Sall Grover gets cancelled in New Zealand, as entirely expected.

Right on cue, the first imposed cancellation of a venue booked for the Sall Grover speaking tour in New Zealand was received yesterday. Absolutely no surprises there. However, being no newbies to the phenomenon of cancellation, the co-coordinators of this tour, the Women’s Rights Party, has their backup plan underway, and ticket holders will be advised of the new venue.

What is somewhat of a surprise is that the venue which has issued the notice of cancellation, in New Plymouth, is managed by the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB). For those who don’t know, or aren’t sure, the CAB is a largely taxpayer-funded community service which offers free legal advice in conjunction with local lawyers for anyone who needs it, as well as information on rights and how to access services. So, you’d think they’d know something about not cancelling a booking for a taxpayer-funded venue just upon getting a little squeamish about who was hiring it, wouldn’t you?

However, according to the New Plymouth CAB, they received “many complaints from the public” about the Sall Grover event. Really?  I’d like to see these “many complaints”. Experience has shown us that some venues will cancel a booking from the ‘wrong’ people just upon a small handful of complaints, and then disseminate the same old worn-out reasons for doing so. Those venues are usually populated by more woke staff than not. Is the CAB amongst that type of organisation now? Instead of being non-partisan and impartial in order to do the best job they can, they let their personal feelings and beliefs dictate decisions?

Jill Ovens from the Women’s Rights Party has contacted the Free Speech Union for advice, and I expect more will emerge about that in due course. In the meantime, a number of supporters of Sall Grover and the Women’s Rights Party have counter-complained to the New Plymouth Citizens Advice Bureau. Here’s what I wrote –

“Dear Citizens Advice Bureau, New Plymouth -

I ask that you please reinstate the venue booking for the Women’s Rights Party event on Saturday 6^th July, without begrudgement or sabotage via unreasonable requests, or weaponising ‘security’ requirements.

As a taxpayer-funded organisation, especially one which offers legal advice, you should know that you are not within your remit to refuse an event based purely on your staff’s personally held beliefs. If you have any legitimately held concerns about the legality of the contents in the event which the Women’s Rights Party have booked your venue to hold, or the Women’s Rights Party itself, please point them out directly, precisely, and coherently.

If you can’t identify anything in this manner, then I can only surmise you have listened to emotionally-laden accusations and gossip about the Women’s Rights Party and the potential event attendees, and capitulated to that without establishing the truth or relevance of it.

I do not expect the Citizens Advice Bureau to be squeamish about who they hire their taxpayer-funded venue to if there is no law-breaking, nor apply your own arbitrary purity measures to organisations who request to hire it.

Thank you.”

I haven’t had any response so far.

To date, no other venues have cancelled the Sall Grover event, although Wellington is bound to, because it’s Wellington - the place where wokery lives and breeds the most in NZ.

To be honest, I’m a bit staggered that the New Plymouth CAB has done this. It’s like they have no idea that other taxpayer-funded organisations have tried it before, and have had to back down. Admittedly, the back down is usually done with bad grace accompanied by sullen staff, but strangely enough, there are no recorded cases of men who say they’re women, or vice versa, perishing as a result of terfs being on the premises.

More info on the Sall Grover speaking tour is here.