ACTing the fool
The ACT party’s new law and order policy announced today confirms how deeply unserious they are about freedom of speech and expression. One of the key proposals is that police be able to apply to the courts to put an injunction on anyone on the National Gang List, if they have a “reasonable belief” that the person is at risk of dealing drugs or committing violence. This would then potentially prevent the person from being in a particular place, or hanging out with certain people.
One of ACT’s other key policy platforms recently has been around freedom of expression, and opposing the government’s proposed changes to hate speech laws. In fact, ACT don’t just oppose these, but want to remove all current hate speech laws as well. From their website: “As the government considers further restricting speech, we risk following other countries into censorship, where elites decide what we can and can’t say.” Seymour and ACT were similarly critical of white nationalists Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux being denied the ability to speak at an Auckland council venue.
There seems to me to be a large inconsistency in these two positions. On the one hand, ACT are fine with the courts making a determination on individuals having their freedoms restricted in the case of gang members, but on the other hand are very concerned about the courts being able to make determinations on peoples’ freedom of expression and what counts as hate speech. If they are concerned about the use of hate speech laws by the ‘elites’ to silence people, surely it would be reasonable to be concerned about injunction orders being abused by the same ‘elites’ to limit people from engaging in otherwise lawful activities.
It’s hard to see these inconsistent principles as anything more than appealing to the sort of reactionaries who are very concerned about free speech for bigots but happy for those who are disproportionately poor and minorities to have their freedoms restricted in more draconian and authoritarian ways than are being proposed in Labour’s hate speech laws.
