Todd Stephenson and Stephen Rainbow: David Farrar’s Ideological Plant In The Human Rights Commission

Everything the right do connects….

In 2018, David Farrar wrote a series of suggestions on Kiwiblog as to how the far right might best promote freedom of speech as a method of limiting other civil rights (in this particular case, academic freedom, a campaign that has just paid off this this month as David Seymour has finally announced the legislation to curb the independence of our universities as promised in the coalition agreement).

As part of that list, Farrar wrote the following suggestion for how he and his followers might respond:

Amend the Human Rights Act to require one of the Human Rights Commissioners to be a dedicated Free Speech Commissioner who can then fight these battles with Government resource (sic). Sure many don’t like the HRC, but it isn’t going away so try and use it for good in this battle. Tim Wilson in Australia was very effective as a de facto Free Speech Commissioner.

It’s therefore incredibly interesting that our minority-party-driven cabinet has this year placed the ideological plant of Stephen Rainbow in the role of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, despite him apparently being rejected for the job twice.

So who is Tim Wilson?

Statistically, an asshole.

In New Zealand, Tim Wilson is a former journalist, ZB Newstalk presenter, and current director of a major conservative Atlas-associated think tank, the Maxim Institute. The Maxim Institute’s mission as an organisation is to promote “The dignity of every person in New Zealand”. If that sounds familiar, maybe somewhat similar to Luxon’s “restoring dignity to landlords”, it should; under Wilson’s leadership, the Maxim Institute has emphasised conservative fiscal policy and debt responsibility, the very “conversation” from which our people-pleasing Prime Minister has launched his awful fiscal platform.

But he has nothing to do with this story.

The Australian politician Tim Wilson, on the other hand, and the subject of Farrar’s 2018 blog post, is someone completely different. But he is, coincidentally, also a grade-A prick.

The Australian Tim Wilson is a gay Liberal Party member who retired from politics in 2022. Before he became a representative for Goldstein, he was the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, a role he gained the same year the free-market think tank he directed called for the abolition of the Australian Human Rights Commission.

He was hired by Tony Abbot’s government to be an informal “freedom commissioner” who set out to refocus the commission on free speech rather than anti-discrimination work. His appointment was considered quite controversial at the time.

The Sydney Morning Herald writes:

[Wilson] was chosen by the then Attorney-General George Brandis as an extra commissioner without any obvious process that the public could discern. Brandis made that appointment without adding any budget to the commission so it functioned in two ways: one, to provide Wilson with a prominent position; and two, to cut funding to other parts of the AHRC because of the Wilson-sized hole in the budget.

I’d argue the latter damaged the important work of the commission.

Graeme Innes, the former Disability Discrimination Commissioner and for a time Human Rights Commissioner and Race Discrimination Commissioner, whose nine-year term briefly overlapped Wilson’s, said of him: “The assumption was that whatever was said in meetings was going straight back to government. It was the most political appointment I can remember.”

Wilson was, before this time and after, not a person who had an outstanding record in human rights law. He made it plain to his colleagues in the AHRC at the time that he was not even very interested in human rights law, which made it hard for those same colleagues then to rely on him to share the burden of work.

He was committed to only two areas of work within the commission: the equality of rights for the gay and lesbian community in which, as an openly gay person, he was deeply invested. Insiders say he did a reasonable job in that area although his commitment to religious freedoms meant he was also conflicted.

He was also deeply committed to the abolition of 18C which he described as democratically dangerous. That was the law commentator Andrew Bolt fell foul of in 2011 when he was found to have been in breach of 18C. Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that "fair-skinned Aboriginal people (or some of them) were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed in the newspaper articles" which were published in the Herald Sun.

Tim Wilson is Australia’s political sabotage of the Human Rights Commission. While we have our own Tim Wilson here by name, we also have our own version of Tim Wilson in Stephen Rainbow.

