Maki Sherman is suspended from Parliament for 5 days
The Maiki Sherman saga has now expanded well beyond the original “faggot” incident. The TVNZ Political Editor is alleged to have used a homophobic slur toward Lloyd Burr at a ministerial event in 2025, an incident confirmed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis, who said she heard “offensive language” and shut the event down.
The story, which had circulated privately for months, became public this week when I wrote about it on this Substack. This has triggered scrutiny not just of the incident itself, but of how it was handled and essentially covered up. The fact that TVNZ issued legal threats to another media outlet who was investigating the matter, raises massive concerns.
Sherman has now also been suspended from Parliament for five days after breaching press gallery rules in another unrelated incident and is not travelling with the press gallery to Singapore.
Meanwhile, I received some confusing legal threats from Stuff too.
Ani should feel flattered that the far left Stuffers think her blog is so widely read that they need to threaten her over what she says. Good on her for telling the Stuffers where to go. —Eds
Alfred Russel Wallace has always been in the shadow of Charles Darwin, but he should be remembered as his equal. Wallace was a naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist, who extraordinarily developed the concept of evolution by natural selection about the same time as Darwin. He collected more than 100,000 specimens in his travels in the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago!
Well-known historian Jock Phillips is our speaker this month.
“In my recent book I attempted to tell the history of New Zealand through the stories of unusual and revealing objects. In this talk I will discuss seven objects from the book which have a significant connection to the Kapiti coast or the Wellington province. They include several items which tell of the early settlement of the area, two from close-by which highlight the fascinating history of sewing, and finally two 20th century items with local links – the baton of Levin farmer and scholar Leslie Adkin and the country’s first working television set.”
Tuesday 12 May Starting at 7.30pm Kapiti Uniting Church Hall – Weka Road, Raumati Beach. Everyone is welcome a koha would be appreciated.
Jock Phillips is a freelance historian of New Zealand. He was formerly General Editor of Te Ara, the Online Encyclopaedia of New Zealand in Te Manatū Taonga/the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. He has also worked as New Zealand’s Chief Historian following 16 years teaching American and New Zealand History at Victoria University of Wellington.
He has published sixteen books on New Zealand history, of which the best known is A Man’s Country: The image of the Pakeha male – a history. His most recent books are A History of New Zealand in 100 Objects and Our Land in Colour. He was awarded a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2014.
Thanks to our April speaker Chris Turver
He gave an interesting talk on the problems and and mixed experiences he faced as a press reporter in dangerous places entitled “Life in the Danger Zones” about his time in Vietnam, Borneo and Mururoa.
Since those days he has worked in local government, for Electra, as President of the Kapiti RSA, chief executive of the RNZ Coastguard Federation; founder and life member of Club Vista; and commodore of Waikanae Boating Club.
Confirmed speakers for the next two months
9 June – Paul Callister speaking about the Ahu Ahu Ohu Commune within a wider context of thinking around that time.
14 July – Bruce Taylor talking about provincial and inter-city passenger rail travel from 1950.
Helping the Kapiti Historical Society
Lindsay Madden can’t continue with assisting at KHS Meetings. Our thanks to him for his efforts over the last two years or so especially in getting posters out into the community and purchasing the vouchers for speakers.
If anyone couldassist the KHS in the future,for example with getting posters out and purchasing vouchers, it would be much appreciated.
Most New Zealanders aren’t anti-immigration. They know this country was built by people willing to make a journey for a better tomorrow – from those who arrived in open boats 700 years ago, to those who landed at Auckland Airport this morning. That heritage is something to be proud of.
But to many of us, something doesn’t feel right. And those suspicions are correct.
Successive governments have let the system drift. A scheme meant to fill genuine skills gaps has become a wide-open tap. Rules exist on paper, but aren’t enforced. Meanwhile, infrastructure is struggling to keep pace as the pressure piles on to roads, hospitals, and schools.
The numbers tell the story.
There are 20,980 known overstayers in New Zealand. Since July 2022, New Zealand has approved visas for 2,480 fast food workers – and just 30 biomedical engineers.
That’s not a system working in New Zealand’s interests.
ACT’s six-point plan is credible, tangible, and grounded in reality. It restores the basic bargain: if you come to New Zealand, you contribute, respect our values, and help build the country.
ACT’s six-point plan for immigration:
1. Deport serious offenders ACT will ensure Resident Visa holders convicted of offences carrying sentences of 10 years or more can be deported no matter how long they’ve been here. This goes further than the Government’s current proposal to extend liability to 20 years.
