Hate speech laws: Government proposes one change to Human Rights Act after years of divisive debate
After years of divisive policy debate, six proposals and thousands of submissions, the Government has finally released its new hate speech law proposal – making just one change to the Human Rights Act.
It comes after Newshub revealed on Friday the Government was watering down its proposed hate speech laws as they were too controversial to be palatable.
The Government would make one amendment to the hate speech laws to include religious communities. However, it hasn’t ruled out extending it further to other groups in the future.
Let’s be very clear upfront, what has been proposed is the barest nothing of a nothing that the Government could get away with.
Kiri Allan’s extraordinarily aggressive opening salvo launched on The Nation last month has been muzzled and neutered in this latest voyage into the minefield of free speech vs hate speech culture war.
The panic that swept through the Labour Caucus at Kiri’s sudden decision to launch a one person charge at the radioactive free speech front was immediate as I understand.
Like, the moment it was airing.
Like phone calls were made very soon after her appearance. And during her appearance.
I understand many, ‘What the fuck is she doing”, comments were made.
Repeatedly.
What Kiri has come back with is the least problematic version Labour can ram through without gaining ACT 10% more in the Polls.
The problem is, their solution is such an affront to a liberal progressive democracy that it still can’t stand!
The law will make it illegal to publish or say anything that hates religion which is just bullshit and the most obscene part of this is that it will be picked up by religious freak shows all using the court to promote their branch of religious fear grifting!
I’m telling you now, it will be the Church of Scientology who abuse this first!
Look, again, for the billionth time, there are a plenty of good philosophical and intellectual reasons to hate religion, and in a secular liberal democracy, we should be able to hate religion!
If a Religious Hate Speech Law is passed, it will cause bizarre interpretations as every fringe religious fruit loop fear grifter plays the system for credibility and recruitment purposes.
Besides the fact that the State shouldn’t be criminalising people for hating religion, this will not protect the people we think we are protecting!
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Kiri’s wife, RNZ announcer Mani Dunlop will say it’s OK, and all will be good.
Misogynist troll Alan M?
Or homophobic troll Alan M?
We don’t come to your workplace and knock the sailors’ cocks out of your mouth.
Put you and your antiquated prejudices in the closet, get in behind, and pull yourself into oblivion!
@TMS
Misandrist troll.
Take your contemporary prejudice back to Twitter.
100% – TMS is clearly looking to take ‘man hatin’ to new heights.
The misogynist smeller. Paranoia may have it’s own sad place, but your aggressive crudity serves no constructive purpose. Shame on you.
Its hilarious TMS that the following comments attacking you on your own comment, is not seen as hypocrisy. So much for ” free speech”.
@nsc
Calling out prejudice is right.
Demonstrating prejudice whilst calling it out in others is not right.
Here are some pearls to clutch.
TMS had the right to air her little prejudices, and others had the right to respond to them. Why not ? Who’s to say who should be silenced ?
( Apart from the government, and a whole extremist department set up just for that purpose.)
Scientology describes itself as the study and handling of the spirit in relationship to itself, others, and all of life. Scientologists also believe that people have innate, yet suppressed, power and ability which can be regained if cleared of unwanted behavioural patterns and discomforts.
Scientology beliefs and practices – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Scientolog
Well I think we have done the right preparations to find our suppressed powers and abilities
when cleared of unwanted behavioural patterns and discomforts through the legislation that our government has in mind controlling whatever unsatisfactory behavioural patterns that our leaders decide, discern and discover.
NO DEAL, this proposed law change is insidious at best and demonic at worse.
Is this yet another tedious distraction to draw our attention away from the fact that our politics is still neoliberal and neoliberalism is really a fascist capitalism which has had our politics in a strangle hold for the last 38 years?
It’s another one of those attempts to create some sort of legacy for this govt and Jacinda. “CHC Call, Hate Speech, Gun Laws, Co-Gov. I’m proud of what we (I Jacinda) achieved.” Will look great over there in NYC and Greta will love it, but how does that make NZ a more prosperous place and how does that generate all the money needed for all the massive taxpayer-funded social programmes?
Totally agree.
Well, wasn’t that a total fizzer!
They’ve spent the last 5 years threatening to ban hate speech and every time they put pen to paper to actually draft the law, they found:
a) They couldn’t define hate speech
b) There was an outcry from the public.
LOL – exactly as I thought
Yes Andrew and sadly Kiri who looked like an up and coming politician of promise has joined the long list of failures.
Like Don Brash, Todd Muller, Judith Collins, Soimon Brudges, Jami-Lee Ross?
Did I miss any BTF?
Heaps but never mind.
You cant beat the ‘God Squad’. They will beat you! Born agains are the worst of them and you know who has a pretty good following and this bs will just galvanise them all.
Religious belief and affiliation is obviously not immutable so a strange thing to “protect” from genuine discussion. Mind you, so we’re told, neither is gender. Even ethnicity is now decided on what you “identify” as – whatever that means. Oh what a tangled web…..
Very well put David George.
They have done this because they want National to support it. Remember it was National that refused to get rid of the blasphemy law.
Labour got rid of it and now in response to the attack on the people at the mosque is restoring it and including Islam and Judaism.
It is a fundamental betrayal of secular democracy by Labour, as it allows religious hate speech against the unbeliever – only one side of that debate gets suppressed. Worse it allows religion to make hate speech against people based on their sexuality and sex (affirm the supremacy of the male within their patriarchal tradition) while religion is under protection.
Those whom you cannot criticise rule over you.
Another demonstration of incompetence.
The politics of it though are obvious – Labour feared the perception that the woke would cancel people over their exercise of free speech – so they restricted the cancellation of free speech to those outside of the three patriarchal religions and left all the power to censor to the conservative right. And dared NACT top oppose that.
