We’ve applied for Legal Representation!
27.03.10 | tim | 
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The Atheist Bus Campaign and the Humanist Society of New Zealand are proud to announce that we’ve applied for legal representation from the Office of Human Rights Proceedings. This will take the office about a month to process. During this month we will be exploring alternative advertising options – but we will keep a significant sum aside for the buses – we have received wide ranging support for our campaign from both Atheist and Christian groups and do not believe that our campaign is “controversial and divisive”!
The Humanist Society have been great helping us collect donations and acting as trustees for the donations while the advertising issues are sorted out. If you’re keen to become more involved with other friendly atheists, then check them out and perhaps even join up! The Humanist Society is based in Wellington – http://www.humanist.org.nz/. If you’re based in Auckland then try the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists at http://www.nzarh.org.nz/.
Tim
March 29th, 2010 at 8:47 am
Firstly, excellent news! I feel that this is the best way forward, so even if it uses some of the donations to fund the legal action, I fully support what you are doing. Secondly, we can only hope that the legal action is successful. Good luck!
March 29th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
but how long would the whole court process take anyway? and couldn’t nzbus keep on appealing it so it could take more than a year. i say forget about taking legal action, just put ads in the newspaper.
lets get things rolling. no legal action.
March 29th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Looking forward to seeing the logo’s somewhere.
Good luck
March 30th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Godspeed on your work! Thanks for waking the Christians up – we need a kick up our pants every now and then to ensure we do not become to comfortable.
Funny the ways in which God works though? I bet you never thought you would be working for Him?
God Bless!
April 6th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
@lance
I get where you’re coming from if your goal is just to get the message out there ASAP.
However: Don’t you want some kind of legal acknowledgement that discrimination on religious grounds isn’t acceptable behavior for New Zealand companies? That should be sufficient grounds to take legal action even if we never run a single ad with them.
@lou
That was a touch smarmy – but the sentiment at least is appreciated.
Thanks. I think.
April 11th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
I agree with @Daniel Schealler. Having the legal precidence is important.
@lance I think having the ads on the buses is important. It is the Atheist Bus Campaign after all.
Personally I think we should get the court ruling but not use NZ Bus. There are other bus companies.
Come to that, why are none of the South Island bus companies being approached? NZBus don’t have anything to do with the South Island companies.
April 22nd, 2010 at 10:30 pm
C’mon guys, lagging much? Get the ball rolling!
April 24th, 2010 at 7:02 am
Unfortunately the process to apply for legal representation takes up to a month. We’re biting at the bit as much as you are!
Tim
May 17th, 2010 at 2:38 am
I completely agree that legal precedent is very important here and fully support your bid for legal representation.
I think NZ Bus’s actions were blatantly discriminatory. What I’m less clear on is the legality of this discrimination. Many people are arguing that because they’re a private company they’re allowed to discriminate in this way. I think this could even be true for news papers & other publications (at lest from what I’ve read about examples in the US), but these are different as they’re actually expressing an editorial opinion and are apparently free to do so. NZ Bus however is merely a conduit for advertising and it seems to me that their refusing service to the Atheist campaign would qualify as a human rights violation. Another complicating factor is that they apparently have government/public contracts to provide their service, which I would have thought negates any potential right to discriminate that they may have had.
I would love to see the legality of this situation spelled out. I was appalled to see how many people in NZ were apparently OK with this kind of censorship and discrimination. I honestly thought we were better than that as a society.
May 20th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I’m starting to think that with the lack of updates, people involved with this have moved on with their personal endeavours and aren’t concentrating on the ad campaign.
Perhaps a previous idea about advertising in a different medium might be called for to keep interest in this project from withering.
I used to check this webpage daily, now it’s fortnightly at most. Which is quite disappointing. I thought we were on to something!
May 25th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
@Jon P
You’ve got a point.
What’s happening guys? Any word on legal representation?
I know these things can take a while, and that it’s not always a good idea to discuss. But can’t you give us something?
June 1st, 2010 at 10:26 am
Hi Jon and Daniel,
We’re working on this – we haven’t yet heard back from the Human Rights Commission. However, we’re as keen as mustard to see something happen and have been developing a strategy to both make something happen and to pursue the legal option. Expect to see something in the next couple of weeks…
Tim
June 1st, 2010 at 3:39 pm
This situation only applies to the NZBus buses. NZBus don’t cover the South Island. Is there any reason we can’t get these on the buses down here?
It’ll bring the issue back into the media’s eye again too.