A liberal elite academic thinks Shane Jones’s Indian comments should be tested in a court of law. Although calling a professor at Waikato University an academic is stretching credulity a little:
Whether Jones wants to take New Zealand back to ethnicity-based restrictions within immigration in the future is unknown. What is more pressing is whether his words have violated any rules.
The particular trip-wire is the 1993 Human Rights Act. This specifies in article 61, dealing with racial disharmony, that it is unlawful for anyone to broadcast words that are, “threatening, abusive or insulting … likely to excite hostility or bring into contempt any group of persons who may be coming to or in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race or ethnic origins of that group of persons”.
This problem escalates to being a criminal offence, under article 131 of the same law, of inciting racial disharmony. This occurs if their broadcast intends, “to excite hostility or ill will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule, any group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group of persons” and their words are of a type, “likely to excite hostility or ill-will against, or bring into contempt or ridicule, any such group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group of persons”.
The difference between the charges, and whether it should be a civil or a criminal matter, is the intention of the person speaking and specific types of words used.
Whether the words of the minister breach either, or neither, of article 61 or article 131 is a matter that only the courts should decide.
Both the Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon and the Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt should, if they believe that a breach of law has occurred, test the matter in court, rather than just telling the minister to stop.
There are advantages to referring this to the courts. An independent judicial assessment of existing law would take the partisan nature out of the stone-throwing that those in Beehive are so good at. This is particularly important because government ministers should be held to higher standards than normal citizens. Their examples matter.
There is currently a push to develop new hate-speech laws because it is believed by some that the current laws in this area are inadequate – that assumption should be tested.
Finally, post-March 15 2019, we must all lift our game and question more than we did in the past.
NZ Herald
Well, Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law at Waikato University, why don’t you take a private prosecution against Shane Jones and test it yourself at your own expense rather than wait for some other person or organisation to have a crack. If you are worth your presumably tenured salary then an honourable person would put into action what their mouth has already said.
I’m sure Shane Jones would be absolutely ecstatic to have this tested in court.
