NZ Herald supports abolition of sedition law

The NZ Herald has backed calls to abolish the sedition law. Good. Extracts:

Sedition is not at all common and is largely irrelevant to people’s daily lives. Yet it is a charge which is misused on occasion and represents an overly broad, worrying threat to one of our most basic rights, the freedom of expression.

The Law Commission’s final report … saying the provisions are overly broad. “They infringe on the principle of freedom of expression and have the potential for abuse, a potential that has been realised in some periods of our history, when these offences have been used to stifle or punish political speech.” It goes on to observe that in a democracy it is hard to see how or why speech uttered against the government should be a crime. And it says that other parts of the Crimes Act deal adequately with inciting violence, rioting and willing insurrection.

We have a largely open society, but it is one in which threats to freedom of expression and the freedom of the press regularly arise. The Law Commission’s clear and forceful report is a welcome support for free speech. It usefully quotes English writer and thinker John Milton from a speech in 1644: “Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties … Let [truth] and falsehood grapple; whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.”