The man who was instrumental in whipping up violence against women in NZ, in March 2023, is given a job with a Labour MP.

Today, March 25^th, is the one-year anniversary of the worst mob violence ever seen against women in New Zealand. Today, I also heard that a Labour Member of Parliament has employed the man, Shaneel Lal, who was instrumental in whipping up that violence, as an executive assistant. Not only was he instrumental, he videoed himself on the day being jubilant about it.

Allegedly, that MP is the Hon. Jenny Salesa, the MP for Panmure-Ōtāhuhu in Auckland, and the spokesperson for Ethnic Communities, Customs. So far, I’ve only had hearsay that she’s the MP who has employed Lal, and phone calls to both her electorate and parliamentary offices to verify it were answered only by voicemail. However, she and Lal do go back a few years, when she selected him to be her youth MP at the age of 18. If it’s correct that Lal is indeed an executive assistant for Ms Salesa, it’s difficult to see how he can be an astute choice as an aide for the Spokesperson for Ethnic Communities, considering his background as a fervent anti-woman activist.  

But, Shaneel Lal has been continuously rewarded and lauded for his efforts for the ‘LGBTQIA+ community’. In reality, his efforts for the ‘LGBTQIA+ community’ boil down to making demands which mainly favour the TQ+ faction of the acronym. From what I understand, and it may have changed from the last time I read this, Lal identifies as ‘queer trans’, and uses they/them pronouns.

Any pushback against Lal’s efforts, like not wanting any man who says he’s a woman to have free and unfettered entry into all women’s and girls’ spaces and sports, he claims are “transphobia”. Shortly after his part in stirring up the violence against women in Albert Park, Auckland, on 25 March 2023, Lal got the ‘Young New Zealander of the Year’ award, whose main sponsor is Kiwibank. Now, he has a job as an executive assistant for an MP.  

It's incomprehensible how so many MPs, including women MPs, turn a blind eye to Lal’s appalling behaviour against women. Seemingly, they’re able to pretend it doesn’t exist. My own engagement with MPs and councillors, though, has demonstrated that it may not be an uncommon practice for some to ignore all those things which could interfere with the implementation of a pet project, or appointment.

Besides being employed as an executive assistant for an MP, Lal is also said to be employed by Labour as a policy researcher. That is a much bigger worry, in my opinion, even without Labour currently being in government. I would put money on it that he will be researching ways to take the word ‘sex’ out of any policy (or piece of legislation, as well, perhaps) he possibly can, and replacing it with the word ‘gender’. The word ‘gender’ may have been used narrowly once as a polite euphemism for ‘sex’, but there’s no limit to how it can be used now. It’s wide open to be interpreted any way a person chooses. Potentially, any man with a self-described gender-identity of any sort, that has no male words in it, gets a free pass into all women’s and girls’ spaces if he so desires.

It's hard for me to imagine a bigger insult to women from Labour than to employ the man who was instrumental in whipping up the worst mob violence against women ever seen in New Zealand, and which shocked much of the world. Unless they’re well-behaved fawners, Lal is no friend to women. Women who don’t fawn are also entitled to sex-based rights, and no one should be giving them away on us – so why are MPs not only doing that, but employing a man who will revel in doing it?

In the event that we need reminding, after the aborted Let Women Speak rally, Labour’s leader, Chris Hipkins, said he would have been proud to support the protest against Posie Parker (Kellie-Jay Keen). He may have found it politic to change his stance a bit since then, but when Labour then goes and employs a man like Lal, it makes me very nervous.

• Labour leader, Chris Hipkins, verifies that Shaneel Lal is employed as an executive assistant by a Labour MP (see the last three minutes of the video).