategy and an objective and is therefore bound to fail.

That might be an overstatement, but it's certainly true that the public is unlikely to get behind a protest if they don't know what its purpose is.

This brings us back to the lack of a spokesman or spokeswoman to clearly articulate the protesters' grievance(s) and objective(s).

Presumably, we can assume that if nothing else, the protesters at the very least want to attract wider public support - but there again, they blew it.

New Zealanders generally support the right to protest and may even take the view that the grounds of Parliament are a symbolically powerful place to do it, regardless of Trevor Mallard's preciousness.

But tolerance of the right to protest soon runs out when the protesters obstruct other New Zealanders from going about their lawful business, and it runs out even more quickly when protesters abuse people for exercising their freedom of choice by wearing a mask, or when they lose their temper with café and shop workers who refuse to serve them because laws over which they have no control say they can't.

That's no way to build public goodwill.

There's a massive PR problem, right there.

The majority of the protesters may be polite and non-aggressive - in fact, I'm sure they are; but if a minority exhibits arrogance, irrational anger and provocative behaviour verging on hysteria, that becomes the defining characteristic of the event.

As I was writing this, an acquaintance who supports the protest sent me a link to a 50-minute video in which he wandered among the crowd interviewing people, apparently at random.

It's easy to dismiss the protesters as nutters, conspiracy theorists and people with an anger management problem, all of which is almost certainly true of a few; but many of the interviewees struck me as calm, articulate, intelligent and motivated by valid, deeply felt beliefs.

The thought occurred to me that if the mainstream media had taken the trouble to do what the video-maker had done, the public would have a far more accurate picture of this otherwise perplexing event.

Sure, there was some wildly emotive rhetoric and hyperbole.

One man referred to his grandfather who fought in the Second World War - allusions to New Zealand soldiers risking their lives for freedom seem almost obligatory in this context - and said "We're fighting World War Three".

He was worried about the Pfizer vaccine making girls sterile.

Another protester referred to MPs as "pieces of sh.." and one expressed contempt for the "gutless ....ing police" (exactly what he expected them to do wasn't clear.)

But others talked about losing their jobs, having to take their kids out of school, being excluded from family gatherings and being denied access to community facilities such as libraries and swimming pools. Some of it made painful listening.

These people feel mainstream society has made them outcasts as a result of decisions sincerely made according to their conscience.

We may disapprove of their beliefs, but at least we can try to understand and not reflexively condemn them as pariahs.

Our attitude to the protesters may be seen as a test of our true tolerance of diversity.

Incidentally, the video I refer to was removed from YouTube hours after being posted.

The video-maker was suspended for 10 days, ostensibly for violating community standards, and put on notice that he risked being banned permanently.

And we wonder why people like the Freedom Convoy protesters get paranoid about the suppression of minority views …

The novelist Lloyd Jones has no such problems getting published.

In an open letter printed in the country's biggest-selling newspaper, he expressed a coldly elitist disdain for the protesters - a rabble, he called them - and implied they were no longer New Zealanders.

"Prime Minister Ardern says you are part of New Zealand," Jones wrote.

"I beg to differ. You are of New Zealand, but longer part of it."

"How dare they?" was the tone of Jones' polemic. It was a chilling demonstration of the ease with which people who think of themselves as liberals can morph into excuse-makers for authoritarianism and enforcers of approved orthodoxy.

This is how the marginalisation, and ultimately the persecution of outsiders, begins.

We're surely better than that.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.

*Paradoxically, probably the biggest protest march of all was the "Kiwis Care" march of 1981, when 22-year-old sales rep Tania Harris led 50,000 people down Queen St. I say "paradoxically" because it was more in the nature of an anti-protest protest, motivated by public anger over militant unionism. It dwarfed a union march down the same street the previous day, when bystanders booed and hissed at the 4000 marchers.

Allegations made by lawyer Tony Ellis implicate New Zealand's two most senior judges in an affair that reflects badly on the judiciary and its handling of concerns about Hawke's Bay Family Court Judge Peter Callinicos.

What Ellis has disclosed will almost certainly serve to reinforce perceptions that Callinicos has been the target of a furtive - in fact you might say conspiratorial - gang-up.

According to Ellis, the case threatens judicial independence and has caused a major rift among judges.

Senior lawyers are scratching their heads trying to recall whether any judicial squabble has ever before been aired so publicly.

