Jonathan Ayling
Wellington, August 10, 2021
The liberties that we enjoy in New Zealand are troublingly easy to take for granted.
Yet, contrary to the experience of most who live in developed western societies, freedom and peace are not givens. Perhaps the greatest freedoms of all which leads to peace are the rights to conscience and speech.
Our familiarity with these liberties has bred contempt as today these basic freedoms are opposed and undermined in ways unseen for centuries.
Dark Ages of the world
As the very term ‘the dark ages’ would suggest, the West has not always lived with these considerable privileges. Centuries of deference to superstition, unmerited tribal hierarchies, and uncritical thinking saw Europe stagnate in an era of violence, poverty, and ignorance which prohibited free thought and speech.
The substance of the Renaissance, the rebirth of scientific inquiry, political dialogue, and cultural revitalisation, came as people no longer saw themselves indistinguishably from their grouping, but saw themselves as individuals. Questions that previously had been forbidden were on the table; the unthinkable was thought, the unsayable said, and new life came.
Freedom of thought, inquiry, and speech liberate public conversation to allow the contest of ideas. Many New Zealanders think that our society will always know the civil liberties that have come as a result of Enlightenment thinking.
Many believe that the inherent value of a human being, the right to personal autonomy, the freedoms which come from being a sovereign, independent thinking individual are so self-evident that they could never be undone.
This is patently not the case.
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A bleak future
If we are unable to navigate the questions that we face today without an unswerving dedication to the civil liberties we have inherited, our future will be less free and less peaceful, despite our very best intentions. Benjamin Franklin famously claimed, ‘Any society that will give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
The hate speech proposals which have been released by the government present a material threat to the liberties which have delivered to us the freedoms and peace we know. By embracing the notion that we must elevate certain questions, certain subjects, certain people, above the fray of public discussion and outside the contest of ideas, we remove the surest path forward for our society together to navigate the conflicting ideas it currently entertains.
It would be foolish and inaccurate to claim that hateful speech does not exist in this country, or that hateful speech does not at times have deleterious effects on communities within our nation. However, that by no means justifies this proposed overreach by the government. While many can relate to the good intention of the government, these changes would in the long run hinder and hurt those they seek to help the most.
Marginalised communities
If today we challenge the notion that all Kiwis have the freedom to think and speak as they feel is right, then tomorrow it is those with the least power who will find their thought and speech censored. While we may start by limiting free speech with the marginalised or minority in mind, it is these very communities who would eventually find themselves victims of these unjustified infringements on civil liberties.
The Free Speech Union does not believe that all speech is helpful or conducive to social cohesion. However, we believe the alternative of state-censored-speech is terrifyingly worse.
Rather than introducing laws to censor speech, I would prefer that leaders speak up against the vile comments they might otherwise criminalise.
When good counter-arguments are presented, when fools are silenced through reason, not threats of imprisonment, when honest conversations on difficult topics are allowed to be had, it is then that we won’t make martyrs of bigots and we won’t drive them underground.
Submit to the Ministry of Justice at freespeechsubmission.com and sign our petition at savefreespeech.co.nz to defend these fundamental liberties.
Jonathan Ayling is the Campaign Manager for the Free Speech Union based in Wellington. This story has been sponsored by
