Karl du Fresne: RNZ's non-exposé of the year

It’s hard to imagine a more spectacularly pointless exercise than RNZ’s “investigation” of the language used by National leader Christopher Luxon.

Pointless, that is, unless the objective was to discredit Luxon by presenting him as a reciter of repetitive, predictable and boring election-year rhetoric – or worse, as an unscrupulous dog-whistler trying to exploit public anxieties.

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.