Section 14

The Greens, United Future, Act, and the Maori Party joined forces this afternoon to call for the repeal of New Zealand’s archaic sedition law, lending their support to the Law Commission’s report recommending the same.

“In a country that champions itself as a free and fair democracy the existence of sedition laws is an unnecessary restraint on the political rights of New Zealanders,” said the MPs.

“The problem we have with the law of sedition is that while it continues to exist in this country true freedom of expression is compromised.”

In the past, sedition laws have been used against Taranaki Maori leader Te Whiti in the wake of the Parihaka invasion, and against then-future Labour Prime Ministers Peter Fraser for opposing conscription during World War I and Walter Nash for importing communist propaganda. (No Right Turn has an index of sedition cases in New Zealand.)

More recently, Tim Selwyn was convicted of sedition for distributing pamphlets encouraging people to copy his axe attack on the Prime Minister’s office. This has sparked a rash of threats to prosecute for sedition for some extremely silly things.

Peter Dunne noted at this afternoon’s press conference that together the four parties had fifteen votes, making a majority in Parliament if either main party joined them.

Kudos to all involved, especially if they manage to get this law off the books. A few hours ago I would never have imagined that you put these four parties in the same room and expect anything sensible to come out but credit where credit’s due - this is a creditable move.

UPDATE 25/4/07: Idiot/Savant has set up a pledge at Pledgebank to write to the Minister of Justice urging the repeal of New Zealand’s sedition laws as long as 20 others do the same, so sign the pledge and get writing.

UPDATE 26/4/07: The pledge has collected the signatures needed to trigger it. Kudos to Idiot/Savant for relentlessly pushing for sedition law reform. If you signed the pledge, now’s the time to keep your end of the bargain and write that letter to Mark Burton to make sure we get the result we want. If you didn’t sign, you still can.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 9:03 pm and is filed under Sedition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.