MEDIAWATCH: Faafoi & Ardern Hate Speech burn so bad it sizzles
Sweet Jesus on a unicycle this critique of Jacinda and Faafoi’s gasp inducing ignorance of how the horrible Hate Speech laws will be interpreted by the Courts…
Do Ardern and Faafoi understand how courts work?
When Parliament passes a law, MPs know what they mean and what the law will do – probably.
Sometimes, however, despite their best efforts and those of their professional drafters, language winds up in legislation which is not crystal clear.
Even simple things can be problematic: what does it mean to park a car, for instance? Does the engine have to be off? Is a fish an animal? Is the airport Koru Lounge a public place? Lawyers routinely deal with these questions and many more, and judges routinely give judgments on them.
A set of rules exists to extract meaning when ambiguous language is before a court and one of them is the obvious one: to look at Parliament’s intention. What did parliamentarians say they meant?
The issue is now in focus as the Government moves ahead with its hate speech project, the public submission period in the ‘’consultative process’’ ending recently.
…the defence Chris & the Prime Minister have relied on when challenged on how the law will be implemented is to claim the Courts will decide but as criminal law barrister, medical doctor and author Roderick Mulgan savagely points out in painstaking detail, the defence is meaningless…
And no help was provided by a string of news stories and interviews portraying Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Justice Minister Kris Faafoi repeatedly tripping over when trying to explain how the significant new law will work.
Hate speech is already illegal, but the protected groups are “narrow’’. The proposal, in part, includes first folding in new protected groups like gay people and the disabled, which is straightforward. The difficult second part is that the proposal will also change the test for what sort of speech will be criminal. That is a problem because no-one can agree on where the new line will be, least of all the politicians pushing it.
The changes have not yet become a bill in front of Parliament, but that step is not far away, and when it happens the minister introducing the legislation will have to say, on the Hansard record, what it is meant to do. That is the speech in particular that future judges will read when they are asked to bring meaning to amorphous words.
Recently the minister has struggled to say if insulting gay people or Baby Boomers will cross the line or not. What is he going to say when he stands up to introduce the bill? If he hadn’t worked it out before the public consultation stage, when might he get around to it?
The prime minister likewise struggled to answer when asked if it would be criminal to tell a Christian his religion was mad.
The point is not academic. The proposed law would not just criminalise the wrong sort of speech, it would provide for jail sentences that are longer (three years) than people get for significant assaults. It is important to know where the line is and yet nobody does.
It gets worse. Ardern articulated a handwashing “solution” to the problem, which appears to represent the Government’s view on how law works. As she put it, “it is not for us to determine what a court may or may not do” in assigning meanings – that’s what judges do.
Yes, that is what judges do, but only with the tools the law allows them, a key one of which is what the minister who shepherded the bill through Parliament said. If the record of his oratorical effort shows he thought that blaming Boomers for house prices might be a bridge too far, that has to go into the judicial interpretive mix.
..I’m genuinely surprised something this critical of Hate Speech published in the joyless puritanical woke Stuff was allowed past the conclave. A white male disagreeing with a woman on hate speech is usually a sackable offence at Stuff, Mulgan’s sharpest burn however is still in the tail…
It is not the only consideration, but it is a vital one – and giving judgments that line up with what Parliament intended is generally how judges see their job. You might hope that people who have the job of making laws know that, but apparently not.
Our law on statutory interpretation (laid out at present in the Interpretation Act), which requires courts to give legislation a construction that best serves Parliament’s purpose, has been around about a century, but neither Ardern nor Faafoi seems to have noticed it.
One contributory problem is having a legally unqualified minister of justice in the first place, but after more than half a year in the job he should not be getting his nuts-and-bolts descriptions so very wrong. The “purposive rule” is our elementary legal canon of legislative interpretation, and Faafoi should have long ago educated himself on the basics of the justice system which he heads.
So sorry, Kris, but reassuring us that someone else decides doesn’t work. The person who decides is going to look straight back at you. By the well-worn constitutional process of courts following in the footsteps of Parliament, what you say – before enactment – the law is supposed to do will have a big impact on what it actually does.
