Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc.
P.O. Box 13-683 Johnsonville - www.spcs.org.nz

Media Release 12 July 2006

Charles Chauvel: His Attempts to Crush Free Speech and More

Wellington lawyer Charles Chauvel will shortly enter Parliament as a new Labourt Party List MP. He will replace soon-to-retire veteran MP Jim Sutton. The PM announced on Monday 10 July that Sutton, a list MP, will take up new appointments outside parliament on 1 August 2006 (see Scoop 10/07).

The Society is asking why the media have failed to report the serious criticisms of excessive travel-related spending made against Mr Chauvel by the National Business Review and document the extent to which he, as a gay rights activist, has sought to crush free speech and censor publications critical of the homosexual lifestyle (e.g. Living Word videos). It is also asking why the media are reporting without any critical analysis, Mr Chauvel's assertions that the facts concerning his "family life" are completely off-limits to media scrutiny. Chauvel, an "openly gay man", has a homosexual partner of 11 years, and a one-year old son, who lives with his mother and her partner.

"They will remain nameless," he told GayNZ.com."I understand that people may think that they have some right to know about my personal situation because I'm an MP, but I don't agree with that" he said. My "family life" is "private" and not up for public consumption he told the New Zealand Herald. Chauvel says he would rather be judged on his abilities and contribution to Parliament, than on his family life.

Mr Chauvel is entitled to his views. However, The National Business Review has taken great interest in his "abilities" to clock up massive taxpayer-funded travel expenses while an employee of the Lotteries Commission (see report below). The NZ public will take an interest in any "family life" values he seeks to espouse and promote and how his role as a gay activist will influence his voting record on legislation such as proposed "gay adoption" and "same sex marriage". Will he and his gay partner be used by gay rights lobby groups such as GayNZ.com and Gay Express to promote "gay marriage"? Will he be the next gay MP to appear on the gay TV programme "Kiwifruits" to promote "gay rights" for "gay" MPs with young children (following in the footsteps of lesbian MP Maryan Street)?

The Labour Party's 'hidden agenda' is to boost the number of high profile gay lobbyists, like Chauvel and former party president and "lebian-feminist icon", Ms Maryan Street, (placed at number 44 and 36 respectfully on the party list at the last election), within its parliamentary ranks. This will help it achieve its social engineering legislative programme that is so dear to the heart of the gay and feminist cabal within the party to which the PM is so closely aligned: same-sex marriage, gay adoption, anti-discrimination laws to protect transsexuals and hate-speech laws to crush all criticisms of promiscuous homosexual lifestyles.

The fact that Mr Chauvel is practising homosexual man is hugely significant to the Labour Party. They are the ones to trumpet his sexual orientation as an issue. As the NZ Herald reports, the announcement that he will be made an MP was made in auspicious surroundings celebrating the so-called triumphs of homosexual law reform:

"The change was informally signalled at a function at Premier House in Wellington yesterday celebrating the 20 year anniversary of homosexual law reform, where Mr Chauvel was introduced as Labour's new gay MP.

"The function was co-hosted by gay professional group GAP and Rainbow Labour, Labour's gay and lesbian group of which Mr Chauvel is a member."

CHARLES CHAUVEL: "GAY LABOUR CANDIDATE AND ATTORNEY-GENERAL WANNABE"

Labour's candidate at the last election for the Ohariu-Belmont electorate, Charles Chauvel, is a Wellington lawyer who has been described as an active "homosexual lobbyist" [ref. 1]. According to a gay website, GayNZ.com, he was "hoping [at the last election] for support from gay constituents who wish to help unseat the fundamentalist United Future party from Parliament." Chauvel is reported as saying that the removal of Hon. Peter Dunne, the United Future Party's leader, from the House of Representatives, "would rid Parliament of a party that has proved itself to be extremely homophobic" [ref. 2] (N.B. "homophobic" is a term of abuse used regularly by extremist and intolerant gay-rights political lobbyists).

At the previous election the Labour Party stood another prominent gay-lobbyist against Peter Dunne, the Executive Director of the NZ Family Planning Association and outspoken lesbian, Dr Gillian Greer. Dunne easily won the seat, gaining 19,355 votes, a majority of 12,534 votes over his nearest rival (Greer). (The United Future Party gained 6.69% of the party vote nation-wide).

One wonders whether Mr Chauvel has grasped the fact that Peter Dunne, who has held his electorate seat since 1984, after winning it from National MP, Hugh Templeton, voted for the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. This law that decriminalised acts of sodomy between consenting adults and was passed into law on 11 July 1986 by a narrow margin (49-44), has allowed homosexuals to sodomise one another without fear of being criminalised. Dunne, who is the only sitting MP to have served as a cabinet minister in both a Labour-led and National Government, is certainly not regarded by the vast majority of his constituency as "homophobic" or "fundamentalist".

Mr Chauvel did not need to win the electorate he stood for in 2005 to get into parliament. He was placed so high up on the Labour Party List at No 44 (making him one of the highest ranking Labour candidates who was not a current MP), that he could have got in if Labour had secured sufficient support in the party vote. He failed to do so via this route and yet Chauvel has now managed to enter Parliament through the proverbial back door. He stood unsuccessfully for the Labour Party in the Franklin electorate in 1990 against Bill Birch.