Figuratively speaking, the fire is in the fern and threatening to singe some illustrious names.

In an incendiary letter to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner, Alan Ritchie, Ellis has alleged that:

• Callinicos was "unlawfully lobbied" by Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu and Principal Family Court Judge Jackie Moran, together known as the Heads of Bench, over his handling of a case that was then still in progress.
• Ritchie, whose role is to assess complaints about the conduct of judges, "irrevocably compromised" his independence through the way he dealt with concerns about Callinicos.
• Callinicos was investigated without his knowledge and with no opportunity to defend himself.
• Callinicos himself claims he received "misleading and bullying" correspondence from the two senior judges, known as the Heads of Bench, and was the subject of "scathing" letters sent to Ritchie by the Heads of Bench and by the second-ranked judge of the Supreme Court, Justice William ("Willie") Young.
• Ritchie predetermined Callinicos's guilt without his knowledge and without giving him a chance to respond to criticism.
• Ellis quotes Callinicos as saying: " … the dumping of this unilateral crap into [the] public domain compounds the injustice as I have no recourse in the investigation, or in the public eye."
• Chief Justice Dame Helen Winkelmann and Young are implicated in the affair by allegedly failing to disclose that Young was involved in behind-the-scenes discussions about the case.
• Young reached conclusions about the case without giving Callinicos an opportunity to put his side.

According to Callinicos, 60 of New Zealand's 180-odd judges have contacted him expressing their support.

Callinicos is quoted as saying the actions of his judicial superiors have sent "shivers of fear" through the District Court, of which the Family Court is part.

Ellis accused Ritchie of kowtowing to senior judges and added: "A well-informed independent observer would ask the question: "Who are the bullies here, Judge Callinicos, or Justice William Young and the Chief Justice?"

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the background.

In the Family Court, Callinicos thwarted Oranga Tamariki's underhand attempts to remove a girl - whom Stuff named Moana - from a loving, stable home and place her with unfamiliar Maori caregivers on the pretext that her Pakeha foster parents weren't meeting her "cultural needs".

In a 145-page judgment, Callinicos tore into Oranga Tamariki social workers over their conduct in the case.

His ruling rapidly escalated into a dispute over judicial independence when it emerged that Taumaunu and Moran had intervened in the case, apparently at the urging of the then acting Oranga Tamariki CEO Wira Gardiner.

Callinicos protested that this action compromised his judicial independence - a point subsequently taken up by Ellis and other unnamed lawyers in complaints to Ritchie.

In a preliminary report issued last week, Ritchie inflamed the issue further when he found that the two senior judges had not acted inappropriately. Extraordinarily, he appears to have reached this conclusion without bothering to speak to Callinicos.

That provoked Ellis into lodging the further complaint implicating Winkelmann and Young.

In this latest complaint, a copy of which has been sent to Attorney-General David Parker, Ellis alleges that when Winkelmann and Young met lawyers acting for Callinicos, they failed to disclose that Young "had been involved in making a finding that Judge Callinicos bullied witnesses [in the Moana case] and that the Chief Justice concurred".

Ellis continued: "Justice William Young, in reaching a conclusion that Judge Callinicos had made comments that were disproportionate and inappropriate, [had] made gratuitous criticisms, and engaged in what appears to be bullying, following an investigation which did not seek input from Judge Callinicos, and taking no action to seek such input himself, this undermined judicial independence. The Chief Justice's concurrence compounded this error."

Ellis challenged Ritchie to recuse himself from further consideration of the case, writing: "Your approach has created not just actual bias, or its appearance, but worse created a scandal not seen since Edwards [a landmark case from 1892], and has now implicated not only … the Chief District Court Judge and the Principal Family Court Judge, but now also the Chief Justice, and Justice William Young, NZ's second highest ranked Supreme Court Judge as well."

What is now clear is that judicial concerns about Callinicos date back to his handling of a controversial unrelated case in April involving a woman named as Mrs P, whose cause was taken up by feminist academics and sympathetic journalists who claimed she was mistreated in Callinicos's court.

According to leaked documents published by Stuff last week, Young had been providing "advice" to the Heads of Bench about Callinicos, apparently without his knowledge, since then.

Young was reported as saying in a letter to Ritchie that there seemed to be a pattern of conduct by Callinicos and those on the receiving end "considered, understandably, that they had been bullied".