At what point in the process are you going to work out what that is?
…POW! Right in the kisser.
You can’t pass mad laws like this and just leave it all up to the Courts! So the Police will define hate and leave it up to Judges to decide?
This is fucking free speech we are talking about!!! You can’t leave it to the cops and judges to decide! That’s a grotesque over reach by the State into our lives!
Jacinda is emotionally welded to the Hate Speech legislation and will do what Labour are doing with the Gay Conversion Therapy legislation and ram it through before Christmas.
I think that could be politically dangerous.
If the Hate Speech laws are passed before the 2023 election, that will see woke activists launching their vast purge tsunami of complaints against everyone they’ve ever disagreed with.
The woke threshold for hate is so low that saying ‘hello what a lovely day’ can be immediately construed as a hate crime because how can it be a lovely day when the heteronormative white cis male patriarchy are still in charge, you are gaslighting me’.
Watching an explosion of hate speech investigations lodged with the police leading up to an election that will be very polarizing and scare the bejesus out of the middle and cause a political backlash against the left.
What Labour aren’t calculating is the gleeful anticipation the Woke have for their Spanish Inquisition once the laws are passed and all the fears of Hate Speech will surface as we go into election year.
Strangling off Free Speech and nudging us towards a Police State is one thing, doing it and losing an election while leaving that Police State infrastructure in place is just fucking stupid!
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This be fair, exactly the same very valid criticisms have been well thrashed out on TDB.
Their combined lack of understand of how law making works is truly worrying, given both have been in parliament for years.
In a funny way, it sums up this government perfectly. They come up with a vague idea, and leave it to someone else to interpret that vague idea and then to implement it. And every time is fails. And they wonder why.
Hence the housing catastrophe
Hence the mental health failure
Hence the Transport policy failures.
Hence meaningful change on climate change.
And if they draft some vague hate speech thingy law like they’re doing, then it’s doomed to failure, just the same.
Our present Ministers are like kids in one of those miniature cars outside a shop pretending to drive.
You are assuming the PM and minister are actually confused on the legal process. This is impossible, they have legal advisors and have passed a bunch of – mostly bad- laws already.
They know exactly how the legal process works.
What is far more likely is that they are deliberately attempting to confuse the public in order to push through the hate speech laws, which will weaponize their supporters, anyone speaking against them will be done for hate speech- a massive tilting of the left/right table in their favor as they see it.
Of course the same laws would be turned on them when they are eventually booted from office but think of the power now! A 1000 year reich of woke Puritanism is almost within their grasp!
+1 Keepcalmcarryon
Lets face it, there is not a lot of thinking going on anymore. Just suppression and marketing tactics.
I disagree. A badly drafted law means it will have loopholes huge enough to drive a bus through and it will mean that law is unenforceable. Then the police won’t bother.
But if it is a clever plan to pass a law like this symbolically knowing it will be toothless then maybe. But I definitely don’t think they are that cunning. Not by long way.
I regret to say I think I agree with you Kcco. Keeping the legislation as vague as possible right up until it is passed into law would be the obvious tactic when you have the numbers in parliment to crash it through in defiance of the outrage of the opposition. And by the time the electorate grasps what has happened it will be too late.
Seems they might have learned tactics from a previous labour administration.
D J S
Same with the conversion therapy laws.
Agree 100%.
People are tired of this. Very tied. If you fight you get abused and harassed. People stop fighting and the bullies win.
It is crazy to put all this on the police and courts that are already full. They are forced to uphold even the most stupid laws. The woke as we know and a growing percentage of population truely believe they are victims and there are hate criminals all around them. The paperwork and investigations will be huge, like china’s cultural revolution.
We have a growing group of professionals who appear to have identity issues, not just gender but body and race dysmorphia and it’s growing. Soon anyone trying to stop anything ridiculous, or pointing out opinions on policy will be branded a hate criminal. So stupidity will continue.
