{"id":3845,"date":"2023-03-27T03:53:08","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T14:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2023-03-27T03:53:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-26T14:53:08","slug":"posie-parker-protest-christopher-luxon-says-right-to-free-speech-must-be-protected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=3845","title":{"rendered":"Posie Parker protest: Christopher Luxon says right to free speech must be protected"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article__body\">\n<p>National Party leader Christopher Luxon says a controversial British activist has the right to free speech in New Zealand, following the clash at Auckland&#8217;s counter protest on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Anti-transgender campaigner\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/486733\/posie-parker-departs-new-zealand-jk-rowling-blasts-protest-as-repellent\">Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; also known as Posie Parker &#8211; left her rally in central Auckland on Saturday without speaking, after being overwhelmed by thousands of counter-protesters.<\/p>\n<p>When asked for his thoughts on this today, Luxon said regardless of Parker&#8217;s views, the right to free speech needs to be protected.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As much as you may actually like or dislike her views, you actually have to defend the right for people to have free speech in a liberal democracy. The way to deal with that as I have said is have other speech and debate counter the view that you don&#8217;t like, rather than intimidating behaviour.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He said he thought some of the behaviour at the counter-protest was intimidating.<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-full photo-cntr eight_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--mtQ-JKoz--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_1050\/v1679702122\/4LBLENX_Posie_Parker_being_escorted_out_PNG\" alt=\"Screengrab from a video of Posie Parker being escorted out of her rally by her security.\" width=\"1050\" height=\"511\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">A screengrab from a video of Posie Parker being escorted out of her Auckland rally by her security on Saturday.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Jordan Dunn<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Parker shared a photo on social media showing her being escorted by police through Auckland Airport, which meant that her rally that was planned for Wellington on Sunday did not go ahead.<\/p>\n<p>But about 3000 people turned out to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/486738\/in-photos-transgender-rights-demonstrations-bring-hundreds-to-central-christchurch-and-wellington\">Civic Square in Wellington<\/a>, as well as 300 at a rally in Christchurch, to show their support for the transgender community today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article__footer\">\n<div class=\"c-tag-list\">SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n<ul class=\"c-tag-list__items\">\n<li class=\"tag-item\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/tags\/politics\" rel=\"nofollow\">p<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Party leader Christopher Luxon says a controversial British activist has the right to free speech in New Zealand, following the clash at Auckland&#8217;s counter protest on Saturday. Anti-transgender campaigner\u00a0Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull\u00a0&#8211; also known as Posie Parker &#8211; left her rally in central Auckland on Saturday without speaking, after being overwhelmed by thousands of counter-protesters. When [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3847,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions\/3847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}