Political commentators in New Zealand have frequently questioned how much of Luxon’s recent coalition “negotiations” were actually negotiations as he describes them. If anyone wanted evidence that these meetings were not tense standoffs but rather strategy plans between Winnie and Seymour over how to dupe the public where Luxon just nodded along, impressed at their cleverness, then look no further than our very own non-Tim Wilson Tim Wilson: our ideological Gay Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Stephen Rainbow.

Stephen Rainbow, transphobic and pro-genocide

Like Tim Wilson in Australia, Stephen Rainbow was elected to (or rather, selected for) the Human Rights Commission as an alternative to axing it. Todd Stephenson, ACTs counterpart to Paul Goldsmith, said of the Commission:

“There’s a bloated budget over at the Human Rights Commission just waiting to be reprioritised for something useful. While the Human Rights Review Tribunal actually defends against breaches of rights, the Human Rights Commission is a left-wing activist group more interested in pushing political agendas than addressing real human rights issues.

“It’s time to shut it down and use those resources to better support the human rights of New Zealanders.”

Obviously they were never going to be able to shut down the HRC. But fortunately for Stephenson, Farrar‘s far superior plan was already in motion.

Todd Stephenson, Minister for Rights

Todd Stephenson was recruited from his pharmaceutical job in Australia to run as a list MP for ACT. At fourth on the list, he is the highest ACT member outside cabinet. He had moved to his already-owned home in Queenstown for the 2023 election to run in the district of Southland, where he was originally from. Two months from the election, he told Stuff that the cost of living in Queenstown was too high.

What a relatable guy.

This guy quit his job in Australia to do this, knowing it would likely lead to him becoming an MP. He must be quite important to ACT.

Maybe that’s why the National candidate took out his electorate.

No matter. Stephenson was never expected to win his seat that way. He was hired to be a list MP.

It was a gamble on his part, but not a very risky one. When Stephenson joined the party, he was guaranteed a job based on ACTs polling, and it remained that way for the entire election.

Two wikipedia scatter graphs demonstrating that national did not win the election, labour lost the election. To Winston Peters.

Stephenson ran in the election as ACT’s spokesperson for the arts, claiming to have requested the role despite having bugger all experience with either the sector or the medium. At first glance, this seems inexplicable. By his own admittance, he “once watched a musical”. One can only fathom why he took this portfolio then.

Could it possibly be because he’s gay?

Oh yeah, he’s gay too.

Todd Stephenson with David Seymour

Why is that important? Because modern gay acceptance within libertarian conservatism allows gay men of modest means to operate as minority representation between right wing movements in the same way that the right accuse the left of using minority representation as “tokenism”. Gay men interested in using minority issues for a right wing cause are valuable to the right, because they hold apparent value to the left and center.

These converted minorities can weaponise their own identities for rightwing movements not only to confuse discourse deliberately but to function as representation to claw people from the fringes of marginal groups, to bring them back to the cause despite the general bigotry of the main group and their fundamental ethos. Representation does matter, a bit. By presenting themselves as diverse, ACT and other “socially progressive” libertarians mask their far-right leanings and are more successful at capturing marginalised groups than most because their conservative philosophy is in theory purely economic, and so their “ethical” philosophy supports stances like euthenasia and the decriminalisation of homosexual behaviour and a general support for lesbians and gay men, who nowadays still face homophobia but often are less affected by it than fellow queer minorities more persecuted, and who are therefore socially useful.

Money goes a long way to soothe the shallow divide.

As we see throughout the Atlas Network, there is financial incentive to pursue racist and transphobic agendas.

In reality, there is no “pure” libertarianism, and this is usually just a description for a series of ethical beliefs following the status quo, centred around the value of property ownership. This is the pivotal principle of neoliberalism and the modern right, in which the physical self and a person’s possessions, capital, and therefore wealth, is what is valued and protected under the law, far above what is generally considered equally important human rights by wider society.

