Parliament is now a hate-platform

A ballot for two member's bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn:

• Public Finance (Prohibition on Providing Public Funds to Gangs) Amendment Bill (Rima Nakhle)
• Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill (Jenny Marcroft)

The first bill is just more tiresome racism. The second is a hate crime. Its drawing from the ballot (and indeed, its acceptance into the ballot at all) makes it clear that "our" parliament is now simply a hate-platform, Stormfront-in-Thorndon, spewing divisiveness and hate into the public sphere for the benefit of a tiny fringe of fundy bigots and weirdos. Just this week the House supported rules against exactly that, extending a sessional order which deplatforms hateful petitions from parliament's website. But apparently hateful member's bills which seek to erase the identity of some kiwis and reduce their rights are OK. That has obvious implications for the already tottering legitimacy of Parliament as an institution, and for the legitimacy of the laws it makes.

Aotearoa is no longer a democracy

A regime Minister uses their parliamentary platform to slander an opposition MP as a pedophile, resulting in escalating threats to their safety. Eventually, they are forced to resign in order to protect their child from harm.

Putin's Russia? Orban's Hungary? No, it's Winston Peters' New Zealand:

The Green Party’s Benjamin Doyle is resigning as an MP, citing concerns for their safety and the wellbeing of their whānau.

[...]

In a statement on Friday afternoon, Doyle said they decided to resign after their young child had asked them to leave Parliament for their own wellbeing.

“After having baseless and violent accusations thrown at me, and an onslaught of hate, vitriol and threats of real-world violence directed at me and my whānau, I have decided to move on from Parliament.

“Whānau is the most precious thing in the world. From the start, I have always said my child is my priority. My tamati asked me to leave Parliament, and I am leaving for them and for my own wellbeing,” they said.

This is clearly the right decision for Doyle and their family (and good on them for putting their kid first - something too few MPs do). At the same time, its a terrible precedent for our democracy.

This is not the first time this has happened. Jacinda Ardern was bullied out of office. And there have been systematic campaigns against Golriz Ghahraman and Tory Whanau. It is clear that the right are pursuing a deliberate campaign of harassment and threats of violence as a way of over-ruling the will of the voters and eliminating effective opponents. In a normal country, the people responsible would be in jail. But clearly, we're not a normal country any more. Instead, we have a regime, whipping up mobs and using terror to silence opposition.

In a democracy, who represents us is meant to be decided by voting. A country where elected representatives are bullied out of office by threatening their children is no longer a democracy.

A parliamentary purpose?

Rimmer's Regulatory Standards Bill is unpopular, and like his unconstitutional Treaty Principles Bill, has seen a massive outpouring of public opposition. So for the past week, he has been using his platform as deputy prime minister to publicly attack high-profile submitters, with a series of ads calling them "victim of the day". It is effectively a hate-campaign against submitters, attempting to incite harassment and violence against them, in an effort to deter submissions in future. It has already resulted in thousands of hate-filled online messages directed at Rimmer's targets, including misogyny, racism, and threats of gender-based violence.

That's bad enough. But to add insult to injury, at least one of those ads bears a Parliamentary logo. It's being done with out money!

Parliamentary communications "must only be used for parliamentary purposes". Readers might want to consider whether organising harassment campaigns against members of the public who submit on legislation is a "parliamentary purpose". And if it turns out that it is "within the rules" - as MP's love to say when caught doing something immoral - whether those rules, or indeed the entire institution, is fit for purpose.

Secondly, among the examples of contempt of parliament are these:

intimidating, preventing, or hindering a witness from giving evidence, or giving evidence in full, to the House or a committee...

assaulting, threatening, or disadvantaging a person on account of evidence given by that person to the House or a committee.

Rimmer is not (to my knowledge) sending hate-filled messages himself to intimidate, threaten, and disadvantage committee witnesses in retaliation for their evidence - he has an online mob to do that for him. Which he is inciting. And on that front, anything which "has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such a result" qualifies as contempt.

Some MP should lodge a complaint. And if the Privileges Committee finds him guilty, then he should be hoist by his own petard, and suspended for a month.

Labour grovels to the bigots

In the wake of the March 15 terror attack, the inquiry recommended tougher hate-speech laws. And after dragging their feet on it for a full year, the government has basicly said "fuck that":

The Government has drastically watered down its hate speech reforms, Justice Minister Kiri Allan said on Saturday.

Proposed last year in response to the March 15 terror attack and the Royal Commission report that followed, the reforms were due to expand protections to women, religious groups and rainbow and disabled communities, among others. As it stands, only hate speech on the basis of race, skin colour or national origin is prohibited.

The reforms were also going to increase the maximum sentence for hate speech and raise the legal threshold for what might be considered hate speech so that only a narrower band of violent and threatening expression would be banned. The law currently forbids speech that is intended to "incite ill-will" against a group while the Government's proposals would have raised that bar to inciting "hatred".

However, Allan said, the scope of the reforms is now severely curtailed. Only religion will be added to the list of protected grounds and no further changes will be made to hate speech law.

On the plus side, Muslims will at least get some protection. On the minus side, groups who have been routinely targeted by both hate speech and the violence it incites will be left out. And all because Labour would rather grovel to bigots and throw their own supporters under the bus than stand up for its principles.

Fuck Labour. They're as useless as a proverbial useless thing. Grovelling to the rich, grovelling to farmers, grovelling to bigots and misogynists. If they won't do what they say they will, and will back away from their principles at the first sign that someone might disagree with them, what is the fucking point of them?

Something is wrong in Tauranga

On Monday, Stuff reported that queer-supporting students at a Tauranga "Christian" school were subjected to chants of "kill the gays". This morning, a building hosting queer and trans groups was burned down in an apparent arson attack:

A building used by Gender Dynamix – an organisation that aims to meet the mental health needs of the transgender and nonbinary community of the Bay of Plenty – has been targetted by a ‘suspicious’ fire.

The fire broke out at the building, which is also the home of advocacy and support service Rainbow Youth, at Tauranga’s Historic Village complex in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Police were called at around 12:45am to the premises on 17th Avenue following a report of a fire.

“It's being treated as suspicious,” confirmed a police spokesperson.

Homophobic harassment, followed by an apparent anti-gay hate crime. Something is very wrong in Tauranga, and it seems like the entire city is being infected by hate and bigotry (see also: their racist museum). I guess we just have to hope that the police catch those responsible. Meanwhile, if you'd like to help Rainbow Youth recover from this, they have a GiveALittle here.

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.

This should not happen in New Zealand

A pair of men kidnapped and beaten because they were believed to be gay. A gay couple driven from their business by a campaign of vandalism and harassment. And now we have another gay couple forced to close their business after it was firebombed. This isn't Alabama, or even Iran - its happening right here in New Zealand.

This should not happen here. It shouldn't happen in those other places either, but we pride ourselves on being better than them. It looks like we're not. It also looks like the police have a lot to answer for, showing a complete disinterest in the graffiti which preceded this hate-crime. I don't know if they're homophobic, or just dumb, but I doubt they'd have responded the same way to anti-Semitic graffiti on a Jewish person's house, or Islamophobic messages on a mosque. They recognise those crimes as warnings of worse to come, but apparently they don't when it comes to gays. That has to change.

But the real thing that has to change is public attitudes towards homophobia. This sort of shit happens because people think that homophobia is acceptable, that its OK to hate someone (and beat and abuse and firebomb them) because they're gay. Its not. And we must make sure that no-one is left with any illusions about that. We have to challenge this hatred every time it occurs. Because if we don't, we get stuff like this.