The woke in NZ are huge advocates of “white decline”. This is happening all around the world and creating huge division. https://www.unz.com/ghood/why-do-leftists-celebrate-white-decline/ It seems the woke are happy to throw out free welfare, super etc in NZ for their ideal and been trying to do this for over a decade https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1110/S00572/grey-power-warns-of-impact-of-high-immigration-rates.htm. White woke, are the biggest public champions of white decline.
But none of it makes any sense. If you are against homophobia why would you champion cultures that put people in jail still as your heros? If you are against tyranny and totalitarianism, why would you champion cultures that still ‘disappear’ people? If you are for woman rights, why would you champion cultures that have the highest crimes against woman? If you want more benefits for the poor, why would you champion cultures than don’t believe in welfare?
Labeen will lose the election as people have had enough if they keep allowing the woke to push their agenda. The migrants themselves don’t want people like Samsudeem in NZ, nor do they want the migrant exploiters gaining more power in NZ by expanding their operations, nor do most people want a mockery of justice and protected status in NZ via the Samsudeem way of becoming a refugee. What happens when the protected with extreme rights under law, become the aggressor?
The identity crisis has reached a point, now is the time for society to peddle quietly backwards and remove the woke from criminalising, everyone except the criminals.
NZ woke champion violence.
http://www.terfisaslur.com
Then wonder why nobody is publicly against speaking out against all these crazy woke laws. And don’t think that level of violence has not happened in the NZ trans community. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/300020336/pair-jailed-for-kidnap-torture-and-murder-of-auckland-teenager-dimetrius-pairama
Transgender and gender issues have become ‘trendy’ attracting many hibernating within and given free reign to explore their fantasies, who have a lot more issues than gender.
This is quite different to people like Georgina Beyer who is a fantastic example off how it should be done, but also shows that those that constantly are spreading their lies, that Kiwis are small minded, racial bigots, are completely wrong, Georgina (Maori/european/transgender/woman/sex worker) won a seat in parliament in a small rural town, that was a National party enclave, against Paul Henry. I’m assuming it was her policies and personality that won people, not her phenotype. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgina_Beyer
Save NZ that is a horrific story of that young girls torture and murder. Truly shocking. And only a brief mention that the main perpetrator was tranistioning……..and it sounds like it was used as an excuse…”difficulty transitioning”. I hope this person who is so capable of the most despicable acts doesn’t use the gender id bill to formally change id to try and get transferred to a women’s prisong.
I personally find it a shocking story, also because the poor teenager felt so alone and alienated from authority, that when the police came to the door, she did not ask them for help. Obviously in her experience you could not rely on authority figures, she was also under the care of Oranga Tamariki.
The police only found out, because the 14yo told them and then it took a while for them to find the body in the drum. It wasn’t because anybody missed the girl and reported her missing. Even that it was an abandoned state house, asks questions in a housing crisis. Why are these state houses left empty and decaying for these crimes to take place in when others in need could do with the house to live in?
NZ needs a wake up call, because it is our own children that are ignored by parliament and government policy and the woke who seem to be most interested in diverting funding and resources around the world and to other nationals children and well marketed charities full of woke being paid salaries in many cases, not our own.
Likewise the Sri Lanken terrorist was given huge resources by NZ legal system. None that were given to this poor teenager in NZ convicted of rape, on false testimony, and even when found out, nobody cared to remedy the situation. Another boy in Oranga Tamariki care.
How jealous lies sent a teenage boy to prison for rape he didn’t commit
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/how-jealous-lies-sent-a-teenage-boy-to-prison-for-rape-he-didnt-commit/CUI5EFPR7FCILMGEL76DVW7MLQ/#
It seems that everything is as bad as you say it is Martyn.
“ I think that could be politically dangerous.” Yes, of course it would be. But I’m beyond caring what may or may not be politically dangerous – the Greens self- immolate with the gay abandon of a drunken Castle Street party, and the Nats wallow in behaving like headless chooks and expect to be taken seriously.