For obvious reasons, this benefits the rich and powerful, who politicians like Luxon and Seymour and Rainbow seek to be.

I wrote already about how Stephen Rainbow was selected to push this government’s transphobic agenda; being a gay human rights commissioner, I’m sure ACT expected, was a great cover.

Not actually great enough that he got the job off his own merits, though. He had to be selected by Goldsmith every step of the way, recommended by the independent committee as a hire at no step of the recruitment process.

Rainbow is vocally transphobic and pro-Israel; he is the result of the unholy, unartsy matrimony of Paul Goldsmith and Todd Stephenson. Together, they present a front for the “Arts” arm of the NACT coalition that appears to be an interest in small creative profiles alongside bigger profiles like Justice that seem somewhat mismatched together and under these men.

That’s because they really form is cabinet’s Human Rights interest.

NACT’s anti-rights agenda

Neither of these politicians, Goldsmith or Stephenson, give a single shit about the arts. This is what Stephenson had to say about it when Newsroom interviewed him post election:

So, Todd, I know really very little about you. Southland born and raised. Worked in the pharmaceutical industry and lived in Sydney for 17 years, and now in Queenstown with a partner called Alex. Your hobbies include hiking. Why are you Act spokesman for arts?

Actually it was a portfolio I asked for. I think arts and culture is important to a society. And when we were talking about who would be different spokespeople on different topics, I said I was quite interested in doing that.

What’s your experience or knowledge of the arts?

I’m going to say, other than as a consumer, very limited. There’s some parts of the art sector I’m personally interested in, but, yeah, it’s an area I’m wanting to learn more about. And I’m slowly getting to know.

What parts are you interested in?

Personally, along with my partner, I quite like musicals, so that’s probably something we would go to when we have the opportunity.

What musicals have you attended?

I haven’t for a little while, Steve, to be honest. But I think the last one I went to was Hamilton. I saw it in New York.

I’m conducting the interview in my hat as the literary editor of the books section at Newsroom. So what about literature? What’s your experience or knowledge there?

I’m going to be pretty straight up with you, Steve. I mainly read nonfiction, to be honest. So it’s been a while since I’ve read a novel. I’m going to admit that.

What’s your nonfiction taste?

Well, the last one I actually read was about the Labor victory in Australia. I read a lot of kind of political biographies and I’m obviously interested in campaigns.

What about New Zealand books?

That’s an area I want to kind of learn a bit more about. It’s something I’m hoping to develop as part of being arts spokesman. I haven’t actually got into talking to anyone from the literature community yet, but that’s on my list of areas I want to kind of get to know a bit more as I get into this portfolio.

Are there any New Zealand authors who you’ve read?

It’s been a long time, to be honest, Steve. I’m just trying to think of the last one I would have have read. Can I come back to you on that? I’ll give that some thought as we’re talking.

No one’s coming to mind? Not a single New Zealand author?

Not immediately. Let me come back to you.

Well, this goes to why I’m a little bit mystified as to why you’ve chosen this spokesman role when your knowledge of the arts seems to be just about zero to negligible.

Well, look, Steve, that’s part of why I want to start to get around stakeholders. I’ve talked to a prominent New Zealand actor. I’ve talked to a screenwriter. I’m going to be speaking to a movie director shortly. And I’m actually getting out to a meeting with a creative centre in Queenstown later this week.

This is ACT’s fourth highest list MP.

It’s pretty embarrassing.

Stephenson calls this excuse “consulting stakeholders”. I call it bullshitting.

I wrote in September how, as Justice Minister, Goldsmith is attempting to undermine protections enshrined in the Magna Carter. He is also overseeing the restriction of gang patches, a notable limit on freedom of speech.