2. Skilled visas for skilled jobs Accredited Employer Work Visas are meant to fill crucial skills gaps, but too often the gaps close and the categories remain wide open. ACT would have each skill category automatically expire every year. To remain open, they would need to show up-to-date evidence of demand.
3. Opportunity, not dependency Coming to New Zealand should be a path to opportunity – not a path to welfare. ACT will introduce a five-year welfare stand-down for all residence class visa holders. That means no jobseeker support, accommodation supplement, or income-tested benefits for a migrant’s first five years here.
4. A fair contribution for infrastructure ACT will introduce a $6 per day infrastructure surcharge on temporary work visas, on top of existing charges. This ensures migrants contribute to New Zealand’s infrastructure from day one, before they start paying tax. The fee is expected to raise around $80 million a year, while remaining more affordable than comparable visas in Australia and the United Kingdom.
5. Stronger English language requirements ACT will extend stronger English language requirements to all Accredited Employer Work Visa types, with higher standards for student and resident visa holders. Lower standards will be permitted for seasonal workers.
6. Enforce the rules ACT will establish a dedicated overstayer enforcement unit within Immigration New Zealand. Platform employers such as Uber and DoorDash will be required to verify and report work rights. Employers who facilitate overstaying will lose their accreditation.
People are rightly cynical about politicians promising to slash migration. In 2017, Labour promised to cut net migration by 30,000. NZ First promised to cut it to 10,000. Two years into their Government, net migration had risen to 80,000. Without covid closing the borders, they would have held the record.
Immigration must work for every New Zealander who played by the rules, paid their taxes, and helped build this country. Only ACT’s plan delivers this.
Although not as many as there used to be as ever more bush gets felled for conversion to housing.
NZ Birds online: “Eastern rosellas are native to south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania. They were introduced to New Zealand in the early 1900s, beginning with Dunedin in 1910, then Auckland (around 1920) and Wellington in the 1960s.”
In New Zealand, the official winter months are June, July and August.
As a Southern Hemisphere country, these months officially bring the coldest temperatures, shortest days, and snow to the mountains, with July usually being the coldest month.
That may have been so in days gone by but I think it is more likely May, June and July these days, however, one can still expect cold times and late frosts in August and even September in parts of the country.
August is in my mind the start of the spring planting time for hardy plants and tender plants in glasshouses. It is the time when we and our plants notice the increasing daylight hours.
I think we are in for a cold winter this year and reports from gardeners in various parts indicate the same with some cold nights, mild frosts, snow on the ranges.
I know I have my wood supply in and have started using it with a fire in the wood burner most evenings.
Those with wood burners remember that the wood ash from untreated wood, called potash, is great for the garden. Sprinkle it over bare soil around your plants and it helps harden up growth and protects them from the cold and wet soil.
If you don’t have a wood burner with wood ash then use Wallys Fruit and Flower Power which is 55% potash and 45% magnesium.
The magnesium helps keep the foliage green which means that the plants can gain energy from the weaker sun in winter. In practice, that means yellow leaves can still capture some light and produce some energy, but their ability to turn sunlight into sugars is reduced.
Older leaves are usually affected first, and severe deficiency can lead to further decline or leaf death if not corrected. So spread either a small amount of Wallys Fruit and Flower around each month or some Epsom Salts with your potash from the fire place.
Winter brings rain and that causes wet feet for plants including those that have problems with too much water around their roots for extended periods (ponding).
Mulches in winter kill plants as they prevent the water from evaporating as it would do otherwise.
Mulches are great in summer during dry times to conserve moisture and certainly help plants survive droughts, but can kill them in wet times. Remove all mulches away from root zones and if plants that suffer from wet feet are in places where water can pond then do this.
Just out from the root zone dig a trench about a spade depth and width so water can drain into it and evaporate quicker with sun and wind. It can be a few open holes at cardinal points, a half circle trench or a full circle one.
Also spray the foliage each month with Wallys Perfektion which helps plants to prevent and overcome wet weather diseases.
For frost protection you may like to use the new Wallys Spray on Frost Protection.
I remember years ago before frost protection products were available I used to throw a jute sack over the low fence where my passionfruit vine grew and leave it over when ever a frost was likely. It worked a treat.
The heavy fibre made bags are no longer available, unfortunately. Frost cloth can be used instead but not only is it a bit of a hassle to apply and remove each day. There is always the likelihood you miss and damage occurs.
In the past we have suggested spraying foliage with Vaporgard and for the occasional frost down to about minus 3C: it certainly works well within 3 days of application.
