Bridges SimonHon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to speak about hate speech. I don't want to use catchy sound bites or anything. I don't want to talk about woke-ism" or cancel culture or white privilege or Black Lives Matter or culture wars—none of that stuff. But I do want to say this: this is a bad law a bad proposal that the Government's put forward. They could have and they still could I suppose feasibly improve it but actually when you've got a Minister who doesn't understand it and a Prime Minister that doesn't want to understand it they should just scrap this bad proposal this bad law right now.I want to make three points. The first point I want to make is that this is not about the royal commission. That's what they're saying. But the reality of it if you look at what they are really doing with these proposals—which sure as eggs they'll turn into law before the end of the year; they'll slam them through this Parliament—they are doing a bunch of things that the royal commission didn't recommend and they're not doing a bunch of things that it did recommend. The royal commission recommended hate crimes—that is putting into law that if you assault someone with the motivation of racial hate for example it should be a higher sentence and we should enshrine that in law. Actually I could go along with that. There's a good idea. That is over half of the things around hate that the royal commission recommended. They aren't doing any of that and yet in relation to the hate speech part they've taken their chances and the opportunity to do a whole bunch of other things that aren't in the royal commission.The royal commission if you read the report from back to back is very reasoned—it's quite humble actually about these vexed complex difficult issues yet this Government the Labour Party has come in and said "No no we want to do this. We're going to take the opportunity to use the royal commission"—I think quite cynically from Jacinda Ardern—"to do these hate speech changes." The second point—Hon Mark Mitchell: Sneaky!Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It is sneaky actually. I think the Minister doesn't understand it and the Prime Minister doesn't want to understand it. I think sadly she does actually. She knows what she's doing but she's not being upfront with New Zealand.The second point I want to make is that the Government's in this ridiculous position which again—what did you say Mark Mitchell? Sneaky—it's sneaky. They are saying on the one hand "Look we're doing not very much; there's nothing to see here. Actually we've just got a tidy-up. There's no big problem. We're not actually changing anything." which is a ridiculous position when you really think about it; if you're not doing much what's the point of doing it? Or they're saying "Actually it's big and bold it's amazing we're following the royal commission and that's a wonderful thing isn't it?"Well our view on this side of the House is very very clear. They are lowering the bar in relation to hate speech. They are not having this at the level of speech that incites violence that leads to terrible situations we can all agree on—through to I accept terrorism—but that's not where they're going. They have lowered the bar significantly here in their proposals and that will result tragically in this country in many many more prosecutions by police. They will be instructed to do more prosecutions and more convictions. In the criminal area now under this proposal all you've got to do is with a bit of a racial slur or something insult someone else. Now don't get me wrong I don't agree with that; I think it's terrible. But is it criminal? Should we be sending a 24-year-old to jail for stupidity? I don't think so and I don't think New Zealanders do either.In the civil area it's even worse because remember in the civil area if someone receives a civil penalty in this area you know what's going to happen? They'll never get a job in New Zealand and not anything decent anyway. And there all you have to prove is discrimination fundamentally if someone's treated someone to an off-colour joke or something.So I say this: I'm really concerned—this is my third point—that off-colour jokes that protests that Facebook posts in the heat of the moment are going to lead in this country to more police complaints more disputes more polarisation an American style of—Hon Mark Mitchell: Weaponised.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —situation. Weaponise all of these things. That's a tragedy actually. I want to live in a country where people feel free to say what it is that they want to say even if it's ill-considered stupid maybe offensive maybe insulting. If you just disagree argue against what they're saying—maybe shame them—but don't criminalise it. That is not the Kiwi way. We've managed to avoid this for years and years and years but Labour's taking us down a dangerous a slippery an anti-freedom approach and the National Party doesn't like it."