Ani O'Brien: No to Blasphemy Laws - people have rights, religions do not

The long campaign to criminalise criticism of Islam continues to demand blasphemy laws

The Law Commission Hara ngākau kino | Review of hate crime law has surprised me. In an area crowded with panic, symbolism, and bad drafting, it has refused to solve the wrong problem. In Hara ngākau kino, it concluded that New Zealand should keep the current sentencing model, under which hostile motivation aggravates an existing offence, rather than create standalone hate-crime offences. It recommended practical reforms instead, including a hate-crime flag at charging stage, formal recording in court records, express judicial statements when hostility is proved, broader coverage for associated victims and bystanders, the addition of sex to the statutory list, better guidance and training, and annual publication of police and court data.

David Harvey: The Elephant in the Room

The podcast “The Elephant” is an online video series that tackles the conversations New Zealanders often avoid.

It dives into big, uncomfortable questions, looking beyond the echo chambers in search of a fearless and honest debate. In episode 10, hosts recently released, Miriama Kamo and Mark Crysell ask ‘When does free speech become hate speech?’

The promotional material for the programme states:

Bob Edlin: Minister is admonished for not mentioning the muting of Maori media.....

Minister is admonished for not mentioning the muting of Maori media – but budget cuts have been bruising for ALL media

Remember what Budget 2025 did for the news media?

The government provided $6.4 million over four years to hire journalists in heartland New Zealand for reporting on councils and courts.

Penn Raine: No woman, no cry

Last Tuesday Jonathan Ayling, of the Free Speech Union, met with the Assistant Commissioner of Police to discuss why a previous undertaking to cease Non-Criminal Hate Incident (NCHI) police training has been reneged on and is continuing despite there being no law to support it.

The outline of the extensive training manual can be found on the NZ Police home page (Advice and Services/Advice for victims/Hate motivated crime/The Weave). There is plenty in these pages to shock, not least the clarification of ‘hate/hostility’ which, according to NZ Police is the same as ‘bias/prejudice’. Notice ‘hate’ is equated with ‘bias’ which no dictionary would consider as synonymous but according to the police manual would allow mere negative feelings to be categorised as a stronger and more dangerous emotion.

Rebekah Barnett: Proposed Hate Speech Laws Abound in Australia

Victorians could go to prison for up to five years for hate speech under new anti-vilification laws proposed by the Victorian Government.

Under the proposed laws, it would be an offence to “incite hatred against, serious contempt for, revulsion towards or severe ridicule” of a person or group based on their sex, gender identity, or race.

David Bell: The Right to Speak Evil

Words can harm. The childhood saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is obviously untrue. Words bring ruin and despair, drive people to suicide, and foment massacres and war. They are used to justify the enslavement of nations, and the genocide of entire ethnic groups. This is exactly why we must all, always, be free to speak them.

Professor Jerry Coyne: Countering objections to free speech

Greg Lukianoff is, as most of you know, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He’s also a lawyer and co-author, with Jon Haidt, of the excellent book The Coddling of the American Mind.   Yesterday in Quillette, Lukianoff wrote a piece that many of us may find useful, outlining how to give comebacks to flimsy arguments against free speech. The advice is especially useful now that both extreme Left and extreme Right are finding reasons to curtail speech, the former through demonizing certain opinions that go against Righthink and the latter through banning or censoring books. I think the article below is free, so have a look.

Rodney Hide: The New Tyrants

The difficulty of politics now is that the Left have detached from reality. They believe:

• Trans women are women

• We have ten years to save the planet

• That Māori didn’t cede Sovereignty

• That we should Trust the science

• That the river is a person.

Graham J Noble: Killing Free Speech to Keep Us Safe?

Politicians and bureaucrats always seem to use the same excuses to justify censoring free speech and limiting fundamental rights: It’s for our own good. It must be done to protect us, to keep us safe, and to maintain national security. But what government – regardless of how democratic it may claim to be – hasn’t eventually become obsessed with increased security and control, ever more reluctant to allow free speech or other basic liberties?

Penn Raine: They’re listening to us

In a recent interview Mark Mitchell was asked about our police force having special lessons to recognise hate speech. The two examples the public has seen from the teaching module, ‘Kiwi not iwi’, and ‘There are only two genders’, give us an idea of the sinister direction of the forces lining up against wrong think.

Disaffected police whistle blowers who hold  the odd view that they would be more useful going after drug lords, fraudsters, and murderers, have said there also exists a ‘hate hub’ where people who have hurt feelings can lodge a complaint. Wrong speakers can then expect to have their social media accounts scrutinised, phone records sought and to be interviewed with a close focus on their use of pronouns.

