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Wednesday, May 14th, 2014As many of you know, I was on the panel for the TVNZ inquiry into Labour Party activities at TVNZ by Shane Taurima and other TVNZ staff members. Other panel members were TVNZ’s Head of Corporate and Legal Affairs Brent McAnulty and CEO of the Radio Broadcasters Association Bill Francis, and we were ably assisted […]
Press Council to tackle bloggers
Wednesday, May 14th, 2014This is my column for the first edition of the NewLaw magazine. The Press Council wants to spread its wings. It has decided to fly farther afield, casting its eagle eye over new terrains on the internet, including bloggers. Will the online community welcome the attentions of this defender of speech and guardian of journalistic […]
Harmful Digital Communications Bill submission
Tuesday, February 11th, 2014Introduction I am a barrister specialising in media law and a lecturer in media and privacy law at Victoria University of Wellington’s law school. I am also a blogger and occasional journalist. I am the author of a textbook for journalists called “Media Minefield”. I have dealt with, studied, and commented on many cases involving […]
Constitution, reviewed
Thursday, December 5th, 2013To all those people who insistend that the government’s constitutional consideration was a stalking horse for formally entrenching the Treaty of Waitangi and racial bias into our constitution: time to start wiping the egg off your face. I’m looking at you, Chris Trotter and Winston Peters and John Ansell and the folk at the Independent Constitutional Review. […]
Is Whale Oil a journalist?
Sunday, December 1st, 2013More specifically, is Cameron Slater entitled to the same privilege to protect sources that other journalists have? As the NZ Herald reports, the owner/operator/author of NZ’s most widely read blog is being sued for defamation. The plaintiff has formally asked him whether he knows the name of his source. (You might have thought that the […]
Privacy scholarship
Friday, November 1st, 2013My colleague at VUW’s law school, Dr Nicole Moreham, asked me to post this: A scholarship is available for a student wishing to complete an LLM by thesis on the law of privacy at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. The thesis will be supervised by Dr Nicole Moreham (co-editor of Tugenhat & Christie: […]
Sign up!
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013Like many others, I’m worried that NZ is about to sign up to a Treaty (the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) that looks like it will have wide-ranging implications for our own laws – our ability to regulate genetically modified products, intellectual property, tobacco and alcohol, the flow of capital, the environment, the purchase of medicines, and […]
Nipples of discontent
Tuesday, October 1st, 2013It seems the whole of NZ’s media are carrying stories of the “nipple ban”. The stories say the Commercial Approvals Bureau has denied the NZ Breast Cancer Foundation permission to run an ad about breast cancer because it features nudity. Reading through the storms of readers’ comments, I’m encouraged to find that most people think this is daffy. (Take a look at the Scottish […]
Read this, if you haven’t already
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013Andrew Geddis nails the government for another constitutional abuse.
Digital harrassment remedies coming
Thursday, April 4th, 2013Justice Minister Judith Collins has (by and large) accepted the Law Commission’s recommendations to better protect victims of cyber-harrassment. (I have explained and defended and critiqued and defended again the Law Commission’s proposals elsewhere). Note that this is not the same as the Law Commission’s recently confirmed plan to set up a one-stop regulator for the […]
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