This email from the Free Speech Union seeks your support:
Hi Peter,
The Medical Council of New Zealand (MCNZ) has proposed that treating patients well is no longer enough.
Your doctor must also hold the correct views.
This is a substantial change – and as a GP with nearly 40 years’ experience in medicine – let me tell you, Peter, it sends shivers down my spine.
Doctors are being told they must now accept that colonisation - present tense, ongoing - is why Māori can't access healthcare, and that it is their professional duty to challenge the "systemic bias within the system”.
If they don't? Their practising certificate could be on the line.
I'm Dr Roderick Mulgan - GP, barrister, and International Director of the Free Speech Union.
I've read these draft standards with both hats on.
As a doctor, I know what good patient care looks like.
As a barrister, I know what the law requires.
These standards go beyond both.
The consultation closes 24 March. The Medical Council needs to hear from you. | | | Make a submission to MCNZ today |
It takes minutes. We've made it easy. More on that below.
| What doctors must now believe |
The draft standards on "cultural competence, cultural safety, and hauora Māori" read less like a regulatory document and more like a postgraduate ideology course.
Doctors must accept that: the health system is built on oppressive "settler traditions"; colonisation is the reason Māori can't access health resources; patients are entitled to equitable outcomes across identity groups (somehow); doctors must use their professional influence to actively "dismantle unfair systems;" that doctors should challenge colleagues who do not embrace this approach.
Which are all funny things to put in a medical standards document.
You might agree with some of this. You might agree with all of it. That's beside the point.
The question is whether a medical regulator can turn highly contested political opinions into compulsory professional doctrine - backed by the threat of deregistration.
| What the law actually says - and what happens in a consultation room |
As a barrister: the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act requires doctors to demonstrate cultural competence, including respectful interaction with Māori.
That's it. No ideological extremism. No activist roles. No dismantling.
This is yet another clear-cut case of a regulator trying to impose powers beyond what the legislation allows them.
The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects not only the right to speak freely, but the right not to be compelled to say things you don't believe. What the Council is proposing is compelled belief, dressed up as professional development.
As a doctor what matters when a patient walks through my door is whether: I'm listening carefully, examining competently, diagnosing accurately, treating effectively.
Whether I hold the Council's approved position on colonisation has precisely nothing to do with any of that.
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On Friday, I was on The Platform talking about the MCNZ. | | The chilling effect nobody's talking about |
Free Speech Union Council Member Ani O'Brien made a sharp observation earlier in the week: once disagreement with a framework is treated as evidence of the very problem it describes, recertification stops being about clinical skill. It becomes a test of whether you've learned to say the right things.
The real danger isn't dramatic purges. It's quieter.
Doctors will learn the language. They'll stop saying what they actually think - not because they've been persuaded, but because they have mortgages and families. A culture of inquiry becomes a culture of compliance.
Good medicine depends on doctors who think critically, question assumptions, and follow the evidence. These standards would replace that with ideological conformity. | | What you can do |
The Free Speech Union is conducting a full legal analysis and will submit before the deadline.
But this consultation is open to everyone - and the Council needs to hear from more than just the institutions already nodding along.
If you think doctors should be judged on the quality of their care - not the orthodoxy of their politics - make a submission.
| | Make a submission to MCNZ today |
Consultation documents are available here.
The deadline is 24 March. That's soon.
The Medical Council's job is to ensure clinical competence and patient safety.
Not to run a political education programme for the medical profession.
Let's remind them of that.
Best wishes,
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