Does the media even care that an MP is trying to ban free speech in public spaces?

Imagine if a New Zealand MP announced that they had drafted a Bill to create special anti free speech buffer zones around all NZ petrol stations and oil company corporate offices.

Imagine if they claimed that this was necessary because, according to them, peaceful environmentalist protestors can cause emotional distress to the customers and staff who work at these places.

Imagine if that Bill wanted to establish special ‘safe areas’, which would create a 150 metre bubble around any oil company facility to prevent peaceful protestors from expressing their views in public spaces near any oil company properties.

Do you think the Greens would ever support such an outrageous and offensive Bill?

Can you imagine the media remaining silent about such a gross violation of the right to freedom of expression in our public square?

Now stop imagining, and instead of oil companies think of abortion facilities, and instead of environmentalists, think of peaceful pro-life counsellors, or people engaged in prayer or silent protest.

What you are thinking about now is no longer a fiction.

It is the reality of what Labour MP Louisa Wall is attempting to introduce in this country with her Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill.

If passed, the Bill will create 150 metre bubbles in the public spaces around abortion facilities where freedom of expression will be a criminal offence.

How such a Bill could even be allowed to come before Parliament when the Attorney General has officially declared that “clause 5 of the Bill appears to be inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression as affirmed in section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act” is beyond me.

Just consider the implications of this - a long-standing Government MP has submitted a Bill which is in clear contravention of the NZ Bill of Rights Act, and no one in the media seems to care about this.

What sort of upside down world are we living in when this sort of blatant abuse of power is allowed to proceed and go unchallenged by the very people who are supposed to keep politicians accountable?

I would have thought that, at the very least, any Bill brought before the NZ Parliament would first have to meet the legal thresholds established by the NZ Bill of Rights Act before it could even be put up for a vote.

Without this basic standard there doesn’t seem to be much point in having a Bill of Rights Act if Parliament can simply propose and contemplate passing legislation that is in clear contravention of it.

The absurdity gets even worse though, when you realise that David Seymour has announced that he will be voting for Louisa Wall’s Bill.

This is the very same MP, who just 12 months ago, on 3 March 2020 tabled an amendment that successfully removed a LESS restrictive version of the ‘safe area’ law from the Abortion Legislation Act.

In the Explanatory Note to his amendment he even stated the following about the LESS restrictive ‘safe area’ law: 

“Safe areas are an impairment to freedom of expression and create a precedent for future restrictions. What’s more the impairment is so arbitrary and weakly justified that it could serve as a justification for almost any future impairment… The creation of safe areas is bad law-making and should be removed from this Bill.”

So what you have here is the absurd spectacle of a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, voting for a Bill which the Attorney General has said is inconsistent with the right to freedom of expression in the NZ Bill of Rights, exactly 12 months after he declared that “the creation of safe areas is bad law-making”.

So which is it? 

Bad lawmaking that must not go ahead, or a law that you can and should vote for?

I doubt that even the most skilled contortionist could make himself bend in that many directions all at once.

What makes all of this even worse though, is the fact that the ‘safe area’ Bill isn’t just a blatant violation of the right to freedom of speech, it also harms vulnerable women.

This Bill is ultimately about criminalising and controlling the bodies of women who simply want to stand outside abortion facilities to offer other females a caring alternative to abortion. 

It's about controlling the bodies and choices of women who might not otherwise find out about these alternatives until they arrive at an abortion facility and see an offer of help from a pro-life woman outside that abortion business.

This Bill will make Labour's extreme Abortion Legislation Act even more extreme by making free speech and offering to help someone a criminal act in public spaces around New Zealand.

When you couple that with the increasing censorship of pro-life voices on social media, you can start to see just how authoritarian pro-abortion ideologues are becoming. 

On the one side there is big tech, on the other there is big government and big abortion, all working hand in glove to silence voices of dissent.

They must be really afraid of what he have to say if they’re using such extreme and totalitarian methods to try and shut us down.

We won’t be silenced though, because every human life matters, and vulnerable women need us to be willing to become criminals in order to tell the truth and offer them better and more caring alternatives to unplanned pregnancy than the violence of abortion.