THE GOVERNMENT BACKS DOWN AGAIN
Hopefully you recently saw Erica Stanford announce that the last-minute changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill have now been scrapped.
Those changes would have imposed major new regulatory barriers on homeschooling and expanded state power further into Kiwi homes.
Like a few of National’s other recent pipe dreams, these proposals were being pushed forward without meaningful public consultation, without proper consideration for the families affected, and with sweeping discretionary powers handed to bureaucrats.
At PILLAR, we were proud to stand alongside the Kiwi parents who never asked for the government to embed itself deeper into their homes under the guise of “oversight”.
This is now the second major policy retreat by the coalition in as many weeks. The first was Catherine Wedd’s social media ban for under-16s. But let’s not pop the champagne just yet…
The right thing for the government to do now is make it three from three and abandon plans for broader internet regulation too. Will that happen? Well that depends on what we do with what we’ve learnt from these last two victories.
Sometimes, when you lose a battle, you regroup, re-strategise, and come back stronger. Unfortunately, I suspect that’s exactly what’s happening here. So while this is a win worth celebrating, it’s also a reminder that the pressure must continue.
The social media ban itself was a shallow and flimsy piece of legislation that relied heavily on emotional narratives around “online child safety”. But thanks in large part to the work of PILLAR, more and more people began to realise what it really was: poorly written, weak in substance, and unlikely to work in practice. That’s why it stalled.
The homeschooling changes took a different route. Realising they couldn’t sell the public on bad legislation, they tried to sneak it through instead. No proper consultation with stakeholders. No serious engagement with MPs, coalition partners, or the education sector. Just last-minute changes quietly inserted in the hope nobody would notice.
But people did notice. And again, thanks to the work of PILLAR and freedom-loving Kiwis across the country, those changes were swiftly and publicly removed.
Why does this matter?
Because now they know two things…
First, they’ve learnt they can’t market or manipulate us into accepting bad legislation.
Second, they’ve discovered they can’t quietly slip it past us either.
But more importantly, we’ve learnt something too:
When ordinary people say no to state overreach, bad legislation, and creeping authoritarianism, we can stop it.
We hold the power. Not 123 MPs. Not tens of thousands of bureaucrats. Us.
That means now is not the time to slow down. We need to continue pushing back against broad state control of the internet and against any attempt to further erode the freedoms of New Zealanders. Because every time people stand up and say “enough”, we move closer to a New Zealand that cherishes freedom, prioritises liberty, and recognises the inherent dignity and value of every person.
Thank you for standing with us. Let’s regroup, refocus, and go again.
