Justice Minister Kiri Allan has watered down Labour's proposed hate speech law reforms. Photo / Mark Mitchell
OPINION:
The Labour Government is currently fighting on multiple fronts that threaten its popularity in the run-up to next year’s election. Therefore, when a call had to be made about whether to push through divisive and poorly-designed hate speech laws, there really was no decision for Justice Minister Kiri Allan to make – the reforms had to be severely watered down.
On Saturday Allan announced that the Government had decided to ditch the majority of its hate speech reforms. Of six proposed changes to the law, only one will proceed – adding the category of “religion” to groups currently protected under the Human Rights Act.
The Government had previously been keen to go much further than this. There is an argument that the current definition of hate speech in the law makes prosecutions too difficult because the threshold for the courts to convict is far too high. The Royal Commission on the Christchurch Mosque Shootings argued that the current law “does not provide a credible foundation for prosecution”.
The Labour Government, therefore, proposed last year a thorough reform of hate speech laws. But what they came up with was full of serious problems, provoking a backlash.
This was most vividly exposed when both the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice were unable to explain the reforms to the public. Labour politicians...
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