The ACT party is fast becoming the Free Speech party of New Zealand politics. David Seymour has withdrawn a Free Speech Bill in order to strength it further by making tertiary institutions’ funding dependant on them taking “ all reasonable steps to protect academic freedom and free speech”. No doubt this addition to the bill is in reaction to Massey University’s various actions that have shown them to only pay lip-service to to free speech. One Massey academic tacitly admitted that they pulled down posters supporting the Hong Kong protests because they are reliant on China for funding for thousands of International Chinese students.
If Massey is going to shut down free speech in order to appease its Chinese paymasters it only seems fair that the government should be able to cut the University’s funding if it fails to protect academic freedom and free speech. If Massey is going to be a communist controlled University then let the commies pay for it!
“I think there’s a more urgent need now because it’s become clear that the most pressing threat to free expression in New Zealand is not our current laws,” Seymour told Newshub Nation on Saturday.
“Our current laws are not bad – I think they could be improved, and that’s what my previous Bill would have done. The most pressing threat is that some people are genuinely concerned about their health and safety obligations as a person conducting a business undertaking, and they are not sure if they can let people speak on their premises. Others are abusing it.” […]
Seymour […] hosted Feminism 2020 at Parliament on Friday, calling it a “delightfully informative and uneventful discussion”.
“It’s a ridiculous situation. An MP shouldn’t be giving sanctuary to feminists to have their views expressed at Parliament in 2019, but that’s what happened.
“We need to clarify the obligations – particularly of the public sector – of health and safety versus freedom of expression,” he said, before launching an attack on Massey.
“Massey University are horrific. Jan Thomas, their vice-chancellor, blocked Don Brash from coming to talk – I think about monetary policy – because she didn’t like him or his views on other topics. She claimed it was due to health and safety concerns – it was later revealed she had, at the very least, over-egged her claims of how much she’d consulted with police. I think Parliament needs to step in.”
[…] “Our long-term future as a country is not going to be helped by suppressing discussion of difficult issues.”
Newshub