It’s hardly surprising that Muslims see the proposed new hate speech laws as a blanket protection from future verbal abuse. The proposed law will be very useful for warding off critics of Islam as well as those who insult them because, under the proposed new hate speech law, they could be punished with three years in jail!
We already have laws to warn potential miscreants that physical abuse is punishable by law; we certainly don’t need to rewrite human rights law as a knee-jerk response to Christchurch.
Hate speech law would not have stopped Brenton Tarrant; the Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi admitted as much on Newshub Nation, saying, “I don’t think you going to find any society where racism could be completely extinct but we have to keep trying.”
Well, try that on your own time, minister, and when you’ve worked out why racial hatred exists, come back with the root cause and a solution. Until then, go away and do your job which is not to address the hypothetical of another Christchurch but to deal to the gangs increasing under your watch who are an actual physical threat.
An interesting aspect of the proposed law is it is designed to protect groups rather than individuals.
“The six proposed changes include protecting groups from hate speech on the basis of sex, gender, marital status or political opinion, and making “incitement to discriminate” against the law. It will also boost the maximum sentence for the offence from three months to three years’ imprisonment.”
Stuff
We already have individual human rights law so why do we need group protection?
Government ministers are busily dividing us up into groups, particularly Maori and Muslims, and instituting law and process to protect the rights of those groups. Why are they doing this?
The Jewish community has never had special Government dispensations and neither have Christians, Hindu or Sikh. All these groups have historically suffered hate speech and mocking so why is it that only the government’s chosen groups will receive special treatment and protection?
We need to abandon group think and treat people with individual respect. The government is using group think to divide us for political gain. It really is that simple.
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