Goldsmith and Stephenson together do not represent Parliamentarians interested in the Arts industry, or Justice, or Tourism. But they do act as each other’s counterparts through the shared profiles and sub-profiles they hold in justice, arts and culture, tourism. Their roles represent not a logical presentation of political portfolios nor a collection of their personal interests, but the array of areas of expertise needed to manage a concerted campaign in support of freedom of speech, and other such forms of lopsided “rights” enforcements.

If the goal is to strengthen personal property rights because it enriches and protects the wealthy, this is the team you want in your corner.

If the goal was to limit anti-libertarian, anti-neoliberal protections, these are the guys you need.

However, if your goal was to grow the arts sector, build a creative career, or nurture kiwi culture, you’d be rightly starting to feel a little ripped off right now.

And if you’re invested in human rights at all, you’ll be pretty angry.

Stephen Rainbow and his co-hire Melissa Derby are poor picks by any metric. Madeleine Chapman of the Spin-Off notes Rainbow’s “history of comments and views regarding human rights issues felt at odds with the commission’s work” — that puts it mildly. His one advantage that he should bring to the table is his lived experience as a gay man and the passions and insights that might accompany that. But what does that really amount to? A line on his CV about being on the Board of Outline?

ACT do not understand the true value of minority representation and what individuals can bring to a team or a cause or a political party because of it, and Stephen Rainbow’s appointment is a demonstration of that.

Stephen Rainbow is the rich-boy sellout of the blue-green coalition, the “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” voter that doesn’t really exist at all and is just another libertarian conservative holding most of the usual right wing prejudices at a low level and who isn’t afraid to use them for their political advantage.

When people say, “Why don’t the Greens pursue the blue-green angle?” (like when Jack Tame relentlessly pursued Chloe Schwarbrick over not working with Luxon in the face of his socially hostile policy that was incompatible with the Green ethos), the answer they never seem to receive is: that party already happened. It flopped.

Stephen Rainbow was the attempt at a blue-green party.

Interesting how they pitched themselves as “more left” than the greens when actually they are much further to the right. Conservatives should stop falling for horseshoe theory to try and justify their bad economics.

After MMP was introduced in 1994, the Progressive Green Party was formed from within the Green Party as a blue-green alliance of existing MPs. They attracted 0.26% of the vote and disappeared from the political scene forever.

Or until now…. as one of these politicians is Stephen Rainbow himself.

These “Blue Green” MPs kept running after the Progressive Greens disbanded, just under different parties. Rainbow was one of a number who failed to win their seat later, attempting to re-enter Parliament under National’s banner in the next election as well as when running under the blue-green Progressive Green Party in the election following MMP’s implementation.

Rainbow is true to his name, having stood for every party including Labour and seemingly finding little success amongst any of them. But he must have made friends with someone, because it seems ACT was very keen to appoint him to the role.

See this quizzing over the issue in Parliament:

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour): Is he confident that the Human Rights Commission is politically independent; if so, why?

GOLDSMITH (Minister of Justice, National): Yes. As the member will know, section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1993 requires the Human Rights Commission to act independently in performing its statutory functions and duties.

Dr Webb: Does the Minister consider that it is consistent with the duty to ensure the independence of the commission under the 1993 United Nations Paris principles, that the appointee is the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Dr Stephen Rainbow, was recommended to him for appointment by the ACT Party?

GOLDSMITH: Yes, perfectly. Everybody in this country's free to nominate somebody and then Cabinet makes the decision about that.

Dr Webb: Does the Minister consider that he acted consistent with the duty to maintain the independence of the commission, as required by the Paris principles, when Dr Stephen Rainbow was recommended for appointment by the Minister, despite the fact that an expert interview panel found that he did not have the skills and qualifications to be a viable appointment and did not consider him appointable?

GOLDSMITH: Yes. We've been over this before. The independent panel are very senior legal people who I respect greatly. They made some recommendations, and in one case we took up that recommendation with Gail Pacheco. In terms of the chief commissioner, ultimately Cabinet made the decision that they were looking for a slightly different set of skills, and in particular a focus on communicating effectively in terms of human rights. So we went with Dr Rainbow. And I'm proud to say I've got every confidence that he'll do a better job than appointments from the previous Government.

