RODNEY HIDE: From Joke to Official Policy in Four Years

It’s official. In a New Zealand courtroom, a rapist’s penis is to be

referred to as “her penis.”

Four years ago, Ricky Gervais made that exact line a

punchline in his *Armageddon* special. The audience laughed at the

absurdity. Today it is written into the Courts of New Zealand’s

"Guidelines for Courtroom Conduct for Counsel", dated July 2026.

Paragraph 38 tells counsel it is their responsibility to know “the

titles and pronouns” their clients and witnesses use, and to convey

that information to the registrar in advance. Paragraph 54 requires

that witnesses be referred to using their formal name, title, “and

their pronouns should be used.”

The practical effect is clear. Biological reality is subordinated to

preferred identity. A male offender who declares himself female is to

be spoken of with female pronouns, even when the evidence concerns his

male anatomy. The court is instructed to participate in the fiction.

We would not know this from the mainstream media. They are preoccupied

with their ongoing campaign against Prime Minister Christopher Luxon

and the usual diet of celebrity gossip. Luxon is fortunate that the

press is as incompetent at coups as it is at reporting news. I learnt

of the guidelines from a post by Jan Rivers on X. That is how news now

travels — past the newspapers that once claimed to hold power to

account.

This is not a trivial matter of courtesy. Courts exist to establish

facts. When the rules of address require participants to deny

observable reality, the institution itself is compromised. A justice

system that cannot say “his penis” when the evidence is a male body

has already decided that ideology outranks evidence.

New Zealand has a conservative government. The guidelines still

appeared under its watch. That should give every citizen pause. The

capture of language is not limited to one political tribe. It has

become institutional habit.

Gervais’s joke was funny because it described something that still

felt impossible. In July 2026 the impossible became policy. The

distance between the two is measured in the quiet surrender of

institutions that once insisted on truth. God help us all.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader