A Muslim advocacy group is levelling serious allegations of dysfunction at the government's handling of its hate speech law changes.
Kris Faafoi says groups have had plenty of time to make submissions. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The Federation of Islamic Association (FIANZ) says it didn't have enough time to make a meaningful submission on tightening hate speech legislation.
It's among a group of voluntary organisations who've told RNZ they're struggling with massive workloads and their advocacy is suffering as a result.
Today is the final deadline for public submissions on both the hate speech reforms and social cohesion proposals, put forward by the Ministry of Social Development.
FIANZ chair Abdur Razzaq says the clash resulted in an overbearing workload for his voluntary organisation and six weeks simply wasn't enough time.
"We are all voluntary organisations and these are not small items. Plus, there's also the looming Coroner's report. So, for a small community based on volunteers, that's a lot of work to expect.
"And when you have civil servants, and now paid consultancy firms, supporting the state structure, it's not a level playing field."
The Ministry of Justice confirmed it commissioned the engagement specialise group Litmus to coordinate a series of 29 hui from 13 July.
These meetings were designed to reach ethnic and faith-based communities, as well as disability, rainbow, youth, Māori and Pacific groups.
But neither FIANZ nor the Jewish Council received an invite to one of these meetings; a move that's appalled the Jewish Council's president Stephen Goodman.
"If you look at hate speech, Jews are by far the largest population that is attacked by hate speech and Muslims would be second in line.
"Yet, neither of the representative organisations have been approached by the Ministry of Justice or anyone else to have their views canvassed, considered and anything resolved."
FIANZ's submission on the government's proposed hate speech law changes is blunt.
It applauds the invitation to give feedback but says this has been undermined by a quote unquote "dysfunctional process of engagement".
Razzaq said it was disheartening the government appeared to be rushing the proposed changes to prioritise its own timetable over genuine engagement.
"The process has overtaken the principle and, in that case, you think this just ends up as a box ticking exercise. Unless we have people involved in the co-designing of the discussion document it's going to get very confusing. It has. I mean, how will people know what extreme speech is?
Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi did not agree with the assertion the government's engagement on hate speech law changes had been dysfunctional.
"I don't agree with that. I think we've been through three processes now; initially after 15 March we were engaged with the community around proposals through the Royal Commission, post the Royal Commission and again six weeks of submissions for the discussion document process."
Faafoi said he asked officials to ensure FIANZ had the best chance it could to make a robust submission on the hate speech law changes.
"A lot of work was done to make sure translations were made, that we did make sure we were going to specific parts of the community to get feedback on those submissions. So, I respect their opinion but we think there have been plenty of opportunities to make sure that they've had their say."
He said today was just the end of the discussion document phase and gave assurances communities will have more opportunities to give feedback later in the process.
[h] Others also unimpressed
Free Speech Union representative Jonathan Ayling told Morning Report the basic opposition his group had was that "hate is a subjective notion that is virtually impossible to define".
"We have seen other jurisdictions around the world attempt to legislate against hate but ultimately that's not the solution to this problem. Now look, we don't deny that there is hateful speech in this nation and that hateful speech causes considerable harm.
"We just don't think that it's a logical step to go from there and then jump to the state intervening in our conversations, intervening in our opinions, to try and control them.
"Based on the feedback we've had, the government needs to trash these proposals."
Media barrister Steven Price said hate was a nebulous concept.
"But I think we don't want to go overboard here because as the Royal Commission said when it recommended using hatred as the kind of touchstone here, this is making it harder to prove than the existing law that we've got and this is an existing law that's been around for 40 or 50 years and relates to racial hate speech and has been used all of once, maybe twice in the whole period.
"So in terms of actually interfering with our opinions and conversations, it just strikes me as extremely unlikely."
Price said it made proving it harder because "at the moment the criminal provision that relates to racial hate speech includes things like bringing a group into ridicule or contempt - that we stripped away.
"The Royal Commission said those are also nebulous concepts, and there could be quite low level ones ridicule, you know? That could be touching a lot of things, so let's take those out.
"And in that sense, the new law they're proposing which would apply not just the race but to other groups as well, would be harder to prove."
Ayling said it was it a "little bit disingenuous for the government to lay these changes at the foot of the Royal Commission".
"Certainly the Royal Commission did suggest amendments to our hate speech legislation. However, the Labour government has been talking about this for a number of years now and actually went to the 2020 election with this as a manifesto issue.
"The Human Rights Commission had been advocating for this since at least 2017. The Royal Commission didn't come out until last November, so it's a little bit disingenuous to say that this has just come about because the Royal Commission has suggested it.
"But more broadly, I would rather that we actually call on our leaders to raise the tone of debate … there's no disputing that actually we need to raise the tone of the conversation.
"But when we get the government involved, when we call on them to legislate against it, we will actually put perverse incentives in place and what I'm mostly concerned about here is not that there will be a whole raft of cases brought before the courts, but we will begin to self regulate … and we already do this to an extent, with just the concept of political correctness.
"But this will carry the whole weight of criminal law behind it now, so I don't think we will have people locked up endlessly, but we will have people silencing themselves."
