Commissioner Coster,

RE: Unlawful Hate Speech Training for NZ Police

NZ Police officers are currently receiving compulsory training designed to help them detect ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crimes.’ 

Examples of such ‘offences’ in the training material include the statements, ‘There are only two genders’, ‘Kiwi Not Iwi’ and perhaps the most perplexing of all, ‘Free Speech’. 

Hate crime laws do not exist in NZ. 'Hate speech' is very narrowly defined in the Human Rights Act. However, the examples presented to officers in this case are not only highly prejudicial, but should be self-evidently legal. 

‘Free of expression’ is a right enshrined in our Bill of Rights Act. ‘Kiwi Not Iwi’ formed the campaign slogan of the National Party in 2005. To invert this fundamental right by presenting it as criminal is outrageous and suggests a deliberate politicisation of NZ Police under your leadership. Senior officers have contacted us alarmed by these unjustified moves within their ranks.

If this training is implemented as per the module’s own instructions to ‘Recognise, Record, and Respond’, law enforcement in this instance would be enforcing laws which do not exist! 

NZ Police exercise authority according to the doctrine of ‘policing by consent.’ Such extra-judicial activism defies this fundamental public mandate by showing a callous disregard for the Sovereignty of Parliament as sole author of NZ law.