PHOTO: Dickson reportedly characterises the course as requiring participants to “bow down to the Māori gods”.
OPINION | PROPERTY NOISE NZ
There comes a point when a dispute stops being about the original issue and becomes about something much simpler:
If you want to remain part of a regulated profession, are you prepared to meet the requirements of that profession?
For veteran real estate agent Janet Dickson, the answer appears to remain no.
After nearly three years fighting the Real Estate Authority over a compulsory continuing professional development course covering Māori language and development, the Treaty of Waitangi and Māori land, Dickson has lost her latest challenge.
And remarkably, she says that if she had her time again, she would still refuse to do it.
Our response?
Then perhaps it’s time to say: good riddance.
This was a 90-minute course
Strip away the politics, the arguments about tikanga, the court proceedings and all the noise surrounding this case and one fact remains rather difficult to ignore.
The course was 90 minutes long.
Te Kākano was introduced as compulsory continuing professional development for licensed real estate professionals in 2023.
Dickson objected to its content and sought an exemption.
She was entitled to object.
She was entitled to express her views.
She was entitled to challenge the Real Estate Authority.
And she was entitled to take that challenge through the legal system.
But ultimately, the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal has now rejected her application.
The official decision, Dickson v REAA [2026] NZREADT 42, records that the Tribunal accepted Dickson’s perception that the course conflicted with her personal values was sincerely held and that exceptional circumstances existed. But crucially, it found those circumstances did not prevent her from completing the course, so the criteria for an exemption weren’t met.
That’s an important distinction.
Nobody was asking her to change her beliefs
This is where some of the rhetoric surrounding the case becomes difficult to reconcile with what the Tribunal actually decided.
Dickson reportedly characterises the course as requiring participants to “bow down to the Māori gods”.
But the Tribunal’s legal finding was clear: although attendance at the course was mandatory, Dickson was not being forced to learn or believe anything, or subsequently behave in any particular way.
It also found no breach of her rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
That’s rather different from compelling somebody to adopt a religion or personally subscribe to a spiritual belief.
You can attend professional development without agreeing with every idea discussed.
Teachers do it.
Doctors do it.
Lawyers do it.
Accountants do it.
Real estate agents do it.
Professional development isn’t a referendum where every participant gets to decide which compulsory components apply to them.
Thirty years in real estate doesn’t put you above the rules
Dickson has approximately 30 years’ experience in the industry.
That deserves acknowledgement.
But longevity doesn’t give somebody a personal veto over the requirements imposed by their professional regulator.
Imagine if every salesperson were allowed to say:
I don’t think this particular compliance module is relevant to me, so I’m not doing it.
The entire concept of compulsory professional development would collapse.
You don’t necessarily have to like the rules.
You can campaign to have them changed.
You can criticise the regulator.
You can even challenge the legality of those rules — which Dickson has done.
But when those challenges fail, eventually there is a decision to make.
Complete the requirement or accept the consequences of refusing.
And let’s remember: this actually IS relevant to property
There’s another part of the argument that Property Noise struggles with.
Dickson reportedly says tikanga has nothing to do with her work because:
“It’s to do with property.”
But one of the three modules concerned Māori land.
That’s property.
The Treaty of Waitangi and the relationship between Māori and land are hardly obscure concepts in New Zealand.
An agent doesn’t need to become an expert in tikanga Māori.
They don’t need to speak fluent te reo.
And completing a 90-minute course obviously doesn’t magically provide deep cultural competence.
But understanding something about the history, terminology and cultural context surrounding land in the country in which you sell land and houses for a living hardly seems an outrageous professional requirement.
The most revealing part is that she would do it again
This is what takes the story beyond the original disagreement.
After almost three years of litigation, being unable to work as an agent, taking the matter through the REA, High Court and Tribunal, and facing the likely end of a 30-year real estate career, Dickson reportedly remains unrepentant.
Given another opportunity?
She says she’d refuse again.
At some point, personal responsibility has to enter the conversation.
If somebody understands the requirement, understands the consequences, challenges that requirement through the appropriate processes, loses those challenges and still consciously chooses not to comply, then the resulting loss of their ability to practise isn’t some mysterious injustice.
It’s the foreseeable consequence of their own decision.
This doesn’t mean the REA should be beyond criticism
There’s an important qualification.
Property Noise certainly doesn’t believe regulators should be immune from scrutiny.
The real estate industry should absolutely question whether compulsory training is useful, proportionate and relevant.
Agents should be able to criticise the REA.
And people should be able to hold sincere religious, philosophical or political objections without being ridiculed for them.
Indeed, the Tribunal itself recognised the sincerity of Dickson’s position.
But having a sincere objection doesn’t automatically create an entitlement to an exemption.
That’s precisely the question the Tribunal had to determine.
It decided she hadn’t met the test.
Meanwhile, agents are being disciplined for genuinely serious issues
There’s another reason this saga feels so extraordinary.
Spend some time reading recent Tribunal decisions and you’ll find cases dealing with misleading property advertising, incorrect boundaries, undisclosed weathertightness risks, incorrect information about roofs, trust-account failures and other conduct directly affecting consumers.
Those are serious issues.
For example, a recent commercial-property case involved an incorrect boundary and overstated carparking, resulting in a $7,500 fine and $15,344.19 compensation.
Another licensee was ordered to pay $17,159 after incorrectly telling a purchaser the age of a roof, despite the Tribunal accepting the misrepresentation was innocent rather than dishonest.
Against that backdrop, watching years of energy and legal resources consumed by a refusal to complete a 90-minute CPD course seems almost absurd.
The Property Noise view
Janet Dickson was perfectly entitled to disagree with Te Kākano.
She was entitled to challenge it.
And she was entitled to take a principled stand.
But principles have consequences.
If the regulator requires a 90-minute course as a condition of maintaining your professional licence, the courts and Tribunal uphold that requirement, and you still say:
No. I won’t do it. And I’d make exactly the same decision again.
Then perhaps the industry shouldn’t keep bending itself into knots over the outcome.
There are thousands of hardworking real estate professionals completing their CPD, adapting to changing regulations and getting on with selling property.
Nobody is asking them to agree with every word of every course.
They’re being asked to meet the requirements of their profession.
Janet Dickson chose not to.
So if that ultimately means the end of her real estate career, our view is simple: good riddance.
Not because she disagreed.
Not because she challenged the regulator.
And certainly not because she held a different personal belief.
But because after exhausting her right to challenge the rules, she apparently still believes those rules shouldn’t apply to her.
In a regulated profession, they do.