This document was prepared by Research Fellow Professor Warren Brookbanks as Maxim Institute’s submission to the Justice Ministry’s consultation process.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Laws criminalising religious vilification are widespread in comparable jurisdictions to New Zealand. However, we oppose the proposed amendment to the Human Rights Act 1993 as we do not believe that criminal penalisation of speech is the best way to tackle the problem. Further, we are concerned that the proposed criminalisation may have unintended consequences by suppressing legitimate debate and disagreement about religions and moral belief systems.

However, if the grounds of potentially criminal speech are to be extended to include religious belief, then we submit that the additional ground be added as a separate section in the Human Rights Act 1993 and not simply tacked onto the existing s 131.

Furthermore, we submit that an additional provision be adopted that explicitly protects legitimate forms of religious debate along the same lines as the legislation in the United Kingdom.

Finally, we submit that an alternative approach to dealing with religious vilification be explored. A fruitful avenue of exploration would be an alternative dispute resolution procedure incorporating the spirit of the Te Ao Mārama model.