But such politics is not good law. And it will annoy the secular voter, especially women.
What they lack is basic competence.
After the mosque attack
1. adding to the criminal law (threats to individuals) threats to groups of people based on their race, ethnicity, origin, sex, gender ID, sexuality, religion.
2. to the hate speech law a toughening up of the standard to that of incitement to commit a hate crime and then added the categories (race, ethnicity and origin) sex, gender ID, sexuality and religion.
That could have been done in the months afterwards, as speedily as the gun law changes.
No one regards threats to others as an acceptable part of free speech and nor would many support incitement to a hate crime as an acceptable part of free speech.
The changes to the firearms law were done speedily because they were mostly written before the mosque shootings. The changes have been on the Police wishlist for a very long time, just waiting for a suitable “event” to make ramming them through, possible.
Your suggested law changes make sense, which is probably why they weren’t implemented and instead the government decided to pursue thought crimes & fictional Nazis.
Threats of, and incitement to, violence are already illegal – regardless of the category or identity of the target. National and ACT have unequivocally said they will not support the extension/criminilisation of the “likely to incite contempt towards a religion” aspect.
As I said above, the Brian Tamakis of this world will be chomping at the bit to lay complaints against their perceived vilification should Labour be fool enough to pass this BS law.
The gun law changed have also turned into a fiasco.
Firstly, the gun licence renewal scheme turned into a farce with a large proportion of firearms licences expiring and the cops not having the resources to update them. They’ve been forced into giving everyone a blanket renewal.
Secondly the much-vaunted firearms register is not happening and likely will never happen. The government was warned by Nicole McKee that it was impractical and virtually impossible to implement because the Trudeau government had tried the exact same thing a few years earlier, burnt billions of dollars trying and eventually gave up. The cops don’t have an unblemished record when it comes to software development. Anyone remember INCIS?
This is what you get when you take the advice of the police union.
So SPC doesn’t that just show what a bunch of pricks National are then? Didn’t want to get rid of a blasphemy law but now won’t support including religion in the hate speech legislation!
Don’t get me wrong I don’t support adding religion but just as with co governance National are full of shit. They will switch positions to suit a poll and are every bit as unreliable as Labour.
Headlien re-written:
Labour’s religious hate speech law will lose them the election.
Not necessarily, if the Nats support it too.
Thanks Sour Kraut.
Keep on commenting from your North-Shore, Afrikaner villa.
It’s more likely that Nat-Trolls like yourself and your ilk will help lose the 2023 election in NZ, just like Trump-backed candidates lost big-time in the US.
Democratically-minded pKiwis, who just want to get along with others, have an innate sense of social justice, abhor your brand of racist white-male-supremacy, fascism, misogyny, homophobia and hate-speech.
Your NACT-trolls haven’t even got a Marjorie Taylor-Greene nutjob-Karen to roll out as your ‘softer-side’ now that Judith Collins has been knee-capped for being ‘too extreme’?
Good luck SK.
Exactly. It also shows that ACT, National, Sour Kraut , Bob the First, Andrew, David George by association etc, promote hate speech.
I expect that some laws will change in favour of the interests which are in line with the agenda of Scientology over the next five years or so, domestically and internationally.
One reason for this may be that Scientology can boast of having some high profile adherents. As strange as some of their beliefs may be, these people are influential.
Another reason for this may be that would events are of interest to different religions, in particular Scientology. This may incorporate weather events, wars or rumours of war, changes in political office in different countries throughout the world.
That’s very interesting. It doesn’t surprise me though, it stank and Jacinda is well known for talking up a storm and delivering a whimper. The wound is all but cauterised!
But will they do the same with 3 Waters? 88000 submissions, some new record and I can guess they are not complimentary either. But only 4 days to hear them. 10000 people want to be heard via oral submissions. But they won’t be heard. You could say democracy is dead already in Aotearoa! I get Willie couldn’t care less if passing this into law destroyed the Labour Party, it’s do or die, but it will if they don’t tone that down as well!
Where’s our soon to be erstwhile PM on that wound if she doesn’t heal it? Or that of her many MP’s?
Jah bless
The most disturbing thing is that Kiri Allen now sounds exactly like Jacinda. Listened to her on the radio and it was like OMG it’s Jacinda v2!!!!
The Stalinist is not happy: Labour grovels to the bigots. At least he can back to abusing TERFS now.
I checked out your link Tom. That No Right Turn person, the one wanting to stamp down on free speech has, as his byline:”Irredeemably Liberal”. Confused? Hypocrite? Idiot?
I’ve just watched Monty Pythons Life of Brian again just incase it gets banned…
It was already banned in several countries when it first came out. Ireland not so surprising, but also Norway.
Is transgenderism a religion?
Oh yes. And so is rugby football, so beware, beware. Even the naming of your cat can have you called out by the extremist speech female at Victoria University, so call your cat in silence, wear a gag in the company of neighbours who look informant sort of persons, and tell Mama to knit without any patterns.
The apparent support of the legacy media for stronger anti speech laws is surprising; have they no awareness of how this will impact them?
With “hate speech” essentially defined by the target (or someone offended on their behalf) the media campaigns against, for example, Gloriavale or destiny Church, are contentious and likely illegal.
I don’t know about Scientology but I can imagine Brian Tamaki having no hesitation in laying complaints for (what he perceives as) religious based hate.
Genius Kiri!
Tamaki won’t be protected by this law, neither will the scientologists. Look more closely at the big Labour donors paying Ardern to adopt the IHRA, which defines opposition to Palestinians being murdered by Israel as anti-semitism- that’s the same folks behind this change.
social media trained lab strategists realise ‘stuff is complicated’