What you can do today to support free speech

From No Right Turn, with my one-hundred percent support:

The government has responded positively to yesterday's call by four minor parties to repeal our archaic sedition law, saying that it is a sign that repeal has wide support. This is good, but we shouldn't leave him in any doubt. So I've created a Pledgebank pledge saying

I will write to Justice Minister Mark Burton urging the repeal of New Zealand's sedition laws but only if 20 other New Zealanders will do the same.

You can sign it here.

Twenty people doesn't sound like many, but based on previous pledges its an achievable target, and I want this to succeed. You can also sign up after the target has been reached, and I encourage people to do so - the greater the show of support from the public, the greater the chance that the government will act.

I urge you to sign up and send a letter to Burton. I have. (More info here at Section 14 on the minor parties' call for sedition repeal, and more on the press conference at DPF's. As Bernard says there, "I would never have imagined that you put these four parties in the same room and expect anything sensible to come out but credit where credit’s due - this is a creditable move.")

As I've said here before, "the legal definition of sedition is so broad as to criminalise virtually any criticism of the government. If today's political opposition were doing their job properly, they should themselves fall guilty under the Act every day in Parliament. Not likely today, however. And not one word either in opposition to this case from any of today's supine, brain-dead, morally-castrated, principle-free opposition."

It took a while, but the minor parties have finally got there, and with a bit of help from yourselves, they can get this offence to free speech off the books for good.