There are rumours in legal circles that the Labour Party hierarchy is grooming Mr Chauvel for the position of Attorney General to replace the Hon. David Parker, whose credibility has been shattered by recent financial and accounting scandals. The National Business Review (ref. 5. 25/2/05) in its damaging expose of Chauvel's extravagant use of taxpayer funds while Deputy chairman of the Lotteries Commission (2000-2004), describes him as the "attorney-general wannabe". It adds: "Legal sources say Mr Chauvel has designs on becoming the next attorney-general should Labour succeed in winning a third term. He is close to [former] Attorney-General Margaret Wilson."

Mr Chauvel's website [ref. 4] claims that he "has taken important [legal] cases without charge. In 2001, before a Full Court of the High Court, he successfully defended a censorship appeal to restrict the availability of anti-gay hate literature." The GayNZ website (ref. 2. 24/1/05) claims that he did this work in 2001 on "a pro-bono basis". However, one wonders what exactly Chauvel means by "without charge" when the firm he has been a partner in for the last five years and receives a salary from, Minter Ellison & Rudd Watts, received a handsome payout from the Legal Aid Services for this case. Mr Chauvel was counsel to the respondent in the case the Human Rights Action Group (Wellington) - a gay rights lobby group whose representative, Calum Bennachie, applied and secured the pay out from the Legal Aid Service's money that went to Chauvel's firm.

What Chauvel's website omits to note, is that the High Court ruling in the Living Word case that he trumpets as a success, was overturned on appeal in a unanimous decision of the Full (five member) Court of the Court of Appeal (CA 58/00 dated 31/8/200). The classification decision that had ruled the so-called "anti-gay hate literature" (the two Living Word Christian videos highly critical of gay rights political activism and gay promiscuous lifestyle) to be "objectionable" and that was upheld by the High Court; was quashed on appeal by the Court of Appeal. The latter ordered the Film and Literature Board of Review to reclassify the films in the light of its decision and this led to the Board classifying them as "unrestricted" publications. The house of cards Mr Chauvel and his fellow gay-rights lobbyists (the so-called Human Rights Action Group) had sought to construct based on trying to define the videos as constituting "hate literature" that (they claimed) needed to be banned, collapsed.

Mr Chauvel who was appointed Crown Counsel in the Crown Law Office in Wellington in 1994, used his legal skills in the Living Word case to try and ensure that two Christian videos, which he and his fellow gay activists called "anti-gay hate literature" remained banned. He succeeded in convincing two High Court judges, but the Court of Appeal overturned the lower Court's flawed decision. Fortunately, Chauvel's misguided attempt to crush free speech, curtail robust debate and stifle religious freedom, ultimately failed. If he ever does get into parliament, it is clear he will be supporting any Labour-led Government's push to establish "hate-speech laws" so that all publications that he and the homosexual lobbyists consider "anti-gay literature", will have to be banned.

It is significant that in the High Court decision that upheld the ban on the Living Word videos, the Hon. Justice Heron stated: "The Court we must say has been troubled by the inroad into freedom of expression of opinions which this decision [to uphold the ban] represents, particularly in the area of uncertain factual assumptions and premises, and a still evolving understanding of the phenomenon of homosexuality" (p. 14). Mr Chauvel was not in the slightest troubled by this inroad into freedom of expression.

Mr Chauvel omits from his website the fact that his work as legal counsel for gay lobbyists in 1994 seeking to ban a book called Exposing the AIDS Scandal by Dr Paul Cameron, failed. The Indecent Publications Tribunal did not accept his lengthy and turgid submissions that this book should be banned. The book was classified "unrestricted" in a decision issued under the names of Tribunal members Bill Hastings and Peter Carwright.

The GayNZ website states that Mr Chauvel did this work seeking to ban Cameron's book, on a pro-bono basis:

"Chauvel has worked for the past 15 years on gay/lesbian legal issues, and is a former board member and chair of the NZ AIDS Foundation. He was extensively involved in lobbying to pass the Human Rights Act in 1993, and also was involved in the campaign to pass the Civil Union Act. He acted as counsel on a pro-bono basis in 1994 in a case before the Indecent Publications Tribunal seeking to classify fundamentalist Christian anti-gay hate literature, and again before the High Court in 2000 in the infamous Living Word case, which involved videos of a similar nature."

Charles Chauvel's well documented commitment to crushing free speech goes back at least to this 1994 case he was involved in. The reckless diatribe issued by his fellow gay rights activist Bill Hastings (now te Chief Censor) against Cameron's book, in his Tribunal decision, typifies the vitriol and lack of objectivity that undergirds the 'reasoning' of those who cannot cope with critiques of promiscuous homosexual lifestyle.

