Rise and shine New Zealand! It’s a pleasure to be meeting you’ll again, this campaign trail is great. This time I am meeting up with the LGBTQ community to ensure their rights and protection. I’m doing this with my trans daughter TheOWOTrangle. Say hello.

TheOWOTrangle says hello

So first of all I would like to say, it is wonderful that New Zealand is a place where LGBTQ rights are protected. We have made a big step to get to where we are and that we should be proud of the right we have made for minority rights. However, I must warn you, the fight does not stop here. Firstly we must create the cultural shift to help LGBTQ community. For too long, and it is still the case, calling someone “gay” or “trans” is used for a means of bullying. No longer shall we accept this societal homophobia and transphobia. However in order to make the cultural shift I am talking about, we must also pass through more legislation in parliament to root out cultural homophobia and transphobia.

One piece of legislation we could use to stop homophobia and transphobia is of course LGBTQ education. It is important that we root out homophobia and transphobia from a young age, after all it is very common within the playground even as young 11. It’s important that we root it out immediately, and preferably start the education quite young so kids start with a good impression of the LGBTQ community, not a bad one. We have other legislation that will also help root out cultural homophobia and transphobia in our manifesto.

Now TheOWOTrangle would like to say something:

As an LGBTQ person myself, I struggle everyday to go round and not get bullied, it severely influences my self esteem and can change my mindset from good to bad. This explains why the LGBTQ community has such a high suicide rate. Well the Kiwi Party will give us help. We are willing to fund a national suicide hotline to help stop of climbing suicide rates. It is a tragedy that suicide is an issue, and we must aim better and do better to stop this issue. The Kiwi Party has a proper solution, so if you are dragged down by mental health and need something to pick you back up, vote Kiwi.