Dr Duncan Webb: What actions did the Minister take after Dr Stephen Rainbow was informed that he wasn't a preferred candidate for the Chief Human Rights Commissioner role that led to Dr Rainbow re-entering the selection process?

GOLDSMITH: Well, I certainly didn't inform Mr Rainbow about that. And if he was informed by anybody, they were obviously premature, because no decision had been made until the decision to appoint Dr Stephen Rainbow.

Dr Webb: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question asked what actions did the Minister take subsequent to Dr Rainbow being informed he wasn't a successful candidate. The Minister didn't address that at all. He talked about who informed Dr Rainbow of that fact. It's quite an important point. I'd ask that the Minister address the question of whether or not he took any actions to restart that process.

SPEAKER: Well, it would be reasonable to assume that if he's telling the House who informed Dr Rainbow, that it wasn't him.

David Seymour: Is the Minister aware of Dr Rainbow's long history of hard left-wing activism, stretching back to the 1970s, including membership and candidacy for the Labour and Green parties; and can he assure the House that Dr Rainbow will be able to represent the views of all New Zealanders in his role as Human Rights Commissioner, and not give in to the kind of communist tenancies that some of those parties have occasionally exhibited? [Interruption]

There is at this point a long diversion onto other matters. But note the language Goldsmith is using and how quick Seymour, interestingly, is to jump to Rainbow’s defence, and by using his supposed “bipartisanship” from the 90s as a reason for his suitability despite the fact he is clearly not acceptable to any left wing party or group in 2024.

Hansard continues:

Dr Webb: Did the Minister take any action to ensure that Stephen Rainbow re-entered the selection process after he'd been told he wasn't the successful candidate?

PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, the action that I took was to continue the process and to develop a recommendation to Cabinet to appoint a person for the Chief Human Rights Commissioner.

Ultimately that is Goldsmith’s answer to the question. He continued the process by hiring Rainbow despite there being no recommendation to. However again, he tries to create confusion, wordiness, and murkiness around ideas of equal opportunity and (un)equal defence of rights by stating that his two corrupt picks and his third (actually recommended) Commissioner of five finalist candidates “made three excellent appointments to the Human Rights Commission.”

Rainbow being gay is important to this story because Seymour, Stephenson and Goldsmith hope to utilise his sexuality — implicit in his name and his overt PR media mentions of his partner, which is more visible on search engines than his entire parliamentary history — to distract from his true purpose: to do ACT’s ideological bidding.

And the most unfortunate fact of all is that Seymour and Rainbow fully expect to use trans kiwis and the issues that affect them as their “distraction” for doing this.

Well, a distraction, and a little gift to Winnie, too.

Another reason why Rainbow’s sexuality becomes relevant.

This is what is meant by “The culture war is the distraction”. It’s truly not minimising the effects or importance of in any way because despite it definitely being a distraction, the issue is still very very real for trans people, as real as the Treaty Bill is for Maori.

But it doesn’t change the fact that it has been deliberately deployed to draw the defence and thus the attention of the nation, and of which both the media and the public only have a limited amount of, allowing the more insidious limits on personal freedoms and shifts to how we consider human rights are considered to occur in the background where people are less likely to notice.

To happen via bureaucracy. Bureaucracy appointed by the executive.

Meanwhile “gaffs” like this one from Stephenson, noted by Crikey.com.au back in May 2024, which seemed to demonstrate baffling ignorance and incompetence at the time, actually become much more sinister in the context.

The Chris Luxon government in New Zealand is copping a remarkably swift backlash from voters, with polling released by TVNZ-Verian Monday showing a drop in support for his National Party as well as coalition partners ACT and NZ First. It is, according to TVNZ, the first time in modern NZ history that a government has been less popular than the combined opposition parties so early in a term.