Last year The Dominion Post reported that Labour's candidate for Ohariu-Belmont, Charles Chauvel, had quit the board of government power generator Meridian Energy, after warnings of a potential conflict of interest from SOEs Minister, Hon. Paul Swain. Chauvel was director from April 2002 until February 2005, when he resigned. His critics have expressed surprise that he had to be advised by the Minister before making his decision to resign, a decision he should have made independently of the Minister's prompting. However, Chauvel's "explanation": his claim that his resignation was not a response to the advice from the Minister, but was simply an independent decision he made late, due to his busy schedule; is hardly credible. As political journalist Vernon Small wrote at the time: "Mr Chauvel's public comment that his resignation was due to pressure of work" did not work in his favour" [ref. 3]. One has to wonder why, as a ministerial appointee (Chauvel) thinks he can just ignore ministerial advice.

Mr Chauvel was appointed Deputy Chair of the Lotteries Commission in October 2000 and remained on until December 2004. The matter of massive taxpayer-funded travel expenses incurred by Mr Chauvel for his 10-day trip to Europe as an employee of the Lotteries Commission led to serious questions being raised by the National Party MPs. His trip from 25 January to 8 February 2003 covered just five meetings (Hamburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Watford) and his expenses (disclosed via parliamentary questions and answers: 3 September 2003) were the subject of a punishing probe by the New Zealand Business Review. NBR reports that he "invoiced at least $80,00 to the Lotteries Commission for travel between 2000 and 2003 and has earned a reputation as an extravagant spender. NBR has made two complaints to the Office of the Ombudsman, one relating to the Commission's conduct over its refusal and one for the refusal itself [to disclose information]. In his time on the Lotteries Commission Board, at taxpayer expense, he visited Florida, New Orleans, Watford, Helsinki, Austria and Finland in five separate trips. He spent $53,000 in one year alone and said that his Commission Board portfolio area was remote interactive gambling."

The NBR's in-depth critique of Mr Chauvel's use of public money is very significant given that he was named NBR New Zealander of the year for 2002. Accusations of high-fliers having had their snouts in the public trough are rarely if ever made by the NBR with respect to those they have highly honoured, unless there is good cause for concern. It is noteworthy that Chauvel was named Business Leader of the Year by the Business Herald in 1999 and the 2002 Deloitte Management Magazine Executive of the Year.

A key Labour Party goal in the 2005 election was to boost not only the number of active homosexual strategists, like Mr Chauvel, within its parliamentary ranks, but to place them into as many influential positions as possible, including statutory bodies [see ref. 6]. One key to the success of Labour's social engineering legislative programme (eg. prostitution reform, civil unions etc.) has been the influence of homosexual MPs such as Tim Barnett and Cabinet Minister Chris Carter and the transsexual MP Georgina Beyer who have been able to push the gay rights cause using the Human Rights Act 1993.

Now that Charles Chauvel has succeeded in getting into parliament, the pro-gay cabal within the Labour Party sees itself as a formidable force. He has a special interest in using the Human Rights Act to push the gayrights cause, including the banning of publications critical of those who promote and engage in sodomy. No doubt we wil hear much in the near future from Chauvel on so-called "gay-rights issues".

Next in line behind Chauvel on the Labour Party List is Ms Louisa Wall, a former Silver Ferns player who has Tainui and Ngati Tuwharetoa heritage, She is another prominent lesbian, who was placed at No. 46. Louisa, who lives with her partner Michelle in the Auckland suburb of Waterview, is employed by the Human Rights Commission which she joined in July 2001 and is a paid board member of the taxpayer-funded Sport and Recreation New Zealand.

The Labour Party's pro-gay voices will no doubt get louder and louder..... "Gay Rights Special Rights"! (the title of one of the Living Word videos) will be the ongoing catchcry from Chauvel and those within the gay cabal to which he and the PM are so inextricably tied.

References:

[1] Gay competition for Peter Dunne

24 January 2005

http://www.challengeweekly.co.nz/Iss02-2005.htm

"A homosexual lobbyist is taking on United Future leader Peter Dunne in the Ohariu-Belmont electorate".

[2] Gay opponent for Dunne at election

18 January 2005

http://www.gaynz.org.nz/news/default.asp?dismode=article&apage=4&artid=2114

[3] Early Poll Unlikely, by Vernon Small. 29 March 2005

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3230891a6220,00.html

"However, all is not total sweetness and light. In Wellington, supporters of gay lawyer Charles Chauvel, who has impeccable credentials in the party going back to Auckland's iconic Princes St branch, are miffed their man was ranked so low that his chances of election look marginal.

"(Media reports of his travel expenditure at the Lotteries Commission found no wrongdoing, but did not help. SOE minister Paul Swain's heavy hint that he should quit the Meridian Energy board because of a potential conflict of interest as a candidate and then Mr Chauvel's public comment that his resignation was due to pressure of work did not work in his favour either."

[4] Charles Chauvel's Biography [accessed 7/09/05]

http://www.charleschauvel.com/bio.shtml

[5] Government favourite quits as travel questions mount. By Coran Lill

National Business Review February 25, 2005, pages 1, 6-7.

[6] SPCS Articles (7/09/05)

"Labour's Homosexual Agenda: Crushing Free Speech" http://spcs.org.nz/content/view/34/45/

"Labour's Homosexual Agenda: Promoting Lesbian Lobbyists" http://spcs.org.nz/content/33/45/

ENDS

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