Both National and ACT have made clear their opposition to this, but until October the Labour+Green parties have the numbers to made it law.

“The bill aims to improve protections for faith-based groups under the provisions of the Human Rights Act 1993 which make speech that is likely to excite hostility unlawful.”

The change is one part of a package sought by the parties in this government who wish to suppress all criticism of government policy, and is nothing to do with “hate”.

• To conflate questioning the expedited granting of a gun license to Brenton Tarrant with Islamophobia is nonsense.

• We should be able to criticise the leadership of major religions, or the culture of funny little sects

• Former PM Jacinda Ardern recently conflated questioning the climate change narrative with terrorism, in a speech to the UN.

• The idea of “protected groups” and everyone else fair game is obnoxious. The very people promoting hate speech laws are often the biggest peddlers of hate. Members of the audience, including Muslim families, walked out of a post Christchurch vigil, because they didn’t want to hear the diatribes from the Green Party organiser about how we are all white supremacists (blogger Barbara McKenzie escaped to Iran that year, where everyone was far more sympathetic).