But if there is two or more frosts night after night, on the second or third frost damage will occur as the plant has not had enough time to recover from the first frost.
The new Spray on Frost protection works within 24 hours of application and will protect down to about minus 15, night after night for up to one month at which time a maintenance spray needs to be applied.
If you start now with a spray of 50 ml per litre of water over the foliage of your frost tender plants and then one month later at 25 ml per litre, repeated every month till all danger of frosts have past it will work a treat.
Miss a monthly maintenance spray and damage will occur as I found last winter on my banana plants.
The mode of action of spray on frost protection is very interesting:
Its a bit of new science that has discovered how freezing temperatures damage tender plants.
Pseudomonas fluorescens, a species of bacteria, has been the subject of extensive research due to its potential applications in sustainable agriculture. One of the most promising applications of P. fluorescens is its ability to control frost damage in crops.
Pseudomonas fluorescens: A Natural Frost Protector
Pseudomonas fluorescens has been found to significantly reduce frost damage in crops.
Research conducted in Australia and worldwide has reported up to an 99% reduction in frost damage at temperatures as low as -15°C.
This significant reduction in frost damage has led to reported increases in yield ranging from 25-100% for numerous crops across many regions.
Mechanism of Action
The mechanism by which P. fluorescens achieves this remarkable feat is through a process known as ice nucleation activity (INA). Certain strains (not all) of P. fluorescens are known as INA- bacteria,
meaning they lack the genes responsible for the production of ice-nucleating proteins (INPs). These INPs are critical in frost injury as they provide a suitable nucleus for ice formation.
P. fluorescens strain, an INA-bacterium, has been found to have efficient activity at temperatures ranging from -8 to -15°C.
This means that this strain of P. fluorescens can effectively prevent frost damage in crops even at these low temperatures.
Plants in glasshouses can also be damaged by cold and frosts as frost cold cant damage foliage that are near the glass. Wet feet will harm tender plants which can survive the winter as long as the growing medium is kept a little on the dry side… That includes indoor plants as well.
So winter-ready your plants and gardens before damage or losses happen.
But before we get to the media, we need to peek under the hood. Who is Davien Gray? Because the media outlets didn’t tell you.
Who is Davien Gray?
Gray is referred to throughout the NZ Herald article using the pronoun “they.” This is not a stylistic choice. Gray is a biological female. The use of non-binary pronouns is a framing device: by presenting Gray as multiply marginalised – trans-identifying and pro-Palestinian – the Herald constructs a character whose grievance carries maximum ideological weight. The reader is primed to sympathise before a single fact is presented.
What readers were not told is that Gray is a seasoned political operative with documented involvement in multiple radical activist organisations.
Gray is a member of ‘People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA)’
Statements on PAPA website
Gray is named as a coordinator within People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA), a self-described “prison abolitionist organisation.” PAPA’s newsletter Take No Prisoners (Issue 4, December 2020) lists “Davien Gray and Madeline Henry” as Prison Newsletter Coordinators, and Gray authored an article in this issue advocating cannabis legalisation.
Gray writes in People Against Prisons Aotearoa newsletter
PAPA began in February 2015, by its own admission, as a group concerned about the treatment of transgender people in prisons, before broadening into wider prison abolitionism and anti-policing advocacy.
“We started in February 2015 as a group concerned about the treatment of transgender people in prisons. Since then, we have become a mass-based organisation that works with different communities to address the worst problems of the criminal justice system, and to build a better one.” – PAPA Take No Prisoners (Issue 4, December 2020)
Gray is also a member of ‘Peace Action Ōtautahi’
Statement on Peace Action Ōtautahi website
Gray is also a prominent member of Peace Action Ōtautahi, the Christchurch direct action group that made national headlines when 36 protesters were arrested at the National Aerospace Summit – an outcome their organisers publicly celebrated as a “major victory.” Gray is not a student who stumbled into controversy. She is an activist with years of organisational experience across prison abolition, pro-Palestinian direct action, and disruptive protest.
The institution now cast as villain in the NZ Herald narrative is the very institution that gave Gray a scholarship, featured her in its research programme, and handed her a degree.
The NZ Herald would have you believe Davien Gray is a victim of institutional power. The University of Canterbury gave her a merit scholarship, featured her in its own research hub, and handed her a degree. Some oppression.
It is also worth noting that at the time Gray’s LinkedIn scholarship announcement was made just a month ago, she was based in Melbourne, Australia and actively seeking work there. The question of whether this story was deliberately timed and amplified to serve an activist agenda, rather than reflect any ongoing injustice in New Zealand, is entirely legitimate.
