Worth Richard: Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Worth Richard: Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9929] 
Dr RICHARD WORTH (National) 
: 
 We have just heard a splendid speech from Mr Finlayson and I would like to add to some of his comments. 
I shall start by indicating that National of course supports the passage of this Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee. As Mr Finlayson said the offence of sedition has an ancient and unsatisfactory history. That was certainly the view that the Law Commission took because it stated in its report which calls for the abolition of the offence that it was appropriate that it be removed from the statute book. There is nothing very complicated about this legislation. It covers only a few short pages and simply repeals a small chunk of the Crimes Act. 
One of the things the commission did say was that the law of sedition had “virtually fallen into disuse in almost all countries with which New Zealand compares itself.” It had fallen into disuse here until 2006 when as Mr Finlayson has reminded us Timothy Selwyn was prosecuted and I might come back to that in a moment if there is time. That case certainly demonstrated that there was a clear case to review the existence of that particular crime on our statute book. 
In the foreword to the report of the Law Commission Sir Geoffrey Palmer said that most people probably associated the word “sedition” with revolutionary statements encouraging revolt insurrection and public riot against lawful authority. The reality is though that in New Zealand the sedition offences in the Crimes Act 1961 are a great deal wider than that. A seditious intention can range from exciting disaffection against the Queen or the New Zealand Government to inciting lawlessness generally or to exciting “ill will between different classes of people as may endanger the public safety.” I think that is why Sir Geoffrey said that the commission had concluded that the width of the offences meant they were an unjustifiable breach of the right of freedom of expression and to use his phrase “linguistic over-inclusiveness” of sedition meant that the offences lacked clarity. 
So we have a situation where there is quite clearly as Mr Finlayson said the potential for misuse. We can as a matter of history look back at what has occurred in New Zealand to see circumstances where the offence-creating provisions have been inappropriately used in times of political unrest and where perceived threats to established authority have been considered to prompt the intervention of these particular criminal offences. They have been used to fetter vehement and unpopular speech. I support those who would argue that the time has come to remove the sedition offences from the New Zealand statute book. 
In a free and democratic society defaming the Government is the right of every citizen. In times beset with threats of terrorism we should not close the open society. To do that would only encourage its enemies. In New Zealand free speech and public debate must be uninhibited robust and wide open and may include vehement caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on the Government and public officials as Justice Brennan of the United States Supreme Court once put it. 
Others have said and it is right to say this that the provisions of sections 81 to 85 of the Crimes Act concerning sedition fall foul of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. Mr Finlayson has helpfully indicated to us how the term “sedition” was derived from the Latin word. No finer person could give us that explanation given the work he has done under the Pope’s Latinist in the very heart of the Catholic Church in Rome. 
He also spoke about the English Statute of Treasons 1351 which defined many types of offences against the King as treasonable and was increasingly invoked in ever-widening circumstances to prosecute people who spoke or wrote in opposition to the King the Government people in positions of authority or public institutions. 
 Of course we inherited the British common law on sedition. It was codified in the criminal code of 1893 and set out again with varied wording in the Crimes Act 1908—when that massive consolidation of statutes occurred—the Police Offences Amendment Act 1951 and now in the Crimes Act 1961. 
During World War I regulations forbade anyone having or distributing documents that expressed any seditious intention. Prison terms for sedition some with hard labour were imposed on six men including as Mr Finlayson has said Peter Fraser and Bob Semple—who were Prime Minister and Minister of Works respectively in the first Labour Government—for their opposition to conscription during the war. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Real Labour Party people! 
Dr RICHARD WORTH 
: Real Labour Party people as Mr Finlayson said. He gave a number of examples. I will not repeat them but he did speak about the Reverend James Chapple. He spoke about another Prime Minister to be Walter Nash. He might have spoken about Edward Hunter who speaking on behalf of striking miners in 1913 said: “If they”—meaning the establishment—“want a revolution they can have it. If they force it on us they can have a revolution.” He was convicted of uttering seditious words and sentenced to 12 months’ probation. Then of course in 1922 the Catholic Bishop of Auckland James Liston was charged with sedition He was discharged by a jury after a hearing in the then Supreme Court. 
There have been others. The Maori leaders Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi were charged with sedition as a consequence of their opposition to 19th century land confiscations by the colonial Government. After four days of hearing the trial was postponed and it was never resumed. The Crown prosecutors concluded that their case was weak and reports of the 1881 meeting at which seditious statements were allegedly made were garbled. However both men were detained for a lengthy period under the West Coast Peace Preservation Act 1882 an Act that provided that neither man should be tried for the offence with which he had been charged but that allowed both men to be detained indefinitely as the Government thought fit. 
Then there was the clash in 1916 between the Tuhoe followers of the prophet Rua Kenana and the police. Rua was arrested and prosecuted for sedition. There was conflicting evidence over what Rua had said and he was acquitted on the sedition charge but found guilty of resisting arrest. 
After that substantial lapse of time we come to 2006 when Tim Selwyn faced a number of charges including sedition after sending emails calling for militant action against the Government’s foreshore and seabed legislation smashing the Prime Minister’s electoral office window and publishing two sets of pamphlets. He was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment for an unrelated fraud-related offence with a cumulative sentence of 2 months for criminal damage conspiracy and publishing a seditious statement. 
We have seen in some of the examples that Mr Finlayson and myself have given in the short comments we have made examples of attempts to control debate of attempts to challenge expression of political ideas and their consequences by law. The breadth of the definition of seditious intention means that seditious offences can be used to punish political speech that is essentially against Government policy and not simply used to prevent violence. It raises the real possibility of use of the sedition provisions in breach of freedom of expression. 
I have made some brief comments about the content of the bill. It is only 6 clauses long. It has a title clause and a commencement provision then has two parts.