He had read transcripts from the Mrs P and Moana cases and saw the intervention of Callinicos as "excessive, partisan and demeaning".

Even from a non-legal standpoint, this seems an extraordinary way of going about things.

Callinicos appears to have been investigated behind his back by the country's second most senior judge and been given no chance to respond to accusations against him.

According to Ellis, that's a denial of natural justice.

Meanwhile, questions arise about apparent bias in the media coverage of the Mrs P case, which unquestioningly took her side and almost certainly contributed to the anti-Callinicos mood.

People familiar with the case say the coverage didn't fairly reflect a long and complicated history dating back to 2012 and involving multiple judges.

In fact, media coverage of the Callinicos affair by Stuff - the only media organisation to report the Moana case and its repercussions - forms an intriguing sub-plot to the main narrative.

While coverage of the Moana case by Stuff's veteran Hawke's Bay reporter Marty Sharpe has seemed fair, neutral and balanced, the same can't be said for the loaded reporting of the Mrs P case.

Kirsty Johnston, the Stuff journalist who reported the protest in support of Mrs P by women academics and "domestic violence experts" in April, wrote a story published last Friday which highlighted Young's claim that Callinicos had bullied Mrs P and subjected her to demeaning treatment.

To bolster the story, Johnston went back to the same "anti-violence advocacy group" she had quoted in April.

Not surprisingly they obliged by calling for Callinicos to be "made accountable" for the Mrs P case and others he had presided over.

No one reading the story would have been left in any doubt that Callinicos had behaved reprehensibly.

After all, even the country's second most senior judge apparently thought so.

Coincidentally or otherwise, Stuff gave that story far greater prominence than one published a day earlier by Sharpe, which took a notably more neutral (and therefore less condemnatory) tone in reporting Ritchie's preliminary finding in the Callinicos case.

Johnston followed her Friday hit-job on Callinicos with another the following day targeting retired Hawke's Bay judge Tony Adeane, who was in the frame for several cases in which his decisions were overturned on appeal because of faults in the way he had directed juries.

Two stories on successive days, both reflecting badly on ageing male judges?

It looked suspiciously like a pattern - an impression reinforced by Johnston's description of herself on the Stuff website as "an investigative journalist with an interest in inequality, gender and social justice".

An activist, in other words, who by her self-description inevitably creates doubts about the neutrality of her work.

But at least Stuff published the stories, which is more than can be said for its treatment of the latest disturbing claims by Ellis, which apparently warranted not a word of coverage, although a copy of his letter had been sent to Sharpe.

Put all this together and you get a very worrying picture.

Courts are supposed to prevent abuses of power and the media are supposed to expose them.

The worrying conclusion to be drawn from the Callinicos affair is that we may no longer be able to depend on these two vital institutions to guard our rights and freedoms.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.

The tone was set in an opinion piece today in which Stuff political reporter Henry Cooke wrote that the government was finally moving after years of "shameful inaction". Politicians had put abortion in the too-hard basket ever since the "absurdity" of the current law was passed in 1977, he said.

Well, at least we now know not to expect neutral coverage of this divisive issue from Cooke. So how do things look elsewhere?

Er, not good.

TV3's 6 o'clock news last night, in an item foreshadowing today's announcement, featured a sympathetic interview with a woman who said she was made to feel like a criminal for wanting an abortion and didn't think there should be any statutory limits on when terminations could be carried out.

Political editor Tova O'Brien didn't declare an explicitly partisan position, but the thrust of the item was unmistakable.

In a three-minute item, there was no room for anyone from the pro-life lobby.

How about state radio, then?

The signs are not promising there, either. Radio New Zealand last month ran an Eyewitness programme eulogising the women who ran the Sisters Overseas Service for pregnant women wanting abortions in the 1970s.

Again, the documentary wasn't explicitly pro-abortion, but it didn't need to be.

The women of the SOS were presented as heroines fighting for a self-evidently noble and righteous cause.

As an aside, Eyewitness recalled events of that time with such confidence and authority that listeners could have assumed the reporter/producer had personally lived through it.

In fact Claire Crofton, who made the item for RNZ, is a recent arrival from Britain. She revealed in another recent programme that she's a Brexit refugee, which possibly says something about her politics.

Is it too much to expect that on a highly sensitive political and moral issue such as this, one that resonates deeply with New Zealanders on both sides of the debate, we might be spared propaganda made at public expense by an outsider?

