Good Faith Yarns Tauranga
Description
We've outgrown our venue and moved locations! Thanks everyone who has purchased a ticket we will see you at Trinity Warf at 7:00pm
The Free Speech Union New Zealand is proud to present the Good Faith Yarns Tour!
This winter, the Free Speech Union New Zealand is hitting the road. The Good Faith Yarns Tour brings honest, good-faith conversation to ten communities across the country, including the regional centres that so often get left out of the national conversation. With a general election on the horizon, public debate is getting louder and more polarised. We want to do something different.
Few questions cut closer to the heart of what New Zealand is, and what it could be, than the Treaty of Waitangi. After years of political turbulence around co-governance, the Treaty Principles Bill, and what honouring Te Tiriti actually looks like in practice, the country is at a crossroads. Not everyone agrees on the path forward. But most agree we need a better conversation than the one we've been having.
Joining Ani O'Brien in Tauranga are Dr Alistair Reese, theologian, historian, and one of the New Zealand's most thoughtful voices on reconciliation and the Treaty, and Professor Paul Moon, one of New Zealand's experts on the Treaty of Waitangi, whose specialist research spans Te Tiriti, Māori history, and the early period of Crown rule. Two very different perspectives on the same founding document, in the same room, in good faith. This is a rare chance to slow down, dig deeper, and talk honestly about what Te Tiriti actually demands of us and where we go from here.
📍Trinity Warf Tauranga, 51 Dive Crescent, Tauranga 3110
📅 Thursday 30th July 2026
🕐 7:00pm-8:30pm
🎙️ Guest Speaker: Dr Alistair Reese, Dr Paul Moon
Speakers
Ani O’Brien
Ani O'Brien is one of New Zealand's most fearless political voices. A writer, commentator, and Free Speech Union Board Member, she's known for holding views that cut across conventional political lines and saying what others won't. Expect honesty, not headlines.
Dr Alistair Reese
Alistair lives with his wife Jeannie on a farm in Paengaroa, Bay of Plenty. He has postgraduate degrees in Theology, History and Tikanga Māori. His PhD in theology from the University of Auckland focused on reconciliation and Pākehā identity. Alistair is an adjunct Fellow at the University of Otago and his research and speaking interests include post-colonialism, reconciliation and prophetism. Alistair is involved in local and national efforts to promote reconciliation between Māori and Pākehā and exploring understandings of what an indigenous form of Christianity might look like.
Dr Paul Moon
Professor Moon is Professor of History at Auckland University of Technology, where he has taught since 1993, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society at University College, London. His books on New Zealand history have been published by many major international publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Routledge, and Bloomsbury, and he has been a finalist in two international history awards. He has appeared in various international media, including the BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian, and the New York Times, and has worked on several Waitangi Tribunal claims. In 2022, he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM).
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