by Judy Gill

INTRODUCTION

They told us that blasphemy laws were gone. But here in NZ Paradise, 2025, they have returned under a new name.

Yesterday’s blasphemy is today’s racism. Yesterday’s heresy is today’s harassment.

The rituals of a faux-indigenous eco-religion — Te Ao spirituality — are imposed in classrooms and enforced with official letters and social-media shaming.

THE NEW PRIESTS: TEACHERS AS CONVERTS

The new converts are the teachers themselves. Many educators have embraced Te Ao spirituality as if it were a faith — replacing the New Age crystals, Buddha statues, yoga sessions, and meditation circles that once filled the same gap.

This eco-religion fills a “god-hole” and offers a sense of purpose and meaning. Good for them. 

But we, the parents, do not want this religion imposed on our children. We, the parents, want to be consulted. We want to know the content of the curriculum.

For six months, we itemised our questions carefully: about atua, tapu, mana, pōwhiri, haka, tūpuna (ancestors), and more.

The Te Huruhi Schoo Principal replied a number of times — but never once answered those questions.

At last, this was her answer:

“At Te Huruhi School, mainstream classes do not teach, invoke, or practice spiritual or religious concepts. Te reo Māori is taught for approximately three hours per week and may include kapa haka, pōwhiri practice, and instruction in Māori language and culture. These lessons are part of our standard cultural curriculum and are not religious in nature.”

Read it carefully. Six months of silence, and this is all they produced. A circular, evasive answer.

Like the Hippy Chippy infamous “What is a woman?” response — it dodges the question, it refuses to address the content, it says nothing at all.

The Principal’s statement proves it: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES.

Where is the consultation? Where is the compliance with the law?

THE HYENAS

I have set out the situation in detail and expressed my point of view — exercising my right to freedom of speech under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, as everyone does on social media.

My writings are public under the hashtag #MakeNZEducationSecularAgain, where readers will find full analysis and hundreds of articles.

But on this subject, the rules change. You must not question it. You must not write about it. The issue is treated as sacred.

Then the hyenas appear. This is cancel culture. It thrives on name-calling, insults, and digging up dirt.

It appeals to the self-described “progressives,” whose only real achievement is regression.

The pack has its stock word: “RACIST!” That is the cry on social media — applied to anyone who dissents.

And the educators have theirs: “HARASSMENT” (code-word for HERESY).

To question the rituals is to be labelled a harasser.

In the Middle Ages, heretics were burned at the stake, banned from the church, exiled from their communities. Today the same instinct is dressed in modern language.

Accusations of racism and harassment do the same work: they mark out the heretic for punishment.

Question karakia? “Racist1”

Object to atua? “Racist!”

Ask about class hours? “Harassment” (code-word for heresy).

Any dissent? “Harassment” (code-word for heresy).

A social-media pack descends, accusation in place of argument.

And in the schools, the same tactic is formalised — harassment as the charge for heresy.

THE FREELANCE ENFORCER

Then there is the journalist — the so-called independent, freelance voice — presenting herself as highly educated, caring and kind, yet using the same blunt weapons as the mob.

As Tessa King — writer, editor, and local contributor to Waiheke Weekender and Gulf News — wrote publicly on Facebook:

> “Our beautiful community does not need this type of bullying, harassment, and thinly disguised racism. We are all doing our best to live inclusively and respectfully, and anyone who cannot accept this should question whether they belong here.”

These were her exact words, verbatim. She combined both charges: racism and harassment.

In this way she mirrored the hyenas on one side and the educators on the other.

She certainly shot from the hip — and perhaps she never expected her post would be preserved and quoted back exactly as she wrote it.

And her message was unmistakable: dissenters should leave. Just as in medieval times heretics were banished from the community, here I am told to question whether I even belong on the island.

“Inclusion” becomes exclusion of dissenting parents.

I have lived here for 18 years. My preschooler is about to start school; my mokopuna have been in early childhood education here for the past seven years.

I object to children being compelled to yabba to spirits or the dead under the guise of “culture.”

WHOSE ANCESTORS?

Children are told to address tūpuna (ancestors). But whose ancestors?

White children yabba-ing to someone else’s forebears?

Māori children to Taiwanese ancestors?

Te Rauparaha, Governor Grey, Bishop Selwyn?

Or great-granddad with a candle under his photo?

No explanation is given. The ritual is enforced while meaning is absent.

But we do know who they pray to. Children effectively pray before carved figures — pōu, whakairo, tekoteko, kōwhaiwhai — idols in wood. This is not progressive – quite bluntly it is re-gressive.

This is religion, not just “culture.”

SCIENCE AND ORIGINS

When children are told to invoke ancestors stretching back into myth, what of the science?

Homo sapiens arose in Africa. Genetic evidence traces all living humans back to a common female ancestor — “mitochondrial Eve” — about 150,000 years ago.

The story of humanity is migration, adaptation, and mixture.

Some say science is an ideology. I understand that some of it is propaganda, some of it is manipulated — but I still prefer that story to the fantasy that we must now yabba to a whole lot of “ancestors” that somehow magically and mystically arose from the very soil of Aotearoa fantasy land — ancestors with no names, because they can be whoever a politician, a tohunga, or a theologian wants to invoke from one day to the next.

