Locke Keith: Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLocke Keith: Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 October 2007. Volume:642;Page:12280. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEITH LOCKE (Green): It gives me great pleasure to rise on behalf of the Greens to support the Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill. It is a most pleasant experience.The previous speech by Mr Auchinvole indicated the importance of the bill. I was very pleased that the two speeches that began the debate the other night—by the Minister Mark Burton and Chris Finlayson leading off for National—both mentioned the role of the smaller parties in hurrying this bill into being and into Parliament and I thank them for that. This bill in the way it has proceeded is a victory for MMP. The Greens United Future ACT and theMāori Party all got together some months back and had a combined press conference. It is good to see that people took notice of that. Parties from different ideologies have combined on this democratic issue and I think it struck a chord in the community and in this Parliament. What is happening in the debate on this bill is a step forward for MMP politics.Coincidentally we have had another example of that today with the Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Amendment Bill. Again a number of parties from different parts of the spectrum and with different ideologies were against closing off those records which have been kept open since—Shane Ardern: What’s the latest report? Give us an update. How are we doing on that?KEITH LOCKE: What is happening with that particular bill?Shane Ardern: Yes. How are the numbers gathering?KEITH LOCKE: The reason I mention it now is that this afternoon the Minister Rick Barker issued a press statement about the closure of the records which was opposed by genealogists historians biographers and journalists from around the country. The Minister essentially stated that the Government has taken heed of those objections and of the fact that the numbers across all the parties—a bit like the numbers for the Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill—do not stack up in favour of closure. So that is another victory for MMP and for parties working together that might not be traditionally aligned.We have had a discussion in this Parliament on the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill which the Greens opposed. A lot of the legislation we see in this Parliament that the Greens have been opposed to is going in a more restrictive direction reducing free speech or rights and in some respects reducing the power of the judiciary and increasing the power of the executive. That has been the theme of our criticism of a lot of the legislation. But a particularly good thing about this bill is that it is going in the other direction. In one sense it is going against the international current in this respect; I think it is New Zealand standing up for democracy.If one looks at the whole question of free speech and at what has been happening in Britain and Australia since September 11 one sees that those countries have gone in the direction of criminalising free speech under the guise of the war against terrorism. They have new provisions coming in stating that people are not allowed to glorify terrorism.They have used all sorts of vague formulations but they are not making the distinction that speakers in this debate are making between the advocacy of general ideas—however objectionable one might think those ideas are—and the advocacy of incitement directly to criminal activity. That distinction is what we are talking about here.A lot of ideas that have historically been advocated in New Zealand have been caught by this sedition law in the past. Some of them were objectionable ideas such as fascism Stalinism or whatever which sometimes represented quite anti-democratic and violent ideologies. But if people are advocating just on the level of ideas then they should be dealt with in public debate and not be criminalised. In that way the ideas are reduced in their power as those that I just referred to fascism and Stalinism have been. Those ideas do not have much traction in New Zealand society because they have been largely debated out in the open and discredited. It is the same with terrorist ideology—“binLadenism” or whatever one wants to call it. We have to debate the general ideology out in the public arena but of course if anyone incites directly to a terrorist or a criminal act then that is caught under other provisions of our legislation. The Republican Movement of Aotearoa New Zealand’s submission to the select committee on 15 February 2005—and they were a bit worried about being caught themselves—quotes the Monarchist League of New Zealand as stating that debating whether Prince Charles is to be King is possibly seditious.Rodney Hide: Quite right!