Adding to the coalition’s woes is a wonderfully “scornful” interview with ACT arts spokesperson Todd Stephenson, conducted by Steve Braunias for Newsroom. The tone of out and out contempt is set by the headline: “ACT’s arts spokesman once watched a musical”.

The whole thing is a hoot, but we particularly like the following exchange, in which the pair discuss Stephenson’s only arts-related press release, complaining about the poet Tusiata Avia receiving a publicly funded award.

Braunias: You wrote in that press statement about Tusiata, ‘With the new government looking to make spending cuts at low value departments, Creative New Zealand is tempting fate.’ Can you expand on that?

Stephenson: From ACT’s perspective, we’re really saying, you know, are the individuals in these organisations representing what the majority of New Zealanders would want to see supported? I don’t think that they can do that.

You know, people have very individual tastes. And so it’s better that individuals make those decisions rather than, I suppose, you know, a bureaucratic agency imposing their choices on New Zealanders.

Braunias: But you don’t have individual tastes yourself, do you? You’re kind of an arts ignoramus, really, by your own reckoning.

Stephenson: No, I certainly have individual things that I like to go to. We talked about that earlier.

Braunias: You’ve been to see Hamilton.

Stephenson: Well, I was just giving you an example of the things I like to do.

Braunias: What are your tastes, other than musicals?

Stephenson: That’s the main one in the creative sector.

Braunias: Musicals.

Stephenson: And I watch movies. I watch TV.

Braunias: “I watch TV,” says the ACT spokesman for the arts.

And while that’s been happening, the Human Rights Commission has very little to say on issues like Palestine — but why would it, now, under Rainbow? A fundamental feature of blue-green voters is that they resist decolonisation for economic gain, and so they “ethically” take Israel’s side even though Israel’s side is nigh-indefensible and results in routine genocides. They have sold out their morals for their position and presumably the price tag attached to it — the politician’s salary and the privilege.

The only thing Rainbow’s appointment does for the LGBTQ+ community is prove that gays can be just as fiscally immoral and opportunistically intolerant as straight people.

Spinoff’s OIA-pulled texts between Stephen Rainbow and ACT’s Chief of Staff

David Farrar said back in 2017, in a blog addressed to his followers and fans, that maybe they can find a way to use the Human Rights Commission “for good”.

But for David Farrar’s idea of good, specifically.

That’s exactly what David Seymour has done.

---

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all! Thank you so much for reading and subscribing to this substack over the past few months, and especially to anyone who has contributed with a paying subscription to support the hours that I put into writing for this substack.

Articles like this are a weird mash-up of commentary and journalism — these pieces of information all exist, collected by actual journalists, but not all of them have been put together or broadcast well, and it’s frankly infuriating me to see this mysteries of “why and how” go unsolved and unacknowledged by the general public. But they are a lot of work and they do take a lot of time, and subscriptions help me with both. I’m hugely motivated by how fast this substack has grown and how many people have contributed individually in smaller and larger amounts — I guess it’s a bit more of a confirmation that this information and this work has some real value. But that’s also something I used to do for free much more anonymously, so I truly appreciate that people are willing to provide funds to support it.

(I was thinking as I wrote this piece on Christmas day that if I keep writing like this, your subscriptions might soon be paying for my liability insurance… Right now I’m relying on any libel being aimed at me being probably damaging any public figures who might want to sue me, plus my own tenuous ability to defend myself with my not-a-law-degree for free in court if necessary. And if anyone does prosecute me for defamation, I get to subpoena them and go through all their communications on the topic, which is far more reaching than an OIA.)

And thank you to people who subscribed/pledged/contributed in response to my post about struggling with WINZ, your help has made my financial situation over Christmas much easier and is a better Christmas gift than I could possibly have asked for.

(Except I did ask for it, I guess, so just… thank you so much.)