GUEST BLOG: Mick Hall – Secretive terror laws review targets protest and dissent
A leaked document has revealed secretive plans to revise terror laws in New Zealand so that people can be charged over statements deemed to constitute material support for a proscribed organisation.
It shows the government also wants to widen the criteria for proscribing organisations to include groups that are judged to ‘facilitate’ or ‘promote and encourage’ terrorist acts.
The changes would see the South Pacific nation falling in line with increasingly repressive Western countries like the UK, where scores of independent journalists and anti-genocide protestors have been arrested and charged under terrorism laws in recent months.
The consultation document, handed to the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties (NZCCL), reveals the government has consulted with a limited number of unnamed groups this year over plans to legally redefine what material support involves, so that public statements or gestures involving insignia like flags can lead to charges if construed as support for proscribed groups.
As part of a proposal to revise the Terrorism Suppression Act, the document suggests the process for designating organisations as terror groups should be changed by “expanding the threshold to enable more modern types of entities to be designated, such as those that ‘facilitate’ or ‘promote and encourage’ terrorist acts.”
The Ministry of Justice has been contacted in an attempt to ascertain which groups it has been consulting with and why it believed the changes were necessary.
NZCCL chairman Thomas Beagle told Mick Hall In Context his group was concerned the proposed changes were a further attempt to limit the rights of New Zealanders to engage in political protest.
“When you look at the proposal to expand the Terrorism Suppression Act, alongside the Police and IPCA conspiring to propose a law change to ban political protest without government permission, you really have to wonder what’s going on,” he said.
A report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) in February proposed to give police the right to ban protests if they believed there was a high chance of public disorder and threats to public safety.
That would potentially mean bans on Palestinian solidarity protests if far right counter protestors posed a threat of violent confrontation.
The stand-alone legislation would put New Zealand in line with other Five Eyes and NATO-aligned security jurisdictions such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Beagle points out proposed changes to terror laws would suppress freedom of speech and further undermine freedom of assembly and the right to protest.
“We’ve seen what’s happening with the state’s abuse of terrorism suppression laws in the UK and are horrified that they have sunk so far and so quickly,” he said.
Over 100 people were arrested across the UK on suspicion of supporting Palestine Action, a non-violent protest group proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the British Government earlier this month.
Social media clips showed pensioners aggressively arrested while attending rallies in Liverpool, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol and Truro over the weekend.
Independent journalists and academics have also faced state repression under the UK’s Terrorism Act.
Among those targeted was Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley, who had his home raided and devices seized in October last year as part of the opaque counter-terror drive ‘Operation Incessantness’.
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Independent journalist Asa Winstanley (Photo: R Witts Photography)
In May, the country’s Central Criminal Court ruled the raid was unlawful.
Journalist Richard Medhurst has had a terror investigation hanging over his head since being detained at Heathrow Airport in August last year and charged under section 8 of the Terrorism Act. Activist and independent journalist Sarah Wilkinson had her house raided in the same month.
Others have faced similar intimidation and threats of jail. In November 2024, Jewish academic Haim Bresheeth was charged after police alleged he had expressed support for a ‘proscribed organisation’ during a speech outside the London residence of the Israeli ambassador to the UK.
Meanwhile, dozens of members of Palestine Action are in jail facing terror charges. The vast majority are being held on remand where they may wait two years before going to trial – a common state tactic to take activists off the street and incarcerate them, knowing the chances of conviction are slim when they eventually go to court.
The document says the Government wants to progress “targeted amendments” to the Act, creating or amending offences “to capture contemporary behaviours and activities of concern” like “public expressions of support for a terrorist act or designated entities, for example by showing insignia or distributing propaganda or instructional material.”
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Protesters highlight the proscription of Palestine Action outside the British Embassy at The Hague on July 20. No arrests were made following 80 arrests by Dutch police the week before. (Photo: Defend Our Juries)
It suggests that the existing process for proscribing an organisation is slow and cumbersome, noting that: “Specific provisions need to be followed to designate entities not on a UN list, but the decision-making process is lengthy and the designation period is short. This impacts timely decision-making and the usefulness of designation as a tool to prevent terrorism.”
It proposes to improve “the timeliness of the process, by considering changes to who the decision-maker is” and extending the renewal period from three to five years.
The document suggests consulting the Attorney-General over designation-related decisions to ensure legal requirements are met may not be required and questions whether the designation process requiring the Prime Minister to review decisions twice is necessary. It asks whether others, like the Foreign Minister, should be involved in the decision-making process.
Beagle believes the secretive proposals pose a threat to New Zealand’s liberal democracy.
“Political protest is an important part of New Zealand’s history,” he said.
“Whether it’s the environment, worker’s rights, feminism, Māori issues, homosexual law reform or any number of other issues, political protest has had a big part in forming what Aotearoa New Zealand is today. It’s a right protected by New Zealand’s Bill of Rights and is a critical part of being a functioning democracy.”
The move forms part of a wider trend of moves to intimidate the public and close down dissent and criticism, particularly among academics and journalists, over New Zealand’s foreign policy, now closely aligned with NATO and US interests.
