The Government has come under criticism for being slow to reform hate crime legislation, even after it was recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the March 15 terror attack
The Government's decision to not prioritise one of the recommendations from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the March 15 terror attack has been labelled "concerning" by the Green Party and "surprising" by a prominent leader in the Muslim community.
The Royal Commission found significant gaps in the legislative framework for dealing with hate crimes. In fact, people can not even be charged with a hate crime in New Zealand, though their sentence can be lengthened if convicted of a crime that had a hateful motivation.
The Commission advised the Government to amend the Summary Offences Act and the Crimes Act to allow people to be charged with "hate-motivated" offences, which would align New Zealand's framework with that of the United Kingdom.
New Zealand’s legal system does not adequately deal with hate crime and hate speech. The current laws do not appropriately recognise the culpability of hate-motivated offending," the Commission found.
"The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (United Kingdom) provides a useful example of legislation that sees hate-motivated offences result in much higher penalties than for the underlying offences and ensures the appropriate recording of these offences."
Despite the Government pledging "in principle" to implement all of the Commission's recommendations, Justice Minister Kris Faafoi said on Tuesday that hate crime reform wasn't a priority.
"That is a piece of work that we're committed to. It's a longer-term piece of work. We want to make sure that we engage with the wider community and, importantly, across political parties for that kind of work too.
"It is controversial areas and we want to make sure that if we do that, we are talking to other political parties about what kind of direction we might head in," Faafoi told reporters during a press conference after he announced new terrorism legislation in response to a different Commission recommendation.
Aliya Danzeisen, national coordinator for the Islamic Women's Council,replied: "It's quite surprising to be honest. They keep saying that they need to consult regarding hate. Shouldn't they consult on those [terrorism] changes then too?
"They're talking about groups that are overseas but we actually have groups inside that can do us harm here. I would place hate as a higher priority than that one."
She added that she couldn't understand what was holding the Government back from making these changes, given it had received an enormous mandate in the 2020 election. Compared to the divided United States Senate reaching a bipartisan deal on hate crime legislation amid rising anti-Asian sentiment, the majority-Labour Parliament was slacking, Danzeisen said.
Greens justice spokesperson Golriz Ghahraman said the delay was concerning. While the Government appeared to be engaging in significant work on the more controversial hate speech reform, she said she hadn't had any dedicated meetings with Faafoi about hate crimes in particular.
"It is really disappointing that the minister hasn't prioritised this. I know that he is working on hate speech reform, which he has met with me about and we're on top of, but it's the hate crimes that were being not recorded effectively by police and that the New Zealand Islamic Women's Council had become really, really concerned with," she said.
"I've had a meeting with him broadly on the hate speech, hate crime work programme. But it is concerning that hate crimes, which are a broad thing that would be caught otherwise, aren't going to be caught for some time yet."
Community-led framework needed
Tze Ming Mok, a social researcher who has previously written about the need for hate crime reform, said the changes in the Royal Commission report were the least the Government could do.
"The legal framework is kind of the bare minimum, so it's a little bit bizarre that the Government's choosing not to prioritise that, considering it's almost an easier win than hate speech," she told Newsroom.
"It's just the minimum and it's not the full package of what we really need. It's sad that they're not going to do the bare minimum. What really works in the UK is that community groups themselves are the ones who collect, monitor, count and then escalate most hate incidents to the police. And they're funded to do that. What we really need to see is that investment in communities who are the communities that people affiliate with and they're being victimised because of those characteristics - rainbow communities, Muslim communities, Black communities, Jewish communities."
Mok said a community-led approach was important because police might not accurately record hate incidents. Already, a metric devised by police in late 2018 to do so was found by the Commission to be ineffective.
"Reporting of hate motivations remains incomplete and somewhat inconsistent," the Commission reported.
Ghahraman said that police themselves had asked for hate crime reform so it would be easier to tally hate incidents as well.
"That's actually something that New Zealand Police have called for because they feel that they don't have an effective way of recording hate crimes or hate-motivated crimes. They wanted it to be legislated for, rather than to be a systemic change for them because they wanted clarity around what it meant," she said.
ACT Party leader David Seymour said he didn't think a change to legislation was needed, but that police could improve hate incident reporting internally.
"This is one area where I think the Minister has got it right. There is always a temptation to create new laws when in reality we need to enforce the existing laws better," he said.
"In terms of creating new hate crime laws, the British have gone down that route and actually had an increase in hate crimes. I would say the police should be deciding how they report on crimes. It's their job to trace statistics and organise themselves to better fight crime."
Hate speech or hate crime?
Mok also expressed confusion that far more controversial hate speech provisions were first in line.
"I've said this right from the start, when Andrew Little almost wilfully or accidentally-on-purpose confused hate speech and hate crime when talking about it. Hate crime is the easy one!" she said.
"Hate incidents are along a spectrum. They go from things that don't meet the threshold of a crime, they're just really sh*tty and they still really affect people, up to extreme physical assaults and terrorist attacks. We need an approach that covers the full spectrum, that allows people to have their experiences counted."
National Party justice spokesperson Simon Bridges similarly argued that hate crime laws were a different matter from hate speech.
"My hunch is that Minister Faafoi is working out hate laws are much more fraught than the easy rhetoric suggests, particularly if we take our freedoms as New Zealanders seriously. That said, while it's worth questioning the desirability of all hate law changes, the irony is that hate crime laws are conceptually more straightforward and less problematic than hate speech law, which is receiving more priority from him," he told Newsroom.
"Before taking any decisions National would obviously need to see a draft law. The devil is in the detail. But hate crime law, that Minister Faafoi seems to be putting in the too hard basket, is less problematic and worrying to me than hate speech crimes."
