Posie Parker brings anti-trans violence threat, says advocate as High Court decision looms

A rainbow advocacy group says a self-styled women's rights campaigner could push society over the precipice and incite transphobic violence if she is allowed entry into New Zealand.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, also known as Posie Parker, has rejected the claim her ideas align with dangerous Nazi ideology and claims women in New Zealand fear for their safety.

Rainbow advocacy organisations are having their last-minute case to prevent Keen-Minshull from entering the country heard by the High Court this morning.

Gender Minorities Aotearoa, InsideOUT Kōaro, and Auckland Pride have filed for an interim order to stop Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, known as Posie Parker, from being allowed into the country.

The controversial British activist is set to fly into New Zealand this morning after Immigration New Zealand found there was no reason to believe that she would be a risk to public order.

She is planning to hold rallies in Auckland and Wellington this weekend

The groups have also filed a judicial review over Immigration Minister Michael Wood's decision on her visa-waiver status.

Executive director of Auckland Pride, Max Tweedie, told Morning Report Keen-Minshull should not be allowed to stir up hatred and bigotry with her transphobic rhetoric.

Given that her rallies in Australia had attracted support from neo-Nazi groups, and the risk of violence these brought, she should be excluded from entering New Zealand, he said.

"We saw it in Sydney with far-right groups that were campaigning against the rainbow community, anti-trans - the whole hateful groomer rhetoric more broadly. There was a small counter protest outside, and those far right protesters came out and attacked, physically assaulting people," he said.

"We are on the precipice of anti-rainbow and anti-trans violence here in this country, because of the levels the hatred has got to. We had arson last year, vandalism, and so we are so close to violence, and we believe that this event, and her speaking, could be the precipice that takes us over that line."

He said there was no place for what he called Nazi-aligned ideas being propagated in New Zealand and that the government had an obligation to ban speakers like Keen-Minshull.

"We are of the belief that the minister has the ability to do so in the interest of the public order, and something into being someone who's likely to be a threat to the public order," he said.

"And we believe that the grounds that what she's demonstrated in Melbourne and the kinds of groups that she's associated with, but also the type of messaging that she's been sharing, meets that threshold as the risk of the public order and the decision to be reviewed."

Tweetie rejected the idea that Keen-Minshull should be ignored and starved of the publicity that protesting against her presence would bring.

He said trans communities feared her talks of excluding them from public spaces like women's toilets, changing rooms over safety concerns, would help give bigots licence to express hatred towards them.

"Women's Refuge in this country has allowed trans woman into their spaces for around 10 years and have had no issues," he said.

"There's no evidence of the type of things that she's saying. No one gets the birth certificate checks when they enter a gendered bathroom ... it's not an issue that is causing widespread or even the smallest amount of harm. She keeps saying these things provide absolutely no evidence for it.

"When this really hateful rhetoric comes to our shores. And when something is so antithetical to our values, that it's important for us to actually stand up. The trans communities at the moment are deeply stressed out."

'Tarred with horrendous ideologies'

Keen-Minshull told Morning Report the claim her ideas and concerns were associated with Nazi ideology was a political smear.

She confirmed a security firm hired to protect her and her grouping in New Zealand had pulled out at the last minute because of reports of her rallies in Australia, and that another company was being paid $10,000 to do the job instead.

"I don't think men who believe in the far right, who call themselves Nazis, give an absolute stuff for women's rights. That's a preposterous thing to say."

"I just don't want men in women's spaces. I want my daughter to be safe when she played sport. Is that really such a terrible thing. I want women across New Zealand to feel that when they go into a woman-only space, it's only women in it.

"When women speak up against men in women's spaces, these are the sorts of things that happen to women, we get tarred with just horrendous ideologies."

Keen-Minshull also repeated her view that there was no such thing as non-binary.