The ideological ecosystem
Gray’s activism does not exist in isolation. It sits within an ideological ecosystem that includes the International Socialist Organisation Aotearoa (ISO), which describes itself as “dedicated to building the movement for a socialist society” and explicitly frames its work through Marxist revolutionary theory. The ISO is openly active across many of the same issue spaces – Palestinian solidarity, anti-police activism, Treaty-based organising – that PAPA and Peace Action Ōtautahi inhabit.
The ISO, PAPA, and Peace Action Ōtautahi are not separate stories. They are nodes in the same network, operating in overlapping spaces, advancing a coherent political programme – while individual media stories present each node in isolation, as though the person at the centre is simply a student with a scarf.
The language of a global strategy: Yogyakarta to NZ parliament
Here is the thread that ties Gray’s activism to a much larger international project – and that explains why accurate, sex-based language about Davien Gray is itself considered a political act worth suppressing.
The phrases “gender identity” and “gender expression” did not emerge organically from community experience. They were deliberately codified in 2006, when a group of 29 international human rights lawyers, NGO representatives, former UN officials, and academics met at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The resulting document – the Yogyakarta Principles – defined “gender identity” as “each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth.” In 2017, the principles were expanded – in a document known as YP+10 – to add “gender expression” and “sex characteristics” as further protected grounds.
I discuss this in depth in my speech at NZ First convention in 2025
The Yogyakarta Principles are not a treaty. They have never been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, or any UN treaty body. The UN has, in fact, repeatedly rejected attempts to make gender identity and sexual orientation new categories of non-discrimination at the international level.
The Principles are the product of a private meeting of NGO-aligned legal experts – and yet, through deliberate strategy, their language has been inserted into domestic legislation in New Zealand and dozens of other countries, via UN agency frameworks, national human rights commissions, and activist-driven law reform processes. This is exactly what I bring to the NZ First convention in my presentation.
The Yogyakarta Principles instruct signatory governments to “amend any legislation, including criminal law, to ensure its consistency” with their provisions. This is the architecture of top-down legal change: write the principles outside democratic processes, pressure governments through international bodies, lobby groups and NGOs (funded by the government and tax payers), and embed the language quietly into domestic law. New Zealand has followed this playbook almost to the letter.
I presented this strategy in detail at the Public Child Protection Wales conference last week. Full coverage of that presentation is coming soon to my Substack – subscribe to one notified of when this drops.
The law they want – and the law that actually exists
This is why the language used in the NZ Herald story – and the framing of Gray as a non-binary person rather than a biological female – matters beyond politeness. It is part of a legal and political strategy.
The Human Rights Act 1993 (HRA) lists thirteen prohibited grounds of discrimination. “Gender identity” is not one of them. The Act prohibits discrimination on the ground of “sex” – a word that in its plain meaning and legislative history refers to biological sex.
However, the Human Rights Commission (HRC) has for years administratively interpreted “sex” to include gender identity – not because Parliament legislated it, but because a Crown Law Office opinion stretched the meaning of an existing word. The Commission’s own Prism Report concedes the tension, acknowledging that the HRA “does not provide explicit legal protection from discrimination with regards to gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics.”
The HRC’s interpretation is contestable and reversible. It has not been tested in the senior courts. And as Wikipedia’s own entry on the HRA notes, “the decision to interpret the prohibition of discrimination on the ground of sex to cover discrimination based on gender identity is easily reversed.”
This is precisely why activists are pushing hard for gender identity to be explicitly legislated as a protected ground – because the current protection is built on bureaucratic sand, not democratic bedrock. If that change were made, stating the fact that Davien Gray is a woman could be framed as discriminatory misgendering. Stories like this one could be silenced not by argument and online threats alone, but by legal threat.
In the United Kingdom, before the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in April 2025 confirming that “sex” in the Equality Act means biological sex, gender-critical commentators routinely faced employment tribunals and civil complaints simply for stating that sex is immutable. New Zealand activists are determined to cement equivalent protections here before the same judicial correction arrives.
The law, as it stands today, does not stop me from reporting this story. Every New Zealander should understand that – before it does.
What must be repealed and reformed
Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022 is the first New Zealand statute to explicitly enshrine “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected concepts in domestic law. It defines conversion practice as anything “directed towards a person because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.” Framed as protecting people from harmful therapy, it was simultaneously the moment Yogyakarta-derived language gained its first statutory foothold in New Zealand law.
By treating gender identity as something that must not be questioned, challenged, or “suppressed,” this Act restricts professional, pastoral, and even parental guidance. It must be repealed.
Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Act 2021, which came into full force in June 2023, replaced the Family Court process for changing recorded sex with a simple statutory declaration – no medical evidence required, no court oversight, no doctor’s sign-off.
A 16 or 17-year-old can do the same with a letter from a “suitable third party” who need not be a health professional.
The Act also introduced “non-binary” as a registrable sex marker.
This law must be amended to restore the requirement that sex on a birth certificate reflects biological reality, and to remove the self-identification mechanism that allows legal sex to be changed by declaration alone.
NZ First’s Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill rightly defines “woman” as “an adult human biological female” and “man” as “an adult human biological male.” This is a necessary starting point. However, the bill contains a critical drafting vulnerability: it uses the phrase “regardless of gender identity” without explicitly overriding existing statutory clauses – including those in the Conversion Practices Act – that enshrine gender identity as a protected concept. Unless explicit supremacy language is added, activist courts could interpret the bill narrowly and render it toothless. Parliament must strengthen it or send it back for redrafting.
Taken together, these three changes would:
Remove “gender identity” from its only current statutory foothold in New Zealand law.
Anchor the legal definition of woman and man in biology throughout the statute book.
End the legal fiction that a person can change their sex by signing a form.
Media as the apparatus of social engineering
New Zealand’s mainstream media is not a passive observer of this cultural and legal transformation. It is an active participant.
‘Stuff’ was rated the most left-leaning mainstream media outlet in New Zealand in a Curia Market Research poll. A separate study found that 65% of New Zealand journalists identify as left-wing, with only 12% identifying as right-wing. The newsrooms producing these stories are not reflections of New Zealand’s population — they are ideologically captured institutions producing content for each other and for activist networks.
The result is measurable. Trust in New Zealand media collapsed from 53% in 2020 to just 32% in 2024, with nearly three-quarters of New Zealanders now actively avoiding the news – a figure worse than the global average. When surveyed about why, New Zealanders consistently cite bias and imbalance, not misinformation. The public can see exactly what is happening. The sermon has gotten louder; the congregation has left.
This story is a case study in how that apparatus works. Strip a radical activist of context. Apply flattering pronouns. Frame an institution as the aggressor. Publish nationally.
The NZ Herald and The Press have not covered a news story — they have laundered activist grievance through the respectable veneer of mainstream journalism.
A distraction by design
New Zealand is facing a cost-of-living crisis, a housing shortage, a health system under strain, and deep anxiety about the direction of the country. The keffiyeh story addresses none of this. It is a politically weaponised distraction – designed to generate heat without light, to push people into opposing camps over a symbol, while the issues that unite ordinary New Zealanders go unexamined and unreported.
The activists profiled here – Gray, PAPA, Peace Action Ōtautahi, and the networks around them – understand exactly what is at stake. They are working towards a legal architecture that would eventually silence the kind of reporting you are reading right now.
The Yogyakarta Principles gave them the language.
The UN gave the language legitimacy.
The Human Rights Commission inserted it into policy.
The Conversion Practices Act put it in statute.
And now, the New Zealand Herald is doing its part: normalising the framing, manufacturing the sympathy, and building the political case – one graduation ceremony at a time.
The question is not whether Davien Gray was treated fairly at a graduation. The question is: who decided this was the story New Zealand needed to read — and why?
This article relates to my earlier piece on media framing: The Missing Man, The Police, and Media. Full coverage of my presentation at the Public Child Protection Wales conference coming soon to pennymarie.nz.
Penny Marie is a New Zealand-based advocate for sex-based rights and strong families. She formed Let Kids Be Kids in 2023.
How long before Labour/Greens in NZ adopt this nutty notion?
He would not dare — or would he?
Homeowners in Australia are being put on notice to downsize their homes as part of a major push to tackle the nation’s housing crisis & address “intergenerational inequity.”
Albanese now wants to tax people based on how many spare bedrooms in the family residence!
This comes as 96,110 migrants arrived & settled in February 2026, marking the third highest February on record.
This surge brought in approximately 3,432 people per day.
Now, Albanese, wants the house people worked hard their entire lives to pay off, the home where memories have been made, to be given up because this Govt cannot resist overloading the country with recently arrived immigrant families – for votes.
They are not required to pay stamp duty & receive a 5% sweetener towards purchasing their homes.
Is this the PM Australians need at this time; or ever?
