Tapu Misa: As with all rights, freedom of speech is not unfettered

COMMENT

Out here at the coalface, we are grappling with some truly weighty issues. Freedom of expression, for example, and equal rights.

It's my own fault. There I was encouraging the frank and free exchange of ideas, and the staunch protection of individual rights, only to find that my children are under the mistaken impression that that entitles them to say whatever they like, in whatever manner they like.

And predictably, the result has been discord, chaos and hurt feelings.

Now I'm having to explain that their rights aren't in fact equal - my rights to a harmonious environment clearly supersede theirs, for example - and freedom of expression has its limits.

I should, of course, be a staunch defender of free speech, seeing how freely I make use of it in this column every week. And, indeed, I am, to a point. But I'm not a slave to it. I don't worship at its altar. I happen to think that like all freedoms it's not unfettered.

There are limits - demonstrably reasonable limits, as the Bill of Rights Act reminds us. Thus, my right to write about my family, for example, ends when it impinges on their right to privacy and dignity. I may not, as my teenager has pointed out more than once, unnecessarily embarrass or humiliate her. Not if I want domestic harmony and a happy teenager.

There is some speech that does, indeed, harm. That the cumulative effect of certain kinds of speech leads not only to discrimination and threats of violence against certain groups but also interferes with the right to participate equally in society, threatening their sense of security and worth as human beings.

Which goes some way to explaining the reaction to the apparently now cancelled visit of Holocaust-denying author and historian David Irving, a man who has been denied entry into Canada and Australia.

I've been puzzling over why the National Press Club should invite someone like Mr Irving to speak to a gathering of its members.

After all, he's been described by an English High Court judge as a racist, an anti-Semite and a falsifier of history. He has deliberately misrepresented historical evidence. He is a Holocaust denier.

But it's not so much his presence in the country that worries me - we are grown up enough to have the National Front, after all. But why we'd want to encourage Irving and his misguided supporters by giving him all that attention, not to mention the gloss of credibility and comfort he gets by being asked to give a speech at the National Press Club, is beyond me.

It's all very well quoting Voltaire - "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - but the moment it affects us we have an entirely different take.

Yes, by all means, say what you like, but say it about my mother and you'd better watch your mouth.

Take the response to poor old Haami Piripi, who's getting it from all sides for making a submission on the Foreshore and Seabed Bill. Piripi thinks - as do a few other Maori I know of - that the denial of due process (or at any rate, its exchange for a tortuously long and expensive process that will ultimately lead nowhere) is likely to lead to civil unrest. And, given overseas experience, this is not as far-fetched as you might think. He has made his submission as the leader of Maori in the Northland community of Ahipara, and not as the chief executive of the Maori Language Commission, an independent Crown entity.

And as irritating as that must be for the Government, it is his right to do so. As far as I can see, it doesn't conflict with his role in an organisation charged with promoting the Maori language.

So what can the Government - and, for that matter, Act and National, those hitherto fierce defenders of the right of such bodies to operate independent of Government influence - be thinking in trying to shut him up?

It all comes down to a question of competing rights, as with many thorny issues we're being confronted with today.

Where does the right to freedom of religious worship end and the right to be free from religious influence begin?

At which point does the right to free speech end and the right to be free from the damage wrought by that speech begin?

What about the right to speak one's native tongue, as opposed to the right of an employer to insist - as one in Auckland did - that English only be spoken in the workplace?

And, as came up here last week, should two Muslim women be allowed to wear their burqas while testifying in court?

The answers seem clearer once you get past the intolerance and the prejudices, which Paul Holmes encapsulated so nicely on his TV show: "The burqa is extreme ... the burqa is not us ... New Zealanders don't like it ... they see it as extreme and aggressive."

Well, maybe some of us do, but that's not the issue.

The issue is whether the women's right to wear burqas impinges on the defendant's right to a fair trial in a court of law. If it does, clearly their right has to give way. In a court of law, and in this case, it's the defendant's right that should take precedence.

Some rights aren't equal, after all.

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