John McLean: Treason, Sedition........Hate Speech

What are these Legal Leviathans, exactly?

In the turbulent seas battering New Zealand, no Leviathan serpents are more ideologically laden and hard to harpoon than “Treason”, “Sedition” and “Hate Speech”. These salty barbs are being bandied around with increasingly gay abandon.

Let’s rise from the inky depths of our ignorance, snatch Poseidon’s trident, skewer the meanings of this trio of terms and breach the surface out into Enlightenment.

Sedition

Broadly speaking, sedition is conduct - particularly speech - that incites people to rebel against the authority of the State. Until quite recently, New Zealand criminalized sedition. The crimes were against any “seditious intention”, being one or more of the following intentions:

* Bring into hatred or contempt, or to excite disaffection against, our Monarch (including our Governor General), or the Government of New Zealand, or the administration of justice

* Incite the public or any persons or any class of persons to attempt to procure - otherwise than by lawful means - the alteration of any matter affecting the Constitution, laws, or Government of New Zealand

* Incite, procure, or encourage violence, lawlessness, or disorder

* Incite, procure, or encourage the commission of any offence that is prejudicial to public safety or to the maintenance of public order

* Excite such hostility or ill will between different classes of persons as may endanger public safety

New Zealand’s Parliament removed sedition as a crime on 1 January 2008.

The impetus for the decriminalization of sedition was the conviction of political activist Tim Selwyn for sedition and criminal damage. Testy Tim got terribly upset about Helen Clark’s Labour Government passing legislation extinguishing claims that people with any Maori ancestry own New Zealand’s foreshore and seabed.

Tim threw an axe through the window of Clark’s electorate office and distributed seditious pamphlets, like the following:

Click to view

The sedition for which Tim was convicted was for publications intending to "incite, procure, or encourage violence, lawlessness, or disorder".

The New Zealand First Party - in 2008 headed of course by current deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters - was the only party to vote against the decriminalization of sedition. New Zealand First felt that some sort of anti-sedition law is necessary to fight terrorism.

Decriminalization of sedition roughly coincided with the trial of the so-called “Urewera Four” for various alleged offences. The prosecution resulted from New Zealand State surveillance of the four wannabe Walter Mitty revolutionaries. The trial revealed such seditious gems as the following except from an article written by one of the Urewera Four, Emily Bailey, who – in addition to saying she wanted to invade Parliament and blow up communication towers and being convicted of firearm charges – wrote:

I want a revolution of behaviour, revolution of power structures, revolution of the global capitalist economy. I want revolution of cities. I want revolution of everything. A world without oppression, a world of liberty for all, a world of communication and negotiation for resolutions that suit all and that work long term

The merits of sedition laws are obviously closely associated with attitudes to free speech.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi relishes his seditious free speech, with such crackers as:

We continuously allow this House to assume that it has sovereignty — and absolute superiority — over Māori

Today, we made a declaration in the name of our mokopuna that we would no longer allow the assumption of this Parliament to have superiority or sovereignty over te Iwi Māori

Rawiri’s wife – and Māori Party President John Tamihere’s daughter - Dr Kiri Tamihere-Waititi also plunges head first into seas of sedition. Self-deregistered clinical psychologist Tamihere-Waititi’s recent rants have included:

“…start thinking about how we’re going to take our country back too. We’re continuing to subscribe to a model that was designed to assimilate to continue to colonise and to keep us as second class citizens in our own country…Just imagine…if we were all on the same page. Can you imagine the might and the power that we would have? We could overthrow any government. We could do whatever the f*** we wanted…we can just come together and launch our own full-on attack. Our own agenda without permission, without the need to ask for anything from anyone. But that we assert, assert our rights under the Treaty of Waitangi to do what we need to do for our people.”

Tamihere-Waititi would do well to take heed of the biblical adage “Physician, heal thyself”.

I’m a free speech fan, so don’t favour criminalization of sedition. Best to let the seditionists reveal themselves, and to keep them in plain sight.

Treason

Unlike sedition, treason is still a crime in New Zealand. For present political purposes, a New Zealand citizen commits treason who:

* kills or wounds or does grievous bodily harm to the Governor General (the position currently occupied by the vacuous Cindy Kiro) or imprisons or restrains her

* goes to war against New Zealand

* conspires with anyone to do either of those things

* attempts to commit treason

* is an accessory to treason

* knowing that someone is about to commit treason, fails without reasonable excuse to tell the Police or take other action to prevent the treason

Treason is therefore all about going to real-world war against an incumbent government, or conspiring or being an accessory to such insurrection, or failing without reasonable excuse to tell the cops or prevent the treason.

Maori Party Co-Leader and Member of Parliament Rawiri Waititi calls the current Government a “Pakeha Government”. He brazenly calls for the dismantling of the current New Zealand Government, the creation of a separate “Maori Parliament” and differential civil and political rights based on whether or not you have Maori racial ancestry. For his radical rantings, some have accused Rawiri Waititi of “Treason”. But Waititi is probably not genuinely calling for treasonous war. He’s just a pathetic performative show-pony, trying to appeal to his racist constituency.

Hate Speech

New Zealand has a smattering of laws proscribing so-called “Hate Speech”. Rawiri and his awful wedded wife Kiri are flirting with hate speech, and almost certainly crossing the line. Not that the Human Rights Commission or Courts will do anything about them.

The Human Rights Act makes exciting racial disharmony a crime. Under that Act, it is unlawful and also a criminal offence for anyone to publicly do or say anything “threatening, abusive or insulting” that is “likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons in or who may be coming to New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group of persons”. A prosecution for exciting racial disharmony cannot be brought without the consent of New Zealand’s Attorney General.

In addition, a person commits an offence under the Summary Proceedings Act who “in or within hearing of a public place…uses any threatening or insulting words and is reckless whether any person is alarmed or insulted by those words”. That offence could clearly cover racial “hate speech”.

Those unschooled in the Weird Ways of Woke may be tempted to conclude that Rawiri and Kiri are clearly committing Human Rights Act crimes with the racist things they say about “Pakehas”. But the Human Rights Commission is clear and steadfast on these matters – a Maori or Pasifika person cannot be racist against white-skinned people. Simple as that.

Whaipooti

In response to complaints about Kiri’s recent rant, the Commission’s “shared leader” Julia Whaipooti announced “Maori are responding to a rhetoric that doesn’t seem to recognise our existence”, while another anonymous Human Rights Commission staffer patronizingly pontificated “However, it is not enough that people find comments offensive or controversial – they must have the potential to cause or exacerbate serious ethnic tension or unrest. Courts have ruled that the threshold to meet section 61 is very high. The courts have also emphasized the importance of protecting freedom of expression under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.”

Quite how Kiri and Rawiri’s frightful shite can be regarded as not having “the potential to cause or exacerbate serious ethnic tension or unrest” is beyond belief. Whatever else the Human Rights Commission has morphed into, the last thing the Commission is now about is colour-blind universal human rights.

John McLean is a citizen typist and enthusiastic amateur who blogs at John's Substack where this article was sourced.