Talk, don’t hate

Unlike some countries, New Zealand does not have “hate crimes”. Like them, we have hateful incidents through words or deeds, but we do not give them a special significance in law. Should we?

It is a question being asked by police, justice, human rights groups and groups hurt by hate-fuelled verbal and physical violation.

Physical violence is a crime against the individual regardless of motivation, and language can be a crime if it is likely to incite violence against a group. But it probably has to be a direct incitement, not just raise the risk of violence.

Labour MP Louisa Wall tells us she would like the law to go further with a “duty of care” added to the Bill of Rights Act, so people could be held accountable for their use of free speech. Accountability would depend on influence and status in society.

That seems to mean it would apply mainly to public figures and, in fact, anybody quoted in the media.

Thomas Beagle, chair of the Council for Civil Liberties, has a better suggestion. He thinks the Bill of Rights protection for free speech could be used constructively. That implies a right to express any view so long as it was expressed a certain way, or perhaps with a good intention.

Could humour be a good intention? Some of the most hurtful speech is humour at the expense of a less powerful section of society. Beagle says he wants free speech to be genuinely free even if it offends others.

Perhaps the answer is to rely on other arbiters of fairness and decency.

Free media have set up ethical adjudication bodies to consider complaints of all kinds, including written or spoken discrimination on grounds of gender, race, religion and sexuality.

The Human Rights Commission similarly can issue rulings on hate speech that do not carry disproportional penalties. Society can express its disapproval of cruel and nasty language without turning words alone into a crime.

Hate is better defeated by free speech.