The government is also widening the definition of foreign interference in a way that could see people who ‘should have known’ that they were being used by a foreign State to undermine New Zealand’s interests prosecuted.
The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill, which passed its first reading in Parliament on November 19, would criminalise the act of foreign interference, while also increasing powers of unwarranted searches by authorities.
The Bill is effectively a reintroduction of the country’s old colonial sedition laws inherited from Britain, the broadness of the law having allowed it to be used against communists, trade unionists and indigenous rights activists.
Mick Hall is an independent NZ Journalist who has angered the establishment. He writes at Substack.
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Paul Goldsmith wants to ban real New Zealanders from saying “It’s great that the Yemeni government is taking action to stop the zionists murdering Palestinians” or “Thank God Hamas is killing the filthy butchers who rape and kill little Palestinian kids for fun”. I wonder why?
Terrorism never sleeps, and neither do we. Freedom and democracy need protecting.
Fascism never sleeps – freedom and democracy need protecting from the likes of R Smith
Probably more productive to take action against the actual American-loving traitors who make up the GCSB and SIS rather than cranks pretending to be them on a left-wing blog.
The slippery slope to Authoritarianism .
State support for genocide in foreign lands, necessitates State repression in the homeland.
Great line, and I’ll suggest that a State that supports genocide elsewhere is a State that will commit genocide at home, on its own people too!
Next thing you known local government or universities will be preventing people from speaking at events because there might be the “chance of violence”
Oh, wait …
But I guess we don’t care about that
I wonder if you are understanding what you Observer have been perceiving. Is it wrong because it is different to your feelings and reactions? Perhaps you are wrong and it is time to view things differently.
Was your comment referring to the case of an entity refusing to talk on a matter that went against all the co-operative and community-building matters of the nation that had been under discussion for result for decades and regarded as fair, after a century or so of disobedience. The speech I think of was likely to undermine or be hostile to those lengthy efforts and be provocative, and demean the people requesting respectful, better laws. It was wished to prevent more unreasoning prejudice.
I think stopping the speech was a move showing reason and fairness. And raises the question of the shallow thinking that ‘free speech’ must be acceptable instead of laws to prevent derogation or hostility to others who may be putting others to some trouble because some wrong law is being righted. It could be that a way of small compensation in return for loss of some useful advantage might well be made by ruling authorities. Socially, on the one hand laws should prevent unruly and antisocial behaviour to others but limit the extreme of laws that encourage people with negative feelings to complain of imagined wrongs and punish people excessively, (eg in UK*).
It comes under the heading of ‘manners’ really, which if reasonably passed on from adults to children, would prevent this extreme pendulum swing in mores that spoils relations more than the original animosity.
Is it time to stop heaping criticism and/or derision on people trying to make changes. They may be wrong, fully and obviously, but then may only be partly wrong, or the action or assertion shows that there is something stirring people. Reasonable people might decide that some improvement in line with what is demanded by the petitioners, should be considered. That is the wiser, mature way of reacting surely. We haven’t found a sensible way to process the POV though with thousands of submissions, which could be tabulated, made more concise, prioritised and with some yes/no responses available to some model answers.
*Note I am sorry to bring this awful and unreasonable UK legislation to notice but this new way of withdrawing democracy and replacing it with punitive laws and fines, and unreasonable jail time, should register clearly. It is just a return to times of the Tolpuddle Martyrs attitudes without colonies to get rid of the problem to.??
*(UK ABOs Anti-Social Behaviour Orders – 2.37m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZoXoLrLnvA
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An ethnographic multi-order and notice analysis of the …
Taylor & Francis Online: Peer-reviewed Journals
https://www.tandfonline.com › doi › full
The most frequently known and now repealed CPON in England and Wales is the Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO), which the New Labour government (1997-2010) …
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Punishments for antisocial behaviour
GOV.UK
https://www.gov.uk › … › Courts, tribunals and appeals
You can get a civil injunction, Community Protection Notice ( CPN ) or Criminal Behaviour Order ( CBO ) as punishment for antisocial behaviour.
Civil injunctions, CPNs and CBOs replaced Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. ASBOs are still used in Scotland.
Antisocial behaviour includes:
drunken or threatening behaviour
vandalism and graffiti
playing loud music at night
A court may give you a civil injunction or a CPN (Community Protection Notice) if it gets reports of persistent antisocial behaviour from the police, a council or a landlord. You can only get a CBO (Criminal Behaviour Order) if you’ve been convicted of a crime.
You can get a civil injunction or CBO if you’re 10 or over and a CPN if you’re 16 or over.
[Further – it says that this can go on for ever if you are over 18, and sounds a shocking opportunity for control and blackmailing a person, family or group.]
There’s no maximum amount of time if you’re 18 or over. If you have a CBO it’ll be reviewed every year and either stopped or extended.
If you don’t follow the rules –
The punishment for not following your civil injunction is:
a 3 month detention order if you’re under 18
up to 2 years’ imprisonment or unlimited fine if you’re 18 or over
The punishment for not following your CPN is a fine between £100 and £2,500.
