Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Well I consider Kris Faafoi a friend but it is fair to say that he left a series of landmines across Government that have now blown up in the Government's face whether it's immigration; the justice portfolio more generally; or the TVNZ-RNZ merger which seems to be coming apart at the seams; and then of course we get to hate speech which poor old Kiri Allan—again someone I consider a mate—has inherited from Kris Faafoi and has been asked by the Prime Minister to fix. But in the process of doing so in the introduction of this bill it has managed to please absolutely nobody because this bill is being attacked from the right by the National Party and the ACT Party and of course it's being attacked by the left as well. So we're in this bizarre position or the Minister is in an invidious position where nobody—nobody—basically likes what she is proposing. Frankly this bill should be consigned to the dustbin of political history and it shows I think a Government all at sea with its priorities in justice because I do not believe and the National Party does not believe that this is the priority in the justice portfolio. In response to Tangi Utikere's point before about how this is the Government's considered response to the royal commission there is nothing considered about this process. The royal commission reported three years ago and the Government said that they would do a bunch of things and this bill is about the most minute response ever and everything else has been kicked off to the Law Commission again. So it's the Government kicking this issue off into the long grass and no doubt the Law Commission will do its very important work it will come back in the life of the next Parliament and we may well go round again. But I want to make the point and defend free speech because I don't think the Government has made the case for why this is a justified limit—the addition of religious belief—to the Human Rights Act or why this bill is a justified limit on section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act because fundamentally that's what this issue is all about. Section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act protects freedom of speech in all its forms and freedom of expression in all its forms—all communication. That's the starting point and that's a quasi-constitutional statute. It's of fundamental importance and I don't think the Government has made the case for why this is a justified limit. I want to make the case in my speech for free speech because as the Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin has said free speech is the indispensable condition of nearly every other freedom". It is of paramount importance in a free and democratic society and I think that it is a right worth guarding jealously and protecting fiercely. Millions of people have died for free speech and I worry that we betray their legacy too much. Now as David Seymour points out free speech is a fundamental Enlightenment value and the left used to be the party of the Enlightenment. The left used to be the party that protected Enlightenment values and how things have changed. Now the left tries to shut down speech that they don't like. We've got the rise of cancel culture on universities. There was that absurd debacle four years ago when the vice-chancellor of the University of Massey banned the mild-mannered Don Brash from speaking on campus in case some people were offended by what Don Brash said about whatever he was going to talk about. But I want to start with the simple proposition that free speech is integral to what makes us human. Free speech is important in and of itself. It allows individuals to articulate their own conception of the good life and to develop and realise their potential and it protects everything—that's the point about free speech. It protects the offensive T-shirts people wear provocative art challenging novels the speech in this place the finest parliamentary oration—this is not a fine parliamentary oration but I'm sure we can all think of speeches in the past—and the most boring Civil Service documents that we all consider on a daily basis. It undergirds our liberal democratic society. You can't separate our democracy from free speech and there's a reason why authoritarians from time immemorial have sought to control the press and not allow the free and democratic expression of the polity in the public domain. A Government that can hear its citizens and their demands is responsive to them. Freedom of speech protects good governance and of course the classical liberal conception of free speech I think is important—the market place of ideas. Unrestricted public debate allows the truth to prevail. The best ideas win out over the bad ones. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it in the Supreme Court in Abrams v United States "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market". Think about the best changes of the last 40 years: the market economy; the destruction of "Fortress New Zealand"; homosexual law reform; marriage equality; gay conversion therapy in the last two or three years; or the Treaty of Waitangi settlements process to take another example. Those big public policy debates that we've had in the Parliament and in wider society over the last 30 or 40 years all of them—all of those debates—have depended upon free speech. The ability for people of good faith and conscience to make the case for or against made those changes sustainable and endurable in the long term and of course free speech is a social safety valve. Speech that is suppressed doesn't cease to exist. Shutting down the mocking of religion as this bill seeks to do doesn't make those thoughts or make the speech go away. It just makes it more difficult to criticise in the market place of ideas and it means that conspiracy rather than truth is likely to triumph. So I'd rather have dumb offensive ideas out there in the public domain for the debate and for mocking rather than have them suppressed. The whole point is that freedom of speech protects everyone and everything. It protects speech that's crazy it protects speech that's rational it protects speech that's unpopular at any given moment and it protects offensive speech humorous speech and even ridiculous speech. As Chomsky said a few years ago "Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views that he liked. So was Stalin." If you're really in favour of free speech then you're in favour of freedom of speech for precisely the views that you despise. Otherwise you're not really in favour of free speech and of course this bill is an impingement on free speech. It sounds mild—"Oh I'd just add religious belief. Who could be opposed to that?" But of course religion is a choice. It's not like ethnicity or race. You can't choose how you were born but you can choose what religion you are. So of course this bill raises significant concerns because we want in a free and democratic society to be able to mock and excite hostility and condemn and criticise religion. Of course we want to be able to do that and I have every respect for people of faith—of all different faiths—but the simple reality is that this bill will have an impact on people who want to criticise religious communities like Gloriavale. The Book of Mormon musical for example which is artistic expression will raise serious concerns under this bill and of course there is religious opposition to things like vaccination for example. I for one think that those views are wrong and I don't want to get in trouble for standing up and saying that. Actually I have freedom of speech in this Parliament but that right should be extended beyond that and of course we should be able to mock a quasi-religion like Scientology. They believe in absurd things. Not everyone would say that but I for one think that. So the ability to be able to mock and ridicule and excite hostility towards a religion like Scientology Heaven's Gate or any other religion that someone might choose to talk about is important. So this bill looks mild but it isn't because it ties into this culture of shutting down speech that we don't like and it is reflective of a Government with the wrong priorities in justice. We oppose it."