Source: Family First
MEDIA RELEASE – 28 May 2026
HRC’s Conversion Therapy Unit Finds… Nothing
The 2.25 million dollar taxpayer-funded complaints centre set up by the then-Labour government via the Human Rights Commission for generating complaints about ‘conversion therapy’ has struggled to obtain any formal complaints about the use of ‘conversion therapy’ in the four years since the new law was passed – despite significant media advertising – and hasn’t referred a single complaint to the Police. The unit has now been (rightly) dissolved – due to irrelevancy.
According to an Official Information Act response, in the past 12 months, not a single formal complaint was made. This is consistent with numbers before the law was passed. The Human Rights Commission admitted that there had only been one informal complaint and no formal complaints in the past 10 years in relation to ‘conversion therapy’. Even some of the politicians who supported the new law admitted they were not aware of any cases of involuntary ‘conversion therapy’ in their communities.
“The taxpayer via the Human Rights Commission has wasted more than $2m looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. But what the politicians and activist groups have done is make it difficult for parents, counsellors and therapists to support troubled adolescents, and difficult for individuals who are dealing with unwanted sexuality and gender issues to get support,” says Bob McCoskrie, CEO of Family First NZ.
Family First will be campaigning to repeal the law, based on the fact that parents are currently criminalised for affirming their children in their biological sex rather than chemicalising them with puberty blockers. The law is now inconsistent and at odds with the Government ban on puberty blockers which was long overdue.
As an Australian family law and child protection expert warned during the debate four years ago, some mental health professionals will refuse to see young patients with sexual orientation or gender identity issues who have other serious mental health concerns. This could lead to an increase in the mental health burden on already very troubled young people and may lead to increased suicide attempts.
This is leading to huge distress for parents who are already experiencing very difficult circumstances. The NHS report by Dr Hillary Cass confirms that concerned parents have been right all along.
And despite claiming that they wanted to ensure that they “regularly hear from diverse lived experience voices”, the Human Rights Commission admits, “The Commission has not knowingly had any engagement with individuals who made submissions against the new law and who had positive experiences of receiving counselling to deal with unwanted sexuality and gender confusion issues.”
Their rights aren’t important, according to the ‘Human Rights’ Commission. The Human Rights Commission doesn’t care about Issy or Zara and many others.
Ironically, while gender and sexuality is supposedly ‘fluid’, activists want the law to stipulate that it can only go in the direction they approve. ‘Conversion therapy’ is still legal. It’s practiced in schools by groups such as InsideOut and Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (formerly Family Planning).
Original source: https://nz.mil-osi.com/2026/05/28/hrcs-conversion-therapy-unit-finds-nothing/