If you participated in the recent sedition pledge, then I have some good news: the government has agreed to back a repeal. They still have to put a bill up, but it has a majority in Parliament and the process has started. So in six months to a year, we'll be free to excite as much disaffection as we like.
Next step: blasphemous libel.
Update: It was first up in the PM's press conference today:
Cabinet today has agreed to the government response to the Law Commision report on the law of sedition. You'll recall this called for the repeal of the law. The government agrees that the law on sedition should be repealed. It is an out of date piece of law, and offences which need to be prosecuted can be prosecuted under other legislation. So the government response on this will be being tabled presumably in the course of this week.
7 comments:
Well done, dude.
Posted by Will de Cleene : 5/07/2007 11:16:00 PM
A victory for freedom of speech!
Posted by Lewis Holden : 5/08/2007 01:25:00 AM
This is excellent news indeed :)
Yay I/S!!! Thanks for your tireless campaigning on this over the last few years and to all the other peeps who took on the pledge!
Let's plan a huge public gathering to "excite disaffection" on the day the repeal is signed hehehe
Posted by zANavAShi : 5/08/2007 02:06:00 AM
The government should, as a matter of policy, stay any sedition prosecutions until the repeal act is passed.
Unlike sedition, blasphemous libel can only be prosecuted with the consent of the Solicitor General - which explains why there has been only one prosecution, which ended in acquittal.
I happen to also think that the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 should be amended to remove purely textual works from the scope of censorship. Text isn't (by law or in practice) censored in most democracies, but it frequently is in NZ. 'Critic' fell foul of this last year when they published allegedly offensive articles.
Posted by Rich : 5/08/2007 01:17:00 PM
Peter Dunne asked for a timeframe for the introduction of a bill in the House today,and the best he could get was "soon". Meanwhile, Keith Locke also began pushing on the issue of blasphemous libel, which at least gets it in the public sphere...
Posted by Idiot/Savant : 5/08/2007 02:21:00 PM
Well done for banging away on this and great to see the Labour government respond.
Posted by Anonymous : 5/08/2007 10:46:00 PM
Cool!!
Great News! Well done.
Posted by Macro : 5/09/2007 08:16:00 PM
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