Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Human Rights (Incitement on Ground of Religious Belief) Amendment Bill this narrowed-down hate speech law Labour has finally brought to the House. And I start by saying what a back-down what a massive back-down by this Government and what an enormous victory for free speech in New Zealand. To put this in perspective here's the letter that I received from Kris Faafoi the Minister's predecessor on 9 December 2020. And the proposal was to redefine the criminal offence shifting the criminal offence from the Human Rights Act into the Crimes Act increasing the penalty for the criminal offence extending incitement provisions to protect all groups listed under the Prohibited grounds of discrimination" section in the Human Rights Act and extending the civil provisions in line with international obligations by including prohibition of incitement to discrimination against a group and amending the prohibited grounds of discrimination to explicitly protect transgender diverse and intersex people. That's what Kris Faafoi was promising on 9 December two years and one week ago. And today we have the Minister coming to the House with this enormous back-down bill where they are going to add one grounds of discrimination—with the same penalties—to the existing bill staying in the Human Rights Act. And people might ask why the Government has backed down so much. Well actually we could have told them. They could have found out for themselves if they'd just taken the time to read the royal commission report that they say they're following the recommendations from. It says "The difference between legitimately criminalised hate speech and a vigorous exercise of the right to express opinions is not easy to capture—at least with any precision—in legislative language." Well that's what the Government's found. It goes on to say as well "The more far reaching law creating hate speech offences the greater the potential for inconsistency with the right to freedom of expression." That's what the Labour Party's discovered in the last two years. And so what have they done? Well they've backed down in a victory for free speech. And it's a victory for example for the over 40000 people who signed ACT's free speech petition over those two years—those people who value the liberal traditions of this country and the right to freedom of expression enshrined in our Bill of Rights Act. And what this back-down bill really says is that they are going to extend a law that the Minister openly admits will never lead to a prosecution. That's why previously they wanted to change the nature of the criminal offence. They've dropped that. And I asked the Prime Minister in the House yesterday: is she saying that this law is going to do nothing or is she saying that people are going to be prosecuted for criticising religion? She can't have it both ways and she couldn't say which one it was either. And that seemed to frustrate her leading to some hate speech of her own but we won't go into that now.What we've got is a victory for free speech but the remnants of this particular law are still wrong. This law still chills and curtails free speech on the most unusual candidate there could possibly be and that is religion. You see I can understand wanting to protect people against being attacked for unchangeable aspects of their identity—particularly your ethnic identity—but I can never understand why if the Labour Government was going to ban debate about any issue it would be religion because the only way that movements like the labour movement a liberal-left movement that has done a lot of good in its time were possible was because of an enlightenment where people who insisted that you could not have valid views unless they were with the current church of the time were challenged and it was made possible for people to express their views regardless. And then we come back to what the Human Rights Commission said about it being difficult to capture the nature of hate speech in legislation with any precision. Well that's the other big problem. Apart from the fact that the law probably won't do anything apart from the fact that religion is a very odd thing to ban debate on or to try and restrict debate on there's also this fundamental problem of consistency with the rule of law and it goes back 800 years to Magna Carta—the simple idea that I live in a free society and I can't be imprisoned or in any way sanctioned by the State without the right to defend myself against objective laws that apply the same to anyone. But the great difficulty with this law is that it's so subjective. You take something like burglary set out in the Crimes Act: did you enter the premises? Were you legally allowed to enter the premise? Did you commit another crime like theft? Someone accused of burglary can go to court and defend themselves based on facts and evidence defend their rights against the Crown—something that we have fought long and hard to win and maintain in our liberal society. But hate speech laws—to the extent that they do anything—take away that certainty and our basic liberal right. What they do is they mean you don't know if you're guilty to the point of prosecution because as the Human Rights Commission has said the difference between legitimately criminalised hate speech and vigorous exercise of the right to express opinions is not easy to capture. And I should correct myself; that was the royal commission on Christchurch—we don't hear such wise things from the Human Rights Commission which should be gone. We are not only abandoning free speech; we are abandoning the rule of law for something that will not actually deliver any benefit and if it did it would be restricting the ability to debate religion which is what brought about the Reformation and the Enlightenment that made a Parliament like this in a democracy like New Zealand possible. That's how stupid this law is. But let me also give you a glimpse into what this means for our future. You see I heard from somebody recently about the climate of debate and discussion in Western societies at the moment and they said something that has really resonated with me. They said "This is supposed to be an age of enlightenment but you have to walk on eggshells with everything you say." A lot of people feel like that. They feel that if they say the wrong thing they'll be cancelled possibly face consequences at work be beaten up or piled on or doxed or any other number of modern social media phenomena. This is a time when we need to be encouraging free and open debate not siding with the thugs and bullies who thought the only response to Salman Rushdie was to stab him in the neck because they didn't like his opinion. We should be standing up for freedom of expression and making it easier to share your views. But let's give a glimpse into the future. We just heard from a Green member. This is the University of Auckland Greens on Campus on 10 October: "The University of Auckland Greens have chosen to abstain"—that's a big word for 17-year-olds—"from attending this year's baby back-benchers debates and any future debates." And then they give a list of seven demands: one of them is that at this debate they want the instituting of trained equity officers for the event who are responsible for maintaining safety provisions and enforcement protocols; anyone in breach of the rules should be immediately removed. This is my alma mater. This is the University of Auckland a top 100 university in the world where young people who engage in politics boycott a debate until enforcers are installed at the debate to immediately remove people if they don't like what they say or if they think that something being said makes them feel unsafe. This is a culture in a climate where the right to free expression—hard fought hard won and hard maintained over centuries in our society—is endangered in a very real way. And one thing that doesn't help—even though it's a massive back-down; even though it probably won't do anything—is this House and this Government introducing more laws to chill freedom of expression. Well I could tell you one party in this Parliament is always committed to upholding our traditions of free speech and that is the ACT Party and I can tell you that if you want to uphold free speech and have this law and other chilling hate speech laws reversed then the best bet to achieve it is a party vote for ACT. Thank you Madam Speaker."