link to original reddit post by /u/doitstuart
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/pro/up-to-three-years-in-prison-for-hate-speech-under-reforms
Couple that with the coming internet filter laws which will give the police the power to take down any website, and you have a perfect storm.
From NZ's Free Speech Coalition:
'Possible jail time for “abusing or insulting communications”, or “inciting disharmony”.
We couldn’t make this up. The first proposal makes it a criminal offence for “the incitement of disharmony, based on an intent to stir up, maintain or normalise hatred, through threatening, abusive or insulting communications.”
It shifts the current speech laws from the Human Rights Act to the Crimes Act, with penalties of up to three years prison time.
The reforms seek to change the scope of speech restrictions too. They would make many more types of discrimination subject to the law: including hatred against religious belief, and even political belief.
According to the report:
“In addition to adding in new prohibited grounds of discrimination, specific amendments were suggested to clarify the law’s applicability to anti-trans discrimination. A new ground of “gender, including gender identity and gender expression” would be created and the definition of “sex” would be amended to “explicitly include sex characteristics or intersex status.” As well as criminal liability, the standard for civil liability would be expanded under the proposals to include cases where there has been “incitement to discrimination”, not just “incitement to hatred.”
Laws against “inciting disharmony” sound like something out of communist China, not a western democracy. '