by Geoffrey Churchman
Last week the Newsroom website on this page said it had obtained the Cabinet Paper put forward by Justice Minister Chris Faafoi showing what the Government has in store to “protect” us from so-called ‘hate speech’ and gives some of the intentions.
It shifts the current speech laws from the Human Rights Act to the Crimes Act, with up to three years in jail for “abusing or insulting communications”, or “inciting disharmony”.
The intention also is to make many more types of discrimination subject to the law: including ‘hatred’ against religious belief, and even political belief.
“The scope of the [existing] provisions is too narrow — they do not protect groups such as religious groups or rainbow communities that are also targets of hate speech; the penalty and location of the criminal offence does not reflect the seriousness of the behaviour; the complaints process can be difficult to understand and access; and trans, gender diverse and intersex people are not explicitly protected by the Act”.
As well as criminal liability, the standard for civil liability would be expanded under the proposals to include cases where there has been “incitement to discrimination”, not just “incitement to hatred,” says Newsroom.
Unsurprsingly, civil libertarians like the Free Speech Coalition are appalled by these revelations and been swift to react. “Laws against ‘inciting disharmony’ sound like something out of communist China, not a western democracy,” says Dr David Cummin.
As has been said on Waikanae Watch before, it doesn’t seem to occur to Dear Leader and her minions that all this could actually become a double-edged sword and used against the Hard Left for the way they conduct themselves. Some of the vilest and most aggressive attacks we’ve seen have actually come from Labourites; last year we sent a complaint about the behaviour of their candidate Janet Holborow to the Labour Party’s HQ, as did someone else.
You may wonder when the Jacinda government can’t even satisfactorily build basic houses for people, how it is going to build enough jails to incacerate all the people who say things the government doesn’t like. If they are determined to go ahead with this, perhaps Jacinda and Co. should quickly access the construction drawings of the concentration camps and gulags created by totalitarian regimes during the 20th century and make a start on them.
We could make a meal of the proposed crime “incitement to discrimination” as that would cover all the separatist agendas of the tribal elite. Every time they ask for a race-based privilege it would be “incitement to discrimination (against the rest of us”). Ha, ha! This government is not at all smart while the slut who runs it amounts to nothing more than the sum total of her many prejudices – against employers (the unreal minimum wage that is driving the lowly paid out of work), landlords (the expensive measures against them is driving up rents so that there are more and more homeless on the streets), white men in general (hence the ridiculous appointments of people like Bar Code as Foreign Minister) and, of course, Christians for whom she seems to have a special hatred. While she is driving people on to the streets homeless her heartless and corrupt govt has just given $100 million of taxpayers’ money to the filthy rich Amazon company to make a film in NZ, the minister saying that, if NZers want a film industry, it has to be govt. subsidised! Such are the dumb socialists that are now in charge of this once wonderful country.
John McLean
You will top the communist bimbo’s hit list for that one!
As usual the brilliant John McLean is right on this one!!
Amended. We could make a meal of the proposed crime “incitement to discrimination” as that would cover all the separatist agendas of the tribal elite. Every time they ask for a race-based privilege it would be “incitement to discrimination (against the rest of us”). Ha, ha! This government is not at all smart while the fool who runs it amounts to nothing more than the sum total of her many prejudices – against employers (the unreal minimum wage that is driving the lowly paid out of work), landlords (the expensive measures against them is driving up rents so that there are more and more homeless on the streets), white men in general (hence the ridiculous appointments of people like Bar Code as Foreign Minister) and, of course, Christians for whom she seems to have a special hatred. While she is driving people on to the streets homeless her heartless and corrupt govt has just given $100 million of taxpayers’ money to the filthy rich Amazon company to make a film in NZ, the minister saying that, if NZers want a film industry, it has to be govt. subsidised! Such are the dumb socialists that are now in charge of this once wonderful country.
John McLean
Worse than the lolly sramble money that the Jacinda government is throwing at overseas billionaires — not just Bezos, witness the America’s Cup owners – is the aggregate of how much has been thrown at their fav people everywhere and we are now confronted by a $100 billion debt with practically nothing to show for it. Needed infrastructure? ‘Nope, that’s for the Nats’.
The criteria that determines hate speech, ought to include expression of hatred and threats. Anything spoken or written that is true, whether or not it casts a bad light on one group or another, should not be considered a crime. The distortion of historical truth, to enhance or denigrate, amounts to lies and should be considered offensive.
A viewpoint that deserves consideration but will not get it from the lackeys of our communist bimbo.