‘Insulting’ cartoons ruled OK

A tribunal has found Fairfax Media did not breach the Human Rights Act in publishing two ‘‘provocative’’ cartoons in its newspapers.

Labour MP Louisa Wall and South Auckland youth group Warriors Of Change took the company and two of its newspapers, The Press and Marlborough Express, to the Human Rights Review Tribunal over cartoons published in 2013. Fairfax also owns The Dominion Post and Stuff website.

Cartoonist Al Nisbet produced two cartoons about the Government’s breakfasts in schools programme. One depicted adults dressed as children eating breakfast and saying ‘‘Psst ... If we can get away with this, the more cash left for booze, smokes and pokies’’.

The other showed a family sitting at a table littered with Lotto tickets, alcohol and cigarettes and saying ‘‘Free school food is great! Eases our poverty and puts something in you kids’ bellies’’.

Wall said the cartoons were ‘‘insulting and ignorant put-downs of Maori and Pacific people’’. She argued they breached section 61 of the Human Rights Act.

Section 61 states: the written matter or words must be ‘‘threatening, abusive, or insulting’’ and the second requirement is that the written matter or words must be ‘‘likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons’’ in New Zealand on the ground of the colour, race, or ethnic or national origins of that group.

The tribunal’s ruling, released yesterday, found while the cartoons may have ‘‘offended, insulted or even angered’’, they were ‘‘not likely to excite hostility against or bring into contempt any group of persons in New Zealand on the ground of their colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’’.

For that reason, their publication was not unlawful.

The ruling went on to say: ‘‘It would be wrong to characterise this decision as a ruling that there is a ‘right to insult’. There is no such right.’’

The Press editor-in-chief Joanna Norris welcomed the tribunal’s ‘‘strong’’ decision.

‘‘[It] squarely rejects the misguided notion that publication of material offensive to some should be unlawful, finding in favour of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression underpins a free and fair democratic society. If New Zealanders are not free to express views, even those that offend, outrage or upset some people, all human rights are threatened.’’

Wall was contacted for comment.