“Hate speech” laws are back. New Zealand should say no.

MEDIA RELEASE | 22 January 2025 | For immediate release

In the wake of Australia passing hate law reforms late Tuesday following the Bondi terror attack, advocates for hate speech laws have been re-energised in New Zealand.

Since 2021, successive New Zealand governments have started, paused, and then stopped policy and legislative work on hate speech.

Race Relations Commissioner, and founding member of the Free Speech Union, Dr Melissa Derby has suggested there is room to expand New Zealand’s laws, describing the issue as “complex and nuanced”.

PILLAR Executive Director Nathan Seiuli says that framing is exactly how the public is softened up for bad legislation.

“Calling the hate speech issue ‘complex and nuanced’ convinces people that the legislation will be likewise ‘complex and nuanced’. To the everyday person that’s how it this legislation will appear. In reality, hate speech laws are vague by design and easily reinterpreted by whoever holds power next,” Seiuli said.

“Once the state claims authority to decide what speech is acceptable, the boundaries do not stay fixed. They expand. They shift. They are enforced unevenly. And they are used to silence opponents.”

Seiuli said there is no historical evidence that hate speech laws produce greater social cohesion, prosperity, or public safety.

“If New Zealand wants stronger communities, we should protect the freedoms that allow disagreements to surface, be challenged, and be resolved in public. We do not build trust by criminalising speech. We build fear,” he said.

Mr Seiuli said minorities are safer in a society that protects free speech than in one that promises protection from speech.

“Minorities often have the least political capital. When speech rules change, they are the first to lose the ability to speak back. Freedom of speech is not the threat. It is the safeguard,” he said.

PILLAR has predicted that calls for hate speech and hate crime expansions would reappear in the lead up to the election.

“We are prepared to oppose these proposals at every step, and we will do so with the backing of freedom loving Kiwis who do not want New Zealand governed by fear, fragility, and censorship,” Seiuli said.

ENDS

Media contact | Nathan Seiuli | nathan@fsu.nz