30 August 2024

The Free Speech Union has submitted to the Law Commission consultation on their recent discussion paper urging them not to amend the Human Rights Act in ways that would restrict New Zealanders’ legitimate speech, says Jonathan Ayling, Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union.

“The paper examines extending section 21 of the Human Rights Act prohibited grounds of discrimination to include people who are transgender, non-binary and with innate variations of sex characteristics.

“While some areas of the discussion paper are outside of our remit, we raise four areas of concern that would hinder all Kiwis’ speech rights:

1. The significant implications for all government departments, policies, agencies, and any person or body carrying out a government function (especially health professionals) who express their professional opinions or concerns on issues of sex/gender who may be deemed to be discriminating against people who are transgender, non-binary or with innate variations of sex characteristics.
2. The enabling of section 104 (Discrimination) of the Employment Relations Act 2000 to shut down the discourse necessary for decision making on sex and/or gender issues in the workplace, potentially compelling employers to conform to particular ideological positions.
3. Enabling section 57 (Educational Establishments) of the Education and Training Act 2020 to stifle open discussion and debate around gender and sexuality issues among those governing educational institutions and compels them to conform to particular ideologies and belief systems.

4. The de facto introduction of ‘hate speech’ laws, using human rights legislation to suppress and constrain public discourse on contested questions.

5. “The Law Commission was instructed by the Minister of Justice to stop all work on ‘hate speech’ laws after tens of thousands of Kiwis urged them to. But here we are again – this time, it’s simply packaged differently.

“Amendments to speech rights in the Human Rights Act would be weaponised to silence Kiwis’ who simply disagree on contested issues.

“Along with our own submission, the Free Speech Union has so far facilitated over 6,000 submissions through our submission tool freespeechsubmission.nz.”
 

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