Stephen Rainbow smiling and wearing sunglasses next to the flags of Palestine and Israel

Stephen Rainbow has been chief human rights commissioner since November 2024

PoliticsApril 2, 2025

Chief human rights commissioner accused of Islamophobia by Jewish groups

Madeleine Chapman

Editor

Stephen Rainbow has been chief human rights commissioner since November 2024

The alleged comments were made in a meeting with a Jewish community leader.

12:20pm: This story has been updated with a response from justice minister Paul Goldsmith.

11.45am: This story has been updated with a response from Stephen Rainbow.

Three New Zealand community groups, two representing Jewish voices, are calling for Stephen Rainbow to resign from his role as chief human rights commissioner after what they believe were Islamophobic comments made during an official meeting with a Jewish community leader.

At the time of Rainbow’s appointment last year, he was questioned about his history of pro-Israel statements and writing. Rainbow told RNZ that his views on Israel weren’t “particularly relevant” to his role as chief human rights commissioner. In January 2024, Rainbow wrote an op-ed for the Israel Institute about New Zealand’s changing relationship with Israel. “Now, in New Zealand, to be on the Left it seems -if the kaffiyeh wearing antics of Labour and Green MPs of late are any indication- to be anti-Israel has become an integral part of the Leftist creed.

“The Left has found a new underdog to replace the Jews -the Palestinians- in spite of the fact that the treatment of gay people, women, and political opponents wherever Palestinians have control is barbaric.”

On February 24, Philippa Yasbek met with Rainbow, race relations commissioner Melissa Derby and two Human Rights Commission staffers to discuss the Jewish community and race relations in New Zealand. Yasbek was attending as the spokesperson for Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu: Jews Against Occupation.

In an email of complaint sent to justice minister Paul Goldsmith, who hired Rainbow after an independent panel deemed him “not recommended” for the role, Yasbek laid out what happened at the meeting. She described the topics of discussion her assertion that there is a plurality of voices in the Jewish community in New Zealand. She argued that any suggestion of there needing to be a special focus on combatting antisemitism risked conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, and that “racism is best fought by uniting with other groups experiencing racism, rather than arguing that Jews are exceptional in comparison to other ethnic or religious groups”. In the meeting, Yasbek noted the common threat of white supremacists to both Jewish and Muslim communities.

“Dr Rainbow disputed my assertion that white supremacists are still the greatest threat to the Jewish community in Aotearoa. He told me that the SIS threat assessment shows that Muslims pose a greater threat to the Jewish community in New Zealand than white supremacists.” In the letter to Goldsmith, Yasbek detailed how she told Rainbow she found it hard to believe but admitted she hadn’t read the assessment in full herself.

The SIS threat assessment referred to is New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2024, an annual report from the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service that outlines the most recent concerns and trends identified regarding threats to communities within New Zealand. In the “violent extremism and terrorism” chapter, the report states that “Identity-motivated violent extremism (IMVE) continues to be a prominent ideology within New Zealand’s violent extremist environment”. IMVE refers to violent extremists “who seek to advance their own identity through violence or seek to denigrate the perceived identity of others”.

It immediately elaborates: “White identity-motivated violent extremism (W-IMVE) remains the dominant IMVE ideology in New Zealand. Terrorist attack-related material and propaganda, including the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto and livestream footage, continue to be shared among IMVE adherents in New Zealand and abroad.”

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Madeleine Chapman
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The director of security at NZSIS, Andrew Hampton, told the Spinoff he didn’t personally hear Rainbow’s alleged remarks but “if this is indeed what he said, it misrepresents what our 2024 Security Threat Assessment says”.

“At no point does it state or imply that ‘Muslims posed a greater threat to the NZ Jewish community than white supremacists’.

In her letter to Goldsmith, Yasbek shared her concerns about Rainbow’s comments and the thinking behind them. “I was shocked that the chief human rights commissioner would make such nakedly Islamophobic statements to me, a complete stranger. I was also offended by his implicit assumption that I, as a Jewish person, would tolerate or condone them.”

Yasbek sent an email to Rainbow following the meeting, highlighting the relevant parts of the threat assessment regarding violent extremism in New Zealand. Rainbow thanked her for the feedback, saying, “I’ll certainly consider your information… and revise my position accordingly, if appropriate.”

The next day Rainbow followed up himself, having reread the assessment. He cited another line from the report that he said he based his comments on: “The conflict in Gaza is being used by terrorist organisations to drive online radicalisation and recruitment. These are global trends but similar signs are beginning to appear in our environment.”

The Federation for Islamic Associations in New Zealand (FIANZ) has called Rainbow’s comments “an alarming warning bell for human rights in this country”. Chair of the FIANZ Royal Commission and advocacy team Abdur Razzaq attended a meeting with Rainbow and justice secretary and Ministry of Justice CEO Andrew Kibblewhite after learning of the comments. Razzaq said in a statement that Rainbow apologised in the meeting and later sent a “brief email apology”.

FIANZ in a statement applauded Christopher Luxon for “taking a prominent lead to ensure peace and cohesion between the various faith and ethnic communities” before accusing Rainbow of “misusing his position as the chief human rights commissioner to sabotage the pathway to social cohesion”.

Alternative Jewish Voices, FIANZ and Dayenu: Jews Against Occupation have called on the justice minister and prime minister to investigate the matter. The justice minister’s office confirmed that he had received a complaint but did not offer a response. The Human Rights Commission were approached for comment for this story but did not provide a comment before publication.

Update, 11.44am: Stephen Rainbow has apologised to the Muslim communities in New Zealand. In a written statement, Rainbow responded to calls for his resignation with an apology. “On 28 of February I learned that at an engagement with Alternative Jewish Voices I had caused offence to Muslim communities,” he said. “In realising my error, I met with FIANZ and apologised in person. The Commission and I have continued to engage to repair the relationship, which I was attempting to build.

