International trans conference to be hosted in New Zealand, with support from Tourism NZ.

Kiwis, hold onto your kids.

Auckland New Zealand has been chosen to host the 2028 international symposium for WPATH - the World Professional Assn for Transgender Health – in November of that year.

With the support of Tourism NZ, which incorporates the 100% Pure New Zealand brand, PATHA – the Professional Assn for Transgender Health Aotearoa (New Zealand) - pitched Auckland to WPATH as being just the bee’s knees for a convergence of transpeople, trans devotees, and sellers of snake oil – er, I mean trans ‘professionals’.

Lucky Auckland.

PATHA’s pitch included a 2.08 minute video showcasing Auckland, on which Tourism NZ and the Auckland Convention Bureau have their names. In the case of Tourism NZ, that usually means it stumped up some money to make the video.

If these enterprises have been persuaded there are dollars to be made from hosting WPATH in NZ, then that’s just business for them. Fair enough. Of course, the staff in both organisations might be as woke as all heck, too, which wouldn’t go amiss in helping to grease the wheels when PATHA approached them.

Hopefully, Tourism NZ’s sense of business pragmatism will come into play if a gender critical group also asks them for some assistance to make a pitch for an international conference here, and won’t suddenly find all their available funding for that sort of thing has been used up. Or, if the group asks the Auckland Convention Bureau for help with a venue for an international conference, they don’t find that it ‘goes against their values’. What are the chances?

A curious thing about the video PATHA pitched, is that it seems to disproportionally feature Māori. Māori make up around 12.5% of Auckland’s population, but their presence in the video is clearly larger than that. Pacific ethnicities make up around 17% of Auckland’s population, but they got about seven seconds of focussed airtime. Wondering if I was seeing this disproportionate representation correctly, I asked my friends at Mana Wāhine Kōrero (Sovereign Women Speak) what they thought. Their response was that overly-featuring Māori in comparison to their actual population size, was typical Tourism NZ promotional material. In other words, Māori are a tourist attraction. In this video, the message conveyed is that Māori are especially accommodating and welcoming to transpeople.

A word about PATHA itself. NZ’s Ministry of Health previously endorsed the guidelines which PATHA created about trans healthcare, but never published them in their entirety for public consumption. In the 2024 Cass Review, those guidelines were judged to be the second worst of all the trans healthcare guidelines reviewed.

Since then, PATHA has updated them with the expectation that Health NZ, the Crown agent responsible for managing and delivering the public health system across New Zealand, would publish these in March 2025. However, that was delayed, and eventually a request was made for PATHA to make changes to align with the new, more restrictive regulations that came into being, specifically removing information about puberty blockers. PATHA refused, and in late 2025 went ahead and published them anyway on their own website with the Health NZ logo displayed, even though the guidelines are not approved by the Ministry of Health or Health NZ. This may well deceive readers into believing the guidelines do have official approval.

Resist Gender Education has written a damning analysis of PATHA’s new guidelines, in which they conclude “The release of such flawed “Gender Affirming Guidelines” should be the impetus for PATHA to lose all future government support. It has shown itself to be an activist group, not a credible medical organisation seeking best practice, nor a team player.

As an activist group, it is entitled to advocate for its position but by implying it retains Ministry of Health support for its Guidelines, PATHA has broken trust with the government and with the public.

We hope this presumptuous action by PATHA will be a nail in its credibility coffin.

Neither PATHA nor WPATH can be described as scrupulous organisations. An article in The Guardian as far back as in March 2024 highlights WPATH’s not insignificant failings, and says “Despite its grand title, WPATH is neither solely a professional body – a significant proportion of its membership are activists – nor does it represent the “world” view on how to care for this group of people. There is no global agreement on best practice.” With ever-increasing information coming to light about the Wild West nature of what is called ‘trans healthcare’, and the damage it and its proponents have done, particularly to young people, any collaboration with WPATH and PATHA should be carefully considered. With court cases against the negative impacts of trans ideology now being won overseas, it would be wise to exercise caution over promotion in any association.

But, here we are - Tourism NZ has helped PATHA to get WPATH’s international 2028 conference hosted in Auckland. If a gender critical group also goes to Tourism NZ for promotional help, I certainly hope their business pragmatism doesn’t suddenly desert them in favour of dusting off their moral compass for the occasion.