Discrimination is Our Right!
The controversy over Qantas' ban on banning men from sitting next to unaccompanied children on flights has highlighted some very important human rights issues.
Firstly, as a private organisation Qantas has every right to enforce whatever seating arrangements it wishes.
Secondly, as private citizens we have every right to complain about this policy. We can voice disapproval, we can boycott the airline or we can do what ACT man, my friend Kevin Gill did and climb a tree and refuse to come down until the policy is changed.
Thirdly, as a public servant, Human Rights Commissioner, Joris De Bres, has no right to take any action or make any statement against Qantas whatsoever. This is private business, between private citizens and a New Zealand public servant has no right to be involved.
Fourthly, as Air NZ is largely owned by the NZ government, there is an arguement that De Bres has a right to get involved.
The point is that in a free society, there should be no anti discrimination laws effecting private citizens. Only the state should be limited from discriminating on certain grounds, notably race. In NZ we have the reverse in play. Private citizens are banned from discriminating on a whole raft of criteria while the state can discriminate on all sorts of grounds.
The Human Rights Commission should be restricted to monitoring state discrimination or, even better, should be abolished entirely. Private citizens should be free to discriminate according to their own conscience. After all we should remember that true discrimination (judging people according to rational standards)is a great virtue. Discrimination is essential to maintain a free society, but it should be a right reserved for private citizens, not the state.
Firstly, as a private organisation Qantas has every right to enforce whatever seating arrangements it wishes.
Secondly, as private citizens we have every right to complain about this policy. We can voice disapproval, we can boycott the airline or we can do what ACT man, my friend Kevin Gill did and climb a tree and refuse to come down until the policy is changed.
Thirdly, as a public servant, Human Rights Commissioner, Joris De Bres, has no right to take any action or make any statement against Qantas whatsoever. This is private business, between private citizens and a New Zealand public servant has no right to be involved.
Fourthly, as Air NZ is largely owned by the NZ government, there is an arguement that De Bres has a right to get involved.
The point is that in a free society, there should be no anti discrimination laws effecting private citizens. Only the state should be limited from discriminating on certain grounds, notably race. In NZ we have the reverse in play. Private citizens are banned from discriminating on a whole raft of criteria while the state can discriminate on all sorts of grounds.
The Human Rights Commission should be restricted to monitoring state discrimination or, even better, should be abolished entirely. Private citizens should be free to discriminate according to their own conscience. After all we should remember that true discrimination (judging people according to rational standards)is a great virtue. Discrimination is essential to maintain a free society, but it should be a right reserved for private citizens, not the state.
posted by Trevor Loudon at
12/01/2005 10:13:00 AM
5 Comments:
Good points Trevor.
While I do agree that private companies such as airlines must be free to operate as they please, I do believe discrimination is wrong. Unfortunately these two beliefs contradict each other sometimes.
In any case, the situation could have been handled a lot better (they shouldn't have seated the child next to him at check-in in the first place), and I certainly don't think there is now any need for the HRC to get involved. Qantas and Air NZ have suffered enough from the media exposure. If people don't like the policy they can choose not to use their services.
Stan you dipstick, What parent of a black kid is going to voluntarily send their child to such a school and pay the fees? They can't practice such hateful policies with no-one to practice them on.
The only way a black kid would end up in a school like that is if it was a state school and their parents had no option. So you did get the last bit right.
I'm so right and radical I didn't even realise Stan was being rhetorical!
Andrew, I think maybe its maybe prejudice you hate more than "discriminatio" Check out my next post.
Stan, rational as ever, I see
Possibly.
The term "discrimination" has been somewhat hijacked.
It's like last year at uni I did a study into stereotypes. Up until then I had always thought of them as wrong (due to the stigma surrounding the word). After looking into it I realised that sterotypes to a certain extent keep us safe.
It's like, if you're in New York at 1am and on one side of the road is a large group of young men, who appear to be drunk while on the other side there is an elderly couple walking home after a late night playing cards; which side do you walk on??
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