They are nameless, but the children must yabba to them anyway.

And in the process, we are told to forget the real migrations — from Taiwan to Indonesia and the Philippines, down through East Polynesia, Tahiti, and Rarotonga, finally reaching New Zealand.

Forget the science, forget the anthropology, forget the Kaimanawa wall, forget the evidence.

Instead, we are handed mysticism and told to pray as though these were somehow God’s chosen people, that sprung magically from mother earth.

The idea of God’s chosen people has been repeated across societies through history — each one claiming special divine status for themselves.

And I am done with it. Done with God’s chosen people, done with the myth, done with the fantasy.

Should children be yabba-ing to Vikings, to Celts, to Polynesian navigators, or to Neanderthals?

Which line of ancestry counts, and who decides?

When schools impose spiritual rituals, they replace evidence with ideology.

THE NEW CONVERTS: CRITICAL THEORY

The ideas driving this are not ancient, not iwi-derived. They come from something called Critical Theory, a framework imported from overseas universities.

Critical Theory says that society must always be analysed in terms of power — who is dominant and who is oppressed.

From this framework come the training programs our teachers are put through:

CRT: Critical Race Theory — teaching that race is the central factor in all relationships and institutions.

DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — a set of policies and workshops dividing people into categories of “privileged” and “oppressed,” with prescribed outcomes based on identity rather than individuality.

For the last decade or more, New Zealand’s teachers have been trained in universities where DEI and CRT are standard.

This is why our schools now sit at the bottom of the OECD in education.

Teachers are not being prepared to teach children knowledge, reasoning, and literacy. They are being trained to indoctrinate — and to pass on the same ideological frameworks to students.

Like converts in any era, zeal becomes punitive.

Educators take on these ideas with the fervour of a new religion.

And here on Waiheke, that zeal is turned against parents who resist the rituals of a faux-indigenous eco-faith.

ORWELL WAS RIGHT

George Orwell was an English writer who, in 1949, published a novel called 1984.

It imagined a future where a controlling state dictated every aspect of life. People were told what to think, what to say, even what words they were allowed to use.

Independent thought was punished as “thought crime.”

Most people today have never read Orwell; many have never heard of him.

Their education is limited to social-media feeds, soundbites, slogans, and memes.

This is not their fault. New Zealand schools now sit at the bottom of OECD countries in education.

The very system that should have taught them literature, history, and independent thinking has failed them.

Doublespeak rules:

  • Religion → “Culture”
  • Indoctrination → “Inclusion”
  • Censorship → “Respect”
  • Truth → “Harmful Communication”

Point this out and you are accused of “harm” simply for noticing reality.

Orwell wrote the book 1984 as a warning. We are now living inside the very warning.

FORGOTTEN RIGHTS

The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects freedom of expression and belief.

The Education and Training Act (sections 58–59) protects students’ freedom around religion.

Those protections must apply in practice.

Secularism exists to keep state schools neutral.

CONCLUSION

This is not abstract. It involves a kindergarten teacher, a Principal, a Board Chair, and a freelance journalist.

Together they enforce new blasphemy codes: letters written, threats implied, parents silenced.

Secularism was meant to shield children from imposed religion.

It must do so again.

BOARD CHAIRPERSON & TRUSTEES (FOR THE RECORD)

At the official level, this culture is enforced by the Board.

The Chair of the Te Huruhi Primary School Board of Trustees is also a teacher at the neighbouring school.

Every letter to the Principal was addressed to the Chair as well.

There were multiple replies over six months — but never an answer to the specific questions.

The first and only substantive response arrived on 11 August, accusing me of harassing the Principal.

Six months to answer a few simple questions:

How many hours of te reo are there?

Do you teach about atua, tapu, mana, tūpuna (ancestors), wairua?

Is there a parental consent process for opt-ins?

No answer. No answer. No answer.

Who is making a mountain out of a molehill?

They are — by refusing to answer three basic questions.

The letter itself was bureaucratic, but the message was clear: dissenting parents will be threatened into silence.

Quite frankly, the Chair should resign. She should be removed from the role.

THE LAW AS A WEAPON (FOR THE RECORD)

These threats lean on statutes originally intended for different purposes:

The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 (HDCA) was meant to address cyberbullying, doxxing, intimate-image abuse, and serious online harms.

The Harassment Act 1997 was aimed at stalking and intimidation, requiring at least two specified acts within twelve months.

On Waiheke, these have been repurposed as blasphemy codes to police dissent about Te Ao spirituality.

HASHTAGS

#MakeNZEducationSecularAgain

#MakeNewZealandSecular

#SecularEducation

#SecularStateSchools

REFERENCES

Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 — purpose and communication principles (esp. Principles 5 & 8).

NZ Police: Harmful Digital Communications — overview and typical harms addressed.

Netsafe: About the HDCA (plain-language guide).

Harassment Act 1997 — s 3 meaning of harassment (requires at least two occasions in 12 months).

Community Law Manual: What counts as “harassment” (plain-language).

HDCA s 19(6): Court must act consistently with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.

New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 — Sections 13–15 (freedom of thought, conscience, religion, belief, and expression).

Education and Training Act 2020 — Sections 58–59 (religious instruction and observances in state primary schools).