Where this might go next is a mystery because there are no laws against offending people. Not yet.

John McLean: New Zealand police perfidity

A Police Force that’s lost the plot (and the citizenry)

There’s been increasing coverage of New Zealand’s pitiful and misguided current Police “Force” - coverage of the Police’s unwillingness to deal with actual physical violence and property crime; criminalizing and annihilating good men for invented “psychological violence”; preferential policing based on perceived “oppressed” societal status.

Simon O'Connor: Three reasons.....

The Greens chanting terrible slogans causes at lot of offence but it also provides three reasons as to why they are wrong - and hypocritical - about so many things.

We once again have Green Party leader, Chlöe Swarbrick, proudly screaming the ‘from the river to the sea …’ slogan from the steps of Parliament. You can try and dance on the head of a pin about what this suggests, but it unambiguously means the removal of all Jews from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. She proudly screams it, repeatedly, despite being told it’s meaning and implications.

JC: “I Lift My Gun, I Let the Shots Do the Talking”

“I lift my gun, I let the shots do the talking”

Peeni Henare, New Zealand Labour Party

Once again our so-called national day was hijacked. We were treated to aggression and fighting words and violence. Threats of guns and cannons. A malevolent, three-headed taniwha. Lions. Spiders.

Peeni Henare said, “I lift my gun, I let the shots do the talking.”

Clive Bibby: Mobsters by any other name

Lushington Brady writes an incisive piece about the anti-semitic hate speech that is fast becoming common place throughout the western world. 

He identifies capitals and major cities (including one or two of our own) where rallies have been held that allow high profile politicians (often government members) to spout their shrill, targeted chants without fear of being held to account. 

It is a sad commentary of what we have become. 

NZCPR Podcast: Media Muzzle

The government is proposing major changes to the control of free speech. 

Lushington D. Brady: Not the “Hate” They Were Hoping For

The vast bulk of hate on Facebook targets white men

When Planet of the Apes’ displaced astronaut, Taylor, begs for an answer to the mystery of just what planet he’s landed on, wise monkey Dr Zaius warns him: Don’t look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.

When he saw the Statue of Liberty in ruins, Taylor certainly did not like it. The truth is a confronting thing. That’s why so many people prefer hiding in a bubble of comforting illusions rather than confronting the harsh truth.

Especially the woke left.

Josie Pagani: Why banning hate speech doesn’t get rid of the hate

The things that make you feel good in politics don't necessary do good. But boy, are they morally satisfying.

Legislating to stop hate speech. Using a “hecklers’ veto” to run Posie Parker out of town. Victories against hate. Job done.

I've done my share. My student comrades were on a high after we heckled and shut down a National Front meeting outside our UK Labour Party conference in the 1980s. We didn’t change minds. Just the venue.

Shutting down people who are hateful feels right. But counter-intuitively, banning hateful words is not the best way to stop the hate.

Karl du Fresne: On free speech and where not to find it

The following is a talk given by Karl du Fresne at a screening of the Free Speech Union documentary ‘Last Words’.

I would like to start with a few words about so-called hate speech:

Hate is a very powerful word. If you hate someone you want to do them harm and possibly even kill them. I don’t think New Zealand is a hateful society. The perpetrator of the Christchurch atrocities, which have been cited as justification for hate speech laws, was an Australian. Speaking for myself, I can truthfully say I don’t hate anyone. Well, maybe Vladimir Putin when he murders defenceless civilians, but I can’t think of anyone else.

What is characterised as hate speech is more often simply speech that upsets or offends someone. But there’s no human right not to be upset, or to be protected from having your values and beliefs questioned and criticised. So I think it would be helpful to get rid of that loaded term “hate speech” because it’s a misnomer.

Graham Adams: It’s open season on white men

Tusiata Avia’s provocative poem opens the door wide to more robust opinions being expressed in public — but only if you’re brown.

Poet Tusiata Avia — with the help of Stuff’s editors — and Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi have exposed the double standards of what is considered to be acceptable speech in New Zealand.

After Waititi recently posted an image of Captain James Cook being killed in Hawaii in 1779, Avia extended the celebration of his murder to killing his descendants.

Waititi wrote on his Facebook page on Valentine’s Day:

James Kierstead: On the spectrum

For all those who were hoping that the state would finally get tough on hate, the government’s dialling down of its ambitious hate speech reforms must have come as a crushing disappointment.

All is not lost, though. Justice Minister Kiri Allan recently issued a legislative statement for a new bill that would still limit Kiwis’ speech, if less comprehensively than the original proposals.

What’s more, Allan’s statement also spelled out some important principles that make clear (if it wasn’t clear already) how important it is that we clamp down on New Zealanders expressing themselves.