“I have read the statement by FIANZ and wholeheartedly publicly apologise to our Muslim communities. They should always feel that they can trust the Human Rights Commission to protect their rights. I am even more committed now to ensure that I am the Chief Human Rights Commissioner for all New Zealanders.”

Update: 12.20pm: Paul Goldsmith in a statement said he had “no intention of requesting the resignation of the Human Rights Commissioner”.

“By his own admission, in this instance he did not express himself as well as he could have. I will be meeting with the Commissioner in the next few days and encouraging him to be more careful with his comments in future.”

Keep going!

Lawyers representing John Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency appeared in Wellington’s High Court on Tuesday.

ĀteaApril 2, 2025

John Tamihere takes government to court over lost Whānau Ora contract

Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

Politics reporter

Lawyers representing John Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency appeared in Wellington’s High Court on Tuesday.

Lawyers acting for the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency chief executive have appeared in Wellington High Court to argue for a judicial review of the decision to award the North Island contract to another provider. Lyric Waiwiri-Smith reports.

John Tamihere’s challenge to the procurement process that saw his commissioning agency lose out on a long-held Whānau Ora contract is a case of concern over “major disruptions to services”, not the grumblings of a “disappointed commercial partner”, his lawyer told Wellington’s High Court on Tuesday morning.

Less than a month after Tamihere’s Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (WOCA) was told it had lost out on receiving a part of Whānau Ora’s $155m commissioning contract, lawyers for the agency (formerly known as Te Pou Matakana) filed urgent documents in the court on Friday last week requesting a judicial review. Secretary for Māori development Dave Samuels and his ministry Te Puni Kōkiri, the agency responsible for Whānau Ora contracts, were named as the first and second defendants, alongside new contractor Ngāti Toa as the third.

WOCA was one of three providers, alongside Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu and Pasifika Futures, which had held a Whānau Ora contract since 2014. All three lost their contracts after changes to the procurement process saw the number of commissioned agencies increase from three to four, with services in the North Island to be split into two and locally focused, though WOCA’s lawyers claim the “vast shift” in the system was designed to ensure it would not be eligible for the next round of contracts.

Wendy Aldred KC, representing WOCA, asked the court to consider the contextual issues within the case, arguing her client was not simply a scorned former contractor, but a service whose evidence of reach and success had been overlooked. WOCA was “not just simply a funding vehicle”, Aldred said, but a “network of 113 service providers, providing crucial services to some of Aotearoa’s most deprived areas and most vulnerable whānau”.

“This is a contextual call for the court to make,” Aldred said, though Justice Boldt requested further clarification on what this context might be. “If this was a company like Spark seeking to put out a procurement process, you wouldn’t think that the outcome of that would be judicially reviewable either,” Justice Boldt said.

The Wellington High Court building from the front entrance. — Wellington High Court (Photo: Lyric Waiwiri-Smith)

Aldred drew on a 1,601-page affidavit filed by Maria Halligan, director of funding and contracting at Te Whānau o Waipareira, a subsidiary of WOCA, which included a history of the Whānau Ora contracts. Halligan included a 2010 Whānau Ora taskforce report, which recommended Whānau Ora be te ao Māori-led, to recognise the position of Māori in Aotearoa and te Tiriti o Waitangi.

A separate affidavit filed by Tamihere also covered a history of working with Whānau Ora, and evidence of WOCA’s success in reaching and supporting communities in need. Tamihere had highlighted the vulnerability of those his service supported, whānau who he wrote are “in for a very long winter because of the immediacy of this disruption”.

“So, the plaintiff argues that this is a classic exposition of the first defendant answering or meeting an obligation under Article 2 of the Treaty,” Aldred said. But, Justice Boldt pointed out, the contractors who have replaced WOCA are also Māori.

“You would have a case if the government said, ‘building on the success of our school lunches programmes, we’re contracting this out to Serco … we don’t need to be culturally relevant,” Justice Boldt said. “What we’ve got here are competing providers, all of them – as far as I can see – steeped in te ao Māori, and a decision by the ministry simply to prefer different ones.”

Aldred said the plaintiff had “no allegation of bad faith at this stage”, and preferred to see an application for interim relief progressed to halt Te Puni Kōkiri’s new contracts, which are supposed to come into effect on June 3. She offered that the plaintiff would be willing to foot the bill for financial damages lost as a result, an offer described by the defendant’s lawyer, Tim Smith, as “spectacularly naive”.

John Tamihere in 2020, when he was co-leader of Te Pāti Māori (Photo: Harry Cundy)

“What we’re talking about here is a competitive process, and you’re not happy with the result,” Smith told the plaintiff. He offered to Justice Boldt that Aldred’s position in broadening the commercial contexts of the case clouded the core matter, which is that “as you rightly said, all of the respondents in this context are Māori providers with excellent credentials”.

Smith told the court that if orders were granted in this context, it would only be “stopping the horse that has already started to run”. WOCA’s case hinged on the idea of a status quo not being upheld, Smith said, but the status quo was now the fact that WOCA was no longer the incumbent.

“Let’s just be honest about what’s going on: the main beneficiary of that is the applicant … it can’t be for the benefit of those downstream,” Smith said.

Justice Boldt said the weakest part of the plaintiff’s case, even if accepting the wider context brought forward by Aldred, was that the challenge “simply reverts back to ‘we are the best provider for these services, and why could anyone have chosen not to continue with us?’”

“All the arguments run by my learned friend are fundamentally flawed,” Smith responded.

“You’d be throwing a spanner in the works of a major policy rollout for the benefit of some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable people.”

The case will return to the Wellington High Court on Thursday.