The advisory group charged with checking the response to the March 15 terror attack has expressed concern to the Government about delays to key recommendations from the Royal Commission, Marc Daalder reports
Reforming hate speech law and creating new hate crime offences has been put on the "back-burner", worrying advocates and the Government watchdog which oversees the response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terror attack.
Kāpuia, the ministerial advisory group responsible for checking the Government's progress on Royal Commission recommendations, wrote to Cabinet Minister Andrew Little in March about the delay. Little is the minister charged with coordinating the response to the Royal Commission.
"We have noted ... one of the areas you have identified as important this year is the continuation of work on hate-motivated and incitement offences but we understand this work has now been delayed," Kāpuia chair Arihia Bennett wrote in the letter.
"We stand by our earlier advice that adequate and meaningful community consultation on these significant issues remains important, and we would appreciate an update from you or the Minister of Justice on the next steps now for this important programme of work."
Changes to hate speech law to protect more groups from incitement, increase the criminal penalties and raise the bar for what counts as hate speech were consulted on last year. More recently, however, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi has indicated that the Government has gone back to the drawing board on the proposals.
The Royal Commission also said the Government should create new, hate-motivated alternatives to assault, intimidation and other offences. No proposals for these new hate crimes have been consulted on. Asked multiple times by Newsroom about the issue over the past year, Faafoi has been unable to provide a timeline for next steps. In March, he did say that he was expecting advice from officials on hate crime reform.
"Objectively, the Government has delayed this work and put it on the back-burner," Green Party justice spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said on Monday.
In a statement to Newsroom, Bennett said Kāpuia members had repeatedly "expressed concern to [Little] about the Government’s lack of progress in implementing the hate-speech and hate-motivated offences recommendations from the Royal Commission of Inquiry. Kāpuia repeated the concerns it raised in its letter from March, and when the Minister met with Kāpuia in May members called for the Government to make progress on this important mahi."
Even before March, Kāpuia had noted in correspondence to Little that these issues needed to be meaningfully consulted on and progressed. Newsroom has previously reported on the group's concerns over the lack of genuine engagement during last year's hate speech consultation.
Little declined to share what he had said in response to Kāpuia's concerns, in comments to Newsroom.
"I have had ongoing discussions with Kāpuia about the programme of work on hate speech and hate crime," he said.
"I'm conscious that the Ministry of Justice, as the ministry responsible for this work, has already put out a discussion document and received overwhelming feedback on that document. This is a difficult area of law and it’s important that we take the time to ensure the balance is carefully considered."
A spokesperson for Faafoi didn't respond to any of Newsroom's questions about hate crime reform or about whether he was aware of Kāpuia's concerns but did address the stalled hate speech proposals.
"The Ministry of Justice has received substantial feedback on the proposals Government released last year for public discussion and is providing further advice to government to progress work on hate speech," the spokesperson said.
"These are complex issues which need to balance the right to freedom of expression with the rights to freedom from discrimination and other harms in a society which is respectful and inclusive, and this needs to be done carefully and thoroughly."
Ghahraman said the delays risked politicising the issue, something that marginalised communities could ill afford.
"The Government's delays to take action have now potentially pushed this reform - even if they act upon it - into an election year. And the last thing these really vulnerable communities need is to become an election political football, which makes them far more unsafe. Literally, physically unsafe," she said.
"My guess would've been that, if they were politically playing it extra safe, they would have actually acted on hate crime. This was something the police were calling for. For the Government to not even act to bring hate crime definitions into our criminal law is wild to me. That's a really simple change."
The Green MP added that the Government could have followed the model for gun law reform in addressing the hate speech issue. Immediately after the March 15 terror attack, the Government implemented the recommendations of previous reviews on improving gun safety while leaving further policy work and more complex proposals for a second tranche.
Ghahraman said previous reviews of hate speech legislation had noted faults, such as that only racist hate speech was banned, not hate speech on grounds of religion, sexual orientation or gender.
In terms of the hate speech reforms, this is something that the Human Rights Commission already reviewed and called for in 2016. So the same thing should have happened with hate speech - the bits that we already knew were missing should have come into Parliament really quickly," she said.
"The bit that could have gone through a review would be whether the actual standard of protection needs to be changed. That is something that we need consensus around and that hits a number of different fundamental rights.
"There is a really different way that the Government's responded to something that made everyone unsafe, which was guns, versus the thing that makes only marginalised communities unsafe."