This hate speech legislation will be a societal disaster. Statutory interpretation is a first year law student exercise which eliminates over a third of every class, and it is astonishing that Faafoi and Ardern are unaware of their responsibility as legislators. I went looking up Faafoi’s qualifications trying to figure out what is happening here, and groaned when I saw he was an ex-journo, even though he seems a very nice man.
Basically, these guys are saying that they don’t know what they’re doing, but somebody else will. Not good enough.
If they don’t have the intellectual grunt to enact legislation which they themselves can define and understand, then they should back off, right now. Already it is the subject of bad jokes, but it will be no joke for those caught up at the behest of the stupid or the vicious, already waiting in the wings.
Parliament does not exist to be socially divisive, but that’s what they’re doing, and therefore they deserve to lose.
Great to see the lawyers who failed to rehabilitate Samsudeen and about, peddling their story and trying to get more funding. Sarcasm. From the time line, it looks like that Samsudeen was not particularly religious and the exposure to religion and the retreats, took him down the extremist path. Maybe NZ needs to stop peddling religious involvement as rehabilitation.
The makings of a terrorist – and the people who tried to help him
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126332093/the-makings-of-a-terrorist–and-the-people-who-tried-to-help-him
Today, Rasheed and Shaakir speak publicly for the first time about their efforts to rehabilitate Samsudeen, and the opportunities they believe were missed.
“For years, the authorities had treated this man as a terrorist – labelling him a terrorist, and convincing him that he is a terrorist,” says Rasheed.
“But let’s not forget that he lived in New Zealand for a decade before committing the act that actually made him a terrorist. The question we have to ask is, ‘Did we find a terrorist? Or did we create one?’”
When Aathill Samsudeen reached out for help, one of the first people he grabbed hold of was Aarif Rasheed.
The Auckland defence lawyer received a call from Samsudeen out of the blue in late 2017. Samsudeen, a 28-year-old refugee with no criminal history in New Zealand, was being held in custody after sharing violent content on Facebook.
“When Aathill phoned me from prison, he wanted pastoral support from the Muslim community,” says Rasheed. “The most striking thing about his situation was just how isolated he was. He really needed human connection.”
Alongside his work as a barrister, Rasheed had created Just Community, an organisation providing cultural support within the criminal justice system. The group also helps to rehabilitate offenders with extremist ideology.
Samsudeen’s online history revealed his fixation on weapons and ISIS propaganda. He had posted comments expressing support for terror attacks in Europe, and alluding to martyrdom. Police found a large hunting knife under his mattress. They also suspected he was trying to travel to Syria to join ISIS.
Rasheed says Samsudeen had been exposed to online religious content that was “unstructured, emotive, misguided and politically-motivated”, making him ripe for radicalisation.
“When someone is isolated from a formal religious tradition – and confused about their identity – they’re vulnerable. They can cherry-pick any beliefs that suit their political ideology. It leaves them with a very puritanical, extreme form of religion.”
The reality is that Samsudeen wanted to leave NZ, he should have been allowed to go and 7 people would not have been stabbed, and resources better spent on rehabilitation NZ prisoners and mentally ill who currently get nothing.
Rather than focus on inhumane conditions in prison for Samsudeen, maybe broaden it a bit more, to all prisoners for example who might need the help????????
If hate speech laws try and encompass anything vaguely negative, how will people put searching, critical comments up on the few political blogs where people actually direct light onto unsatisfactory as well as good things in the political and community field? Perhaps Martyn can make a list of things to avoid which commenters can check through to reach the net outcome that can be published!
I think that Labour haven’t known what they are doing for years and measure their success on the market figures each day, the exchange rate etc. ie just keeping the lid on the boiling, steaming energy coming from the active people in NZ, the cleaners, the baristas, the industrial farmers, the financial investment magicicians and the happy real estate dream merchants.
Why is J. C not in the press critizing this outrage law and condemning the 3 Waters system rather than wasting time making comments about Wiles.