Meanwhile, the anti-abortion organisation Voice for Life has accused another RNZ journalist, Susan Strongman, of collaborating with Terry Bellamak of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand in an exercise apparently aimed at discrediting pro-life pregnancy counsellors.

According to VFL, a post by Strongman on the ALRANZ Facebook page was introduced as "a request from a friendly journalist".

It said she was keen to hear from anyone who had sought pregnancy counselling "only to find they [the counsellors] are pushing a pro-life agenda".

The post continued: "Have you ever been shown tiny fetus toys, offered baby clothes or given inaccurate information on the risks of abortion? If so, I would love to speak with you for an investigation into New Zealand's crisis pregnancy centres.

"You can remain anonymous, and Terry can vouch for me as being a reliable and trustworthy journalist."

Strongman finished by giving her Radio New Zealand email address and added: "or you can get my mobile number off Terry".

How cosy.

VFL complained to Radio New Zealand, claiming the purpose was to undermine the fund-raising efforts of organisations such as Pregnancy Help and Pregnancy Counselling Services.

The reply from Stephen Smith, acting CEO and editor-in-chief of RNZ, blandly assured VFL there was no collaboration between Strongman and ALRANZ and that the story she was working on was not initiated by Bellamak's organisation.

It went on to say: "RNZ journalists have contacts in many organisations and are committed to following a well-established editorial process to ensure that stories are fair and balanced."

Not exactly a resounding denial, then.

In the meantime, anyone wanting to satisfy themselves that Strongman's stories on abortion are fair and balanced is unlikely to be reassured by a tweet that she posted on May 16.

It concerned a story Strongman had written for RNZ about a woman whom she claimed contemplated suicide after being refused a second-trimester abortion.

Strongman then added: "This is what can happen when an abortion decision is not yours to make."

In those few words, she segued from reportage to activism. On the strength of that, I wouldn't trust her to write balanced stories about abortion.

As the abortion debate heats up, we can expect to see many more examples of advocacy journalism for the pro-abortion case.

Overwhelmingly, the default position in media coverage is that the abortion laws are repressive and archaic and that reform is not only overdue but urgent.

But at times like this, the public more than ever look to the media for impartial coverage. Is it too much to expect that journalists set aside their personal views and concentrate instead on giving people the information they need to properly weigh the conflicting arguments and form their own conclusions?

• Karl du Fresne is a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First publshed on Karl du Fresne's blog. Republished with permission.
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

It seems we're in favour of diversity and inclusivity if we're talking about race, colour, gender and sexual identity, the latter two of which keep spinning off into ever-new permutations.

But puzzlingly, we're only partially tolerant when it comes to religious belief.

We are encouraged to be tolerant toward Islam, especially since the Christchurch atrocities, and so we should be.

The right to practise one's religion, at least unless it interferes with the rights of others, is one we should all unquestioningly support.

This applies even when secular society disapproves of some of those religions, or scratches its collective head in bemusement at their practices and beliefs.

But if freedom of religion is one cornerstone of a free society, so is freedom of expression, which includes the right to subject religion, along with every other institution of society, to critical scrutiny and even ridicule.

Virtually all religions - whether we're talking Catholicism, Mormonism, Judaism, the Destiny Church or the Exclusive Brethren - possess what, to non-believers, are quirks, absurdities, hypocrisies and cruelties that render them ripe for mockery and condemnation.

For decades, comedians and satirists have taken joyous, blasphemous advantage of this freedom.

How people laughed, for example, at Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, with its wickedly subversive song Every Sperm is Sacred - a dig at Catholic teaching on birth control.

If it offended devout Catholics - well, tough. Freedom to ridicule is the flipside of freedom to worship.

Mainstream Christianity is still considered fair game by comedians and satirists, and no-one bats an eyelid. But somehow, Islam seems to be off-limits.

Even a cool, reasoned criticism of Islam is likely to excite accusations of Islamophobia.

The champions of diversity don't seem to grasp that you can abhor the grotesque excesses carried out by Islamic fanatics while simultaneously defending the right of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims, such as those in Christchurch, to practise their religion. Continue reading

• Karl du Fresne is a former musician and journalist for over 40 years. He is currently a columnist for The Dominion Post and a freelance journalist, writing on a broad range of subjects from politics to sport. His blog is at: http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/
• Image: Stuff.co.nz