In a move seldom now seen, Stuff NZ produces TWO balanced articles - and reports on a rogue in Otago.

In a move that may tilt the world on its axis, one of New Zealand’s mainstream media outlets, Stuff, has published the second of two not-too-badly balanced articles on matters around trans/gender ideology. To my knowledge, Stuff and the word ‘balanced’ have not been said in the same sentence before when reporting on these matters.

The first surprise was a report on the court case of the man in a pink dress who doused Kellie-Jay Keen with tomato juice at the Let Women Speak rally in Auckland in March 2023. Unlike the NZ Herald’s piece, the Stuff reporter managed a whole piece without referring to Kellie-Jay, or any rally attendees, as ‘anti-trans’. In the event this isn’t just a momentary straying from their usual parameters, then perhaps Stuff have finally read the room. Should we be so optimistic as to think they have finally realised that whining on about ‘anti-trans’ is really naff now, and have stolen a march from the NZ Herald on this? Considering the general demographic of university-indoctrinated Stuff reporters, it’s probably too early to be optimistic, so right now we just watch and wait.

The next surprise was an article on how the Mental Health Minister, Matt Doocey, has been sitting on the new advice about puberty blockers from the Ministry of Health for some time. This piece from Stuff about that was also written in a not-too-badly balanced way. Basically, while we were thinking that the Ministry of Health was behaving poorly by continuously delaying publication of that new advice, it turns out it’s Matt Doocey who’s holding it up.

NZ’s Ministry of Health has previously been all about loving puberty blockers, likely due to TQ+ lobby groups’ advice that they’re pretty much just like a lolly, with the added benefit of halting that pesky puberty for a while. Grudgingly, it seemed, the Ministry of Health finally admitted that they could no longer ignore the different advice about puberty blockers that was flying in the face of what TQ+ lobby groups were saying, and promised a new evaluation and report about them. It was almost ready to be released, and then along came the Cass Review, which buggered that up for a wee while, because it basically didn’t have much good to say about puberty blockers. The release was put off until that could be read and evaluated, so we waited and waited, and waited some more. And then it transpires that the Mental health Minister, Matt Doocey, has had the Ministry of Health’s new report since April this year, and has been “actively considering” it for all that time. The Stuff article above lays it out (surprisingly) well. Meanwhile, kids are still being prescribed puberty blockers here in NZ at ten times the rate the UK was doing before they halted it.

The mainstream media may still be allergic to saying what a woman is, though. Three years ago, in the campaign against the sex self-ID bill, this advertisement was scheduled to be run in the mainstream newspapers.

The Otago Daily Times was the first newspaper to run it, and the wokerati had a massive meltdown. All the other newspapers promptly decided not to run it after all, and the Otago Daily Times apologised to everyone the advertisement may have offended.

Family First recently also tried to run an advertisement with the word ‘woman’ in it to promote their petition for “ ‘woman’ to be defined as ‘an adult human female’ in all our laws, public policies and regulations”. It was rejected by all the mainstream media, because in their world it’s still beyond the pale for the word ‘woman’ to exclude males.

All things considered, it’s not certain yet whether the two above-mentioned not-too-badly balanced articles are the lone birds which signal the arrival of the flock, or a rogue aberration in the usual trans/gender-ordered public information machine, and if so, normal transmission will resume soon.

Speaking of rogues and Otago, which for non-Kiwis is in the lower half of the South Island, I was rather tickled by a news article about a small village from down that way of 28 residents, called Waipori Falls. The only relation the article has with trans/gender ideology, is that I’m fairly sure it’s something the lucky residents have no idea about. But, once again, the article’s from Stuff – which makes me concerned that I may be in danger of changing my mind about them being a complete waste of space if they keep this up. However, it’s early days yet, and I may still be saved from my folly.

So, the story is that a rogue local has taken it upon themself (probably a bloke - yeah, sue me) to block the small number of would-be visitors from entering the village. This person has been stopping vehicles on the Waipori Falls Road, on the narrow gorge section, and instructing them that they are no longer allowed in the Waipori Falls village. He’s a bit of bad boy, all right - but I ask myself if he’s really any worse than the media who stop information getting through to the ‘village’, simply because they’ve decided to protect their (ideological) patch due to what’s going on inside their own heads?

• Waipori Falls village, Otago.