A law school to be avoided
Auckland University of Technology
The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for law students,” written these enlightened words:
I suppose it was inevitable that one of the old racist dinosaurs would make a pathetic squeal in an attempt to preserve the status quo….
Mr Judd and his “matauranga Maori is not science” friends can go die quietly in the corner…
What sort of lawyers will be produced by a law faculty led by someone who resorts to petty abuse instead of engaging in rational argument?
Why did she not explain why tikanga is law? Why did she not explain why a body of law built up over centuries for the purpose of testing whether a custom should be accorded the status of law must be jettisoned because tikanga cannot meet those standards? Why did she not answer other matters raised in my complaint to the regulations review committee. Responses like those could have been expected from a person holding a privileged leadership position. As it is not the response given, the inference may be drawn that she does not have answers which support her position.
The law school deans are members of the Council for legal education. Ms Quince became interim dean in 2021. Presumably that means she was one of those responsible for this breach of the human rights of potential law students. Whilst compelling those who wish to be lawyers to have sufficient knowledge of criminal law, the law of contract, torts and so on is a limitation on their freedoms, it is a limitation which can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. If a person wishes to engage in the practice of law, they must be possessed of adequate competence in the core legal subjects. It is a quite different thing to compel them to receive indoctrination in a system of beliefs and values held by one section of the community.
Ms Quince has such absolute conviction in the rightness of her position that she will happily employ compulsion instead of reason and those who disagree must “go die quietly in the corner.”
To those wishing to take up law, I say try to find a university with a faculty whose leadership has greater respect for the tradition of law as a reasoning discipline.
It’s simply unprofessional and unbecoming of an academic to attack another with huge experience an the highest professional recognition as nothing but a ‘racist dinassaur’ rather than engage in what is here an important issue of legal debate.
You do the country a great service with this column. Not only do you expertly confront small-minded abuse from the Dean of the AUT's Law School, Khylee Quince, but you show succinctly the lack of logic behind the activists' position—and all their positions.
That will rally people to the cause of reason, for sarcastic attacks like Quince's, though maybe hard to listen to, are empty of logic and do not persuade informed citizens, who will adopt your example by the thousands and swing the country behind you.
You set out your principal argument well:
Why did she not explain why tikanga IS law? Why did she not explain why a body of law built up over centuries for the purpose of testing whether a custom should be accorded the status of law must be jettisoned because tikanga cannot meet those standards? Why did she not answer other matters raised in my complaint to the regulations review committee? Responses like those could have been expected from a person holding a privileged leadership position. As it is not the response given, the inference may be drawn that she does not have answers which support her position.
That is the essence of the activists' weakness, as there is no reason to value tribal membership over New Zealand citizenship, nor to value Maori language over English, nor hold a Maori vote worth more than any other New Zealander's vote, nor consider the Maori essence as more intrinsically important than everyone else's essence.
So the argument that they deserve to rule New Zealand is without merit. As well, tikanga is different between tribes, so it cannot act as law. English common law, as ours, is identical in all parts of the realm. Not so tikanga—and it's an outrage that it should be exempt from normal judicial inquiry and cross-examination. Whatever the witness (to the tenets of tikanga) might say in court cannot be questioned. An utter disgrace.
In the present case, since Quince was referring to the undecided referendum on the undecided principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, it's obvious that electors cannot be polled for a decision but only an opinion. So altering the treaty is not an option, and people are objecting to it for no reason. Perhaps the activists are afraid that the Coalition might use their own ruse against them, and act constitutionally without permission from voters. I'm confident they won't, but let the reader judge that for himself.
Keep up the good work.