Our team has been very focused over the past two weeks on campaigning against two serious issues: the Law Commission considering changes to the Human Rights Act, which could make misgendering illegal, and urging the Police Commissioner to stop unlawful training for officers on 'hate crime' and 'hate speech'. 

But, in the background, there have been several other issues on the go that our team has been juggling, too. There's never a dull moment around here! 

FSU training complete at Marlborough District Council 

You'll remember our recent free speech victory when Marlborough District Council stepped up after refusing ‘Let Kids Be Kids’ book a meeting room.

They admitted they made a mistake, issued an apology, and promptly changed the venues booking policy.

Well, yesterday, Jonathan and Hannah ran a successful free speech training session for the senior staff at Marlborough District Council.

We know that we’re David up against Goliath sometimes, and we have to stand our ground pretty confidently. But it is a real relief when those we are calling out admit they were wrong, and look to make amends. 

The training was very well received, prompted fantastic discussion amongst staff, and even left our team walking away having learnt a thing or two. 

Our team isn’t afraid of being disliked (our right to speak is too important to sacrifice to popularity). But it is a welcome change when we’re able to come along good-faith actors, and work together to build a strong culture of free speech.

(While we’re talking about Marlborough, we had a fantastic public event last night, too, with a good crowd coming along to hear more about our work. If you’re in Nelson tonight, we have a meeting tonight at 6:30. Come on out!)

New Plymouth Boys' High School bars student from speech competition finals

Oliver Jull is a 15-year-old student at New Plymouth Boys' High School who's recently made headlines. Oliver made it through to the finals of his school's speech competition only to find out he was barred, without warning, on the basis that some of the audience might find his speech offensive. 

The speech addressed the idea of the demise of the West.

When asked why he'd been barred, the Head of the English Faculty told him “one of the judges might not like it”, and “it’s not in the spirit of the speech competition”.

He was told that unless he changed his speech, he would not continue. 

How can students develop their own opinions on issues, if they can't even discuss them in the first place?

Oliver's views didn't have to be accepted by the school for him to be able to voice them. 

You won't be surprised that we've been in touch with the school, and our team is meeting with Oliver to provide guidance on the next steps to take. 

Unfortunately, the speech finals have already passed, but we believe the school needs to answer for its decision in this case. More than holding them to account, we believe schools should be breathing life into students individual beliefs and voices, not suppressing them. 

Hear Oliver speak about this himself on The Platform. We'll keep you posted. 

South Wairarapa District Council shuts down opposing perspective 

Speaking of being 'offended', last week, we defended the speech rights of a local farmer after he was shut down from presenting at South Wairarapa District Council. 

Mr Hedley expressed his views on the establishment of a Māori Ward in South Wairarapa and was told a comment he made was “disrespectful”, “offensive”, and the reason he could not continue his presentation.

What has been recorded publicly is that Mr Hedley said, “I do not agree with the Māori Ward. That is racism.” 

Agree with Mr Hedley or not, the appointment of Māori Wards is currently a highly disputed topic, and he should have been able to share his opinion without being shut down.

Members of the council did not need to agree with him in order to listen to his perspectives. 

We asked the Council why their councillors seem to feel entitled to shut down the opinions of those they are democratically elected to represent (not agree with). We appreciated they responded to us- but they got this one wrong.

The temptation to shut down opinions we think are offensive is something I think we can all relate to, but all that really achieved was giving this farmer a wider platform. Probably not what the Chairwoman of the committee was trying to achieve when she cut his submission short!

Chief Censor endorses importance of freedom of expression

Recently on Q+A, the Chief Censor, Caroline Flora told John Campbell that, "freedom of speech is an American concept" claiming that in New Zealander we have “freedom of expression”. We were concerned by this comment, especially as it was coupled by several questions by Campbell as to whether the law should allow for more censorship by her team. 

We've reminded her that free speech is the foundation of our democracy, and it is freedom of speech that allows us to hold our leaders to account, protect the voices of minorities and dissenters, and safeguard our justice system. 

We said: The principle of freedom of speech is what distinguishes every liberal democracy which has properly sprung from the British Parliamentary tradition with its roots in classical thought and practice dating back even to antiquity. This is true, not least because, of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688.

The Chief Censor responded with a very thoughtful letter, explaining “In response to John Campbell’s question about whether the current laws needed “tweaking” what I said was that freedom of expression is a fundamental right and that the “test for limiting [the freedom of expression] in our Act is extraordinarily high for a reason”. She went on to offer a meeting to further discuss this issues if we’d like. 

While there are some serious threats to free speech afoot, it’s nice to also work alongside actors who have respect for this freedom. 

Meeting with the Police Commissioner

On Wednesday, Jonathan and Hannah presented the Police Commissioner with our public letter with over 11,000 signatures from you, our supporters. 

As Jonathan said on Wednesday, Police have operated in good-faith with us on this issue; but you don’t need to have bad intentions for terrible results to occur. The Commissioner has already said that the examples we were most concerned by (training officers that the claims ‘there are only two genders’ or ‘Kiwi, not Iwi’ are examples of ‘hate speech’) have been removed, and that a full review will be conducted of the training. 

But we are still very concerned that the groundwork is being laid for what has occurred in places like the UK and Canada. The idea of ‘non-criminal hate incidences’ is fundamentally Orwellian. 

Our team is continuing to work on this issue. We’ll have more for you next week on how we can each respond to this overreach. 

Read what Nick from our team has to say on this issue here. 

Whenever I get the opportunity to describe the work of the FSU, I say we campaign at a Government level to ensure our leaders uphold free speech, and we advocate for people at a community level who are unjustly silenced, too. Well, these past couple of weeks have been an example of just that.  

Free speech really matters, in every context. And with you, we're ensuring it stays free. 

Enjoy your weekend. 

Nadia Braddon-Parsons Communications & Marketing Manager Free Speech Union www.fsu.nz