NZ Bill of Rights Act
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Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008In Which Steven Writes Another Overly Long Post About A Controversial But Potentially Significant BSA Appeal, And Starts Off Disagreeing With The Judge, But Winds Up Coming Close To Changing His Mind, Perhaps Because She Cites His Article. Justice Mallon has overturned a Broadcasting Standards Authority decision that found a Close Up programme unfair (search for “Heather Green” here). I discussed the original decision here. To […]
T-shirty
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards was angered by this T-shirt (scroll down a bit). So they asked the censor to ban it. He did. You might be surprised that T-shirts can be censored. But they can, just like books, films, papers, billboards, or material on a website. Why did he ban it? […]
Electoral Finance Act lawsuit tanks
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008Was the Crown Law Office vet that found that the Electoral Finance Bill wasn’t inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act wrong? Should the Attorney-General have reported to Parliament that the bill was inconsistent with our rights to freedom of expression? Is the Electoral Finance Act itself inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act? John […]
Who needs the BSA?
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008This might surprise you. I was looking at broadcast licences the other day. As you might guess, they can be subject to conditions, and most of the ones that are imposed relate to technical issues: making sure there’s no overlapping use of the spectrum, for example. Mostly, they’re nothing to do with the content of […]
Free speech log
Monday, May 12th, 2008Some upcoming free speech cases: Electoral Finance Act judicial review: strike-out application to be heard on 15 May. Applicants John Boscawen, Garth McVicar, Rodney Hide, and Graham Stairmand now want the court to rule that the Attorney-General should have advised Parliament that the Electoral Finance Bill was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, and […]
Okay, have at me
Sunday, May 11th, 2008This blog is mostly about free speech. It should be becoming clear that my philosophy is that freedom of expression is extremely important and that any limits on it should be carefully defined and properly justified. That philosophy tracks closely with the framework of the Bill of Rights Act, which is relevant to almost all […]
Get over it!
Sunday, May 11th, 2008Some people think flag-burning is offensive. Fine. Some argue that it’s not speech. Not so fine. One of them, somewhat extraordinarily, is Stephen Franks: The effect of flag-burning derives solely from its power to shock and offend. It is not speech; it is not expression. It is the suppression and destruction of others’ expression. As […]
UK political broadcast ad ban upheld
Monday, March 31st, 2008In NZ, we ban the broadcast of election ads, except for those paid for out of the broadcasting allocation. That means a pot of about $3 million of public money gets divvied up between the parties (along with a bit of free air time that some publicly minded stations throw in) – and that’s the […]
HC overturns BSA privacy decision
Sunday, March 16th, 2008Last August, the BSA upheld a complaint from Dr Stephanie du Fresne, the medical director of a mental health clinic, about an interview with one of her committed patients conducted without the clinic’s knowledge. TV3 News interviewed the woman about her electric shock treatment, which she didn’t want. The story revealed that she was bipolar […]
Another backward step for the Bill of Rights
Saturday, March 15th, 2008The best measure of a country’s commitment to free speech is its willingness to protect speech it doesn’t like. At the very least, a respect for free speech involves ensuring that any restrictions are clearly justifiable. That’s how our Bill of Rights works. The Supreme Court passed this test in R v Brooker, using the […]
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