Day One: Human Rights Commission Lines Up With Phil Goff

It was standing room only today at the back of the court for day one of our proceedings against Auckland Council and the Mayor for their de-platforming of two controversial speakers from Council-owned venues last year.  Thank you to all of those members and supporters who came along.

Our counsel, Jack Hodder QC, has now finished the opening submissions – the lawyers for the council started this afternoon and will continue into the morning. The Human Rights Commission (who are appearing as ‘interveners’ in the proceeding) will present orally tomorrow, and then there will be submissions in reply.

Now that they have been presented in Court, we can share with you our written submissions which are available to download here.

Human Rights Commission arguing in favour of the council 

Until they are presented in court, I am not allowed to share with you the submissions filed on behalf of the Human Rights Commission (HRC).

But boy do I want to.  The arguments of HRC seem to undermine the very legislation that established them in the first place. The undermining of fundamental freedoms of New Zealanders by an official organisation that is ostensibly dedicated to upholding those freedoms shows just how big our fight is. Believe it or not, the HRC argues:

• that freedom to form an opinion is only applicable in private – that freedom of thought does not extend to being allowed to adopt thoughts or beliefs at a public event;
• that considerations about “hateful and dangerous” speech “are relevant” for the Canadian speakers (despite there being no evidence before the court that there was anything hateful or dangerous about the speakers) and therefore the council should have been allowed to ban them;
• the “Heckler’s veto” (or “thug’s veto”) may be allowable under NZ law, even if US jurisprudence is strongly opposed to it; and
• there is a comparison between the proposed speaking event and gang headquarters.

The New Zealand Human Rights Commission also make technical arguments in favour of the censorship, including:

• backing the council’s view that it was acting as a commercial party and not in a “governance” role – and therefore the decision to cancel the event is not “judicially reviewable” by the court; and
• our political discrimination argument should be heard only by the Human Rights Review Tribunal and not the High Court (a jurisdictional argument).

Over the lunch break, I sat down with Jordan Williams, Patrick Corish, and Malcolm Moncrief-Spittle (an original ticket holder and the other applicant in these proceedings) for the podcast below.

We invited representatives from the Human Rights Commission to justify the positions the HRC is taking in the Courtroom. They told us they would not be making public comment and wouldn’t come on the podcast to discuss it with us.

This is truly David and Goliath stuff; never did I really think that we would have to put forward human rights argument against Auckland Council and also our Human Rights Commission. Your support is really appreciated.

Thank you for your support and for making our work possible.