The punishment for not following your CBO is:
up to 2 years in a detention centre if you’re under 18
up to 5 years in prison or an unlimited fine (or both) if you’re 18 or over
https://www.gov.uk/civil-injunctions-criminal-behaviour-orders
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Independent Working Group on Antisocial Behaviour
The Scottish Government
https://www.gov.scot › publications › pages
25 Feb 2025 — Review of antisocial behaviour with recommendations for strategic and sustainable cross-cutting approaches focusing on prevention and early intervention …
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Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland) Act 2004: Guidance on …
The Scottish Government
https://www.gov.scot › publications › antisocial-behavi…
28 Oct 2004 — ASBOs are civil orders that exist to protect the public from behaviour that causes or is likely to cause alarm or distress. An order contains …
Why would Jews wish to repeat Nazi terror and disgrace after suffering themselves so much. Continue that it seems mad.
I have been reading about Django Reinhardt, great gypsy guitarist . Only a strong mental attitude and determination to follow his music kept Reinhardt going. That is what is needed to survive now. Have we got his tensile strength? He survived so much including the killings of gypsies in WW2. On outbreak of WW2 he was in UK but returned to France. The Nazis and Germans had taken to jazz and life was up and down literally for musicians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt
…in 2 November 1928, Reinhardt was going to bed in the wagon that he and his wife shared in the caravan. He knocked over a candle, which ignited the extremely flammable celluloid that his wife used to make artificial flowers…. The couple escaped, but Reinhardt suffered extensive burns over half his body.[19] During his 18-month hospitalization… doctors recommended amputation of his badly damaged right leg.
More crucial to his music, the fourth and fifth fingers (ring and little fingers) of Reinhardt’s left hand were badly burned…Reinhardt retaught himself to play using primarily the index and middle fingers of his left hand, using the two injured fingers only for chord work.,,,Reinhardt retaught himself to play using primarily the index and middle fingers of his left hand, using the two injured fingers only for chord work…
From 1934 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Reinhardt and Grappelli worked together as the principal soloists of their newly formed quintet, the Quintette du Hot Club de France, in Paris.
Beginning in 1933, all German Romani were barred from living in cities, herded into settlement camps, and routinely sterilized. Romani men were required to wear a brown Gypsy ID triangle sewn at chest level on their clothing,[7]: 168 similar to the pink triangle that homosexuals wore, and much like the yellow Star of David that Jews had to subsequently wear.[29] During the war, Romani were systematically killed in concentration camps.[7]: 169 In France, they were used as slave labour on farms and in factories.[7]: 169 During the Holocaust an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Romani throughout Europe were killed.[7]: 154
Hitler and Joseph Goebbels viewed jazz as un-German counterculture.[7]: 154 [30] Nonetheless, Goebbels stopped short of a complete ban on jazz, which now had many fans in Germany and elsewhere.[7]: 157 Official policy towards jazz was much less strict in occupied France, according to author Andy Fry, with jazz music frequently played on both Radio France, the official station of Vichy France, and Radio Paris, which was controlled by the Germans. A new generation of French jazz enthusiasts, the Zazous, had arisen…
1943 – At that time the tide of war turned against the Germans, with a considerable darkening of the situation in Paris. Severe rationing was in place, and members of Reinhardt’s circle were being captured by the Nazis or joining the resistance.
Reinhardt’s first attempt at escape from Occupied France led to capture. Fortunately for him, a jazz-loving German, Luftwaffe officer Dietrich Schulz-Köhn [de], allowed him to return to Paris.[31] Reinhardt made a second attempt a few days later, but was stopped in the middle of the night by Swiss border guards, who forced him to return to Paris again….
After the war, Reinhardt rejoined Grappelli in the UK. In the autumn of 1946, he made his first tour in the United States… He had been promised jobs in California, but they failed to develop. Tired of waiting, Reinhardt returned to France in February 1947…
After his return, Reinhardt appeared to find it difficult to adjust…
In Rome in 1949, Reinhardt recruited three Italian jazz players (on bass, piano, and snare drum) and recorded over 60 tunes in an Italian studio. He united with Grappelli, and used his acoustic Selmer-Maccaferri. The recording was issued for the first time in the late 1950s.[37]…
On 16 May 1953, while walking home from Fontainebleau–Avon station after playing in a Paris club, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage.[16]: 160 It was a Saturday, and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive.[16]: 161 Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau, at the age of 43. ..
The best people of those days were killed off in WW2 it seems. We have been unable to rise to their levels of value and social community after recovering from the greatcataclysm.
Interesting line up. 15 comments
4 Jacqueline plus 4 Nathan, AnnE, Observer R Smith (new)
equals 8 fixed right views, screws that could never be loosened it seems.
It is so hard to thoughtfully discuss and disclose the various measures that our societies are using to suppress people who need some fairness and freedom to to be part of a fair human society. But in a world which has been called democratic and yet has enabled people with huge fortunes to madly keep on scooping up anything that has value to them, it is too much to expect that there won’t be hangers on at the lower end as well as close to the huge money pile.
Sure thing Brooke.