Locke Keith: Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2007. Volume:643;Page:12700. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I think there is a certain celebratory atmosphere in the House tonight and rightly so in that this Parliament can take considerable credit for knocking these archaic provisions off our statute book. When we think back as others have mentioned to the roll-call of those who have been charged with sedition we see that it is really a roll-call of our political heroes. When students today study our history in secondary school the names that pop up quite regularly in their studies are Rua Kenana Te Whiti o Rongomai Peter Fraser Harry Holland Bishop Liston and Walter Nash. The names of all of those people pop up as part of our history and as important leaders in our society. I feel them on my shoulder today in a sense as we get rid of the laws that so hurt them those many years ago. 
Perhaps the one I am thinking about most today is Rua Kenana. Let us just remember who he was. He was a very strong Tuhoe leader and very strong on the Tuhoe people running their own show up in the Ureweras. Despite the fact that when he was arrested one or two of his people had guns he had strong anti-war views against the First World War and against Maori being a part of it. He was treated as being seditious and dragged away. 
I think it is interesting in the light of current developments that one of his direct descendants is the well-known TV star personality and artist named Tame Iti who is much in the news today. It may be that some of Tame Iti’s comments over the years could be seen to be a little bit seditious. He was not all that keen on the Queen and the Queen’s representatives being here when he went up to Waitangi and he did and said certain things. He will not have to worry about the sedition laws from today when we scrap them off the statute book. 
I noted the Minister Mark Burton’s comment that some of the things that previously might have been seen to come under the sedition laws will still be offences under the Crimes Act and that is right. Direct incitement to a crime and conspiracy to do criminal activity are already covered in our Crimes Act. It was interesting to reflect when I was listening to that speech as to why we need to use the Terrorism Suppression Act in the way it is envisaged if there are such fall-back crimes on our statute book as incitement to commit a crime conspiracy and offences like that. If people are really what we might regard as terrorists they would fall under those Crimes Act provisions. The situation is a bit like that of the sedition laws we are considering here tonight. 
In some ways I regret the passing of the sedition laws—the end of the sedition laws—because the offences themselves in the Act have a certain ring about them. Section 81(1)(a) states that one act that counts as sedition is: “to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against Her Majesty or the Government of New Zealand or the administration of justice;”. It trips off the tongue a little bit and in some ways I feel a bit of sadness at its passing. 
I think the origin of those words in both the British and the New Zealand jurisdictions goes back to well before the full flowering of parliamentary democracy. They were really put in legislation to keep the British King or Queen of the time however incompetent or oppressive he or she was beyond both public criticism and criticism within the emerging parliamentary system. In the days when we did not have a proper parliamentary democracy an MP would be carted off to the Tower of London if he or she was deemed to be seditious in criticising the monarch for one thing or another. The result of that problem is reflected in a tradition in our Parliament whereby neither the Queen nor the Governor-General are allowed to enter this Chamber because the monarch or the representative of the monarch did tend to come in and nab MPs and put them in the Tower of London. 
As parliamentary democracy fully evolved and we had constitutional monarchies in Britain and in New Zealand the Government also thought sedition laws were a good thing. The laws might have started out to protect the monarch but the new parliamentary Governments thought: “We want to protect ourselves from criticism too.” It is interesting that sedition laws were used against early Labour leaders to protect the Government not only against criticism of the monarchy which some of these early radical Labour leaders tended to do but also against the more trenchant attacks on the institutions of the time and criticisms that Parliament and the institutions of the State were very much run by wealthy business people landowners etc. 
Harry Holland later to become a Labour leader fell foul of the sedition laws because of his strong in working-class terms challenge to the Government of that time. I think he fell foul of another part of section 81 which we are amending tonight which renders it an offence “to excite such hostility or ill will between different classes of persons as may endanger the public safety.” Lynne Pillay talked about some of the essence of that provision continuing in the human rights legislation but I think that the sedition laws were really to stop those who were challenging the system from below—the poorer people the working people of the time—rather than protecting people who were not from the dominant culture such as racial minorities etc. The procedures we have under the Human Rights Act today are more to protect people who are subject to racism or put into some sort of second-class position in society. It is a different concept altogether. 
I think that New Zealand society will welcome the passing of this law. It is interesting that the select committee did not get very many submissions. Nobody got terribly exercised about the passage of this law. It is interesting that although people were a little cautious about any change a year or two ago when I started talking about this law once the movement for change started—and Sir Geoffrey Palmer had a big role in this—most politicians got on board. I congratulate the select committee on that. I think it means that we can take up what might seem to be more controversial things with greater ease. For example the blasphemy laws need to be taken out of the Crimes Act as well. 
 I think what we are doing tonight reflects what New Zealand society is all about. We have a very robust democracy where we can criticise each other often in very harsh terms without really breaking the ties between people. I think that rather than using the law to stop people from speaking out the very fact that we can speak out and say all sorts of outrageous things is actually a safety valve in our society—a safety valve that makes us a peaceful and harmonious society. I hope that as time goes on bearing in mind current worries about people talking about violence we will allow more tolerance for a certain amount of outrageous speech and see it as something that can be rectified by taking people aside and teaching them better manners or whatever. 
I also thank Tim Selwyn because in some ways even though he suffered a prison penalty under the sedition laws he along with Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the work of the minority parties in coming together produced this change. So I think we should thank him tonight. He might have suffered a bit of time in prison but he will be remembered as one of the people who helped to end these outdated laws. I thank Chris Finlayson for his comments and for his idea of naming bills after people. I think Rodney Hide might talk a little bit about that in his contribution.