A conviction for hate speech

The Herald reports that a man who recoded a violent rant calling for genocide of Māori has been convicted for hate speech:

Richard Jacobs, 44, filmed a video from his Pāpāmoa home in May last year where he called for the killing of Māori. The video was uploaded to YouTube.

In the video Jacobs spouted a diatribe of attacks against tangata whenua, labelling the race "overweight and unhealthy".

[...]

He then became markedly more violent, saying the Māori population "could be wiped out within a month". He threatened to burn down marae, said he knew how to kill and aimed a gun at the camera.

He was later charged with inciting racial disharmony - a rarely prosecuted offence under the Human Rights Act. He was also charged with knowingly making an objectionable publication.

He pleaded guilty to both charges.

The BORA's affirmation of the right to freedom of expression means that it is phenomenally difficult to prosecute for inciting racial disharmony, and this is only the second-ever case. But the penalty for that is only three months, so the bulk of his sentence (12 months' home detention and 300 hours of community work) was due to knowingly making an objectionable publication. Which I guess shows the opponents of a specific hate speech law the existing alternative: rather than risking three months in jail, they can risk 14 years, and be tainted by an offence normally reserved for child pornographers.

(In practice, the courts are highly unlikely to give 14 years for making a publication which is objectionable due to hate speech, as its considered less harmful than other types of objectionable material. But the maximum sets the scale of sentence, and in this case the offender was looking at two years as a default, which was then scaled down and turned into home detention by the guilty plea, mental health issues, and potential for rehabilitation. And contrary to Te Pati Māori's Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, that sentence isn't "a joke". Home detention is a real punishment, and a full year of it will not be easy).

Of course, publications are not the only vehicle for harm, which is why the Human Rights Act offence covers public speeches. Any broader hate speech law would need to cover them too. But given usual methods of distribution the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 might actually be good enough to deal with this problem.