Rainbow Wellington Chair Sam French says the group is concerned by reports of increased abuse directed at members of rainbow communities and is encouraging all political and community leaders to take a bolder stand against bigotry and intolerance.

We know that the majority of New Zealanders don’t support the toxic culture-war dynamic that various groups are promoting. However, as intolerance and hateful rhetoric has increased worldwide, we think that this is emboldening a nasty minority here in Aotearoa to believe they can be act abusively with impunity.

Rainbow Wellington calls on the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and other senior political and community leaders to condemn intolerant and abusive behaviour towards the rainbow community. We need our leaders to come out and back the rainbow community – particularly transgender and gender diverse people. Be an ally, not a bystander.

We encourage victims of offensive behaviour or language to report it to the Police, as it is an offence.

Rainbow Wellington has been speaking with Police about their tracking of hate motivated offending for several years now. Police only started recording the specific characteristic targeted in Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents from July 2022.

The Christchurch terror attack Royal Commission recommended reform of New Zealand's current hate speech laws, and better recording by Police of hate-based motivations. However, recently the Free Speech Union has pressured Police to change their threshold for hate perception, and entirely abandon recording ‘non-criminal hate incidents’ as a category.

About Rainbow Wellington

Rainbow Wellington is a rainbow social and advocacy organisation and registered charity which has been operating in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington since 1997.

rainbow means people whose sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or variations of sex characteristics differ from majority binary norms, for example, people who are takatāpui, lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, transgender, queer, non-binary, and fa’afafine

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